Podcasts about dragon naturally speaking

Dragon Naturally Speaking is een geavanceerd spraakherkenningsprogramma dat gemaakt is om snel en effectief teksten te produceren met je stem. Ook maakt Dragon het mogelijk om je pc geheel met je stem te bedienen. Dragon werkt op Windows. De dicteerfunctie van Dragon is met name interessant voor mensen die veel teksten moeten produceren, bijvoorbeeld vanuit een werk- of schoolsituatie. Dragon kan dit effectiever dan reguliere dicteerfuncties onder meer doordat het programma zich aanpast aan je stem en diverse mogelijkheden heeft om woordenschat en grammatica te optimaliseren. De stembediening van Dragon is met name interessangt voor mensen die niet in staat zijn om het toetsenbord van de pc te bedienen, bijvoorbeeld door een motorische beperking. Richard Ouwejan van Koninklijke Visio heeft 15 jaar ervaring met het trainen van Dragon gebruikers. Hij neemt je mee in de mogelijkheden van dit pakket. *Heb je nog vragen?* Mail naar kennisportaal@visio.org, of bel 088 585 56 66. Meer artikelen, video's en podcasts vind je op https://kennisportaal.visio.org Koninklijke Visio expertisecentrum voor slechtziende en blinde mensen www.visio.org

Simon Sansome was born, raised and continues to live in England. He had what he considers a normal childhood except for the fact that he did have and has today dyslexia. As he describes it, reading even to day some forty-two years after he came on the scene, is extremely difficult for him. He does, however, write well. He will tell us about his growing up, going to a British college, then joining the workforce and eventually going to a university. Yes, college as he will tell us is different from university.   In 2014 he was struck with a slipped disc. Unfortunately, the chiropractor who then attempted to fix the problem only made matters much worse and Simon became paralyzed from the waist down. Simon determined to move forward and went back to the university where he graduated in 2018 with a degree in journalism.   Along the way Simon created a Facebook page and a community called “Snowball Community”. As the community evolved Simon and later others began posting information about accessible places first in England and then elsewhere as well. Today Snowball has received countless awards for all it is doing to promote accessibility and Simon tells us that they expect to have over a Million viewers on a regular basis. Snowball Community will soon be providing opportunities for restaurants, shops and other places to obtain in-person accessibility assessments and the ratings from those assessments will be available to promote the businesses that are evaluated.   Simon by any standard is unstoppable and inspiring. I trust that you will agree.       About the Guest:   Simon sustained a life changing injury when he was 32 which left him disabled from the waist down. It forced him to take early retirement and he decided to go to DMU to study Journalism and pursue his passion for writing.   In 2016, while at DMU, Simon set up a Facebook Snowball Community with the idea of raising awareness of, and improving, disabled access. His award-winning campaign has had a global impact and the page now reaches more than 20 million people a month.    Simon is also an award winning film/documentary producer after his life story was brought by Amazon Prime and his film ‘Access All Areas' won 16 international film awards including best film.    Simon is also founder of Snowball Community a global disability app where you can leave reviews on how accessible a place is. Which is available on Android and Apple devices. The app has had 40,000 reviews in 12 months making it the biggest disability app in the world helping thousands of people daily.    Simon has won a number of major awards he is widely considered to be one of the most influential disabled people in the UK.   He was named in the top ten of the most influential people in the UK 2023 and this yeas won the Digital and Tech award at the Disability Power 100 and won the prestigious Santander X national award and will represent the UK at the Santander Global awards 2024.   Ways to connect with Simon:   https://www.facebook.com/FreezeSnowball   https://twitter.com/FreezemySnowbal   https://www.instagram.com/freezesnowball?igsh=MTl5ZHMxb3FvdzV1dA%3D%3D&utm_source=qr   https://www.tiktok.com/@snowball.community?_t=8jKD9oRZmPw&_r=1       About the Host:   Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/   https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening!   Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast   If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset .   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review   Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.       Transcription Notes:   Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:20 Well, hi there. This is your host, Mike Hingson, and you are listening to unstoppable mindset where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. I love to say that every so often, but here we are once again, and now we are talking with Simon Sansome, who is over in England. So it is about 736 in the evening there, and it's 1136 where I am. So Simon, welcome to unstoppable mindset. Simon is a he's going to talk about snowball and I don't want to give that away. He also is a person with a disability. So again, welcome to unstoppable mindset. Thank you very much. It's   Simon Sansome ** 02:01 a pleasure to be here.   Michael Hingson ** 02:02 Now I am curious about something that just popped into my head. Do you all have daylight savings time over there that takes effect at some point? Yes, we   Simon Sansome ** 02:10 do. Yes.   Michael Hingson ** 02:12 When will that start?   Simon Sansome ** 02:13 No idea whatsoever. It just pops up on my iPhone and changes itself   02:17 these days. Yeah. Yeah. I   Simon Sansome ** 02:22 mean, best thing from working at home doesn't really affect me. Yeah, well, it's not like I lose an hour or gain an hour because I just stay in bed or get up, you know, get it when, when I need to. So, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 02:33 now I'm just really curious. I'm gonna look at my calendar. I think,   02:39 I think it's April.   Michael Hingson ** 02:40 Is it all the way to April? Yeah, with Okay, over there, it's April. Well, here Daylight Savings Time begins. Oops, I'm sorry. Daylight Saving Time begins next Sunday. So you can tell we're recording this in advance of when it's going to actually go up everyone but daylight savings time here in the US, begins on March 10 so time Time flies. However, when you're having fun, I guess   Simon Sansome ** 03:13 there is a rumor over here that Daylight Savings Time was actually created by Benjamin Franklin so we could play golf in Scotland. Is that what it was, apparently so, but obviously we've got nothing to verify that, but that's the rumor. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 03:26 yeah, but it didn't get implemented all that soon. But you know, on the other hand, um, Benjamin Franklin is also one of the main characters in the new James Potter series, the outgrowth of the Harry Potter books. Oh, I didn't know that, because he is the Chancellor of Alma alaran, which is the American or US School of magic. So he's been around a while. This guy, Franklin, he's done a lot of stuff. But anyway, nevertheless, welcome to unstoppable mindset, and we're really glad that you're here. Why don't you start by telling us kind of about the early Simon growing up and some of those things. Yeah,   Simon Sansome ** 04:06 of course, I grew up in a village called burst in Leicestershire, that for most people, nobody knows where Leicestershire is. Everyone thinks of Nottingham when they think of Les share because it's the cloak, because of Robin Hood. So Nottingham Sherwood Forest is about 40 miles north of Lacher. However, we have become more famous over the recent years. We won the premiership in 2016 in Leicester City, which went was was a fantastic thing for the city. And then Richard the Third interesting fact, it was found under my car parking space. Dickie three. I was working for social services at the time, and Dickie three under my car parking space. So that was fun, I know, but no grew up in a normal house, Mum, three sisters, went to school, was dyslexic, wasn't diagnosed. I did terribly at school, great at cricket, loved the sport, played a bit of rugby and. And, yeah, just, I suppose really, you know, I worked. I worked all the like, Saturday jobs, and worked in a fruit and veg shop from the age of 14 to 16, getting up at four, four o'clock in the morning, going to work for a few hours, then going to school, falling asleep at school before Yeah, and then going to close the shop up at night. And I did that for one pound 25 an hour, which was, you know, child slave labor, yeah? So really, your average childhood, nothing really exciting going on there.   Michael Hingson ** 05:33 So did you ever go to Sherwood Forest?   Simon Sansome ** 05:35 Many times it's a nice walk. Yeah, is it we go on a regular basis due to the fact that it's you can hire a they're called trampers over here. It's a big mobility scooter, and so you can go around Sherwood Forest in the mobility scooter. So we'll get there quite a lot, because it's a nice outing. What   Michael Hingson ** 05:52 kind of trees?   Simon Sansome ** 05:55 Big oak, okay, big ones, yeah, willows, oaks and lots more. You know, it's a forest.   Michael Hingson ** 06:02 How big is? How big is the forest?   Simon Sansome ** 06:04 Absolutely no idea whatsoever. It's big. It's a forest. Yeah, you know, it's a good few miles across, a few, good few miles wide. You're going to get lost in it, if you if there wasn't a path, yeah, yeah. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 06:19 and it's nice that after all these years and all the reputation that it has, and Robin Hood hiding in it and living there, and all that, that it really does still stand and people honor it, which is cool. Yeah,   Simon Sansome ** 06:31 I the best thing about Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, if you've seen it, he arrives in Dover on by sea, and then by night, he's walked to Nottingham, which is about 250 miles, he's fast,   Michael Hingson ** 06:47 and when you got to go after the sheriff, you know, you, you've got a mission, you got to do it,   Simon Sansome ** 06:51 yeah? So fat place Walker, him and him and Morgan Freeman,   Michael Hingson ** 06:57 well, my favorite movie is actually a slightly different one. It's called Robin in the seven hoods. Have you ever seen it is,   Simon Sansome ** 07:04 is that the, I don't know if, no, I'm thinking of Robin Hood, many types. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 07:09 Robin and the seven hoods, stars, well, the Rat Pack, basically. Okay, and so Bing, Crosby is no Frank Sinatra is Robbo. It takes place on the in Chicago during the gang times. So Frank Sinatra is Robbo. Dean Martin is John, or Little John. Bing Crosby was Friar, tuck and other people. Peter Falk was Guy Gisborne. Okay, you know, so they had all the characters. It was, it was really a cute movie. I've always loved to watch that movie. It's a lot of fun. So, and needless to say, it was a comedy and, and at the end, most everybody ends up behind, you know, in concrete. It in behind a wall, except for Friar Tuck who gets the girl? Fair enough. I think Robbo doesn't get walled up either, but it's a fun movie. But anyway, no Sherwood Forest. It's all on the south side of Chicago, okay. But anyway, so did you go to college? I   Simon Sansome ** 08:16 went to college and dropped out and then moved when? Because I just didn't get along college. Well, the thing is, because I had undiagnosed, I was undiagnosed dyslexic, yeah, in the like, you know, 80s and 90s, it wasn't really recognized as a thing, no. So I really couldn't really write until I was 1516, so I didn't go to what you would I went to a college. But the college isn't what colleges in America, or secondary rather than higher education. So we go, we go primary school, high school, college, university, okay? And so I went to, I went to Leicester college to did, what did I do there? It was film, I think, yeah, for about a year, dropped out and then got a job in Scotland, and moved Scotland just on a whim and became a training manager in a hotel. And the idea was, is I wasn't going to be rich, I but I thought, if I could be a waiter, if I can be a barman, if I can be the head of the departments in a hotel in the catering industry, then I've got a job for life. Yeah. So I've got a backup plan. So because once you've worked in a bar, in a restaurant, or you've been a chambermaid, which I've done, or kitchen shoe chef, or whatever, you know, you can pretty much walk into any job anywhere, and just, you know, you're always going to have a job if you need to, you can find things. Yeah, yes, absolutely. And that was the plan, because I didn't have an education behind   Michael Hingson ** 09:39 me. And then, and I'm amazed at the number of people, and I shouldn't be, because I understand the history who happened to have dyslexia or who were on, what we would say now is on the autism spectrum, who were never diagnosed. I've talked to a number of people here on on stop. Mindset who talked about the fact that they were autistic and didn't even know it until they were in their 30s or even 40s, and it was very freeing to figure it out, because they knew they were different, but they didn't understand what what was really going on with them, and then in the last 15 or 20 years, they finally got enough of a diagnosis, a lot of information. So they, oftentimes, they figured it out even before the medical profession did.   Simon Sansome ** 10:37 Yeah, same thing that happened with me. It was late diagnosis, yeah. So, so after Scotland, I moved back down to moving with my sister to help her out, because she had a child, and she was struggling. She was single mother. And so I got a job working at British Gas in Leicester, which is in the call center, and I got and after a painstaking working a nine to five job in a call center, thought, I don't want to do this for the rest of my life. Yeah. So I returned to education. And I returned to Loughborough College, which is up the road, and my then teacher, my sociology teacher, after handing in my first assignment as a mature student, she went, right, you're dyslexic, have an assessment. And that's when it really Yeah, and that's when it changed. That's when everything changed for me.   Michael Hingson ** 11:28 So what changed and why did it? Well, I can understand why, after the diagnosis,   Simon Sansome ** 11:33 I got the support I needed, that I didn't that I didn't realize myself, that I needed so kind of support, extra reading lessons, extra tuition, how to read and write, how to spell, very patient teachers, and a lot more encouragement as well from the college, which then helped me go on to university as well. So yeah, so   Michael Hingson ** 11:57 your your teachers helped you teach your brain to connect and be able to eventually really recognize, yes, so   Simon Sansome ** 12:07 I learned very visually. I can't really read. Can't really read very well. However, I'm an excellent writer, which is ironic. And I was writing everything and everything because I enjoyed writing so much. But I couldn't read software. I couldn't read out loud. And if I would read, sit there and reading your book, I would have, I call them brain farts, but their memory lapses or something, where you can read a whole page, or three or four pages of a book, and you can read it absolutely fine, but I've got no idea what's happened in those three pages, the information just doesn't   Michael Hingson ** 12:42 stay there. Yeah, the disconnect is still pretty strong. Yes, very much. So,   Simon Sansome ** 12:47 so I learn visually. So I was, I mean, back in the day, I was a huge film fan, and that explains the reason why. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 12:53 but, but you could write so you could, you could communicate. And whether, whether you, I assume, probably more often than not you, you wrote via a keyboard. Yep,   Simon Sansome ** 13:05 very much. So I also used the dragon talk back in the day, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 13:09 but you don't. How did you do with like, writing with a pen or a pencil? No, I Yeah, no, I can do that quite well. You can do that quite well as well. Yeah, yeah.   Simon Sansome ** 13:18 I kept my journal as well. I kept a diary, yeah, just because it helped me to write. So   Michael Hingson ** 13:24 do you still use Dragon? No,   Simon Sansome ** 13:27 no, God, no. It's atrocious. I don't I haven't used it for about 15 years, so I don't know where it is now. Oh   Michael Hingson ** 13:34 gosh, it it is incredibly much better than it used to be when it was dragon. Dictate. Now it's Dragon Naturally Speaking, I use it a lot, and when I discover it has mispronounced, I can read or not mispronounce, but misrecognized or misinterpreted, I can correct it, and it doesn't take much in the way of corrections. But Dragon is so much better than it used to be. Yes, I use Dragon Professional and and I do type a lot and compose a lot, but I also find when I'm doing something that takes a while to do because it's long, it's much better to use Dragon to do it.   Simon Sansome ** 14:18 Yes, No, I never really got along with Dragon. I used it, but a big fan of it. But however, the dictation on my Mac and my phone is absolutely perfect for me. We'll come to it shortly. But I'm a journalist as well now, and so I can write a story within 10 minutes, 500 or 1000 words within a few minutes. It's great, and   Michael Hingson ** 14:40 you would find that that Dragon has that same level of accuracy, because I think a lot of the algorithms went from Dragon to other technologies, or the other way around. But Dragon is really great today.   14:55 Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 14:56 so, you know, I can't, I can't complain a lot about Dragon. And it really does help a great deal. It's a whole lot cheaper than it used to be, but that's another story. You know, of course, the original Kurzweil Reading Machine for the blind that read print out loud by being able to look at a page and recognize the characters. The original Ray Kurzweil machine was $50,000 and now you get free OCR on an iPhone or an Android device or or very inexpensive anyway, and optical character recognition is a common place kind of thing anyway. So yes, lot different than it used to be. The world does progress and move forward. It certainly does so you did eventually go to university. What did you do there?   Simon Sansome ** 15:41 Yeah, so the first time I went to university. So I went twice, I did criminology. Oh, wow. Because I was enjoying writing so much, I thought I'd like to be a crime writer. What a waste of the time. If you want to learn about crime, you don't go and do you don't go and do criminology at university. So because it was so boring and so dull, I dropped out after the second year again. I mean, I was doing okay. I was getting about 50s, you know, so, two, two ish at university, but I really wasn't enjoying it, and I wasn't putting any effort into it. And so, yeah, I dropped out and looked for a job and went to work for the council. So   Michael Hingson ** 16:27 the council being so,   Simon Sansome ** 16:29 I worked for the local authority. Left City Council. Okay, yeah, the city council. Okay, great, okay, yes. So I,   Michael Hingson ** 16:36 I that was different. It was,   Simon Sansome ** 16:39 it was, it was very interesting, because I wasn't enjoying university, that was the thing, and so   Michael Hingson ** 16:46 and so you decided to leave criminology at the university and go look at the criminals of the council, right?   Simon Sansome ** 16:51 Pretty much. Yeah, I started off in housing. I worked as a housing assistant for a couple of years, working up there, and then, after a number of years getting a bit of experience under about doing some volunteering for youth services, um, I moved on to social services. And I was there till I left the council. And that was, that was an education. I did that for about eight years. And so, yeah, that and nothing prepares you for working for social services, going to see people intimate house you know, into their homes, their immediate environments, how people live, the poverty, the destruction, the drugs, the deaths you know, every you know, everyone's everyday life that you take for granted. And it certainly was an eye opening experience and a very worthwhile life education,   Michael Hingson ** 17:43 yeah, at the same Yeah, it is a great education at the same time, when you do it and you care, you are also hopefully able to help people and make a difference, even if it's with one life that   Simon Sansome ** 17:56 was the intention. So our specializing in adult mental health and physical disabilities by the time I left, and what you see every day is you try and get some positives from it, because you are saving lives and you're trying to make people safe, and that's your job. And at the end of the day, you get people who just don't care and just want to die and kill themselves. And yeah, it's people dying on you every day, especially if you come to the hospitals, that's interesting. I didn't I got transferred to one of the hospitals here in Leicestershire and but even before I had a case or went to see went to see a patient, to get them discharged from hospital, I had like, nine deaths on my table, wow. And so I got transferred back, just in case I thought I was killing people, even I hadn't seen anyone.   Michael Hingson ** 18:46 So did, do you think you ever really did make a positive difference to any of those people who were really losing hope, or who had lost hope? Were you? Were you able to help?   Simon Sansome ** 18:55 I mean, the thing is, is because you're the first point of call, so I was on effectively, emergency call outs. So you go and make sure that person is safe, you make sure they've got food, make sure they're okay, and then you pass it on to a long term team. So mine was the emergency intermediary department, like working with the police, ambulance service, firemen and so on and so forth. We would do joint visits. And so I really never got to see the long term effects. I was there to put the plan in place and then let a longer term, longer team, manage that person and the cash plan, or whatever was needed. So well,   Michael Hingson ** 19:31 it's a it is a process, no doubt. So when did, when did you leave the council? What year was that   Simon Sansome ** 19:39 that was? When was that that was 2015   Michael Hingson ** 19:42 Oh, okay, well, yeah. And then what did you go do? Because at some point after that, your life changed.   Simon Sansome ** 19:48 My life changed. So it actually changed while I was working for the council. Um, so I became disabled in 2014 um. So I we're not 100% sure how the injury happened. I'll explain. So I was doing Ruby training at Victoria Park during that week, and I we also had a ton of bark delivered to our driveway because our driveway needed doing. And so I have this I slipped a disc, and I don't know if it's from the or it's from playing with me that I don't know, or rugby training anyway, not from cricket, not from Cricket. No, I have played cricket for a while, since then I played it as   Michael Hingson ** 20:30 a lad. Cricket is very slow. Oh, cricket's amazing   Simon Sansome ** 20:34 you. It's more technical than baseball. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 20:37 I know. I understand. I When I visited New Zealand and listened to some cricket on the radio, and it was really hard to follow because it it generally does move pretty slow, so I know it's very technical, and I never really caught on to the rules. I did figure out rugby a lot more than than I was able to figure out rugby   Simon Sansome ** 20:58 is 80 minutes. I mean, cricket lasts for five days. It's beautiful. Yeah, I   Michael Hingson ** 21:02 understand, but you have to take the time to really learn the rules. And I didn't have enough time to really listen to the radio, I guess   Simon Sansome ** 21:11 that's right. Anyway, yeah, so I had a slip disc. I've had a slip disc before, and normally I would take some ibuprofen, do my exercises, try and pop it back in. On this occasion, me and Kate, my new wife, we were going away on a honeymoon to Mexico, and so I went to see a chiropractor in the local area. And it was doing well, you know, I was getting better. I was exercising. What I was walking further. It was had I took a few weeks off work because it was really very uncomfortable, and couldn't really visit people in their homes when I'm really uncomfortable. However, on the fifth or sixth visit, this newly trained chiropractor decided she was going to have a go at putting the disc back in for my honeymoon, and she crushed levels three, four and five of my spine while doing that, and that hurt. I screamed. I didn't know what she did. I thought she slipped. I thought she she could. She warned me it was going to hurt, yeah, and it did. It really did okay. And I after I couldn't get my shoes on, so she was on. So she helped me get my shoes on, and effectively, she just threw me out after I screamed. I think she knew something that had gone wrong. I didn't know at the time. I just thought she put my disc back in because I was in so much pain. I collapsed outside where Kate was waiting for me in the car. And I went home and said, Look, I'm just going to go to bed. I'll sleep it off. And the following morning, I woke up, I thought I had a stroke because I had no sensation from the waist down. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 22:50 yeah. My wife was a t3 para, so it was basically from the bottom of the breast down. But I understand exactly what you're saying,   Simon Sansome ** 22:59 yeah. So it was a very unusual situation. I didn't know what to do. Kate had gone to work that morning. We lived in a cul de sac, a dead end road for you and me.   Michael Hingson ** 23:10 Nope, no cul de sacs. Very well, that's okay,   Simon Sansome ** 23:14 okay, that's fine. I wasn't too sure on the terminology for the American audience.   Michael Hingson ** 23:18 It's it's a term over here, too cool,   Simon Sansome ** 23:21 excellent. And so I was shouting for assistance. There's nobody there. I didn't have my phone on me. Phone was downstairs, and so I threw myself out of bed, did an army crawl, threw myself down the stairs, but naked, and I don't really remember a lot after that. I don't mean apparently my mom came round. Apparently, the ambulance came round. But I you know, but I don't remember a lot what happened. I really don't. What I know is, when I was taken to hospital, I had an MRI. Don't remember the MRI at all. Obviously, I'm under painkillers at this time, and there's a lot going on, and I'm in shock because I'm paralyzed from the waist down. And yeah, they they did an MRI. The emergency doctor said it was cordial. Quite a syndrome. Cordiaquinas syndrome is fully recoverable if you get an operation within 2448 hours. However, for whatever reason, and we still don't know the answer to this, the consultant overall, the A and E doctor, and said, It's not cordial Corona syndrome, and they put me on the ward for three months not knowing what to do with me, because they didn't know what was wrong with me. And by the time the by that time, the damage had been doing. Needed to do it within a 48 hour window to stop any permanent damage. But no, they left me there, and I was unfortunately left there to rot for three months. The damage had been done, and then I was paralyzed from the waist down for forever. I still, you know, I'm a wheelchair, full time wheelchair user. Now I. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 25:00 yeah. By then it was irreversible and there was nothing you could do. Yeah,   Simon Sansome ** 25:04 very much. So,   Michael Hingson ** 25:06 so as a paraplegics, can you? Can you now? Well, I've summoned that. You then went through some sort of physical therapy and strengthening and so on. Yeah,   Simon Sansome ** 25:17 absolutely. So I went through physio for a while. I mean, some of it has come back. Some of it did come back for a while. They said you probably going to get better for a while, but then it's going to deteriorate again. So the point where the first, after a year, I could walk, you know, 200 meters, maybe, with a walking stick and a frame. So I was getting out, you know, I could walk slightly. I could, you know, so that wasn't too bad, okay, however, then I got a drop foot, so that went so I couldn't really walk anywhere, because I got no balance. And then the other Association went to my legs, so I got to a point where I could walk slightly, a little, and then it started disappearing over the years. It's been 10 years now. So now I've while I've got about, in my right leg, I'd say about, ooh, 10% sensation. But my drop foot, there's nothing at all. Can't feel it, so you can drop it off, I wouldn't notice. And in my left leg, I've probably got about 10% usage. So I can move my legs, I just can't feel anything, and then my bowels and bladder have gone as well. So I've got a self catchpherized and stuff as well.   Michael Hingson ** 26:25 Yeah, which? Which my wife always had to do. She was born with scar tissue on her spinal cord, so she's always been that way. We always been apparent. So obviously huge difference in your lifestyle going forward. And how did you cope with all that? What did you do? What did you decide to do? Because you strike me as a person who isn't going to let a lot row of grass grow under your feet, as it were. Well, I   Simon Sansome ** 26:55 mean, we didn't know. Wow, this is the thing. We were stuck because I couldn't work, okay? And work made me take ill health retirement. They didn't want me back at work. Even though I didn't want to do that, I was forced to take ill health retirement at 32 we me and Kate. This is where me and Kate were very sensible. Is because Kate was earning a good wage, I was earning a good wage, and we brought the house. That was in case any of any of us lost our jobs, we could still afford the mortgage and the bills. Okay, wouldn't leave us with a lot of money, but we could just, we wouldn't lose the house, right? So if we, if we brought a huge because we had a nice three bed, semi detached, it was a really nice house, but it we could have Afford a House shovel the size, but if we did that, we'd be really stretching ourselves. So because we were sensible. That gave me the option to go and we needed to cover the mortgage effectively, because the bills were the bills and the mortgage were effectively case wage, and so we didn't have really any money to live on. You know, we're talking about 2030, pound a week after all, the bills will come out and the mortgage. So I decided that I was going to return to university to retrain, um, after pretty much the day afterwards. Uh, let's let city council told me how to take ill health retirement, and I applied to university to check do a journalism because I enjoyed   Michael Hingson ** 28:14 writing. Did the health retirement then give you some income,   Simon Sansome ** 28:18 very little. It was 134 pound a month. And it still is about, I think it's going to be up to inflation, like 150 pound a month. I get it after life, not much. Yeah, absolutely. Because, you know, I was 32 there's no money in the park for the ill health retirement, yeah. But what would happen is, is it would give us time to sort things out, and the student loan would cover any food bills, or, you know, anything we needed for that for three years. So it gives us a little leeway. So it gives us a little bit of an income. It takes the pressure off Kate and so I returned to university to train as a journalist, and that's again where everything starts to change again. So,   Michael Hingson ** 29:04 but you could write, so there you go, yeah,   Simon Sansome ** 29:07 um, couldn't spell. It still can't spell, but I could tell a story, yeah, so I can get it checked by Kate or my mom or whoever. So, yeah, it's, it was interesting. So yeah, I got accepted. And I was twice the age of everyone else there, which was a little bit embarrassing, but I didn't really care. I was more mates with I'm still in contact with them. Actually, I'm still, and this is like 2000 what, 15 until 18 I graduated. Yeah, I'm still in contact on Facebook and stuff with all my lecturers, not the people I went to university with, because, yeah, but all lecturers I'm still in contact with.   Michael Hingson ** 29:46 So, you know, I want to come back and continue the story, but now I'm a little bit curious. Given the way things work over here, a lot of times, somebody clearly made them a. Stake in terms of dealing with your diagnosis and so on. Did you ever think about any kind of litigation or going after them legally and looking for funds that way, or anything like that?   Simon Sansome ** 30:11 We had to. Never sued anyone in my life. Never wanted to. Yeah, but we're getting to the point where I you know, wheelchairs are expensive. Equipment's getting expensive. Mobility scooters are expensive. We need an adapted vehicle, brooches, medication. We need carers. We need, you know, personal help with personal care, adding confidence power, which was really expensive, and so we didn't realize at the time how expensive having a disability was. So we got to the point where we had to take legal action. And we saw a lawyer, we got recommended one, and after five years, they settled. They didn't go, he didn't go to court. And so that was put in a trust for my protection. Yeah, yeah, because I am going to deteriorate later in life, and the cost of that is going to be extortionate, so that is well protected. So yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 31:16 yeah, it's unfortunate you have to do that sometimes my involvement in litigation was that I was thrown off of an airplane because of my guide dog, and we, we sued, we eventually settled years ago. Was back in the early 1980s it's an education to go through the process, and it did go to court. There was eventually a settlement. But it was even really hard to get a good jury, because some of the original people who were potential jurors worked for airlines, or new people who worked for airlines, and so they said they'd be prejudiced, and it didn't matter that a blind person with a guide dog was ejected from an airplane simply because of the dog. Yeah, of course, today that that couldn't happen, well, it could happen, but it would. It can. He   Simon Sansome ** 32:10 still does. It does. It   Michael Hingson ** 32:11 does and but the laws are, are more substantive, but even so, it lawsuits are, are really not an easy thing at all, and there's a lot of emotion that goes into it, and there's a lot that one has to decide they want to put up with. And you don't really know a lot about that until you're in the middle of it, unless somebody really sits you down and describes this is what's going to happen. I had a little bit of that, but I know how difficult it is to do people have told me I should sue the hospital that put me in an incubator when I was born prematurely, simply because that could cause blindness. And other people have actually sued successfully 20 and 30 years after they were born, they litigated, and I just felt, look, medical science had already started to be told that a pure oxygen environment could lead to what at that time was called retrolateral fibroplasia, which is now retinopathy or prematurity. But I think 2030, and 40 years later, suing doesn't accomplish anything and and so my parents and I talked about it a lot, and we all agreed that that doesn't make any sense to do, and we didn't, and I have no regrets about that, but your situation is significantly different than that. Yeah,   Simon Sansome ** 33:44 we had to move house. We had to double our mortgage. We couldn't stay in the house we were in at the time. And yeah, it was, it was a painful experience. So yeah, we needed, we needed an adaptive property at the end of the day, and we simply couldn't afford one. So you found   Michael Hingson ** 34:03 one, or did you build one? Or so   Simon Sansome ** 34:07 we couldn't find one. We actually brought one off plan, but we had to double our mortgage to do it. Yeah, that was interesting. So that wasn't pleasant, pleasurable at all, but we managed it. So   Michael Hingson ** 34:20 we had instances where we built a house from scratch. First one was a manufactured home, and then we we moved to New Jersey in 1996 and we built a house there because we couldn't find a house that we could relatively easily modify. And if you modify a home, the cost is so expensive because you've got to redo doors, you've got to redo counters, you've got to redo a lot of things. That's assuming you can find one that doesn't have too many stairs for a person in a chair, and that you can can ramp those but. If you build a home, there's really no additional cost other than the cost that we had in New Jersey, because it was in an area where they only had two story homes, so we did have to put an elevator in. So that was an additional cost, but that was the only additional cost, because, as you're pointing out, everything else was on plan and you you design it in, there's no additional cost for building lower counters if you're doing it from the outset. So we did that. But then when we moved to we moved back to California, we couldn't find a place to build, and so then we did have to modify a home and it and the problem is that you can't really put it in the mortgage, and it's a little different today than it was when we moved back out here in 2002 but we couldn't put it in the mortgage, so it was $150,000 that we had to find. And eventually it it worked out as you, as you pointed out with like with you. Then we moved here to Southern California. We built this home, and I am, I'm very glad that we did. It's, it's a great house.   Simon Sansome ** 36:05 Yeah, we've got a lovely home now. It's fully adapted. It's great, you know, it's large. I can get around quite easily. So it's a it's very nice,   Michael Hingson ** 36:14 all one floor,   Simon Sansome ** 36:17 all one floor. Yeah, it's extremely long.   Michael Hingson ** 36:19 There you go. Well, so you went back to university and and clearly that was a major commitment and dedication on your part to decide to do that, but you didn't. What was the university like? How accessible was the university?   Simon Sansome ** 36:36 Oh, it wasn't accessible at all for me. So I had a manual hospital, manual wheelchair. At the time, I couldn't push myself around because of my spinal damage and the spinal damage that I've got. I can't really push myself well in a manual wheelchair, right? And we didn't have any money for a scooter, so the first year, I was really struggling because we didn't know what services we didn't know what services we could access. We didn't know what was available. I'm newly disabled. I'm new to this world, even my work for social services, and until you're sitting in the chair, what you know about the world is absolutely nothing. And so it wasn't until I came across Disability Services at the University who helped me apply for a grant with the snow interest in the UK, and they provided me with an electric scooter. Well, that was brilliant. I mean, oh my god, yeah, it's like I found freedom. Because obviously, you know, so my university is called, my university is called Democrat University. And although it's not on a hill by any means whatsoever. There is a slope going all the way down to the main campus. And it's quite, it's quite a long road, but the slope is very subtle school it helps, yeah, but if you're pushing yourself in a manual wheelchair up that slope, by the time you get to the main road, you're absolutely exhausted. You just can't push yourself anymore. Yeah, and it's about, it's about a quarter mile along the whole campus. And so, yeah, I was pushing myself backwards with my foot on the floor up the hill to get the classes and stuff. And I just said, This is ridiculous. This can't carry on. And so I spoke to Disability Services, and they helped me out. So,   Michael Hingson ** 38:16 so what did you do once you So you went to the university, you you did that, and you were committed to making it happen and and there, there had to be times that they would have been tempting to give up, but you didn't. No,   Simon Sansome ** 38:30 I wasn't really tempted to get up. I mean, I have side effects from my corticoana syndrome. I have, like, seizures in the legs, which can happen anytime, and that causes that knocked me out for a few days. Yeah, so I did get a few medical exemptions here or there, but, you know, the the lecturers were more than happy knowing that I was capable of doing the work, yeah, which is cool. Yes, very much so. But I did have to have a couple of exemptions here or there, but nothing major. But while I was at university, that's when I set up the Facebook page, which is now known as snowball community, and that's what brings us to it. So, right, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 39:05 so tell us all about snowball and yeah, and everybody should know that I teased at the very beginning. I said, Well, now isn't it time that we should remember that snowball was the name of the pig in Animal Farm. And Simon's not read Animal Farm, so I   Simon Sansome ** 39:24 got red Animal Farm can't read, sorry.   Michael Hingson ** 39:27 Well, go listen to it. Then, you know, it's not that long on the book. It's not that long.   Simon Sansome ** 39:33 No. So when, when, after a year of recovery, when I was going to university, so I went. So we were going out for a meal. It was the first meal me and my wife went out following the injury, okay? And there's a really nice place in Leicester, Spanish tapas, and it was the first time out in the wheelchair for a meal, and we couldn't get in. Okay? We called up and the wheelchair wouldn't go through the door. There was a step. At the front. And they're like, can you step over? That went, No, not really. But what happened was, as well, they put a table in front of the disabled entrance as well. Oh, that was good. Yeah, they had a ramp that went into the road, so that was interesting. And then the disabled toilet was upstairs, and so it was an emitted, a mitigated disaster. It really was atrocious. And this, and we didn't know this, we know I've never paid attention to say what access, you know, it just something we'd never, you know, I've never really been in a wheelchair before, so why? Why would I, yeah, yeah, and only if   Michael Hingson ** 40:42 you took an interest, but most people wouldn't think of that, yeah, yeah, exactly understandable. So   Simon Sansome ** 40:48 yeah, we just thought, you know, what else can we not get into? And it turns out quite a lot. And so a couple of days later, I decided to set up a Facebook page. It was called Ability access. Back then. It's now, of course, now being rebranded snowball community. And you know, all it was, it wasn't anything special. It was a very simple Facebook page, and it was to raise awareness of disabled access in the Leicester area. That's all I wanted to do. I didn't want awards. I didn't want recognition. I didn't want any of that. But however, within like, I think it kind of triggered something in people. It's not mold. It snowballed. Yeah, exactly. And I'm not too sure why or how, but I started putting a post of pictures of things, of places I couldn't get into, and videos, and, you know, me being angry, and so on and so forth. And, you know, within a like, within a month, I had 1000 followers. You know, they went to 2005 1000. And just kept on growing and growing and growing. Then we got nominated for many the page got nominated for awards. He started winning awards. And that's when I, at the time, I decided I was going to create something, if I could, called snowball community, which was an app. I had the idea of a disability app, but I'll come to that in a second. And yeah, it just, it just would not stop growing at the moment, I think it's about 110,000 followers on social media, and in 2019 it became the most read disability page in the world because people sharing videos, people sharing stories. You know, we were reaching an audience of over 30 million people a month. At one point, it just got absolutely crazy. And I just mean, I couldn't carry on doing that. I mean that took a lot of time, that took a lot of effort. And we just said, Look, we can do something with this. We can use the audience we've got. We've got an audience who follows it on a regular basis, who comments on a regular basis. And I said to Kate, we could do something really special here. And so I just Yeah. Once I graduated in 2018 I graduated from university with, again, a two one with honors in journalism, and I was working as a freelance journalist as well, which is great. It's because I could work whenever I like, but really, ability access would now snowball, just started to take over my life on the social media pages. And I said, Look, we could design an app here and create an accessibility app, and it took years of design to try and get it right. It really did. We took, we took, we did consultations, but also we couldn't afford it at the time either. We had to raise money for it as well. That's quite hard. And so, no, it's at the moment. Snowball was launched last year, and we are looking to get 100 that it's won national awards. It's one we came back from Barcelona last week. Okay? It won funding at a global award ceremony. And it's really snowballing. It's, we're expecting 100,000 reviews on the app this year.   Michael Hingson ** 44:04 So do you? So have you created an actual nonprofit organization out of it, like snowball.org or anything like that?   Simon Sansome ** 44:15 No, I really wanted to. I wanted it to be a charity organization. Yeah. And the reason I wanted it to be a charity organization, because I had assistance from a charity organization in the UK while at university, however, um, here in the UK, there are very strict rules and regulations on what you can spend the money on if you're a charity. And I wanted to set up a fund to help students who have disabilities at university, so I can do that. But also, I wanted to give 10% of the profits to local businesses who can't afford to do their own adaptations. We're talking small businesses, coffee shops, you know, local cafes, bakers and butchers and so on and so forth, fruit and veg shops who simply haven't got the 1015 grand what's required to make their stores excess. Possible. So I still, I'm still ever have every intention of doing that, but I couldn't do that as a charity organization. The rules and regulations wouldn't allow me to spend the money where I wanted to and where I thought thought, see if it where it's needed to do so for the communities across the UK. So I actually set it up as a limited company with the intention of probably 10% of the profit aside for local businesses to apply for grants when we start making money.   Michael Hingson ** 45:30 Yeah, well, but that is, I would still say that is exciting. You're, you're, you're channeling all of that, and hopefully you'll be able to do some major things to to help raise a lot of awareness. So what other kinds of things do you do to help raise awareness about disabilities and so on?   Simon Sansome ** 45:50 Yeah, so we're launching a number of profiles, at the moment, a number of things. So what we're doing is, I'm sure you have it in America as well with you, probably for your restaurants and pubs and everything you have, something similar to a food safety hygiene certificate. Yes, I'm not too sure what you call it. Over there, we have a certain similar thing here. It's a rating from one to five, okay? And we're launching something called the snowball membership scheme, and we're taking our 70 staff over the next few months to cover the whole of the UK. And what we're going to be doing is we're launching a scheme where businesses, whether it's Frankie and Benny subway McDonald's, can sign up to the system where we will go out and basically view a disability consultation for 250 quid and give you a full breakdown of what you can improve on your business, but also gives you an access rating that you can promote on social media and say, Look, come to our business. We are disabled friendly, yeah. But what that does is that creates a huge opportunity for businesses and the snowball app, because we are creating the biggest disability app in the world, and it tells you where you can it tells you where you can access, where you can go, okay, where you can eat, where you can shop, but also, more importantly, where you can spend your own money. And I was doing some research earlier today, before this interview. And according to one, I think the valuable 500 is the disabled community in America has $8 trillion of disposable income right to spend on things like restaurants and cinema tickets and so on and so forth, to cafes and, you know, clubs and shops and whatever, per year. So $8 trillion is going unspent because the disabled community in America, which is 60,000,060 1 million, I believe, don't know where to spend their money.   Michael Hingson ** 47:48 Well, when you think about the fact that it's the largest minority worldwide, you hear anything from 20 to 25% of all persons have some sort of disability. The The only, the biggest challenge that I see is the problem is that the disabilities aren't uniform. That is, it isn't the same. The needs that that you have, to a degree, are different than the needs that I have. The bottom line, however, is that even if you deal with it in that term that everyone has different kinds of disabilities. The fact of the matter is, it's still awareness. And while you need physical access to get into a restaurant, I need access to be able to to know what's on the menu and know what it's going to cost. And you don't have as much of a need for that, as I do, because you can lift a menu and read it in theory, but the fact is that we all have different challenges, and as I've said a couple of times on this podcast, we need to really redefine disability. First of all, disability doesn't mean a lack of ability at all. This isn't really the issue, because we do have terms like disciple, discrete, you know, they're not all negatives and and so disability is is really something different than what people have made it into. Disability is a characteristic that everyone has, and it manifests itself differently. I love to say that that the reality is, for most people, your disability is that you're light dependent, because most people don't do well in the dark, and they and Thomas Edison fixed it by inventing the light bulb, but it still is a disability, even if it's covered up, because most of the time you have light disability is a characteristic that everybody manifests. It's just that we do it in different ways.   Simon Sansome ** 49:44 No, I completely agree. I'm hoping that the system that I've created will address that. So, because what we've done as well is not, it's not just the question of, oh, we're going out there and is disabled friendly, is wheelchair accessible? We're doing. Know, full disability consultation on the business. So, do they have Braille menus? Do they have a change in place facility? You know, is there a lift? Is there Braille on the lift, that kind of thing, and so. And we're also introducing something called the stimulation rating as well. And this is touch, touch, taste, sight, see and spell. And this is to give you an indication of what those things are at that place for people with visual impairments, for mental health issues and learning disabilities. Because, for example, if you go to the British Library, very quiet, you know it's going to be quiet. Okay. If you go to the Natural History Museum in London, well, some days it's really nice and peaceful on other days, because you've got 10 school 10 coaches of school children, absolutely chaotic. Okay, so it does vary considerably. And the whole idea is, is, while it's not a perfect rating system, because, like you said, there are so many different types of disability, not every disability is the same. Yours is different to mine. We're trying to incorporate a holistic approach to making sure that people feel comfortable going there, because they can relate to something that's on the assessment, and they can see what's there, so they get the full report, and therefore they can have an individual, independent, independent, independent decision on whether that place is suitable for them. So it's not a perfect system where it can be changed quite easily through feedback. It can be improved through feedback. It's like a moving model at the moment. It's like 16 pages long the assessment. But hopefully it will with the feedback we're getting and how it will grow. It will hopefully evolve into something absolutely fantastic for everyone to be inclusive everywhere.   Michael Hingson ** 51:42 Well, and that's a cool thing, clearly, to do. One of the things that I know well is that you and I were introduced by Sheldon Lewis at accessibe. Sheldon is in the nonprofit part of accessibe in helping to find places that need Internet access and who are nonprofits, especially in the disability world, and helps provide accessibe for that. And I don't know whether you all are doing much yet with accessibe, but clearly it's a great place to get involvement in the whole issue of internet website access is is a horrible thing. I mean, we have so many websites being created every minute, and the reality is that none of the major internet website building companies, including Microsoft and Google, do nothing to insist that for website is being built, it has to be accessible right from the outset. So, you know, accessibe is a great, inexpensive way to help with all that, and I'm assuming that Sheldon and you are working on that somewhat.   Simon Sansome ** 52:54 Yes, we are. We've had a discussion, and unfortunately, accessibe isn't available on apps at the moment, but that is something they're working on, and you introduce it soon. So I'm, I think once it's available on the apps, I will after, course,   Michael Hingson ** 53:07 but it is, however, the reality is that restaurants and other places do create websites, and people go to websites, and so that's, that's right now, the place where accessibe can make a significant difference.   Simon Sansome ** 53:22 Absolutely, I completely agree they should have it on there. Yeah. So   Michael Hingson ** 53:26 that is, that is a that is certainly one place where, you know, we can help. And certainly every restaurant should have an accessible website and and if they're going to have menus on the website, then there are certainly guidelines on ways to make those accessible, and that is part of what needs to be done.   Simon Sansome ** 53:46 Yes, and I completely agree with you. I support it, of course,   Michael Hingson ** 53:50 yeah. And you're right, apps, apps today, that's a different process. It's a different animal, but it will come, and that'll be something that that we'll be able to see. But in the short term,   Simon Sansome ** 54:02 yeah, I've told Sheldon, straight away, we'll get it on there straight away, as soon as soon as they've done the development for the apps, for access to be   Michael Hingson ** 54:09 Yeah, but right now, well, okay, but right now for your app, it could be accessible. You just build it that way, but it's not the app. But every restaurant should have an accessible website, and that really ought to be part of what you look at when you're going to a restaurant, to explore what and how accessible they are. Having accessible and inclusive websites is certainly something that is very straightforward to do today. Yes,   Simon Sansome ** 54:38 it is, but businesses are lazy   Michael Hingson ** 54:42 well, but you know, they also that they are, but they also think that it's more expensive than it needs to be, and that's part of the whole issue. I mean, if you go to a restaurant and it's not accessible because you can't get into it, so they're still lazy. They didn't make it. Accessible right from the outset, and either they're going to where they're not, and it's a lot No no, no offense in any way intended, but it's a lot less expensive to make a website accessible than it is to modify an entrance so that you can get in with a wheelchair when there are steps or a very narrow door. Yeah. So it is yeah, laziness goes always Yeah. And   Simon Sansome ** 55:23 hopefully, if they do have initiatives that hopefully snowball, can help me out with that, with the credit that we want to provide to small businesses, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 55:30 yeah. And I understand that most businesses are pretty small and don't necessarily have a lot of money to spend, but with websites, that's where accessibe can make a big difference right from the outset? Yeah, absolutely, which is pretty cool. Yes. So what's, what's next as you go forward with snowball What are, what's the future going to hold?   Simon Sansome ** 55:52 Oh, my God, right. So, I mean, we're having a huge expansion, as I said, we're taking on about 70 staff to cover the whole of the UK. We're actually looking to franchise it as well across North America and Europe. We've also asked to be consultants for a number of governments as well. So it's going from strength to strength to strength. Every week, we keep on getting inquiries. We've got customers signed up already for the assessments, for the membership schemes. Loads in London. London's really taking off quite nicely. So it's where we're going at the moment is, I don't know, but in a couple of years time, I think we're going to be a major player in the app world for accessibility, because we already are the most that we are the biggest disability app in the world at the moment. Mm, hmm. By a long, long way, by, you know, 10s of 1000s of reviews. So nobody's really going to catch up with snowball, but we still need people to use it on a regular basis. That's the thing, because all the information we get is usually generated. Okay, in the UK, we're doing really well. In America, we need a bit more help. Yeah, but, you know, I was having a I was doing another podcast a couple of weeks ago in America, and there's a chap who wants to give us 10,000 locations of petrol stations across America where they went, because he doesn't know where to post it. All this information on accessible fueling stations across America, where they'll come out and help you to fill yes and you to fill your yes and stuff, and do help to pay for it. And he's just got no idea where to post it. So parallel, we think he's going to get we will win early stages of talks, and he wants to give us that information to help people to travel across America, and so they know where they can go and get their car filled up with assistance. So it's just we need people like that to leave reviews, to add places to use it on a regular basis, even if you go, even if you spot a car, you know, disabled car parking bay, you can have that. If you find an accessible toilet, add the accessible toilet. If you find an accessible restaurant, add the restaurant. Even if you find an inaccessible restaurant, add the inaccessible restaurant, because it will stop people going there and being disappointed. So all that information is extremely relevant to help people to be live a more independent life. So we need as many people across the world, including America, to download to to add reviews like you would on TripAdvisor. Is TripAdvisor for the disabled community. We just need more reviews and more people to use on a regular basis, and it will grow considerably. And therefore, once that's grown, we can start helping people more with like booking cinema tickets, booking airline travel holidays, and expand it that way as well. Because once businesses know that you're booking it through snowball, then they know you need extra assistance. So Sheldon,   Michael Hingson ** 58:43 has Sheldon talked to you about access find? Uh, no, okay, access is again, right now, it's website oriented, but access find is a database that accessibe created of accessible websites, and any website can say, you know, we have, we have made our website accessible, and it's checked, but then, when it is, then they are included in access, find. And it might be interesting to explore that, both in terms of websites, but finding ways to expand it. So we can, we can explore that and talk about that one. So what? What motivates you? I mean, you're doing a lot. Why?   Simon Sansome ** 59:28 It's the frustration of not being able to so, I mean, yes, remember, I for 32 years, I was fully independent. I could go anywhere in the world. I wanted to Okay, and it's the frustration that the world is not I'm not going to say it's not welcoming, because it's not that's not quite right. I'm going to say uneducated. And the ignorance of that everyone can access everything after having an injury like mine is very small mindedness, and I get. Frustrated that, because I travel a lot for work. I travel all over the world, and when we turn up to places, you know, we haven't got the right room, we can't access the hotel, we can't access the restaurant. It's got to the point where we don't choose where we want to go the place chooses us, yeah, and I don't, I don't think that's fair, no. And so I just want an equal opportunity world. That's what I don't like being turned away from places where we want to go for a family meal. I don't like being turned away from the cinema because the disabled seats so close to the screen. You know, it's, you know, it's just It frustrates me. And that's what, you know. I think that's what keeps up, keeping me going, but also as well, is when I was in hospital, because I got told I would never sit up again. I got told I was going to be on my back for life. Okay? And I'm very fortunate where I am. I mean, I know that sounds really stupid, because I'm paralyzed from the waist down, but I am very fortunate where I am, and I see, especially from a social services point of view, there are so many more people worse off than I am okay, and I just want to help them as much as I can. I want to give them choice. I want to give them a bit of independence. I want them to have that freedom of not being restricted to, you know, five, five places to go and eat, or, you know, the only place you can go to the cinema. I want you to the only tourist attraction you can visit. I want them to be fully inclusive. I want them to have a good life, you know. And I think snowball can help a lot of people do that.   Michael Hingson ** 1:01:40 Well, that's cool. So if people want to learn more about Snowball or access the app and so on, how do they do that? And how do they reach out to you? Yeah,   Simon Sansome ** 1:01:50 I'm on LinkedIn. Simon Samson, just send me a message. That's not a problem at all. Spell, if you would please. Yeah, S A N for November, s o m for mother, E for Echo,   Michael Hingson ** 1:02:03 and first name Simon, s, i, m, o n,   Simon Sansome ** 1:02:05 that's correct. You can also, you can also email us at support at snowball dot community,

Lets Talk about JAWS, Zoomtext, and Fusion for a Change   Points   JAWS screen reader, Zoomtext screen magnifier, and Fusion JAWS/Zoomtext running together. Compatible with Windows 10, and Windows 11. Around for over 25 years for JAWS, and Zoomtext. Fusion more recent.. Number one product used for Education and Employment for all 3 products.. JaWS Home edition and JAWS Professional. A large variety of Braille displays supported by JAWS. Many extra functions beyond usual functions of a screen reader for JAWS. Screen curtain to blank screen for privacy when using JAWS. Split audio to allow speech or media to be heard on either speaker or both for JaWS. JAWS Tandem to support other JAWS users remotely. Works with Citrix, and other remote terminal setups. JAWS only is compatible with Arm Processors. JAWS can be fully scripted (programmed) to support non standard programs or difficult to use screens.. Virtual cursor seems to be the main thing for folks to get their minds around when navigating the web for example. Combine with such scripts as JSay,allows JAWS or Fusion to be used with Dragon Naturally Speaking. Excellent variety of training material available. Can run in demonstration mode whilst learning. Compatible   with Arm processors.   Zoomtext sharing many common features of other screen magnifiers. Zoomtext Magnifier, and Zoomtext Magnifier/Reader  Zoomtext handy app or doc reading mode for speech output (not a screen reading function). Zoomtext can be used with two screens. Various magnification type views to read screen. Not compatible with Arm processors including Fusion (i.e. only JaWS will work).   Remember, at any time JAWS, Zoomtext or Fusion can be turned off to allow others to use the computer without this software running.   I always go with an I7 processor and 16GB of RAM.   Main Freedom Scientific Page   https://www.freedomscientific.com   Training Materials   https://www.freedomscientific.com/training/   Podcasts (FSCast Official FreedomScientific Podcast)   http://blog.freedomscientific.com/fscast/   Podcast (Training Podcast)   https://www.freedomscientific.com/training/podcast/   Downloads (can run as demo versions until registered)   https://support.freedomscientific.com/downloads   Obtaining a License   Available from the Vision Australia Vision Store for Zoomtext, JaWS or Fusion. Plus updating from older versions or cross grading across licenses.   https://shop.visionaustralia.org Or Email visionstore@visionaustralia.org   Help in Australia   ATS service from Vision Australia, Quantum RLV or the AT Help Desk from Vision Australia via 1300 847 466.Support this Vision Australia Radio program: https://www.visionaustralia.org/donate?src=radio&type=0&_ga=2.182040610.46191917.1644183916-1718358749.1627963141See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today we welcome back Jeanne Faulconer, M.A., to talk with us about writing. How should we approach writing with our kids? What are some of the major pitfalls? What should we look for in a writing curriculum? How can we keep their interest? And is it OK to type instead of handwriting? TheHomeSchoolMom - https://www.thehomeschoolmom.com/ TheHomeSchoolMom, Ask Jeanne - https://www.thehomeschoolmom.com/ask-jeanne/ Support The Podcast If you like what you hear, consider supporting the podcast: https://homeschooltogether.gumroad.com/l/support Consider Leaving Us A Review If you have a quick moment please consider leaving a review on iTunes - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/homeschool-together-podcast/id1526685583 Show Notes Homeschooling Journeys with Jeanne Faulconer - https://homeschooltogether.fireside.fm/289 The State of Homeschooling with Jeanne Faulconer - https://homeschooltogether.fireside.fm/291 TheHomeSchoolMom - https://www.thehomeschoolmom.com/ Brave Writer - https://bravewriter.com/ Scribophile - https://www.scribophile.com/ Libby - https://libbyapp.com/ Building Content During a Skills Lag - https://www.thehomeschoolmom.com/benefits-of-homeschooling-building-content-during-a-skills-lag/ Dragon Naturally Speaking - https://www.nuance.com/dragon.html Writing Without Teachers - https://amzn.to/459zvNu Waldorf Form Drawing - https://waldorfpeninsula.org/blog/value-of-form-drawing/ Waldorf Education - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldorf_education English Composition for High School - https://www.thehomeschoolmom.com/homeschool-high-school-composition/ Freewriting - https://bravewriter.com/program/brave-writer-lifestyle/friday-freewrite/freewriting-the-key-that-unlocks-the-words/ Reading, Writing, and Rhythm - https://www.thehomeschoolmom.com/reading-writing-rhythm/ Scribes: Narration & Homeschooling - https://www.thehomeschoolmom.com/scribes-narration-homeschooling/ 21 Ways Your Homeschool Can Benefit from Audiobooks - https://www.thehomeschoolmom.com/21-ways-your-homeschool-can-benefit-from-audiobooks/ Instead of Curriculum: Bring Me Bad Writing - https://www.thehomeschoolmom.com/editing-writing-instead-of-curriculum/ Instead of Curriculum: Lies and Statistics - https://www.thehomeschoolmom.com/instead-of-curriculum-lies-and-statistics-book/ Instead of Curriculum: Handwriting Practice - https://www.thehomeschoolmom.com/instead-curriculum-handwriting-practice/ Eight Ways for Later and Less-Fluent Readers to Build Knowledge - https://www.thehomeschoolmom.com/benefits-of-homeschooling-8-ways-for-late-readers-to-build-knowledge/ Play On Words - https://www.thehomeschoolmom.com/homeschooling-writing-warm-ups/ Talking about Books by Talking About Movies - https://www.thehomeschoolmom.com/homeschool-literature-curriculum-alternatives/ Waldorf-inspired homeschooling page - https://www.thehomeschoolmom.com/homeschooling-styles/waldorf-homeschooling/ Raising Critical Thinkers by Julie Bogart - https://amzn.to/440LMTo Connect with us Website: http://www.homeschool-together.com/ Store: https://gumroad.com/homeschooltogether Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/homeschooltogether Facebook: www.facebook.com/groups/homeschooltogetherpodcast/ Instagram: www.instagram.com/homeschooltogetherpodcast Twitter: https://twitter.com/hs_together The Gameschool Co-Op: https://www.facebook.com/groups/gameschoolcoop/ Email: homeschooltogetherpodcast@gmail.com

Refuse to listen to the enticing whispers of this world, and instead obey the voice of your Savior.

Here's a secret you don't know about the CU 2.0 Podcast. Just about in every show there are some minutes of talk before the show really starts  Most shows do similar. It helps get the guest comfortable and, importantly, it lets the host do a sound check to make sure all is working.Those minutes almost always are deleted in editing.Not in this show with Amy Travers, a regional vice president with NA Security focused on biometrics - voice - in financial services. That's because we started by chatting about her personal background, growing up in County Donegal in the northwest of Ireland and earning degrees at the Institute of Technology in Sligo. And then…she's in Florida where she founds a contact center company.Understand that a good part of what her present employer does is equip contact centers to help authenticate incoming callers and to blow an alerting whistle if the caller seems fraudulent.Travers knows that work from the inside.Nowadays, the NA tools - which grow out of the wildly popular Dragon Naturally Speaking tools - are used in a range of applications to improve security and screening.But a fundamental starting point is that the voice is indeed something that can be used to authenticate and almost all of us are comfortable with the procedure.You'll hear exactly how slick the tools have gotten - and indeed says Travers they pay for themselves at most FIs. It's a wide ranging talk about what's happening right now in biometrics and voice - listen up.Listen up. Like what you are hearing? Find out how you can help sponsor this podcast here.  Very affordable sponsorship packages are available. Email rjmcgarvey@gmail.com  And like this podcast on whatever service you use to stream it. That matters.  Find out more about CU2.0 and the digital transformation of credit unions here. It's a journey every credit union needs to take. Pronto

Kelly Brakenhoff is an author of six books and an ASL interpreter from Nebraska. She has served as an interpreter for deaf and hard of hearing persons now for over 30 years. You can tell how much she likes her chosen professions by listening to her as you get to do in this episode.   Kelly is especially excited by a series of books she has started involving Duke the Deaf Dog where she introduces readers to ASL, American Sign Language. She is working to help readers, especially children, better understand the deaf and hard of hearing community. On top of everything Kelly has done, she has used the crowdfunding program, Kickstarter, to help fund her newest book. It turns out that another famous author also used this program to fund their efforts. You get to hear all about it.   I very much hope you enjoy our episode this time and that you will give us a 5 rating. Thanks for listening.   About the Guest:   Kelly Brakenhoff is an author of six books and an ASL interpreter from Nebraska, US. She divides her writing energy between two series: cozy mysteries set on a college campus, and picture books featuring Duke the Deaf Dog.  Parents, kids, and teachers love the children's books because they teach American Sign Language using fun stories. And if you like a smart female sleuth, want to learn more about Deaf culture, or have ever lived in a place where livestock outnumber people, you'll enjoy the Cassandra Sato Mystery series.   Social media links:   kellybrakenhoff.com and follow her social media or blog by using this link: https://kellybrakenhoff.com/quicklinks/   About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is an Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can also subscribe in your favorite podcast app.   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.     Transcription Notes* Michael Hingson  00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i  capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson  01:21 Hi, and here we are once again with unstoppable mindset, the podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected me. And the unexpected, as always, is the fun part of the podcast. We love to carry on different kinds of conversations with people learn about them. And you know what I'm going to say once again, for any of you listening out there, I'd love to have conversations with you. I'll bet you have stories that we should talk about. So definitely reach out. Michael hingson.com/podcast or Michaelhi@accessibie.com. And I'd love to chat with you. But for now, we have Kelly Brakenhoff, who is here with us. She is an author, and ASL interpreter, and a Kickstarter campaign runner par excellence. But does that elevate you are what Kelly Welcome to unstoppable mindset. How are you?   Kelly Brakenhoff  02:18 Hi, I'm great. Thank you for having me. today. I'm really excited to be talking to you.   Michael Hingson  02:24 Well, I'm really excited to have a chance to chat with you and learn all about you and and learn why you're unstoppable. When I started this podcast, because we think that everyone has a story to tell, we all have had challenges in our lives and, and we've overcome them. And it doesn't need to be a huge challenge. But still a challenge is a challenge. And when we overcome it, that's great. And when we recognize that we did something that we didn't think we can do, then I think we fall into this concept of being able to move toward a mindset of unstop ability. And so we started unstoppable mindset, and we have a lot of fun with it. Well, why don't we start with your story a little bit? Why don't you tell us about you kind of growing up or anything about that that you think we ought to know?   Kelly Brakenhoff  03:12 Well, sure. Um, yeah, I'm a fan of your, your mindset, your your podcast, I think this is just the coolest thing. So like I said, just super excited to be here today. Um, I've been an ASL interpreter for more than 30 years, and an author for just over three years. So although I'm a veteran interpreter, I'm still a baby author and publisher. I learned new things every day. So I guess you can teach an old dog new tricks. I guess. I've moved around. One thing that's interesting about me as I've moved around quite a bit. I grew up in Connecticut. I've lived in Nebraska, Boston, Hawaii, Seattle. And then now we've been in Nebraska for quite a while since Austin. Last Boston, Boston. Yes.   Michael Hingson  04:01 So can you say it pack your car and have a yard? Of course.   Kelly Brakenhoff  04:07 My uncle is from South Boston and so he married my aunt who's from upstate New York and listening to the to talk was so fun. I lived with them for a summer in college. And and I just had such is such a fun time, especially if they like had a little discussion or something you know, and they they get the voices raised and they'd start going in their accent they revert.   Michael Hingson  04:35 I lived in Winthrop, Massachusetts for three years and spent some time in the in the Boston area before then and back a little bit but I love the accent but I love Massachusetts. I love New England in general. And my wife and I have a story about Mr. Connecticut. We were going there for something and And I don't even remember what it was. And we were we were traveling the right way but we were traveling a lot further than we thought we needed to to get to Mystic So ever since I've been saying that one of the things about mystic is it moves around and doesn't stay in one place. So I'm sticking   Kelly Brakenhoff  05:17 to memory of mystic is going there on probably a sixth grade field trip. And you know afterwards, the field trip they take you through the gift shop and I bought a little pewter whale. Yeah, sure. I still have it somewhere in the bookcase somewhere in my house.   Michael Hingson  05:39 We stopped at a restaurant there. The second time we went to mystic and I'm still convinced it wasn't in the same place. It was the first time we went to a restaurant and sat right along the river and watch the drawbridge coming up, which was   Kelly Brakenhoff  05:55 that is really fun. Yeah,   Michael Hingson  05:57 definitely. Yeah. We love New England. And I hope that we get a chance to go back there. I have all sorts of stories about Boston. We went I went a lot over to Daniel hall into Quincy Market and ADA Durgan. Park. Have you ever eaten there?   Kelly Brakenhoff  06:13 I have it in there. Yes, I love Faneuil Hall.   Michael Hingson  06:16 I don't know whether Durgin Park is still open. I've heard it. I've heard that it is. But I'll have to tell you. Well, I'll tell you the story about Durgan Park. It's a Durgin Park, for those who don't know, is a restaurant that if it's still there, serves food family style, and they have tables along the side. That will seat for people. But you have to have four people, if you want to sit at one of those tables. If you have three, you sit at the long tables in the middle. If you have too long tables in the middle. They're very snotty about it. In fact, waitresses and waiters are hired to be snots. It's all an act, but they're supposed to be absolutely obnoxious. They're just what some people would say the typical clothes New England style of of being, if you will, but anyway, we go into the restaurant one night, and it was me and two other people and my guide dog Holland, who is a golden retriever with the most luscious eyes in the world. And the hostess said, you know, I'm just going to let you guys sit at one of the tables for four. So she seats us and the waitress comes over. And she says what are you people doing here? You can't sit at this table. And I said, well, the host has put it put us here. No, she didn't you just snuck in here. You can't sit at this table. And she yelled at us. And we said no. We got to sit be seated here because we have a guide dog under the table. No, you don't I don't believe that. You're not going to fool me with that. You can't sit here and she just went on. Then she goes away. And she comes back and she said you can't sit here I said, look under the table. Finally she looks. There's these eyes just staring back at her. And she just melts. And the next thing we know she goes away. One of the things about Durgin Park is that they serve a when they serve prime rib. It's a huge piece of prime rib that takes the whole plate. She comes back with this plate. She said somebody didn't eat much of their prime rib. Can I give it to the dog? And oh, it was great. But it's just fun memories of all over Boston. So I'm glad you had a chance to be there. Well, enough about me in that. So you've lived all over?   Kelly Brakenhoff  08:29 We have we've moved a lot and you haven't moved a lot recently. But when when I was younger, I moved quite a bit.   Michael Hingson  08:35 Yes. What caused you to be moving around. Um, we   Kelly Brakenhoff  08:39 grew up in Connecticut. And then in high school, my parents decided my mom's from Nebraska so and my dad's from upstate New York. So when I was in high school, we moved our family moved to Nebraska. And then when my husband and I first got married, he worked for a construction company who moved us to Hawaii for five years that works. That worked. That was a great honeymoon, We'd only been married six weeks. And so that was that was a five year honeymoon. That was awesome. Our first couple of kids were born there. And we decided that we after a year or so they really didn't get to see their grandparents very often. So he decided to move back to the mainland and we made a stop first in Seattle and then we came back to Nebraska. So we've been in here for quite a while but I really enjoyed getting to experience all the different cultures and all the different places and I also have a very soft spot in my heart for New England to   Michael Hingson  09:35 Well, it's great to live in various parts of the US shows what a wonderful and just incredible country we are with all sorts of different cultures that can really blend and meld together to form what we get to experience if we only keep the culture going as as really we are the melting pot and that just makes it so Great when we get to see that,   Kelly Brakenhoff  10:01 I totally agree i Yeah.   Michael Hingson  10:04 So how old are your kids now?   Kelly Brakenhoff  10:07 They are grown up. We have four kids, three boys and one girl. And so the oldest is 21 going to be 29. And our youngest just graduated from college last year. So he's 22 in Nebraska, and Nebraska. Huskers everybody's a Husker.   Michael Hingson  10:28 Go Huskers Go Big Red. Yep.   Kelly Brakenhoff  10:31 So um, but we have four grandkids too. So that's a lot of fun. And we're really lucky. They all live in town, so I get to see them quite a bit.   Michael Hingson  10:38 That works. So you see you fix it up. So you now have this this Braden half ghetto, if you will,   Kelly Brakenhoff  10:45 yes, my Twitter handle is actually in Brockville. Because one of my friends quite a while ago used to tease me that I was trying to create my own village. So we call it in Brock anvil.   Michael Hingson  10:59 There you go, that works. Nothing wrong with that. Well, so I know you're an author. And I know that you are an ASL interpreter, and so on, tell me how you got into being involved with ASL. And a little bit more about all that.   Kelly Brakenhoff  11:16 Sure. Um, I in high school, I volunteered at a camp for deaf kids. My parents wanted me to do something in the summer and stay out of trouble. So they kind of sent me to go volunteer. And at this camp. In the end, I didn't know any sign language. So I got a book. And I started trying to figure out a few signs before I first went to this camp. Of course, the first few weeks I was there, I had no idea what anyone was saying, because they were all using sign language. And I didn't know it. But by the end of the summer, I had learned quite a bit and I had made some really good friends. And I just kept learning during the school year, when they went when they were all gone. I kept taking classes and reading more books. And it actually turned out to be my, the language that I took when I was in college, it counted as my foreign language. And I just kept learning and hanging around with Deaf people. And eventually, my mentors in ASL, the deaf people that I was friends with, invited me to try interpreting for them. And I didn't, if I had known, I wasn't very good, but they were very kind. And they they asked me to interpret so I did and it just ended up kind of something I fell into. It wasn't something I intended to do. But it's become my whole life's work, and I really like it.   Michael Hingson  12:40 So is that kind of a full time job? Or are your vocation then?   Kelly Brakenhoff  12:43 Yeah, I would say it, it's my Well, it's hard to say what's my vocation because I also really love being an author, even though I haven't been published until recently. But I've been a writer my whole life in college, I actually majored in English. And I always wanted to be a writer, it just, I guess the interpreting thing just kind of was a very long detour. But I always wrote even when I was interpreting and so in raising my family and stuff, so once my kids started getting into high school and college, and I started looking around for something to fill some of my empty hours. That was when I really got serious about finishing my first book.   Michael Hingson  13:27 Well, from from an ASL standpoint, and interpreting it certainly is something that's, that's a little bit different. What have you learned about deafness and disabilities and so on from being involved in all of that,   Kelly Brakenhoff  13:41 oh, my goodness, we don't have enough there's not enough time in the day to talk about it's just changed my whole mindset, like, like, you've talked about that. I think it's just a way of looking at the world. Like a lot of people think that people who are deaf and hard of hearing, it's about your ears being broken, but it's really just a different way to move through life. So instead of a hearing world do like they have a visual world, so everything is visual. So it's like the opposite of what you experience now. So it's, it's just a way of moving through the world, you know that. And so instead of being like broken and something that needs to be fixed, it's just kind of a way of life. I guess. I just have a lot of respect. I've worked a lot in at the University of Nebraska. So I work with a lot of college students. And I've over the years done just Gosh, 20 Something different majors. I sit in on all the classes. I interpret what the teachers seen at the front of the class, and the discussions that the students do. And so I've gotten to learn a lot of things just by osmosis over the years and I have a really deep respect for the students because you know, their classmates sitting in the same room with them, they can listen to the lecture, write notes, you know, go online and do stuff all while this is all going on, whereas the deaf student has to sit there and watch me. If they want to take their own notes, they kind of have to look down and take their own notes, but then still keep an eye on me. And then if there's a PowerPoint, they're trying to watch that. And if there's a video, they're hoping that it has good captions, and so like, there's so many things going on, that it's amazing that they can get as much as they do out of the classes. And then of course, they have to study so much more afterwards, because a lot of times, they have to go back over the notes or back over the reading to see what they missed, because they were just, you know, a lot of their attention during the class is on me. So it's just given me a really healthy respect for how intelligent and how hard workers the students are. And I've just kind of seen that in all walks of life. I've interpreted for a lot of different situations, and different businesses and all kinds of things. And I just, I'm always in awe of how, how hard workers, the deaf students and just deaf adults in their job, or   Michael Hingson  16:13 how did the students then really get the job of notetaking done? Do they oftentimes have people who take notes for them? Or are they successful enough at taking notes themselves,   Kelly Brakenhoff  16:26 it really depends on the student and their preference. You know how some people don't mind having someone else take the notes, because then they can pay more attention to the interpreter and the PowerPoint and the teacher. But then other people maybe don't, you know, when you take notes, we could listen to the same speaker and your notes would be different than mine. And so some students don't really trust that another student is going to write down the same things that they would have written down if they were taking their own notes. So it really is a personal preference. But luckily, now, with the technology, I have a couple of students who, so they're deaf, and they use ASL and they use interpreters, but they also use cart, which is the captioning service. And so they'll have a laptop, or they also use like an otter, which is an app that the teacher wears a microphone and then it, it makes a transcript of everything that the teacher has said, and then they can save it. So I have a few students who even though they're, you know, pretty much dependent on the sign language for comprehension, they still use the transcript, because then they can go back later and like highlight the parts that they thought were important. And then it's kind of I think more in their control. Or if sometimes, like an English word has, you know, five different signs for it. And so if I do a sign, and they want to know what the exact English word was, they can look at the transcript and see oh, okay, that's the word that, you know, I need to remember or that's the word that I want to know. So I think it's great that they have all these tools. Because, gosh, back in the day, when I first started, none of that existed. And a lot of times, they would just have someone else take notes for them. And if that person wasn't a good note taker, they were kind of out of luck.   Michael Hingson  18:25 We use otter actually to do the transcribing of all of these podcasts. So that one unstoppable mindset is published. There's a written transcription as well. So we use otter to do that. And oftentimes, I will use otter to transcribe a meeting, or make it possible, make it possible for for people to come into the podcast, and listen and watch if you will in real time, which makes a lot of sense. So I found that otter works really well.   Kelly Brakenhoff  19:00 Yeah, I've tried several different apps and different services, because I have a thing to like you, I really want to make my website as accessible as possible, and my appearances as accessible as possible. So I get transcripts made of all the podcasts that I do whether the provider does or not. And so I've tried several different services, and I do agree that I think otter is a it produces a good product, and the price is good, too. So   Michael Hingson  19:33 I certainly right, you're right, the price is certainly right. But also, it does a good job and it's improving over time. Some people have said they're better systems than otter and I haven't really tried other services. And the people who help with the podcasts have looked at various things and we all end up settling on otter it really works well.   Kelly Brakenhoff  19:54 That's good to know. That's good to know, because a couple of years ago I tested several and I haven't read rechecked back into it. And the last six months, it's great. I think the one of the good benefits of the pandemic has been, how everyday people have realized that speech to text. And other, just things that we used to think of as being accessible for people with disabilities are now helpful for like everyone. And people have just come to realize that with all the Zoom meetings, and all of the the work from home solutions, so things that used to be just in the realm of special are now every day and they're all getting better, because we all demand that they get better. So the AI captions and everything are so much better than they were even just a few years ago.   Michael Hingson  20:47 Well, and then look at that you bring a very good point to light, which is that oftentimes, there are things that we use, that when other people start to use them first of all makes them much, much more affordable. But also, that will cause them to improve a lot more than otherwise they would have look at Dragon Naturally Speaking that started out as Dragon Dictate and did okay. And now Dragon is a lot better. I don't think that it transcribes as well as otter does in terms of plugging in punctuations, and so on. But I'm not surprised or wouldn't be surprised if that improves over time. But when you look at what otter does, it's pretty incredible.   Kelly Brakenhoff  21:31 It is it really is. And the What's incredible to me is the the short amount of time that it's gotten better. So I think that's great. But like you said, I think I guess it's sad to me that it takes it took a pandemic for enough people to use the tools that we've all been using for years to you know, demand a higher quality and a lower price. But I guess you know, if that's one good thing that comes out of all this, and that's great.   Michael Hingson  22:02 I think we tend to just get locked in to doing things one way and we, for whatever reason tend to be very slow at looking at other options. And you're right, the pandemic has made a significant difference and look at how many people are using zoom as opposed to pre pandemic, yet, Zoom has been there. The other thing that we've noticed along the way with Zoom is that they have deliberately and absolutely focused on accessibility and inclusion. So when a person who is blind encounters a problem with zoom in something is working right. There is a process to report that and we find that very quickly, it gets resolved, because they have a whole team working on issues to make sure that Zoom continues to be very inclusive.   Kelly Brakenhoff  22:55 Yes, I agree. Because I think when we first started with Zoom, the there was no, the only way you could have captions was hiring a person to do the captions. And then once they started making them automatic and everything that that was huge. That was that was huge. That's I'm glad to hear that they have a team doing it. And I agree, their improvements have have been amazing.   Michael Hingson  23:23 I don't want to put zoom on the spot, but have you compared otter with, if you compare it to otter with the zoom, automatic closed captioning,   Kelly Brakenhoff  23:31 um, I have, I guess if I just stop and think about it, I think they're pretty similar. What's actually kind of funny is when I will do a large meeting on Zoom, where I'm one of the interpreters. So I'm one of the little heads in the Brady Bunch group of people on Zoom. So I'll interpret for some of the deaf people in the meeting. And what I'll do sometimes is I'll turn on the captions because, you know, occasionally I might have a hard time hearing someone talking, or I might miss something or whatever. And so I can look at the captions and see if you know try to correct myself or, you know, check my accuracy. And yeah, so I have seen some pretty bad interpretations on our transcript on on Zoom and on otter, where things just don't come out. Right. It's, it's definitely for people who speak like standard slow American English once you have any kind of an accent or any kind of, if you speak too quickly, then the captions pretty much everywhere are a lot harder to understand. But they like I said, I still think they've gotten a lot better, which   Michael Hingson  24:48 I only asked that just out of curiosity because I know that the service is there to do automatic transcription or captioning. And I've never, never asked anyone exactly how well it does, except I've heard that it does a good job, but I've never compared it to like otter or something. And I bought otter for teens. And the reason I did that is so that it is now set up and integrated with Zoom. So it automatically starts when I opened a Zoom meeting. And what I do usually is unless there's a need to I will stop it. But it automatically starts when I come into a meeting that I that I initiate, and that's great, because then I don't even have to think about it. And it's a an effort of volition if I want to stop it.   Kelly Brakenhoff  25:42 Oh, yeah, that's great. I didn't realize you can set it up that way. That's awesome.   Michael Hingson  25:45 Yeah, the otter for teams. Home, I think, unless the price has changed, it was like $240 a year. And if you're a nonprofit, or whatever, it's half that. So it's not even a lot of money to do it, which is what's great.   Kelly Brakenhoff  26:00 That is That's awesome. Well, thank you. So the more users that use things, then the cheaper the price for everyone. And I think that's what we're seeing now with a lot of these tools.   Michael Hingson  26:12 It is ironic that we have to go through something like a pandemic to see things become more available, and for people to start to see that maybe some of the tools that say a person who is blind or low vision, or a person who is deaf or hard of hearing uses might very well be relevant for the rest of us. I'm still amazed that in driving with people using cell phones, we don't find more automatic use of the verbal technology voiceover for Apple and talkback on an Android, I'm surprised that we don't see more use of those verbal systems. In the driving experience, there's no reason not to do that, and do more to keep people's eyes on the road. Unfortunately, we're going the other way, we're getting more driving experiences with touchscreens, which means somebody's got to watch the screen, or look down and then quickly look back at the road. Why should that even have to happen today? Because we have such good voice technology. And we can also have good voice input technology to go along with it.   Kelly Brakenhoff  27:21 That's an excellent point. That's, that's so true. Yes, there's definitely you know, all the fancy touchscreens. But when I got my latest car, I had to sit in the driveway with the owner's manual for an hour just to figure out how to reprogram the clock. So you definitely don't want to be doing any of that while you're on the road. Well,   Michael Hingson  27:42 if you and I, I love Tesla's and I think that the technology is great, it is demonstrating the state of the art technology that's out there. But it's all controlled by a touchscreen, which means a blind passenger, I can't even do what a passenger would do to tune the radio or turn on a podcast or turn on whatever the services are available, much less anything else, because it's all touchscreen. And there's no reason for that today, we should be able to keep people's eyes more on the road. Even if you have the Tesla copilot function, which can take over a good part of the driving experience. It's not an autonomous vehicle software, but it can help with the driving experience. People should be keeping their eyes on the road not watching a touchscreen. And I'm still amazed that we're not seeing more people recognize the value of audio input and output.   Kelly Brakenhoff  28:36 I did not realize that I wrote in my first Tesla just a few months ago, and it was really neat, but I didn't I guess I just assumed that they had voice input things. I mean, wow, that's that's really shocking. as fancy as that whole system is that is very surprising. Well, let me let me rephrase that Ilan and say, hey,   Michael Hingson  28:59 well, let me rephrase it a little bit. There is availability of voice input for some things, but it's not an automatic process. So you have to invoke it, then you have to do something, I think to make it work every time you want to use it. What I'm saying is, it should be as much a part of the driving experience as anything else. And I'm saying it should be more part of the driving experience than using a touchscreen, it should be automatic. And we don't do that. We're too young to eyesight and we think that eyesight is the only game in town. Just like I'm sure that people who are deaf and hard of hearing would say that most people think that hearing is the only game in town. And in the in reality is neither is true. Exactly. I've said for years that I've said for years that people with disability, well, people who have eyesight, have their own disability and that is their light dependent. They can't do things without light Thomas Edison as the Americans with Disabilities Back would define it developed a reasonable accommodation for light dependent people when he created the light bulb. Let's get real, and I and I don't have the stitches. Lee it's true. You know, it's it's unfortunate that people are so locked into doing things one way that they're missing opportunities to make driving safer. But there you go.   Kelly Brakenhoff  30:22 I love that. I love that idea. I love that idea. I think that should be used to make that a thing as a political movement. I love that.   Michael Hingson  30:31 Yeah, well, we got to get Elon to go along with it.   Kelly Brakenhoff  30:34 Well, you know, he's kind of busy with Twitter right now. So maybe that all wrapped up, then he can he can focus his brain power on this?   Michael Hingson  30:43 Well, once he gets it set up, and if he's gonna do Twitter, then we'll start doing tweets. Oh, there you go. There you go. What a world we live in right now. So you said that you've done a lot of writing, you've been very much involved in writing, since college and so on. Why do you like writing so much?   Kelly Brakenhoff  31:07 Honestly, I don't know. I think it's just how I think how I process things. It's communication, talking to people talking to people like you. That's just kind of how I think it's just, just what I do is is who I am. That's a pretty simple answer.   Michael Hingson  31:26 We'll put Hey, it works. It works. So you said you just pretty recently got involved in starting to actually write books?   Kelly Brakenhoff  31:36 Yeah, I think it was 2014. I joined NaNoWriMo for the first time, which for people who haven't heard of that, it stands for National Novel Writing Month, and it's in November, where, gosh, by this day, by last year, I think it was around 750,000 people around the world, try to write 16 167 words a day for 30 days, and you come up with a 50,000 word manuscript by the end of the month. And that was signing up for that challenge was because I'm kind of competitive. So if I sign up for a challenge like that, I'm gonna do it. So that was like the thing that broke the barrier for me of just having ideas and just wanting to write and whatever and actually finishing a manuscript for the first time. That's what kind of gave me that push to actually do it.   Michael Hingson  32:33 So what did you publish your own books? Are they published through a publisher or what?   Kelly Brakenhoff  32:38 Yes, they are. They're self published, I tried for about a year to publish my firt, or to find an agent and all of that for my first one. And then at the same time, I was also checking into self publishing. And I don't know I think just a lot of factors kind of all converged. And I just decided at the end that self publishing was was the way to go. I'm kind of a control freak. And I like to, I like to have the my input into how to make you know, I hire my whole team. So I have an editor and a cover designer and and proofreaders and all of that stuff. And I get to decide what the finished product ends up to be. And it turns out that, yeah, I'm kind of bossy I guess.   Michael Hingson  33:23 You have a publicist who helps with the PR, and all that. I do.   Kelly Brakenhoff  33:27 I do. It's a it's called creative edge is the one that I use. And, and they've really, I've really enjoyed being part of that group.   Michael Hingson  33:37 I met Mickey a couple of months ago, actually, for the first time, he was introduced to me by someone else that we interviewed on the unstoppable mindset podcast. And she said, you know, he works with a lot of authors who might very well have interesting stories for you. And so that's how we met him. And we've actually started working with him as well. We're just getting started. But having written thunder dog, which was, and we're blessed by the fact that it was a number one New York Times bestseller, and then was published by Thomas Nelson part of HarperCollins. Now, but then we self published our second book, which was called running with Roselle, which was kind of more for youth, but more adults by it than then kids do. And it's the story of me growing up and Rozelle growing up. And then how we met after she became a guide dog in training, and she became my guide dog, and you know, kind of went from there, but I love writing, but I haven't done that much of it. We are starting to work on a third book, and that'll be a lot of fun. And we just got a book contract for that as well. So that's pretty exciting.   Kelly Brakenhoff  34:46 That's great. Congratulations. I didn't know that. That's awesome.   Michael Hingson  34:51 But But I'm curious. You've written I guess basically what two different kinds of books children's books and mysteries. How do you do mystery How do you come up with a plot? And how do you? Do you make it all come together? Because I think mystery writing has to be if you do it well, it has to be a real challenge to come up with a not only a plot, but create all of the scenes, do all the things that you need to do. And essentially, keep the solution hidden until the end of the book unless there's some value in presenting that earlier. And it's really how you get there.   Kelly Brakenhoff  35:30 Yeah, that's a funny question. Because I definitely write in extremes. I mean, I write 70,000, word mysteries, and then I write 500, word picture books for the children's books. So very different, very different approaches. But yeah, the mysteries and thrillers are kind of the things that I have always read my whole life. So I thought when I wanted to do that first NaNoWriMo challenge, I decided to kind of mash up all of my experiences. Like I said, I've lived in Hawaii and Nebraska, the East Coast, Seattle. So I kind of took all of those different elements working at a college and I put them all together into this murder mystery. And I got about two thirds of the way through and realized exactly what you said that writing a mystery is hard. It's actually one of I think, the most difficult genres to do because exactly for the reason you said, you want to make that mystery puzzle complicated enough that it can't be solved too early. Mystery readers are very smart people. And so it's very challenging coming up with enough suspects and clues to keep people guessing until the end. I guess I just love a challenge. I think it's it's fun, but it's also just what I love to read and write. So a read so it was kind of the most natural thing to write.   Michael Hingson  36:59 I think you just hit on it. Essentially. mysteries are puzzles and puzzles are as good as it gets. Who are your favorite mystery writers?   Kelly Brakenhoff  37:10 Oh, I have so many.   Michael Hingson  37:12 Yeah, me too. Yeah.   Kelly Brakenhoff  37:15 I think like my, you know, the ones I kind of grew up with was like Sue Grafton. So that letter A is for those Jana Ivanovic. There's Stephanie Plum Siri   Michael Hingson  37:27 plum. Hey, come on. We all love diesel, but that's another story.   Kelly Brakenhoff  37:30 Oh, yeah, diesel's awesome, too. Well, I'm sure being you live. You said you live in New Jersey, right? Oh, yes. Yeah. So you're very familiar with tenants. Definitely. Trenton definitely fun. And then I also just love like John Grisham and James Patterson and Michael Connelly. I mean, gosh, I just, that's all. I haven't really met very many mysteries that I didn't like.   Michael Hingson  37:54 Yeah. My my favorite still is Rex Stout with the neuro wolf series. Oh, yeah. Yeah, they I've never solved any of his books before the end. And I worked at it. I love Mary Higgins Clark. But I was able to basically figure out all of the, the mean people in that before the end of the book, still, they were fun to read   Kelly Brakenhoff  38:20 is fun, right? I mean, as long as it's a good story, even if guests are having an idea of did it by the end, as long as the character still keep you in it. And a lot of times this setting is kind of a character to then I don't mind, you know, reading to the end to confirm that I was right. I think what's funny since I became a writer, and I don't know, you can tell me if this is true for yourself. But since I became a writer, an author, I kind of ruined for reading, like I read a lot. But I read now to learn and to see what when I read a really good book, I love to pick it apart and and see why it's good. And not just the structure of it. But like if I if that paragraph was beautiful, I'll go back and read that paragraph several times and try to figure out what is so great about that paragraph, or when someone throws a twist or a turn in or I thought I knew who it was. And then at the end, I find out it was someone else. I just love that. That thrill of like, oh, you fooled me, you know, and I really like to think about all of that. But that means that a lot of times I'm not really enjoying the book. I'm like studying the book. And so I have found that if if I really get so sucked into a book that I am not doing that, that means that it's a really, really good book because if it took me out of my analysis into just enjoying it, then that's a me that's the mark of a very good book.   Michael Hingson  39:53 Sue Graf passed away from cancer did her last book ever get published? Because I don't think she finished it, did she?   Kelly Brakenhoff  39:59 It did not odds are one of those.   Michael Hingson  40:01 Zero Yeah,   Kelly Brakenhoff  40:03 yeah. The sad things. Is it never it's, it's not finished. I don't even know how far she got in it. But it wasn't finished enough to be published. Yeah,   Michael Hingson  40:12 yeah, I guess that's kind of what happened. But her mysteries were definitely some of the best. And we read them all. And some twice, which is always fun if I if I want to read a book a second time. And I don't have that many hours in the day that that's easy to do. But if I want to read a book a second time, then I know that there is something about it that I must have enjoyed. And we read here, a lot of books on audio, audible and other sources. The reason we do is that instead of watching TV, we pipe books through the house, my wife has learned to listen to audio. So we listen to books together. What I've been occasionally finding are editor mistakes where they said something and then later on referring back something, they say something different. Somebody messed up in editing it, and I don't see it often. But I do occasionally see it and I always find them. Which is a fun.   Kelly Brakenhoff  41:15 It is it's i It's funny, because, you know, even though my books are self published, I work really hard not to have those kinds of errors. Yeah, they go through an editor, at least one editor, numerous BETA readers, numerous proofreaders. And then, you know, six months after I published it all open it up, and I see a typo. And it's like, at first I used to get so frustrated at that. And then now I saw something one time on Facebook, it was like, cheers to you, you typo you made it through three rounds of editing, 10 proofreaders and you still made it you you go, you know,   Michael Hingson  41:58 I when I was in college, we used in freshman and sophomore physics, a series of books called the Berkeley physics series, because it came out of there. And I had a dorm mate, who looked in detail at every single book, looking for a mistake, because he said a lot of books, there are editing mistakes. And he said he finally found one in one of the Berkeley physics books, but he said it was so fun looking just to see any error. And he couldn't find them in the Berkeley physics series. It was just incredible that he spent that time. On the other hand, he was an excellent student. So I guess he learned from it as he was reading.   Kelly Brakenhoff  42:43 Have a niece who's a doctor and they actually some textbook company paid her. I don't know if she just got free books. Or if she actually got paid her last year of med school, they they paid her to go through the as she was going through the textbook to note down any errors that she found.   Michael Hingson  43:03 See, it's always good to to read as much as possible and proofread as much as possible. And you're right. There's nothing like a good editor to help.   Kelly Brakenhoff  43:12 Right, exactly, exactly.   Michael Hingson  43:14 So how hard was it to write your first mystery? Oh, must have a lot   Kelly Brakenhoff  43:22 of courage. And it was a lot of it was a lot of I think I must have gone through 10 or 15 jobs. It took me five years to finish it, it was ugly, there was a lot of tears. But you know, you just learned so much I kind of consider it like getting a master's degree. I just did it at home with my, my own process. But you know, I just had to learn a lot. You have to be humble, you have to be willing to accept criticism and advice from other people. But I feel like it taught me a lot. And of course, then the second book teaches you even more and the third and you know, each one you do, I think you just learn more, either about yourself or about writing. I'd love to read books about writing craft and how to do better. You know, I want every single book that I write to be better than the last. I think most authors are that way.   Michael Hingson  44:15 They get easier the more you write. That's a   Kelly Brakenhoff  44:18 funny question, because I'm right in the middle of writing my fourth mystery right now. And I've been stalled for quite a while. And what it's taught me is just about myself and my process and what I thought my process was versus what I'm finding. I thought I could speed it up, but it's actually making me slow down. So that means that I was not speeding it up correctly. If that makes sense.   Michael Hingson  44:46 Yeah. Well, and I don't know whether it becomes easier or not. I have been very blessed when we did thunder dog. I had someone to collaborate and help with it Susie Florrie And that happened because she actually found Me, because she was writing a book called Dawn tales, which was 17 stories about dogs who had stories. And she wanted to include Roselle in that. And she did. But as we discussed my story, she said, You should really write a book. And so we got started down that road. And I met her agent who became my agent, Chip McGregor on thunder dog. And we, we had a good time and collaborated well. And I think that there was a lot of value in that for me, because I know that I don't have the writing experience as such. But I know what's good when I read it. And I also know that I can add value. So we really had a very collaborative process of writing thunder dog, a lot of it is hers, and a lot of it is mine directly. And we blended the two which was great. Now with the third book that we're getting, which is getting ready to do, which is going to talk about fear and controlling fear and people learning that they can overcome fear and not let it blind them, if you will, to being able to make decisions. The working title is a guide dogs Guide to Being brave, and I'm doing that with a friend of Susie's Carrie, Carrie Wyatt can't. Because Suzy is in a Ph. D. program. Yeah, we love the title. We'll see what the publisher does. We've got a contract for it. We'll see what the publisher does with it over time. But so far everybody likes it. That was a carry creation, because I was going to call it blinded by fear, which was more accurate in some senses. But I think a guide dogs Guide to Being brave is a lot better title.   Kelly Brakenhoff  46:35 Yeah, it reminds me of that one. Is it the Art of Racing in the Rain? Yeah, yeah, it kind of reminds me of something like that, where it's it's a little off of what the theme of the book is, but it's still engaging, and it makes you want to know more about it.   Michael Hingson  46:54 It was a good book. And so   Kelly Brakenhoff  46:57 you said something that really resonated with me, you said, I know, it's good when I read it. And I think that's a big obstacle for beginning writers. And is that usually, if you're a writer, you're a reader first. And so I've read tons and tons of great books, and I know what great literature is, and I know what a great story is. And then when I write my first one, it's not very good. So you kind of have that, that huge gap between what you know is good and what you've produced. And so it's, it's, it's hard, you have to overcome that, that feeling of, of my stuff is really bad, you know, and then you have to work really hard to make it as good as, as you want it to be, you know, as good as it is to be able to actually share with the world, you know, to get up to that level of what your your bar is the bar that you've set. And so I think that's something that stands it's a barrier to a lot of people. And that's where I think a good editor comes. Yeah.   Michael Hingson  48:05 Yeah. Well look at John Grisham. You mentioned earlier the first book he wrote If I recall was a time to kill but it was the third one published the first one that he wrote, and it was published was the firm and then I'm trying to remember what the second one was. Was it the Pelican Brief the Pelican Brief right? And then A Time to Kill, which was the Jake Brigantes initiator, if you will. But if you look at all of them, you can see how the the books evolved over time in his writing style. So it's it is a natural progression. And I mentioned Rex Stout, a Nero Wolf, if you go back and read fair to Lance, which was his first book, and you compare it with especially much later writings, you can see changes, but you can see where everything is starting from and you get engaged in in fact, fair Lance was not the first mirror wolf book I read. by a longshot. It wasn't the first, but having gone back and read it. Even though everyone in the book all the characters developed a fair amount and since then, and his writing style improved. It was engaging. Mm hmm. Well, tell me about your mystery series,   Kelly Brakenhoff  49:26 sir. Um, it's about a college administrator named Cassandra Sato and she lives in Hawaii. She gives up her her life in Hawaii to move to Nebraska because she wants to accept her dream job at a tiny college called Morton college in the middle of nowhere in Nebraska. And she and her eventual goal is to become a college administrators or college president. So she thinks this is you know, the Path is gonna get her there. But of course, moving from Hawaii to Nebraska is a very, very large cultural, cultural shift. And so she encounters all kinds of problems, discrimination, barriers, everything. And a few months into her job, a student turns up dead on campus and see has to be part of the group of people who figures out what happened to the student and then find justice.   Michael Hingson  50:28 Yeah, come on. Cassandra really did. And she's been hiding a whole series. Yeah, that's   Kelly Brakenhoff  50:33 the end of the series. It was Cassandra.   Michael Hingson  50:35 That will come later on about the hundreds book, right. That's awesome. When Karen and my wife and I are talking about who did it in various books, we, we usually do things like that. We've been reading a lot of the JE NACHA as well, we read a chance to but the JD Robb books, the in depth series, have you read those. And so I read very many of those now, we we oftentimes will spin a story how Eve Dallas really did it. Or Roark did it and had just a lot of fun with it. But again, a great series of books is there's a lot of sex in those books, but they're still taking Ross. Yeah, they're great mysteries.   Kelly Brakenhoff  51:20 Yeah, a lot of times people like the ones that I write well, obviously, I have four kids and grandkids. And my kids would cringe if I if they had to read a sex scene that I wrote. So, you know, my kids were like, high school and college age when I started writing. So I decided all the sex in my books, there's gonna be behind closed doors, and yeah, nobody, nobody wants to have their mom. Yeah, no.   Michael Hingson  51:46 I've, I've talked to several authors who say that who, one who said I would never any more, I would never let my daughter or my wife, wife read the books, or I changed the sex so that they could read them. But the value of having them read them as they're great critics, and so it's worthwhile. But yeah, it is fun to to see how people react. But, you know, a mystery. Doesn't need to have all the violence thrown at you right out in the open, which is why puzzles are so great. At James Patterson tends to be a little bit more violent, but not nearly as violent as he could be. So we we've always enjoyed Of course, the Alex Cross series.   Kelly Brakenhoff  52:33 Yeah, it's there's such a huge variety in Yeah, the violence level and all that stuff. I myself, I have a pretty vivid imagination. I don't really need people to spell some of that stuff out for me. My mysteries are technically like cozy mysteries, which kind of means that there's no like blood on the page. There's no swearing, there's no sex. So like, even you know, high school kids can read them and, and that kind of thing. So I guess that's just, I just write what I like. So that's only because I like to read. So that's what I like to write.   Michael Hingson  53:12 Come on. That's only because Cassandra is trying to hide everything, but we know the truth.   Kelly Brakenhoff  53:18 That's right. She's really Voldemort.   Michael Hingson  53:21 Yeah, she's really Voldemort. Speaking of another good series of books   Kelly Brakenhoff  53:28 that's that's a whole different ballgame.   Michael Hingson  53:30 But but you know, looking at the Harry Potter books, again is another one where going from Book One through Book Seven, just how it evolved. And they're so fun.   Kelly Brakenhoff  53:42 They are they're definitely one of my I, I like all genres. So yeah, I loved Harry Potter Lord of the Rings, Narnia. I mean, you name it, it's I thought during the pandemic that I would just read all day every day but it turns out I actually have to do other stuff too.   Michael Hingson  53:59 So I hate it when that happens.   Kelly Brakenhoff  54:02 There is no laundry fairy I hate to be the person to tell you this but there is no laundry fairy,   Michael Hingson  54:07 I haven't found one either. And I get to do the clothes washing at our house which is fine. So for me, I love the brainless activities on Sunday. So there are three tasks that well for that I do on Sundays. It starts with doing the laundry or starting the laundry. Another is we I take the cat box out we use a litter called litter one it's not sand, it's all pine kernels. And you buy them and they come in a disposable box. So we just use in different new box every week. And it's about the same as using regular sand that you buy in the in the store. But at the end of the week, you just throw the whole box out and put a new one up and the cat is very demanding when it comes time to change the box. So that happens on Sunday. I take the trash out on Sunday. And then we have a little If we do get housecleaning help during the week, Karen's in wheelchairs, he has been in a chair her whole life. So it's kind of hard for us to do some of those things. So we do have a housekeeper that comes on Thursdays, in fact, and today's Thursday. So Jeanette is here, but we have a robot vacuum and I do the vacuuming again on Sunday with the robot in our bedroom, because that's also where Alamo my guide dog sleeps. So we get all those. So those are my four tasks on Sunday. And they're they're all pretty brainless in a sense. So I can read while they're going on, which is fun. And Karen is a quilter. So she's usually in sewing. And and she's reading the same thing I read. So it's a question right now, who finishes which JD Robb book first?   Kelly Brakenhoff  55:44 Yeah, that is definitely the the good thing about audiobooks is being able to multitask on some of those things that you don't have to pay so much attention to.   Michael Hingson  55:54 Tell me about your dupe the deaf dog ASL series.   Kelly Brakenhoff  55:58 Well, that is the second series that I started after I finished the mystery novels, I kind of had a moment where I realized that I, you know, I started my own publishing company. And I just had a thought, I mean, it's kind of cliche, it was actually a dream that just came to me of like, what I could do with this publishing company, if I just kind of unleashed it. And so I came up with the idea of, of this orange, English spaniel dog who is deaf and all of the people in his or all of his family can hear. And so it's just about different experiences that he has as the only person in a family of hearing people, and trying to get deaf and hard of hearing children to see themselves and their everyday life experiences on our pages of our books. But I also want kids who can hear to understand what it's like to hear differently. We just finished the third book, and I'm actually actually we just finished the fourth book, the third book just came out. But the fourth book is in production right now. And I had no idea when it started, what it was going to end up being but it's actually turned out to be more successful. And I would say even more fun than my mysteries, the mysteries are kind of like my thing that I enjoy. As far as, like you said, creating the puzzle and, and the challenge of it, but the Duke, the deaf dog ASL series, is kind of what I feel like I'm taking my 30 Whatever years of interpreting and hanging around with really cool Deaf people, and then like sharing that with the world.   Michael Hingson  57:49 So it's not a mystery series.   Kelly Brakenhoff  57:53 No, it is not. They are picture books. So they're only like less than 500 words. And each one is a different situation that do gets into so there's like a different message. And each one more than 90% of children who are born deaf or hard of hearing have parents that can hear I did a lot of research to before I started the books, and there's very few books for young children that have deaf and hard of hearing characters. Once you get into like high school age, or even beyond, there's more books that have deaf and hard of hearing characters. But at the kindergarten, first grade age, there's very few books. And you know, my kids had lots and lots of choices of books to read. So I feel like deaf kids did have lots and lots of choices, books that have characters like them in there. So each book has a different message like the first one was called nevermind. And the message is that everyone deserves to be included in conversations. I mean, how many times do we tell people nevermind when they ask us to repeat ourselves? Or maybe we have, like a older parent or spouse who doesn't hear well, or even like someone who's just a little bit slower to act, or to understand a lot of times we just get impatient and say forget it. I'll explain later. And this book like after I published that first book, I've had so many deaf people come up to me and tell me stories of times when they've been told nevermind. And they thanked me for sharing their stories because they want hearing people to understand how hurtful those words are and what it feels to be left out. So I have a pretty long list of situations I've seen throughout the years that I plan to incorporate into the books and I I'm only stopped by my amount of time and and money to hire illustrators at this point.   Michael Hingson  59:55 Back to mysteries. Of course there's the cat who series Lily and Jackson Brown and also Rita Mae Brown and sneaky pie Brown. But in thinking of the cat who books, why not have a Duke, the Duke, the deaf dog series, solving mysteries, and also deal with all the frustrations that Duke has of trying to get his humans to listen? And how he has to figure things out, not being in a hearing world himself.   Kelly Brakenhoff  1:00:27 Yeah, that's a good thought. I'm actually like I said, I have so many ideas that it's really limited by my time and money, but um, the picture books are more like so Duke's a dog. Right? It's more like he's like a pitbull, like, they stand on their hind legs. And they kind of like even his dad wears like a tie. So they kind of are like human, but they're dogs. But it's a nice way to be able to show diversity and like breeds of dogs and colors of dogs and abilities and body types and stuff without actually having like different children in there. So it's kind of like, like, I don't know, if you remember the Mercer Mayer series, little critter. That's kind of what I thought of, as I   Michael Hingson  1:01:13 was able to read them. Yeah,   Kelly Brakenhoff  1:01:15 that was like my, my model, I guess of who I thought of it's like, so Duke is more just like a character, a fictional character. But I do have a couple of other ideas for series for like middle grade age kids. And those would be mysteries, and those would use some characters. I have a couple of young characters in the Cassandra Sacco series. I did a Halloween short story last year called scavenger hunt. And that two of the main characters in there were 10 year old kids. And so I think I want to do a separate series with them and have those be mysteries because I agree, I think I can incorporate a lot of the things that I know about the Deaf community and Deaf culture and ASL into a mystery, and they get kind of fun that way. And   Michael Hingson  1:02:05 it's great that you're using this opportunity to teach people more about deaf and hard of hearing. And not only as a culture, but as just as much an included an inclusive part of society as everyone else. I am concerned when you're talking about do looking like a character and looking a little bit like people. I just don't want to see a new book coming out about do the deaf dog ASL series goes to Animal Farm just saying. But Duly noted. So So you you did one of your books. As a Kickstarter campaign?   Kelly Brakenhoff  1:02:43 We did. Um, the the most recent one that just published in January, I did my first Kickstarter campaign.   Michael Hingson  1:02:51 Now why did you do that? What brought Kickstarter into it.   Kelly Brakenhoff  1:02:54 I went to this conference last fall in Las Vegas, and I met some authors who publish their books first on Kickstarter, before they release them more widely and other stores. And listening to them made me realize that Kickstarter might be a good way for me to reach new readers. The nice thing about Kickstarter, which I think you said that you've supported a couple of campaigns, honestly, before I had gone to this conference, I did not think starter was something I needed to do, I hadn't really gone on there, I hadn't pledged sponsored anybody else's project. So I just kind of went into it blindly. But I realized that the cool thing about Kickstarter is you get to develop a direct relationship with people who want to buy your product. So in my case, it's a book, but I've gone on there. And since then, I've supported all kinds of different projects. I've done a board game, and a coloring book and a purse. And I mean, there's so many neat, creative ideas that people come up with and put them on Kickstarter, just to see. So then the the customers can come on and pledge money towards that product and say, Yes, I think that's a great idea. The world needs that. And I'm willing to plunk down my money to pre order that thing that you want to make. And so if enough of those people say that they'll pre order the product, then the project is successful, and it funds and then the person who listed the project goes ahead and makes it. So that's been really exciting. But you have this direct relationship where the creator is sending you messages and keeping you updated on the progress like, okay, you know, we're finished in publishing, you know, in the case of publishing, you say, Okay, we finished the illustration and we're waiting for them to be printed and then I actually personally boxed everything up and mailed them to the people with personal note and some extra stickers and everything. So I think I'd really enjoy that contact with people and that communication because it goes both ways, then people can actually respond to me. If I just sell stuff on Amazon or in the local bookstore, I don't really know who buys my, my books. And so the Kickstarter has been a really cool way to just kind of, I guess, learn more about what people want and what people like about them. And it's kind of a neat way to have this direct relationship. It made me I funded my first project successfully, we raised $2,500, which was enough money to buy some hardcover books. In the past, I haven't been able to afford doing those books, as a small publishers. So it's great to be able to order those books and get those into people's hands they came with, they're very well done on nice thick paper with really vivid color illustrations. And then there's photos on each page of different ASL signs. And the photos are really clear. So it was definitely worth I guess, the experience. So I'm actually going to be doing another one in July for the, for the next Duke book. But as a person, like you said, you you have a contract to do your next book. And so you get a lot of times authors will get paid in advance, this is kind of almost the same thing where I'm making this idea. And then I'm, like pre paying some of the costs that it cost to produce the book, like, you know, the illustrating, or the printing, or all the different things that are associated with making the book, it's like a way for me to almost get like an advance except this directly coming from the customers instead of from the publishing company.   Michael Hingso

Episode Summary I have had the honor to interview many guests since beginning Unstoppable Mindset. No guest has demonstrated a greater ability to be unstoppable than this episode's guest, Ian Walker. Ian learned at a fairly early age that he happened to have ADHD. He also demonstrated a great aptitude and love of music. His love of music won as he will tell you in in our interview. Ian also has worked at other jobs in his life. He will tell you about them as well. Ian's insights about music and ADHD especially will show you and anyone you bring to our podcast that we can use our inner strength to overcome any challenges we think we have before us. As you will hear, Ian is also a successful author and is even creating a play. Join Ian and me and be moved.  Thanks for listening and I hope you will let me know your thoughts about our episode and the Unstoppable Mindset podcast by emailing me at michaelhi@accessibe.com.   About the Guest:  In Stirring My Soul to Sing, Overcoming ADHD Through Song,_first- time Canadian author W. Ian Walker, ADHD survivor, musician, author and speaker tells his story of lifelong struggles with ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) and how he found relief by leaning into the music and his Christian faith during his successful 30-year career in music and the arts. Walker's book continues to grow in distribution and is listed on _43 international bookseller websites and stores. _ In his gritty and moving autobiography published in 2018, Walker offers "hope" for families and individuals facing an ADHD diagnosis. Walker is a classically trained musician, singer (baritone) and arts manager. He shares stories about how music (with an emphasis on vocal and choral music) brought him joy, success, and fulfilment in a life that was marked by a constant battle with ADHD. Walker credits his musical experiences and profoundly personal faith with mitigating and overcoming the potentially devastating impact of the disorder. He explains how, for 35 years, he used vocal and choral music to help him stay  focused, achieve goals, and meet deadlines, in conjunction with his ADHD.  Mr. Walker will be speaking at all online conferences for 2022 on “Overcoming ADHD with the Arts and Music Therapy”  A Long Road from the past until now... Although Ian was told he was “hyperactive” and had a learning disability in the early 1970s; he was not formally diagnosed with the disorder until 1996. In the intervening years, Walker experienced verbal abuse, school bullying, poor academic performance, employment instability, financial hardships, and failed relationships.  Despite these challenges, Walker persevered and now holds a _BA in Theater and Film, from McMaster University and a Post-graduate Certificate in Fundraising and Volunteer Management, from Humber College, Toronto and is a successful Arts Consultant.  W. Ian Walker is an in demand speaker and has recently spoke at ADDA/CHADD International OnLine Conference in 2020 & 2021. He also involved in many local community projects and is in preparation to lauch his first vocal performance and tour of a “Cabaret Evening with Ian” in 2022.  Walker is touring, speaking, and singing in support of the book. He has also produced eight videos.  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpXUoGfVMOrt6BtsrZiPtbg?reload=9  For Contact: wiw@emliancommunications.org/shop or to purchase the book. Please call: 1-289- 700-7005  About the Host:  Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/  https://twitter.com/mhingson  https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson  https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links  https://accessibe.com/  https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe  https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening!  Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast  If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can also subscribe in your favorite podcast app.   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review  Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.     Transcription Notes Michael Hingson  00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i  capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us. Michael Hingson  01:19 Welcome to another episode of unstoppable mindset. Thanks for being here. I hope that you enjoy what we have to talk about today. We have a guest who I've been looking forward to for quite a while and circumstances keep causing us to have to delay getting together but we finally made it didn't we Ian?  Ian Walker  01:42 Yes, exactly. Nice to be here, Michael.  Michael Hingson  01:45 Thanks. And it's good to have you here. Ian Walker has a very interesting background. And I'm going to say up front, one of the interesting things about en and one that I'm really anxious to learn more about is that he himself has what people would classify as a disability. And that's fascinating to me, needless to say, so why don't we start there? You You say that at some point in your life, you since you were different? Can you tell us about that?  Ian Walker  02:15 Yeah, so um, I was raised in a very musical family. And music and the arts were really important. And especially for me, when we found out that I was diagnosed later on in my life with ADHD, but being a kid from the 1970s, they used to, you know, call me hyperactive. And so ADHD wasn't, you know, wasn't diagnosed wasn't used then. But I basically had all of the elements of, you know, dealing with ADHD. And so that's Attention Deficit hyper disorder, we're for people that don't, don't understand the disorder. And so, you know, I dealt with a lot of stuff. My mother, my grandmother, and my mother were very musical, and they acted as my, my mentors. And so, you know, once we sort of found out that I wasn't in your MOS, I wasn't your average, you know, person here that was going through the regular school system. My, my grandmother suggested to my parents that I'd always love to sing and that I should take singing lessons. And that opened up a huge, you know, door for me a level of confidence, and self esteem. And, and then, you know, I had to deal with all the bullying that went on, because I was a young young man who wanted to sing. Michael Hingson  04:09 When did this occur? When did all this occur?  Ian Walker  04:12 So, I was born in 1960. Okay, and by around 1970 1971, I, you know, I'd already been a boy soprano.My grandmother really trained me very well. And as a result, people come up to me all the time and say, Oh, II and when you sing, you have great diction. Yay, Grandma, you know, Ian Walker  04:39 oh, well, about your D's and T's and that you want to be heard at the back of the hall or the back of the church, you know? And that was the days before amplification right where amplitude vacation is used so much now. So, so I got all of the the great beginning sings and grandma would work with me on the piece and the finesse and the phrasing, and the and, you know, the diction, and mom would help me with, with rhythm. You know, sometimes my rhythm wasn't always right on track. And then she'd also helped me with, you know, the finesse more maybe about dynamics and, you know, interpretation of the songs. And so, you know, this being the early 70s, there wasn't a lot of great selection out there to, for a young staff to learn to sing. And so I'd be and because I was raised in the church, you know, I sang a lot of early boy soprano stuffs, a lot of Easter pieces of hallelujahs. And, you know, a lot of those kinds of wonderful thing is a great training, a great training, you know, I really, really wished we had recorded my voice as a young soprano, I don't have a boy soprano. I don't have any, you know, except vague little memories every once in a while, sort of, you know, pops in my head. But so then, around 1971 72, I was in grade four, grade five. And they determined that I needed to go and deal with my ADHD issues. So it being the 70s, they took kids out of the regular school system, this is here in Canada, they took kids out of the regular schools and put them into a special school for disability issues. Well, I was always really good on all of my, you know, English, geography, history, all of the main core, you know, subjects, but my weakness was math. And so as now probably what they would do is just, you know, have a special tutor for me, but anyways, I had to be taken out of the school system. Put two years behind, you know, and, and, thank goodness, in my second year, we had an amazing teacher, who was a background of the military was a left handed Colonel here in Canada. And he, when you were in his class, you were like, in the army was it and so we classmates almost saluted when we came into. And, but he was very, very good with me. And he recognized and said, This boy's intelligence, he's got, you know, English and history and, and geography and, you know, an interest in science, what's he doing here? So, he made a special, you know, presentation to me to the, you know, to the board or whatever, and said, Ian needs to be put back into the regular classroom curriculum. And so, I did grade six, and then to grade eight, back in the road rotary system, but I was two years behind, you know, my peers so so, you know, still continuing on with my music. You know, it was in a lot of different shows. At that time. They had a kid's version or student version for the pirate No. Gilbert and Sullivan's not pirates, but the other one. pinafore pinafore, HMS Pinafore, and I got to play the captain and you know, Michael Hingson  09:13 you are not the model of modern major model of the modern Ian Walker  09:17 meeting general No, no. That's a wonderful twisting song. Oh, my goodness, it's, you know, takes a long time to learn all the lyrics in that song. Yeah, Michael Hingson  09:32 but you know, yeah, go ahead. Ian Walker  09:35 So there's a little bit about, you know, dealing with the disability stuff. Michael Hingson  09:39 So do you regard yourself as a person with a disability today? Yeah, why? Why? What do you think about that?  Ian Walker  09:51 Well, because of Okay, so, it took me 27 years to get my BA And a lot of the hindrances, that when, you know, I gone through high school, and did, you know did some other sort of other some other courses along the way to, you know, check out, see what I really wanted to do, but I really wanted to have a degree in music. And when I got into the program at the University of Western Ontario, very good school, for singers, and choral people. I just couldn't handle the program, I could handle all the artistic, all the creative stuff, but I couldn't handle the academics. And that's where we really found out that I had a disability with my writing, that there was some some problems that I'd leave out words that, you know, my sentence structure was in great. I couldn't do syntax from one paragraph to the other paragraph. And there was just some other, you know, other stuff along the way that I really, it was really determined to me that I did have a disability, as you know, as an ADHD student, Michael Hingson  11:18 how did you deal with that, then, in terms of addressing the issue of word gaps and so on?  Ian Walker  11:25 Well, before you know, voice activated software, right, I would have to read my papers over, like, you know, and that was part of the chore as getting the work done way before the the deadline was, you know, was required. But then when voice activated software came in, I use Dragon Naturally Speaking in the early years. And so then, eventually, it could read it to me. And then I went, Oh, my goodness, you know, I've left out a verb here, I've left out an adjective there, or, you know, the sentence didn't make sense. Or, and then, you know, as I learned more about syntax from the next paragraph to the next paragraph. Yeah, it was difficult. And I still got some of my papers. From those some of the early beginnings before I was officially diagnosed with ADHD. And I go, Oh, my goodness, like look at the mistakes, you know, as well as spelling mistakes and things that now you know, software can grammerly Naturally Speaking, no grammar, grammar, Grammarly. I like Grammarly. It really, it really punches up my my work. I haven't checked Michael Hingson  12:53 lately but for me, Grammarly has been somewhat inaccessible, which is a little bit of a problem. But it doesn't at least I haven't found that it works with screen readers well, but I again, I haven't looked at it now. And in a couple of years, so maybe there have been some improvements. But I do agree with you and appreciate the concept that software helps us a lot. If we're open to using I remember Dragon Dictate back in the very early days. Ian Walker  13:26 And yeah, and there. Michael Hingson  13:29 Well, and it wasn't overly accessible and Dragon wasn't overly accessible. There is a product now I use a screen reader called JAWS that verbalizes whatever text comes across the screen, and a gentleman over in England has created a product called JC which is sort of a bridge between dragon and jaws, and actually makes the combination a lot more accessible. So it's very easy now to use Dragon Naturally Speaking and use it effectively. And voice input software like Dragon has made such a difference. I think to so many people. It's so much easier to compose now as you point out. Ian Walker  14:15 Mm hmm. And, and I love it. Like you know, I'm generally a Microsoft guy. So you know, I yeah, I tried Mac and it just it's just too complicated for my brain. Michael Hingson  14:30 Mac is great for graphics. Yeah, and a lot of and a lot of people use it but I too tend toward windows. Ian Walker  14:38 Yeah, yeah. And so you know, now that when I'm writing and stuff, I just love it that AI can either use dictate or you know, or just click on the Grammarly and clean up some stuff that need may need it Michael Hingson  14:55 has Grammarly ever said You dumb bunny. Aren't you ever gonna figure that out, oh, no, just checking, just checking. Ian Walker  15:06 They may say, Huh, you might have another, you have two or three other options. Michael Hingson  15:13 That's my wife would say that though. But that's, that's what wives do. Well, you know, you, you talk about your grandfather being a preacher or pastor, how did? How did his influence affect you? Ian Walker  15:31 Okay, so this is great grandfather. So I had two great grandfather's on my dad's side, who were Baptist preachers. So faith has always been very important in our family. And, you know, and then along with, with the music and stuff, my grandmother that the one that was my, my vocal coach, everything, she was a music director for 25 years, and her Baptist Church and director, choirs, as well as all, you know, musical events. So, so between both my mom and dad had both strong faith and, and I was raised in the Baptist Convention of Ontario, and Quebec, or Baptist of Canada. So our faith has always been very, very important. And that's a really good point. Because in my later years, as I, you know, was learning more about the disorder and a whole deal, when I would be really frustrated, I could just, you know, I could just turn to my faith, I could turn to God, and just, you know, say, God, I need strength here. And I need help, I need support. And, you know, and, and then the thing was, I had lots of people in the family praying for me as well, genuinely, all of them on both sides of my mum and dad side are a lot of, you know, secure Christian, so they had been Christians for a long time. And they they, so I would really say on both my mom and dad side generally is we're a family of faith. And that made a huge, huge difference in actually tell you another story. When I was going through some really bad bullying, in so this is public school, just before third grade, seventh grade, sixth grade seventh, my mom formed a prayer group for children that were having disabilities, mostly boys. Were there were some girls in in the group. And that prayer group continued, I think they got together like, once or twice a month, that prayer group continued for a good 10 years. And I know that I'm walking out of the blessings of that prayer group, because of the faithfulness of my mom and her, her friends that prayed me for strength to get through the issues that I needed to get through. And Michael Hingson  18:17 they pass that on to you. Mm hmm. Which is pretty cool. I think that faith is a very important thing. And I think that it is very relevant for us to have faith, however we express it, that inner strength is is very important to all of us. And, and I'm sure that you, especially when you're talking about bullying, and so on, clearly you, you've had a lot of tests of that. And, you know, at the same time, you know, as well as I that a lot of the bullying comes simply from ignorance and people just don't understand. And you you can choose either to hold a grudge and create a lot of animosity, or you can move beyond that. Ian Walker  19:11 That's right. Well, I think what happened was, you know, when I got to a point, kind of just sort of before my 30s and I just didn't like all of the excess baggage that you know, the that I was still having, I was having, you know, bad dreams of these experiences and stuff. And just just right around there, I was starting to have some, some marital ish issues with my first wife. And so I got into some really good Christian counseling. And, you know, we had to go deep, deep deep down the well, you know, To deal with this stuff, but once we got it out, and as they will talk about it. And the other thing was to learning how to forgive those who had really, you know, hurt me, like, as in the Bible, you know, Jesus says, you know, forgive those who may not know what they've done, right? And, and so once I was able to do that, oh my goodness, a huge burden was lifted from my heart and my whole presence. And I just, you know, I was able to carry on, and I think a lot of the blessings that I've had over the last, say 10 or 15 years is because I've gotten rid of that, those burdens of, you know, of not of those burdens of unforgiveness still holding on to those those issues. So I'm, I'm grateful that, you know, I learned that experience relatively young in my life. Michael Hingson  21:05 You have written a book I have, that I'd love to hear more about. Ian Walker  21:12 Okay, so I'm holding it up here. So it's called stirring my soul to sing, overcoming ADHD through song. And it's available on Amazon. It's available on Barnes and Barnes and Noble, and you can find it on a lot of other you know, platforms. Michael Hingson  21:34 Is there an audio version of the book? Ian Walker  21:36 Not yet. This is that I'm just starting to think about that, too. So when we were getting it, you know, published and my resources didn't include in the budget to do an audiobook, but I'm, I'm thinking about doing one very soon. So, yeah, Michael Hingson  21:55 it won't earn you money, but you might explore in Canada. I'm not sure what the process is. But you might reach out to the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, there is a program. In most countries, it used to be called Talking Books. It sort of still is, I guess, to some of us who remember those terminologies. But yeah, we're blind people are in books created for blind people are exempt from standard copyright laws. And so in the in the United States, contacting the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, print impaired or print disabled, however you want to call it, readers, they record books. Now, it's only available to blind and other print challenged people. But it is also a place where you might look at going. But did you did you publish the book yourself? Or was it? Ian Walker  22:55 I went through through a Christian Faith Based publisher in Canada called Word allied press. Okay, so yeah. And I would Michael Hingson  23:07 think that they should be able to help you get the book out on programs like Audible. Ian Walker  23:14 Yeah, well, that's, that's kind of in the works. So we're just just setting up the time, then, you know, the studio time to be able to do it. And I'm hoping I'm hoping to have it done. You know, probably by the fall, so yeah. Michael Hingson  23:31 Well, when we did thunder dog back in 2010, and 2011. It was published by Thomas Nelson sets, the largest Christian publisher, now part of Harper Collins. Yeah, I didn't read it. They actually had someone else read it. But they did make that part of the process. And I kind of encouraged and someone insisted that it needed to also be an audio book. As it turns out, the Library of Congress has also produced it along with our second book running with Roselle so that they're directly available to blind people. Of course, you know, it's always nice when people buy it through audible, as opposed to the Library of Congress because these poor starving authors, dogs, and our dogs make a little bit of money. So you know, Alamo my guide dog always says, whenever we travel, please tell people to buy books because we're running low on kibbles. You know? Ian Walker  24:25 That's great. Michael Hingson  24:28 But, but tell me more about, you know, the book. Okay. Ian Walker  24:30 And so, um, so for the longest time, you know, I was really thinking about should I write a book and just, just sort of sitting down and thinking about the process and, you know, like, this is, this is my first effort. I've had other you know, other pieces published in different sort of music publications and things like that, but So, um, but I just went, Oh, can I do this? So I sat down, and I just sort of came up with potential chapter, you know, like, chapter titles. And then and, you know, wanted to start at the beginning and, and sort of worked my way through. And that's how I started to do it. And so it took about five years to write. Some things were very easy that just flowed really well. Some of the other real difficult issues took a long time, one particular chapter, in dealing with the relationship with my ex wife, I wrote at least 50 times, and, and then I sent it to my publisher, and, you know, I got it back with lots of red ink and crossbow this and, and, and said, No, in, we've taken your chapter, we've added it now. And if you want to publish with us, it has to be this way. And, and I went, you know, and when I read it, and I'm like, Oh, my goodness, like, why did this take me so long to you know, but it's the process of getting it out. Right, the good as well as the bad. And, and so I was really, really happy, you know, when I read their sort of version of that particular chapter. And, and then, you know, different things just started to come along way. So the first part is about the difficulties of dealing with ADHD from a from a child to, you know, to early 20s. But the other part is about the success of my career is working in arts management, in choral and, well, choral arts management, and I've done some orchestral, but most of my career, so I've worked with some major choral organizations in Canada. And, you know, I've worked with some incredible artists. And so I'm not sure if you're familiar with marine forester, she's an amazing classical vocal artists, she was, you know, big in the 40s. To, to the early 2000s. And she had an opportunity to sort of work with her, and she sort of took me under her wing. I'm an alumnus of the Tanglewood Institute program for actually called Boston University Tanglewood Institute. And so when I was down at Tanglewood, in 1981, I got to spend 20 minutes with Leonard Bernstein, and had an amazing conversation with him about one of his choral pieces. And, you know, the other one who comes to mind is like, an over 10 year relationship with Sir David Wilcox that's he's the conductor for or was the conductor for King's College, Cambridge. You know, what Christmas times Christmas from Kings is usually broadcast and Oh, my goodness, that, you know, well, so David was just one of the most amazing and generous people I've ever met my life. And so we, you know, became friends. And then we emailed for over 10 years, you know, right up to Lee. He was in his early 80s, then right up to his early 90s. And he lived to be 95. And, you know, so I wanted to talk about the other side of my career, which was still having a disability, but basically getting to do what I wanted to do, which was to work in music. And, you know, I talked about some of the teachers that I, I worked with, and, you know, choral experiences. And Ian Walker  29:23 so I it's, it's genuinely an arts book, for that arts person in your family who you don't know what to deal with. Michael Hingson  29:34 Yeah. So when you went, by the way when you were done and tinker with Did you ever get to sing with the Boston Symphony? Ian Walker  29:40 No, because our program was a young artists vocal program. But, but we had all kinds of speakers coming in throughout the summer. We were there for eight weeks. And it was an incredible program. and no says You didn't come and speak to us. But we could go at any time, you know, with the student card and go and listen to rehearsals all the time. And our, our, our choral director just recently passed away Leonard Atherton, who used to be a part of University of Muncie, Indiana. But he was a Canadian first. And he did some work up here, like just not very far from where I live in Hamilton, Ontario. And so I was just amazed, choral people that he knew, and that I knew, and then, you know, we come down to dangle wood, and, you know, it becomes International. So, so it's wonderful. And our group are has stayed together this summer, this coming summer, we'll celebrate 41 years, that and we've got composers, we've got conductors, we've got singers that had had incredible careers. And so we're just, you know, through the wonder of the internet, that we're able to still, you know, stay connected. We've got about three reunions throughout the years to that's pretty Tanglefoot. Michael Hingson  31:22 How long did it take you to act? How long did it take you to write the book? Ian Walker  31:27 Well, it was about five years. And then I was looking for the right publisher, and I was going to publish with one in the States. But there was some problems with, you know, the price of the book then and having to add the tariff coming back on and, you know, for a paperback it was going to be like between 35 or $40 for, you know, who would pay that. So. So, I'm connected with a very wonderful group here called the word guild, for Christian writers, and Christian folk who write for, you know, for Christian media. And so some of my friends said, Ian, why don't you check out word alive press. And it's been a very good, you know, association being connected with them. So they, they really helped me get the book out there. And now it's gone into 43 International bookstores on website, I am just, it's gone all over the world. The last it was in China, and it was being looked at in Russia, I was just totally blown away. So Michael Hingson  32:45 exciting. It is. Ian Walker  32:47 And, you know, I'm working on a second book right now. So but it's not gonna have you know, I've already told my story, you know, now, it's time to finesse and, and have some fun. Michael Hingson  33:03 Yeah, we're, we're sort of in the same boat, Thunder dog having been publishing it, and it tells my story. And we have talked in previous episodes of unstoppable mindset about working on another book, and I interviewed Carrie Wildkin, who I'm working with who's collaborating with me on writing it. We also had Susie Florian, who's the lady who wrote and helped me write. She's a professional writer, and she helped me write thunder dog. She is also very involved with Christian writers on the west coast. So we should probably introduce the two of them. That would be wonderful. All right, yeah, I'll do that this afternoon. But we, but we are now getting ready to write another book. And this one's going to be more about fear, and learning to better address and control fear and make it more of a positive thing then, when something happens and you just become so blinded by fear that you can't move forward or do any do anything. So our tentative title is the guide dogs Guide to Being brave me having worked with a guide dogs, and you're just about to have a contract signed on that, which is really exciting. So we'll be awesome. We'll be telling people about that as it moves forward. But I I'm with you the stories out there. So now it's time to be able to branch out and do other things. Yeah, but Ian Walker  34:33 that's really interesting that you you're, you know, looking at writing a book about fear because I've really felt in the last little while that a lot of ADHD issues, open the door to fear. And I was thinking about writing a book on fear, but but I just I've seen it, you know, time and time again, and I A lot of like, part of, you know, part of my journey has really also been to just break down the doors and say, I'm not going to be held by fear anymore. And, you know, I mean, it took me 27 years to get that degree and I was bound and determined that I was going to get it. I, you know, I didn't think it was going to take that long. But there, you know, and there were elements of fear that I had to break through and just say, No, I'm not going to I'm not going to let that, you know, just one little element stopped me from achieving my goal. Michael Hingson  35:37 Hence, the concept of unstoppable. Exactly, yeah. Let me ask this. I'm just curious, have you have animals been a part of your life and help you and moving forward in any way? Ian Walker  35:52 Yes, we growing up, we had an amazing Labrador, and her name was shadow, black lab. And when I would have bad days, she would always come near me, and sit with me. And just she sensed that you know, that I'd had a bad day or had been bullied or whatever. And we had a tent trailer. So sometimes, if it was a really bad day, I'd go out underneath one of the beds and sit with her just, you know, for half an hour or 45 minutes. And she just helped me to really calm down. And then, Elaine, and I, my second wife, we have a Shih Tzu have a niece and her name is Faith. And oh, my goodness, she is such a good dog. And I recently had some health issues. And she came and sat with me almost every day, you know, while I was recovering. And, yeah, so Oh, yes. I love animals Michael Hingson  37:05 very well, we, Ian Walker  37:08 I'm not a cat person. They're the only thing I like we Michael Hingson  37:15 we are now going to draft you to be interviewed for the book. Great. So I think there's, there's a story there. And I think it will be fun to make it part of the book because we will be talking to other people. And Ian Walker  37:33 I would love to write a story for that. That'd be wonderful. Michael Hingson  37:36 Well, we'll get we'll get you interviewed, and we'll be working on that. Definitely. Okay. But, but you know, it's it is interesting animals have such a positive effect on all of us. If, if we allow that. And I understand you're not a cat person. We do have a cat. Yeah. Okay. And she is the most verbal creature. I think I have you ever known. She talks to us all the time. We rescued her. And it took her a couple of months to decide that maybe we were reasonable creatures to have in her house. You know how cats are. So, so we we do have a great relationship with her. And she's good. She's on reason. Ian Walker  38:21 I don't like taxes. I'm allergic to them. Michael Hingson  38:24 So yeah, I understand that. Ian Walker  38:27 You know, a couple of my friends have some tolerable cats that Michael Hingson  38:34 we had. When we lived in many years ago in Mission Viejo, California. We had neighbors, whose kitchen faced our kitchen, and they discovered that from time to time, I would drag out my ice cream freezer and make homemade ice cream. We actually had okay, why we actually had wireless intercoms between the two kitchens. And whenever they looked through their window and saw the freezer going, they would announce that they'd be over with bowls and spoons about 630 or seven o'clock. And sure enough, Alan Linda would show up with bowls and spoons. We also had to we also had two cats. They were sisters. Yeah. Al was not a cat person. These two cats every time he came over, would jump up on the couch where he was sitting and they would wrap themselves around his head and purr and purr and you knew that he was a little bit uncomfortable. But what's funny is what's what's really funny is eventually there was a cat in the neighborhood that would occasionally go to their house and he fed the cat and suddenly the cat adopted him. And he became a cat person, which was really hilarious. Ian Walker  39:49 That's funny. Michael Hingson  39:51 But But animals are a part of our lives in so many ways. So you took five years to write the book was published in 2018. And it's doing Yes. Hmm. Let me ask this. So you come from a musical family, obviously. Yes. Your, your parents and so on. Do you have any, any musical relatives that maybe some of us would have heard of? Ian Walker  40:19 Yes, I do. So on my grandmother's side, my great uncles and everything, generally, we're all very artistic, loved music or arts or, or. And so my third cousins are Jonathan and Jordan night from the New Kids on the Block. So, and we got to see them in concert, because I'm about 10 years older than they are. So Michael Hingson  40:54 that's why there's a new kids. Ian Walker  40:56 That's right. So we got to see them in concert in, I think it was around 2014 or 15. And I understand they're coming to Toronto again in the near near future, I think. I think this coming June or something anyways. Yeah. So. So they're, you know, that that's pretty amazing that but vocal and choral music have been a part of my mom's side of the family. I have other cousins, second cousins or third cousins that have also been in some international choirs and, you know, sang in church choirs as well as you know, community when cousin, she's sung in the Toronto Mendelssohn choir for a number of years. So which is 160 voice choir? Michael Hingson  41:49 You were part of that for a while, weren't you? Ian Walker  41:51 I was I was in the Toronto Mendelssohn youth choir. And that was wonderful. And as a result, Robert Cooper, who has been my good friend and mentor, he was the artistic director of that, that program, and oh, my goodness, we, we had wonderful, wonderful years wonderful training. And I have still about, you know, good 10 or 15. Friends from from those years that we've still stayed in touch, and that's also at least at the 40 year mark, too. So. Michael Hingson  42:29 Well, I have to ask, do your third cousins acknowledge you as members of as a member of the family? Ian Walker  42:36 Oh, yeah, they know, checking? Yeah, they know who I am, what you see their grandmother was my favorite great aunt. Okay. And so, she is mentioned in the book quite a lot. And, and she was an amazing painter. I have like five or six of her paintings in my house. And, and so the eldest, Jonathan knew her fairly well as the Jonathan Jordan was a couple years behind. And so, you know, he didn't get to spend as much quality time as, as Jonathan did, to, you know, connect with her. They were living in Boston, so yeah, so, but she was wonderful. Oh, my goodness, I love spending time with my aunt all of Michael Hingson  43:35 Well, obviously, ADHD was something that you you dealt with very well, but even so, and music helped that, but help you deal with that. But was was your ADHD ever a problem when you were dealing with music singing or studying music? Ian Walker  43:54 And that's really interesting, because some other people have asked me that, no, you know, and the, like, the only thing that I have a problem with right now, maybe it's partly age, but is memory. And so when I'm memorizing words in with music, there's no problem. When I have to memorize like, you know, written script part. It is, it's a real difficult time unless I sort of have worked out some, you know, some steps along the way, like, Okay, I'm telling this part of the story, and this is what it means in depth. So that, you know, and it's kind of like I have to sort of like do a, a plot analysis. But when I'm learning music, with lyrics and music together, there's no problem. And I would love to, to see an MRI of my brain to trying to do one or the other, just to you know, to understand what what's going on. out there, why what, you know, problems. Michael Hingson  45:06 But it's interesting that you can use that as a breakthrough to really, in a lot of ways get beyond the absolutely HD. Ian Walker  45:15 Yeah, yeah. And also, they say after 50 That your ADHD, you know, lessons, and mine certainly did. But the other thing that I wanted to stress too is I've chosen since I was 12 or 13 years old to be non medicated. So I have used music as my therapy. So I have a catchphrase music versus medicine. And that has worked so well for me. Michael Hingson  45:53 So you sing that great thing. Yes. Do you Do you play any musical instruments? Yes. Besides kazoo Ian Walker  46:03 No, I don't play kazoo, but I cannot play because you know, but I play flute accordion and piano and as well as voice Michael Hingson  46:11 Yeah. Well, then you can work on because you could work on kazoo. Ian Walker  46:16 I could work on kazoo. Yeah. Michael Hingson  46:19 That that should go well with football I would think. Ian Walker  46:22 Yeah, the right part. I'm going to be a new what's his name? Bobby. You know that. Don't worry. Get Don't worry. Be happy. Yeah, some? Yeah. That well, he is an incredible musician, incredible singer. And so he can think like he can hum and sing Mozart parts and and then I love it when people come and we'll sing harmony with them or whatever. Oh, it's really mix Aaron Bobby McFerrin. I know, even Ferran Michael Hingson  46:57 right. Yeah. We we are great fans here. My wife and I have acapella music. We listen a lot to groups like Straight No Chaser. Are you familiar with them? No, don't know them. They're a group of 10 students who went to to college in Indiana, formed a group saying some then didn't do anything. And then later got all got back together. Now they have a number of of albums. And it's all acapella. Which is really wonderful. And the harmony is great. And they, they, they sing one of my favorite Christmas songs who spiked the eggnog, you have to hunt it down and listen, oh, that's it. It's really cool. It's really clever. And, but but, you know, music is so much a part of all of our lives. And I'm glad that for you, it really is able to, to mean so much and do so much. So from a professional standpoint. You graduated from college? And then what did you do? Ian Walker  48:10 Well, then I worked a lot in different arts organizations. So in now, like, you know, because it took such a long time to get the degree and, you know, get myself established and because I'm an arts consultant, so I deal in public relations, marketing and fundraising. And I've had a various number of clients, you know, throughout the years. Now, with COVID, some things are starting to, you know, pick up again, but it's me time, I've wanted to really do a cabaret evening. So I've just started working with this amazing music director, her name's Don Martens. She's here, right here in the Hamilton area. She's so talented, and I just love working with her. So our plan is, for September, we're going to do a backyard concert to you know, try it out, we're going to do six to eight or eight, eight to 12 songs or so. And then we'll we'll try it out her husband does all the sound and the lighting. And then we'll see how it goes. And if it's ready to be, you know, shipped, then we can start promoting it when I also do other book signing events. Michael Hingson  49:34 How many people will be involved in that? In terms of singing? Yeah, Ian Walker  49:37 yeah. Well, I've tried to do something different with my book signing events. I've tried to always sing. So you know, do three or four pieces. And, and that's all gone overwhelmed with people that you know, don't know me. But the other exciting news is I'm working on an album. So so this is the first time You can find me on the internet. And, you know, I've just done a whole Christmas community thing with the Dundas Baptist Church, which was our home church, we, my family was there for over 50 years. But Don put together this wonderful sort of community program during COVID. And so I've got a good, good piece on there. So and now we're going to be we're going to be putting together six songs to to, you know, to start an album, so I'm really excited about that. That's been, I've wanted to do an album for a long time. And so we're gonna have the gospel, inspiration, style and one Christmas song. Michael Hingson  50:52 Where can people find out? Where can people find your singing today? Well, Ian Walker  50:55 as soon as I yeah, you can go to my website. And if you can sign up, I do a newsletter vote every, you know, either once a year or six every six months? And do you want me just to tell you the new website, Michael Hingson  51:14 or Sure, we'll, we'll do it later as well. But sure, go ahead. Ian Walker  51:18 So it's Emily in E M, Lian, communications plural.org. And if you go to that website, and there's a, you know, become a friend, join my website, just give us your name and your email address, we'd love to have you, you know, come on board, and then you'll be able to see my, my events. So but the other odd other real exciting big news is, I've written a play about the book. And I taken seven characters, and created a 60 minute play about dealing with ADHD, and using music therapy. So and it's going to be called stirring my soul to sing. And we're going to be premiering it in July here within the Greater Toronto Area. We're just waiting for confirmation. But I think it's going to be done as Baptist church because they have a wonderful sanctuary area, that will just work perfectly. We're going to kind of do it, what I refer to as opera and concert style. So music stands with scripts, and it's gonna kind of like an old time radio show, we're going to begin to try that, that format out. And so I'm really, really excited about that and information, how to get tickets, as all my will be on my website very soon. Michael Hingson  53:02 Cool. Well, that's pretty obviously pretty exciting all the way around in terms of the things that you've accomplished. I'm interested to know a little bit more about what it means to be an art consultant. Ian Walker  53:14 Oh, well, you know, I've worked in, in that position. And as for 30 years, so you know, working with different arts organizations, you learn a multiple level of skills. And so excuse me, when I started off, I was working in marketing, and I loved marketing. And then, you know, you as part of, because I was in an apprenticeship program, so we had had to move around, you know, and learn so many skills. So then I was taught, I think I was like, a month or so in the box office. So I learned box office skills. And then, you know, some of the events that I was working on in marketing promoted me to learn more about PR. And then also that summer I learned fundraising as I was on the phone selling tickets for, you know, for the orchestra. So all of those Ian Walker  54:17 skills became a what's what I call now an art consultant. So I have, I've raised $2.5 million for Arts and Social Sciences. Ian Walker  54:30 And before I'm done when I'm ready to retire I'm aiming for my goal is going to be 5 million. So, so I got another 2.5 to go. You can do it. I think I can do it. Yeah, cuz I'm not ready to retire yet. And I'm just in my early 60s. So Michael Hingson  54:47 there Yeah, there you go. Yeah. So in addition to being an arts consultant, what are you doing to help prepare the next generation whether it's a In art, or I'm more curious to hear what you would say about helping people in the future dealing with ADHD. Ian Walker  55:08 Absolutely. And my whole thoughts is, you know, I want to be able to give back. So I'm, I'm, as we're just starting to, you know, put things together for the production, I'm going to have two or three students, that will be learning stage managing, or, you know, and I'm hoping that these are kids that have some disability issues, you know, if it's a DD ADHD or a DD to be able to see how to use your energies, you know, is really important, and to have the right people there to help steward you, you know, in that, in that process is really important. So, so we're going to do that. I've been speaking to Chamber of Commerce, you know, in the within the community, as a, as a public speaker, and talking about ADHD, and disability in in the classroom, and how important it is that the shaming stops blaming, and the shaming stops, you know, and that disability is part of our lives, as artists as, as whatever that, you know, we continue to grow, and to have tolerance for people that have a difference, you know, then then, then the normal person. And so those are really important things. And, and I had built that into my company that we will have students or we will have assistants that have ADHD, or whatever. And that, you know, we will be working with with adults of disability, in our projects that we're doing into the future, Michael Hingson  57:09 will is clearly a person who has a lot of knowledge about ADHD, especially from the first person's point of view. Have you found? Have you found challenges using websites and the internet? Being a person experiencing ADHD? Ian Walker  57:28 Um, sometimes, like, I'm just because we're, you know, coming out of COVID now, and just bombardment of emails, like, you know, I mean, I get over, sometimes, like, over 150 emails, now I gotta start going through, get rid of the sales stuff. Michael Hingson  57:48 But that takes care of 149 of them. But go ahead. Ian Walker  57:51 See, there you go. Right. And, and so the thing is, I just, I get exasperated, I get tired. From Michael Hingson  58:01 websites. Have you had challenges on going to visit web pages? Ian Walker  58:06 Not so much? No. Because I've just discovered now, and I love this, especially on, you know, on the Kindle books, whatever, that those kinds of books and web pages can read back to you. You don't have to read everything. And I love this. And so. So now with the upgrade and you know, software through Microsoft web pages, if I'm tired or at it, you know, they can can voice activate and read to me, which is wonderful. Michael Hingson  58:44 One of the reasons that I asked the question is that is you may know, if you've looked at me a lot, I work for a company called accessiBe, which is a company that manufactures products that make webpages and websites accessible and accessiBe. It deals with a variety of disabilities and actually allows you to activate profiles to address specific issues like in terms of ADHD, a lot of noise on websites and other things like that. And AccessiBe has a profile specifically intended to deal with websites that can be a challenge for some people with ADHD to make them much more usable. So if you get a chance, you might check it out. It's, Ian Walker  59:33 I wouldn't use it. Yeah. Michael Hingson  59:37 Yeah, I will A C C E S S B E, I will I'll send you some information. Because it might very well be that there is a great partnership that can evolve from that around the wonderful accessiBe likes to work with people who have disabilities and who know more than than we do. So yeah, it's it's good to establish that but the way it works is that there are a number profiles that accessiBe be deals with and ADHD and, and other cognitive disabilities are profiles that can be activated. So it certainly makes sense for us to get you and some of the folks that accessiBe together. Ian Walker  1:00:16 Awesome. Michael Hingson  1:00:18 Well, we have been doing this a long time. And we could go on and on and on. But we both probably have lots to do. But I'd like to do this again. But I really, thank you for your time being here today to talk about a lot of this. And I'd like you to go through again, if people want to get a hold of you not sending you sales emails. Okay, how can they reach out to you? Ian Walker  1:00:45 Okay, so my website is www.E M L I A N communications. So C O M M U N I C A T I O N S .org Emliancommunications.org. Now, there's an easier way to remember if you just Google Walker, or Stirring Walker ADHD, it will also bring up all the information that you need to know about me and the book. Michael Hingson  1:01:30 And if people want to email you, Ian Walker  1:01:33 you can email me at info@Emliancommunications.org. Michael Hingson  1:01:41 Well, thank you very much for being here. I know it's taken us a while to get together. But I am so glad that we finally were able to do it and have a chance to really chat. I've got to ask, do you do a podcast? Ian Walker  1:01:56 I do. And I just started it. It's called the arts report music for the ADHD brain. And it's on Spotify. It's on a couple others, you can find it on my website. We're going to be adding some more to it. It's just been, you know, time to I've got some programs in the can that just have to be edit it. And well, thank God I have somebody who's amazing that does that. I don't have to do that. That's not my that's not my, my specialty. Michael Hingson  1:02:33 You do? No, that's Ian Walker  1:02:34 not what I do. Well, I like being able to have a producer say hey, what do you think about this? And Michael Hingson  1:02:41 do you deal with some of the PATA Palooza folks? Ian Walker  1:02:44 Just starting to get into that. So in been very grateful of the new connections that we're we've made there. So of course, you're one of those. So that's, that's wonderful. Michael Hingson  1:02:59 Well, again, what's the name of the podcast? Ian Walker  1:03:02 So it's called the arts report music for the ADHD brain. Michael Hingson  1:03:09 Well, if you ever need a guest to come on and talk about something esoteric or another, let me know we'd love to do Ian Walker  1:03:16 that because we want to talk about disability as well. So you know and overcoming disability so love to have you on Michael when we can can schedule that. Michael Hingson  1:03:27 Let's do it. All right, in locker thanks again for being here. And I want to thank you for listening to us today. I hope you've enjoyed your time within reach out to him. I am sure that he won't treat your email as a sales email. He's he's responded to mine pretty well. So I guess he he liked me can distinguish between what's real and what's not. But I want to thank you all for listening to unstoppable mindset. We sure appreciate a five star rating wherever you are listening to this podcast. And if you'd like to reach out and talk to me possibly be a guest on the podcast or just share your thoughts. You can go to www.Michaelhingson.com/podcast that's www.M I C H A E L H I N G S O N.com/podcast or email me at Michaelh M I C H A E L H I at accessiBe.com accessiBe is spelled A C C E S S I B E. And again, we mentioned the concept of accessiBe dealing with a variety of disabilities. If you want to learn more about accessiBe , please visit www.accessibe.com. But again, thanks for listening and Ian, thanks very much for being here today. Ian Walker  1:04:53 Thank you so much, Michael. It's been great hanging out with you today. Michael Hingson  1:04:57 It's been my honor as well. Thank you Michael Hingson  1:05:03 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com. accessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

Through social media, the news, and elsewhere we encounter stories of people we say are inspirational to us because they have some sort of disability. We can't imagine how they do the things they do. No matter how many such stories we find, we still are amazed. On Unstoppable Mindset, my goal, in part, is not just to show you such stories, but to give you a chance to meet the people behind the stories, yes those amazing people. Meet Josh Basile, a C4-5 quadriplegic. He wasn't born a quadriplegic, but he grew into the role after an accident. Josh will tell you his story and how he decided to go into the law. He will tell you how his decisions after his accident shapes his life today. I hope you will not be amazed after this episode. Instead, I hope you will gain greater respect and greater value for people who are different from you. Listen and see how such persons live, love, and enjoy life just as you do. I hope that you will see that we are not as different from you as you think. Some directories do not show full show notes. For the complete transcription please visit https://michaelhingson.com/podcast About our Guest: Meet Josh Basile a C4-5 quadriplegic, power wheelchair user, disability rights advocate, and lawyer. In 2004, at the age of 18, Josh was paralyzed below the shoulders in a beach accident. Soon after he formed a 501(c)3 to empower newly injured families through SPINALpedia.com and its 21,000 paralysis-related videos. As a medical malpractice lawyer and disabilities rights advocate, Josh serves persons with disabilities both in the courtroom and through policy initiatives. As a community leader and change-maker, Josh works tirelessly to improve the quality of life the persons with disabilities and to continuously break down existing barriers to access and inclusion. To improve web accessibility and usability, Josh joined accessiBe and that accessFind initiative as the Community Relations Manager. About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog. Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards. https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/ accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/ Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can also subscribe in your favorite podcast app. Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts. Transcription Notes Michael Hingson 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us. Michael Hingson 01:21 And welcome to another episode of unstoppable mindset, the podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. And it's always fun if we get to have something unexpected happened on the show, and sometimes unexpected guests and we'll see how it goes today. We have, I think a very interesting person for you to meet today. He's someone that I met through accessibly. But he has a fascinating story to tell. And let's get right to it. So I'd like you to be Josh Bassel. Josh, welcome to unstoppable mindset. Josh Basile 01:56 Michael, it's great to be here today. Michael Hingson 01:58 Thanks for for coming. So you do why don't you start by telling us a little bit about you. Josh Basile 02:06 Alright, so my name is Josh Basile. I live outside of Washington, DC and Maryland. My life changed forever. When I was a teenager, I was 18 years old. I went on a family vacation to the beach and a wave picked me up and threw me over my boogie board and slammed me headfirst against the ocean floor. That day, I shattered my neck and became a C for fat quadriplegic. Michael Hingson 02:37 So, needless to say, you had a life changing event. What What was your reaction? How did you how did you feel? You must have experienced some fear? And lots of uncertainty? How did you how did you work through all of that. Josh Basile 02:55 So I guess we could start with the initial fear. So like, when I had my injury, I just remember hearing a loud crack. And it like reverberated throughout my entire body. And all of a sudden I couldn't move at all. And I was facedown in the water, I was unable to like scream for help, I was unable to turn my body and just kind of was just floating in the ocean. And all I could do was try to remain as calm as possible and hope that my friends would see me floating in would come out and grab me in and saved my life. And luckily they did that day. And then when it comes to fear of, of kind of transitioning into a new world of functionality and a new world of kind of dependency on in so many ways. I that was definitely a huge change. I went from a college athlete to someone that couldn't even brush his teeth anymore. And it was it was a big it was a rude awakening, but so much of it kind of for me to overcome it was about perspective and having a different mindset of, you know, there's so much with with my injury that I can't do, but I choose to not focus on that I focus on what I can do. And it's it's there's lots of little things that allow me to really always proactively continue to move forward. Michael Hingson 04:31 So we talk about the things that you can't do, I guess, you know, as a as a person who happens to be blind, you know, I hear all the time about how you can't do this or you can't do that. How do you how do you react to that? Being in a chair and being a quadriplegic? And I guess what I'm getting at I'll tell you kind of my thoughts is, are are that is it really so much you can't do or you have to do in a different way. way. Josh Basile 05:02 So for me, it's like before my injury, I did things, 1 million ways. after my injury, I get to do it 1 million new ways. And it's different. But different, could still be fun different could still be meaningful. It's just you know, the way I brush my teeth now is not with my hands. I do it through through the hands of a caregiver. I, you know, doing a different sport. Before an injury, I skied on my two feet. Now I ski in a sled with somebody behind me Holding, holding it. And you know, I've flying down the mountain. So there's a million different ways that I get to do new things. And it's just a matter of having the right creativity. And at the end of the day, it's really having a willingness to try to put yourself out there, and to experience all that life has to offer. Michael Hingson 05:54 The founder of the National Federation of the Blind Jacobus timber once wrote an article and Tim Burke was a constitutional law scholar, he wrote an article called a preference for equality. And he talked about equality, I'd be interested in your thoughts on this. And what what he said is that a lot of people say, well, it's only equal, if I give you a pencil and paper and you write, you know, that's, that's equal, we're giving you the same things we give everyone else. And what he said was that equality doesn't mean that the equality means that you have the same opportunity, but you may use different techniques, different tools, but that you at least are allowed to, or you are given the opportunity to use those tools to be able to accomplish the same task. Josh Basile 06:39 Or yeah, with equality without it's, we all have our own unique experiences on how we do things, how we experience life. So you know, having an equal opportunity to experience and to participate, and to have different options to do it the way that you would like to do it, or the way that you can do it. But being being a part of this world, you know, so much of the internet is about, you know, people talk about accessibility. But you know, for me, it's almost more important for it to be about usability and usable. And it's like, there's different things of that nature that you can kind of talk about kind of equal access and equal this, but it's, for me, it's like, is it going to be functional, to my life to my unique world, and there's so many different types of disabilities, so many different types of functionalities. And it's, it's important that it works for the person that is trying to be a part of it. Michael Hingson 07:35 Which is really the whole point that equality isn't about doing something exactly the same way with the same stuff. Equality is being able to accomplish the same task. I thought it was interesting years ago, was it Jack Nicklaus, who had a hip replacement or someone and needed to use a golf cart. And so there were some issues about him going on a golf courses with a golf cart when everyone else had to walk. And they had to work through that. Josh Basile 08:04 It was, it was definitely it was a golfer in the, in the like the, around the 2000s, that that ended up having to do that. And it went to the Supreme Court, and they found that he was able to use the golf cart, and that it was a reasonable accommodation. Michael Hingson 08:20 Well, for blind people who wanted to take the LSAT and and go into law, there were a lot of challenges because the the testing programs required that you took the test in a certain way. And eventually at least they provided some equipment, but it wasn't necessarily the equipment that blind people use. And so it really put people taking the test at a disadvantage. And again, it went to the Supreme Court, ironically, lawyers of all people who ought to really be upholding the rights of all people. But it had to go to the Supreme Court before a final ruling came down that said, Well, of course, people can use the screen readers and the technologies that they are used to to take the test. Josh Basile 09:06 Now and that's, you know, that's always kind of kind of boggled my mind. How even within the LSAT, how there's so many different discriminatory factors that have that have existed over the years. When I graduated college, I decided to go to law school and I took the LSAT myself. And during that time, everybody that had a disability that had an accommodation there so anybody with accommodation, they created a flag on the test. And basically it's it told every single place that you applied every school that you applied, that this person has a disability. And only after while I was in law school, there was a class action lawsuit that I believe originated in California, that ended up like saying that you can't do that you can't that is completely against Ada, you can add, you can add, be able to disclose that a person has a disability during the application process. And there there was, you know, a class action settlement across the United States. But it's, it's, it's kind of crazy how that stuff is, is there and continues to happen? Michael Hingson 10:21 Well before your accident when you were 18. And of course, you're you're not that old now you're at least 25. Right? So before your I know, before, you're 36. So before you were, you were put in a chair, you you had your accident, what were your career goals. Josh Basile 10:41 before my injury, I was a business major and art minor in college. And for me, I've always loved the stock market. So I wanted to become an investment banker. And that was the route that I was trying to pursue, or I'd like a dream internship that summer, my injury and I would have loved to continue to work for my boss that summer as a as a career afterwards. But I'm definitely my injury, I flip things upside down, it changed life forever. And I quickly learned that my voice and my mind were my best assets. Physically, I was limited in what I can do. But mentally, and through my, through my advocacy skills, I could do great things. And that's when I decided to go back to community college, and I went to undergrad, and then graduated magna cum laude through law school, and it was a it was definitely a long adventure with the patient I decided to go through. But in the end, it was totally worthwhile and is open so many doors to an opportunities within the employment world. And I've very much enjoyed working for since 2013. Michael Hingson 12:04 So why did you decide to switch and go from investment banking into law. Josh Basile 12:11 So basically, just to become as strong of an advocate as I could possibly be, you know, with undergrad, I was a communication major. And so my voice getting really strong and my ability to influence others and change the world around me. And then I just knew law school would give me a unique mindset and approach to really taking it to the next level. And, you know, law school is incredible to it teaches you kind of how to think like a lawyer. And then you have to get in the world and you actually have to kind of have a specialty to take on. And that's when I took on medical malpractice and catastrophic injuries and help families all across the country, the lawsuits and helping them navigate kind of also how to get the community supports they need for independent living when it comes to caregiving or pursuing vocation through the vocational system. There's there's so many different elements to what happens after our college Strophic injury to kind of reenter society and actually have a better quality of life. Michael Hingson 13:16 But you worked through it, you chose to not give up, you chose to move forward and do something with your life, which is of course the whole point, isn't it? Josh Basile 13:27 Absolutely, it's, um, life is too short not to, to live, love and laugh, and put yourself out there to be the best you and you know, before my injury, you know, our let's say, after manage Dre like, Yes, I have a different body, but I'm still, I'm still me. I just have, you know, a sexy power wheelchair to get me around. And I've got different technology and different caregiving supports that allow me to do things that I would have done before. But it's, it's definitely one of those things that like you just, I try to I try to let families know that within this life, like I've mentored 1000s of families through my nonprofit determined to heal. And one of the big things is, after an injury, you need to learn how to advocate for yourself, you need to learn how to become your own best advocate, because nobody's going to fight harder for you than you're going to fight for yourself in your life. So learning kind of what it is to give you the best opportunities to give you the best supports, and to be able to be that captain of the ship as you're going along this life journey. It gives you a great power in what direction you're gonna go. And it gives you the ability to you know, accept help and that accepting help is not it's not a weakness. A lot of people think of an accommodation school as a weakness. It creates an evil Been playing field just to allow you to show what you have. And being able to get support through friends, family caregivers to help you along your journey is just, it gives you extra boost along your way along your voyage is basically having crewmates instead of sailing ship of one year sailing a ship of the 10. That's a much easier voyage. Michael Hingson 15:25 The issue of accepting help is one though, where you need to be the one to decide what help and and when you need help. Which, which is always of course an issue people, a lot of our well most of the time want to help and sometimes help when you don't need help, which which can be a challenge and of itself. Josh Basile 15:47 Yeah, no, it's it's hard. A lot of a lot of persons with disabilities are very stubborn. You know, I see it a lot within the paralysis community. The difference between a quadriplegic and a paraplegic. So a quadriplegic is somebody that has immobility in all four extremities. a paraplegic, has a mobility in two extremities. And so often paraplegics, in many ways, they, they want to do everything on their on their own and show their independence, which gives them their power. With a quadriplegic, you'll see somebody is way more open to receiving help, and is accepting of it, and is willing to, like, try and train somebody to help them do different tasks, but it is, it's the different mindsets of are you it doesn't really, for me, it's accepting help, doesn't matter. Or if you're paraplegic quadriplegic person without a disability, it's just a matter of opening your your arms to being able to allow others to be a part of your life and contribute. So many people just want to help because they want to, they want to give it's it's a good feeling to give. And it's, it's, it's it's kind of a different dynamic, depending on the personality of who you're talking to. Michael Hingson 17:06 Sure. And about. And then the reality is that, that we all should be more interested in receiving help when we need it. And we should also be willing to give help, and offer help. And I tell people all the time, look, don't assume I need help, and don't operate under the assumption that I want help crossing the street. There's never anything wrong with asking if I want some help, but accept the answer. If I say no, because there are also a lot of times that I don't want help. For example, when I used to travel around the world trade center, and looked like I was lost, I probably was and the reason I was lost was because I worked to getting lost. So I could figure out more about how to travel around the center and and learn things and there would be times I would ask questions. But it was important to learn the complex, because I wasn't going to use the same visual cues that you would use. Josh Basile 18:13 I love that about persons with disabilities that we we are faced with so many barriers on a daily basis. But that allows us to be kind of really fine to problem solvers. Like we're really able to like figure out, you know how to overcome challenges, how to get to where we need to go, how to complete puzzles, how to complete? Well, you, you name it, and it it's like the practice that we do every single day gives us a special kind of ability beyond many other people. And it's I think this is one of our greatest contributions that we can give to the workforce in general is that, you know, you you give us a problem within a company, we're going to be able to approach it probably a lot differently than than other employees that you have, just because we we do it every day we put our 10,000 hours in to become experts, expert problem solvers. Michael Hingson 19:14 I know that you have seen this and seen some of the statistics, both before and in your time at accessiBe and we'll talk about that. But one of the things that we both get to talk about on a regular basis is the fact that when companies decide to make themselves inclusive, whether it be in their advertising, whether it be in their hiring practices and so on, but when they decide to make themselves inclusive to persons with disabilities, the reality is we also tend to be more loyal because we know one it's harder to find a job when we're facing a 65 plus percent unemployment rate among employable people with With Disabilities, and to that, it's harder to, to deal with various aspects of a company, if they don't make it more inclusive. So when we find companies and organizations that are inclusive, we tend to be more loyal to them. Josh Basile 20:16 Absolutely, it's data statistics, you name it, studies have been done, and conducted that have proven that the disability community is, is either the most, most brand loyal community, in the world in the United States. And it's because, you know, we're not always taking care of correctly, but when we are, it's, we don't forget it. And we advocate and, and share with friends family, we'd let others in the community know that this company, this organization, gets it, they're doing it, right, they're welcoming, and those good experiences. We don't forget it. And we look forward to those moments when somebody gets it. It's, it's kind of, I think, it's amazing that we're having so many more of these kinds of conversations around inclusion and disability, and that companies are starting to get that this, this needs to be a part of their business, it needs to be a part of their their business culture. And the more that we do that, I think we're gonna see some major changes coming up in the years to come. But obviously, we're still a long way away. But it's, I've heard more about this in the last, you know, two years than I did in the last, you know, 17 years of my injury. Michael Hingson 21:42 Well, it's true, and we need to be more part of the conversation, how do we get more people to include us in the conversation? It's all about education, but how do we get people to accept us and include us as, as a class in the conversation, the conversation of life, if you will. Josh Basile 22:06 For me, it's always about having a seat at the table. Too often, persons with disabilities are an afterthought, because they never had a seat at the table from the beginning. And they they were just then recognized later on when enough noise was made that there that somebody was like, Alright, now let's, let's deal with the disability that are of our business or society of this law, have, you name it, it's just no, we don't have enough representation, and all aspects of society, in my opinion, whether it's within, within the legislature, within the business world within education, transportation, we need to have way more persons with disabilities being employed, being employed in positions of leadership, being able to have people get it from the top down, that that Disability Matters. And that disabilities is something that it's it's a way of approaching a system in place of availing inclusion and providing accessibility providing options for all abilities. And it's it for me, it's like it's a win win. If when when organizations get it, when legislators get it, and they incorporated there, they're actually just making it stronger. Everything they put forward ends up becoming stronger, because it it ends up working for more and more people and giving more options. It's it's, you know, people look at curb cuts. And you know, that's that's one of those things that it's made for persons with disabilities. But guess what, everybody that uses it is benefiting from it. And they don't want to live without it. So being able to put together more kind of inclusive pieces of the puzzle to society. For me, it's just a win win, but we need to have more people at the table to be able to make sure it gets done. Yeah. Michael Hingson 24:16 So you went off to law school. Where did you go? Josh Basile 24:21 David Clark School of Law at the DC Public Interest Law School. Michael Hingson 24:26 Cool. So you, you went you graduated, then what did you do? Josh Basile 24:32 So I immediately went to work. So I was in law school, I, I interned for a federal judge. I then worked at a law firm, and then worked at the US Attorney's office worked on the Health Committee under under Senator Harkin, and then I ended up getting an internship at my current employer. And after finishing law school, I just I continued working with him. And it's been there since 2013. And I've loved every moment of it. Michael Hingson 25:09 It's fun, especially when you can blaze a trail. Josh Basile 25:14 It's it's, you know, the thing with lawyers is all lawyers are for the most part nerds. And they're just very smart. They love, they love, either studying reading or are, you know, are willing to go the extra mile like, anybody that ends up doing law school and taking the bar exam. That's a lot of work. It's a lot of time, a lot of energy spent away from friends, family, it's a commitment. Um, so most of the turn attorneys are nerds. But as a medical malpractice attorney, and catastrophic injury attorney with a significant disability, I love it. Because I get to be an empathetic nerd, I get a B, you know, there for families in ways that most attorneys can't I get what they're going through, I understand what they need in place to have a better quality of life, I can communicate with them. And it's most cases that we take can take anywhere from two to four years to either settle or to go through the legal process of getting a judgment through the courts. And even then, sometimes there's delays because it gets appealed. It's a it's a long process. But as an attorney, with a catastrophic injury myself, it's, I really enjoy it. Because I get to connect with with my families more than anything, Michael Hingson 26:32 you must be in a position to help make a more powerful case. Because if you said you have a catastrophic injury yourself, you've been through it. Josh Basile 26:40 Yeah, no, absolutely. There's, it resonates. I think with the jury, I think it resonates with the judge, and also resonates with the defense, that's on the other side, when you're doing depositions, or you're doing negotiations, and they're like, this person doesn't need this. And then you're like, you know what they actually do, but I, I can have some lived experiences beyond the experts that we bring to the table that are saying what we are arguing, but, you know, so much of when it comes to bringing cases, it comes down to the Battle of experts, and both sides end up getting somebody that argues one angle, and then it's up to the jury to decide what what is fact and what is fiction. Michael Hingson 27:26 So you're working for a private firm today? Josh Basile 27:29 Yes, it's a plaintiffs firm. So we only represent families that have been that have been injured, Michael Hingson 27:35 that have been injured, right? Well, so in addition to doing that kind of work, you've you've obviously gotten some involvement in doing things like web accessibility, and so on, how did all that come about? Josh Basile 27:52 So I'm passionate about breaking down barriers for persons with disabilities, whether it's in the employment, world transportation, independent living, and when I learned that less than 2% of the internet meets Accessibility Guidelines. I wanted to do something about it. And I knew that I could proactively kind of know, I always try to first figure out what is the problem? And what are the best options going forward to come up with a solution, or at least, to be able to have a better approach at at addressing the problem, both in the short term and long term, and so much with the internet is about scalability. You know, we're talking about hundreds of millions of websites that remain inaccessible. And when I learned about acccessiBe, I did my research, I had different friends in the disability community, do give me their sense of it, and to test different product products that were out there. And what I learned was accessiBe was the real deal. And that this could be a great way of changing the world of the internet, and COVID COVID was happening at the time, which, for me, the internet became that much more important to be able to be to allow persons with disabilities to have access to the products, information and services that as we well know, the internet provides and, you know, having access to that improves quality of life and opportunity and I wanted to do something about it. Michael Hingson 29:32 How did you discover accessiBe? Josh Basile 29:35 So A childhood friend of mine ended up moving over to Israel and joined accessiBe's team in their HR department, and she ended up connecting me with with the founder, the founders of SSP, and I spoke with them. And next thing I know we're collaborating they wanted they wanted more persons with disabilities to have a seat at the table with an organization, so that they can learn and they can improve, and they can become a better business not only running the company, but also for serving the community that they are on a mission to change lives. And, you know, I, you know, hearing that and seeing that, and being a part of that, since February, I've just, I've been wowed by by them as a company, and SSB is just doing all the right things. And it's, um, I know, there's, it's been a long way since February. And but it's always been a forward moving progression. And, and as an advocate, I love I love moving forward, Michael Hingson 30:45 what are some of the specific problems that you face in accessing the internet. Josh Basile 30:50 So it's basically navigating a page is one thing, you know, being able to go from start to finish and checking out fully. Now I've been on a website where I'm using my Dragon Naturally Speaking, and I can't jump to a different forum, to be able to fill out my contact information, my address, or do a drop down to be able to see what's there. I guess, you know, if I'm only able to access specific parts of a website, I'm missing out on all the other parts that everybody else is afforded. without a disability, I use my mouse controller. To control my mouse, I also use an onscreen keyboard to navigate a webpage, I use voice dictation to type. And I also use a screen reader for reading. So I have multiple different technologies that I'm using at once. And if a website has accessiBe built in access, accessibility built into it, or usability built into it, I'm able to navigate it so much better and gain from it the way that it was meant to be gained, that people put information on the website for a purpose. And you know, it's just a matter of are you going to be able to access it or only be able to see or experience half of what the websites truly trying to show. Michael Hingson 32:15 I know for me, using a screen reader exclusively to hear what's on a web page. When we deal with images where there are no descriptions, or we deal with an element that requires you to use a mouse or it expects you to use a mouse. So as you scroll through items, the screen refreshes, which means you really can't get to see what all the options are without the screen refreshing and it takes you forever to go through it over just two examples of some of the access that we we face that I face and other people who are blind face and you face some of those things, things as well. And the reality is, and I've said it before, and I'll continue to say it, we live in such a marvelous technological world, where it is so easy to make all of this stuff fully inclusive. And it's in some ways becoming less inclusive, because we make it more visual, or we want to make it more automatic to diffuse that little mouse to scroll around the screen. And we forget that that doesn't make the website inclusive for everyone. Josh Basile 33:24 It doesn't. And you know, we make internet work for everyone has not been easy over the past 25 years really of the internet, being you know, more mainstream, but it's, you know, keep working towards it. And the thing I love about accessiBe is that there's many different profiles for many different disabilities and abilities, and then being able to use those profiles, but then also to be able to have customized options below that to even further make it accessible or usable or making it work on how you personally want to navigate a website. And so many people with disabilities, you know, have multiple disabilities. So like being able to, like have usability options for for that is you know, through accessories AI powered solution. It's like there's nothing else out there that exists that I've been able to use that I have a physical disability. I've ADA HD and I have a reading disability. So incorporating all three of those things sometimes makes websites a little difficult to navigate. But then when you have the AI powered solution, I'm then able to customize with the mobility profile and be able to customize with other options with ADHD as well. I guess it's incredible what you can do when you give people choice and power and how they want to navigate. Tell. Michael Hingson 34:58 Tell me about the ADHD profile. Josh Basile 35:01 So the ADHD profile, basically, you know, allows you to have a better, I'd say, it blocks out kind of the top and bottom of the of, of your eye is so that it's kind of blurred out a little bit, but it's darkened. But then as a focus area where you can go up and down the screen, so that your eyes focus on one particular area, without having distractions from all over the page. So many websites, they try to grab you here and there, and everywhere. And you're with ADHD, the littlest thing can like, can pull your attention away and distract it. Yeah, I always like to, you know, there's a great Disney Pixar movie called up, and there's a dog and every time the dog sees a squirrel, because squirrel, and like I that's too often on a website, if I see something, my mind goes away, and then it's hard to get my mind back to where it needs to go to get the most out of the website or what my task at hand. Michael Hingson 36:05 So does it prevent pop ups, for example? Josh Basile 36:09 Well, I'm not I'm not sure. I don't think it prevents Papa fits in. Right? I gotta, Michael Hingson 36:17 it may be the way that the visual stuff. Yeah, Josh Basile 36:21 yeah, it creates kind of that, that perfect kind of line of sight of where to focus on and direct. I know that epilepsy profile for the pop ups in progress that is blinking or as motion. Michael Hingson 36:37 But but the point is that, that there are a number of different profiles, and it's, it doesn't necessarily deal with all disabilities within the artificial intelligence system. For example, there's not a lot for persons who are deaf or hard of hearing. But the other aspects of accessiBe do address that dealing with the ability to have video captioning, and so on. So there are other things that accessiBe now does and we both have talked about the fact that it's a growth issue that accessiBe has grown to recognize and put in place the procedures to deal with that. I Josh Basile 37:19 love that they have, accessiBe now as remediation services for PDFs, they have remediation for, for video captioning, it's like, all of these different pieces of the puzzle is what it takes to make a website accessible. And they're also doing manual remediation. And going in and making necessary changes either from the beginning or later after like it's, there's there's so many different ways of making a website accessible. Obviously, the best way is to always do it right from the beginning. Yeah, and you know, I even say even having a website that was perfectly done from the beginning, but then adding the AI, the AI powered solution thing gives you that much more power and choice, and how a person with a disability or multiple disabilities can experience a website. And it's, it feels very welcoming when it's when it's done like that. Michael Hingson 38:13 So what do you do for accessiBe Since you're busy with a, with a job in a law firm, and so on, but you do work with SSP? What do you do? Josh Basile 38:22 I'm the community relations manager. So I bring in persons with disabilities, disability focused organizations, to be able to work with us on our different projects and initiatives. One of my favorites is called Access Find where we are, right now if you go to Google, and you type in a website, you have no idea if that website that comes out of the 10 websites do the search are going to be accessible, more likely than not, it's based just on statistics of 2% of Internet being accessible, it's not going to be and that's a frustrating experience of not having confidence in knowing whether or not you're going to be able to navigate that website fully. So what access find is going to do, it's only going to house accessible websites through its database. So you go you go there and you're going to be able to know that all of the search results are accessible. And we're building it out. We have over 40 family member organizations that we're working with, to make sure that we do right with and all of these organizations have a seat at the table as we're building out the beta website. So it's gonna be very exciting. But come 20 22x is fine is going to go Live for the world. And it's just I just can't wait for it to to be a resource and a service for persons with disabilities. Michael Hingson 39:49 How do you think that the world will react to access find? Josh Basile 39:53 I think I think it's gonna be one of those things that everything around web accessibility, we We need to provide education for I think X is fine in its own right, is an incredible educational tool acknowledges the fact that so much of it is inaccessible. And that, you know, the Googles of the world had an opportunity to do something to make it easier. And they never took, they never took the opportunity or they they made a business decision that, you know, it is not worth addressing this. And the fact that exists, we took the time spent hundreds of 1000s of dollars to make this this in existence, I think it's just says a lot about accessiBe as a company, that they care that they want to do something for actively about making the internet more accessible. And they wanted to create a product, by the name of with the community for the community. And that I think that's just, I think I think it's just going to be a powerful message to share with the disability community and nonprofits that access find is, is going to be a great tool for them. Michael Hingson 41:06 It will be the first time that it will truly be possible for people to expect when they're searching for something, they're searching for a website, or a company or an organization, it'll be the first time where people with disabilities can truly expect that they will be searching among companies that are inclusive or are accessible. What happens if we find one that isn't an access Find, what happens with that? Josh Basile 41:37 So are you saying a website is put on the X spine and it's not accessible, Michael Hingson 41:42 or becomes inaccessible. Josh Basile 41:45 So that's just an opportunity right there for for the community, to be able to voice and to be able to share with that website, you know, that, you know, something happened over time, that yes, maybe your website was accessible at a moment. But then over time, it became inaccessible to the point where it needs to be addressed, you know, that the the thing with with web accessibility is not something that it's like you do it once and it's forever, like web accessibility is, is is a moving a growing evolving project, where you, you, you have to, you have to have things in place to address it consistently. Because websites are consistently changing, you know, with accessories, AI powered solution, every 24 hours, it does a scan of a website, to be able to, to fix different holes and, and things that are that might be broken or that change or that are new to it and to address those things. So it's when when a website does come up on accessory that was once accessible, but then becomes inaccessible, it's an opportunity for the community to speak up. And then we can reach out to that company or that website, and let them know that they need to address it, and give them an opportunity to address it, which is we're on this journey together. We want to make the internet more accessible. That's kind of how it has to be done. Michael Hingson 43:17 How will websites be able to become a part of access find. Josh Basile 43:22 So that's still we're still figuring out all the details on that. But they're going to have to pass a particular audit test, or multiple audit tests. And those audit tests, be able to basically use the WCAG guidelines to find out if you meet accessibility guidelines. And then once that once that is so it's accessiBe or access find is 1% not going to just be accessiBe the websites, it's going to be all any and all websites that meet accessibility guidelines will be welcomed. And we're excited to have as many websites as possible. You know, if we can have all 2% of websites on the internet that meet accessibility guidelines, a part of access find that for me, that'd be a dream come true. And obviously, we want to get that 2% a lot higher in the years to come. Michael Hingson 44:20 I think he just made a very important point that needs to be emphasized, again, that this is not just to be a platform for websites that use accessiBe. There are a variety of audit systems that one can use to see how accessible their website is accessiBe has one called ACE and if you go to ace.accessibe.com you can test your website you can plug your website into that and you can you can put the web address in and you can get an audit report and have it even emailed to you it's free. There are other places Do it as well, they all do basically the same thing. They look for the accessibility features that come under the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, what the World Wide Web Consortium suggests are the things that need to be an inaccessible website. But some do a better job of explaining what they discover than others, I've seen a couple that aren't very easy to read, whereas ace tends to be pretty easy to read, but they are looking for the same thing. It isn't biased in that sense. But at the same time, the websites are dynamic. And that was kind of what I was asking about that if, if a website goes up into access find, because it is found to be accessible. But then later, someone goes and tries to use that website, because they found it through access find. And it isn't accessible anymore. I gather, you're saying there's going to be a way that that they can notify someone of the lack of access, and it can be addressed. Josh Basile 46:09 There. There's absolutely there's a report feature. And we're still we're still testing out all those things within the the beta surveys we're doing with our founding members. But yes, they're they're 100% is a component of reporting when a website goes from accessible to inaccessible, or a lot of times with a count when it comes to accessibility. A person reports an accessibility issue, but it ends up becoming an issue on their end with their technology, or things of that nature, which is always interesting to be able to provide learning opportunities, both through the website or to the user of the website. Michael Hingson 46:48 You Yeah, I have I've found instances where people say that accessiBe or other systems that make websites accessible aren't working, when in reality, it isn't the the accessibility aspect of it. It's the way they're using it this user error or user problems or user something. And and it is important to recognize that there terror are ways for the system to break down at both ends. If someone wants to explore getting their website into access find, how do they do that? Josh Basile 47:25 So on access find, even if you go there, right now, there's a way to list your website, there's an absent Michael Hingson 47:33 what's the web address for access find, Josh Basile 47:35 accessfind.com Michael Hingson 47:37 Okay, Josh Basile 47:38 and then you go there. And there's, you can kind of learn more about what access finds about, there's a promotional video. But then there's also a way to join as a founding member, but also add to list your website. So we're actually getting those every every single day, Sara charge for that. Zero charge, it's completely free. Access find, is not going to be like Google or Yahoo, there'll be zero advertisements, it's just all about making an easier search and more confidence search for users with disabilities to access accessible and usable websites. Michael Hingson 48:18 It's going to be pretty exciting. And I'm really anxious to see it go live and to see people start to use it. And, and it'll be a lot of fun. And it's been it's been a long time coming. And so it will be great to have a way to do web searches and have pretty good confidence that you're looking at websites that are accessible. You and I know full? Well. I'm sure a lot of our listeners don't how much of a challenge it is to go deal with websites, especially when you find in accessibility. I had a survey that was sent to me by our health provider two weeks ago and and I've seen this happen many times. So the survey they wanted to know my perceptions of things regarding Kaiser at least I assume that's what the survey wanted. And I the reason I say it's, I assume is because it started out by saying Did you feel positive about Kaiser, I think it was or negative. And I clicked positive. And then it took me to a web page. So that was in the email. So it took me to a webpage. And the first thing on the webpage was I had to accept the terms and conditions or click on some something and that something wasn't a link. It was in no way labeled. There was no way to click on it with my keyboard or any of the features that I had. And I couldn't go any further with the survey. And I see that all the time. It's frustrating. Yeah, and and it is so unnecessary because it would be so easy to address. And I mentioned it because I did send an email back to the survey people. And I've heard nothing. That's why I keep asking about how we get more into the conversation, because the reality is that to make websites usable for all of us is not that complicated to do today. Josh Basile 50:26 It isn't, but it's one of those things, we, we have to do educational awareness campaigns, not only for persons with disabilities, but for small businesses to let them know that this is an option. It's an it's a, it's a it's an option that can allow them to, to get and better serve all all of their visitors. And it's that excites me. I know, I know, where we we've got a lot to do around education around awareness. And I mean, this conversation today is one of those things that, you know, it's got to start somewhere. Michael Hingson 51:06 It does in and it has to continue, and I think it will, it's a matter of continuing the conversation and becoming visible. And and we will continue to do that. Look, do you have any? I'm sorry. Josh Basile 51:21 I very much look forward to doing it with you, Michael? Michael Hingson 51:25 Well, I as well, I think we're we are making a difference. And we're going to continue to do that. Do you have a way of people want to reach out to you and ask you questions about access find or anything like that, that they can do that? Josh Basile 51:38 Yeah, the you can email me at Josh. Dot basil. That's B as in boy, A S as in Sam, I l e@gmail.com. That's my email address. Feel free to message me. Michael Hingson 51:57 Great. Well, I want to thank you again for being here. And I want you to come back as as often as you want. When you have things you want to talk about, let me know. Because that's the only way we're going to have the conversation continue. And we're going to make it happen. accessiBe has this goal still of making the internet fully accessible by 2025. That's a pretty ambitious goal, but we have a few years yet to go. So if we do it by the end of 2025, we got four years in a month. So let's see what we can do. But we have to start somewhere, as you said, Josh Basile 52:37 Mike, what's always a pleasure. Everything that you do and the hard work you do and it's just it's It's fun being on this journey with you. Michael Hingson 52:48 And it's got to be fun. Otherwise, why do it? You know, life's an adventure. And so it is it's a lot of fun, Josh Basile 52:55 fun and meaningful is what it's all about. Michael Hingson 52:57 Indeed. Absolutely. Well, Josh, thank you for being with us on unstoppable mindset. And, again, for anyone listening, we hope that you'll go to the website MichaelHingson.com/podcast M I C H A E L H I N G S O N .com/podcast. You can subscribe to the podcast. You can do it through any podcast hosts that you normally go to. And wherever you found this podcast, we hope that you will at least give us a five star rating. And reach out to us and let us know if there's anything that you're interested in. In hearing or knowing more about or any comments that you have about our podcast today. You can reach out to me, Michael H I M I C H A E L H I at accessiBe A C C E S S I B E.com. I will respond to emails. So we'd love to hear from you. We'd love to hear your thoughts. If you know anyone who should be a guest on our show, please let us know. Let them know have them reach out. And we hope that you'll join us in future episodes of unstoppable mindset Michael Hingson 54:16 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com. accessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

Dr. Richard Chapman is a Post Doctorate Fellow at the University of Kansas, and one of my former students from his early days as a college freshman.  Today he is sharing his story about his journey to earning his Ph.D as a student with a disability, the accommodations he used in college, and his favorite assistive technology (hint: Dragon Naturally Speaking).  He talks about the challenges with his Cerebral Palsy. He shares the importance of his work with self-determination, and and the need for parents to give their kids with disabilities high expectations to succeed. He is part of the team led by the work of Dr. Karrie A. Shogren and Dr. Michael L. Wehmeyer and their Causal Agency Theory pertaining to self-determination.

The listener question of the week ask ask and we discuss, How to recycle Electronics, Microsoft buys Nuance- the maker of Dragon Naturally Speaking – emphasizing the importance of Voice Recognition software, Coinbase goes IPO, and NFT’s cause extreme usage of energy, Exchange CEO warns of pending crackdown on Cryptocurrency

Limiting external noise while recording video, avoiding duplicate contacts while syncing them, why a caller is an 'unusual login activity' warning from an old computer, transferring data from old hard drives, controlling a computer from another one, losing WiFi connectivity suddenly, computer restarting constantly all of a sudden, talking with Sam Abuelsamid, Chris Marquardt, Rod Pyle, and more of your calls! Host: Leo Laporte Guests: Sam Abuelsamid, Chris Marquardt, and Rod Pyle Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/the-tech-guy. For detailed show notes, visit techguylabs.com. Sponsors: mintmobile.com/techguy twit.cachefly.com

Limiting external noise while recording video, avoiding duplicate contacts while syncing them, why a caller is an 'unusual login activity' warning from an old computer, transferring data from old hard drives, controlling a computer from another one, losing WiFi connectivity suddenly, computer restarting constantly all of a sudden, talking with Sam Abuelsamid, Chris Marquardt, Rod Pyle, and more of your calls! Host: Leo Laporte Guests: Sam Abuelsamid, Chris Marquardt, and Rod Pyle Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/the-tech-guy. For detailed show notes, visit techguylabs.com. Sponsors: mintmobile.com/techguy twit.cachefly.com

Limiting external noise while recording video, avoiding duplicate contacts while syncing them, why a caller is an 'unusual login activity' warning from an old computer, transferring data from old hard drives, controlling a computer from another one, losing WiFi connectivity suddenly, computer restarting constantly all of a sudden, talking with Sam Abuelsamid, Chris Marquardt, Rod Pyle, and more of your calls! Host: Leo Laporte Guests: Sam Abuelsamid, Chris Marquardt, and Rod Pyle Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/the-tech-guy. For detailed show notes, visit techguylabs.com. Sponsors: mintmobile.com/techguy twit.cachefly.com

Limiting external noise while recording video, avoiding duplicate contacts while syncing them, why a caller is an 'unusual login activity' warning from an old computer, transferring data from old hard drives, controlling a computer from another one, losing WiFi connectivity suddenly, computer restarting constantly all of a sudden, talking with Sam Abuelsamid, Chris Marquardt, Rod Pyle, and more of your calls! Host: Leo Laporte Guests: Sam Abuelsamid, Chris Marquardt, and Rod Pyle Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/the-tech-guy. For detailed show notes, visit techguylabs.com. Sponsors: mintmobile.com/techguy twit.cachefly.com

Limiting external noise while recording video, avoiding duplicate contacts while syncing them, why a caller is an 'unusual login activity' warning from an old computer, transferring data from old hard drives, controlling a computer from another one, losing WiFi connectivity suddenly, computer restarting constantly all of a sudden, talking with Sam Abuelsamid, Chris Marquardt, Rod Pyle, and more of your calls! Host: Leo Laporte Guests: Sam Abuelsamid, Chris Marquardt, and Rod Pyle Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/the-tech-guy. For detailed show notes, visit techguylabs.com. Sponsors: mintmobile.com/techguy twit.cachefly.com

Limiting external noise while recording video, avoiding duplicate contacts while syncing them, why a caller is an 'unusual login activity' warning from an old computer, transferring data from old hard drives, controlling a computer from another one, losing WiFi connectivity suddenly, computer restarting constantly all of a sudden, talking with Sam Abuelsamid, Chris Marquardt, Rod Pyle, and more of your calls! Host: Leo Laporte Guests: Sam Abuelsamid, Chris Marquardt, and Rod Pyle Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/the-tech-guy. For detailed show notes, visit techguylabs.com. Sponsors: mintmobile.com/techguy twit.cachefly.com

Limiting external noise while recording video, avoiding duplicate contacts while syncing them, why a caller is an 'unusual login activity' warning from an old computer, transferring data from old hard drives, controlling a computer from another one, losing WiFi connectivity suddenly, computer restarting constantly all of a sudden, talking with Sam Abuelsamid, Chris Marquardt, Rod Pyle, and more of your calls! Host: Leo Laporte Guests: Sam Abuelsamid, Chris Marquardt, and Rod Pyle Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/the-tech-guy. For detailed show notes, visit techguylabs.com. Sponsors: mintmobile.com/techguy twit.cachefly.com

Limiting external noise while recording video, avoiding duplicate contacts while syncing them, why a caller is an 'unusual login activity' warning from an old computer, transferring data from old hard drives, controlling a computer from another one, losing WiFi connectivity suddenly, computer restarting constantly all of a sudden, talking with Sam Abuelsamid, Chris Marquardt, Rod Pyle, and more of your calls! Host: Leo Laporte Guests: Sam Abuelsamid, Chris Marquardt, and Rod Pyle Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/the-tech-guy. For detailed show notes, visit techguylabs.com. Sponsors: mintmobile.com/techguy twit.cachefly.com

Limiting external noise while recording video, avoiding duplicate contacts while syncing them, why a caller is an 'unusual login activity' warning from an old computer, transferring data from old hard drives, controlling a computer from another one, losing WiFi connectivity suddenly, computer restarting constantly all of a sudden, talking with Sam Abuelsamid, Chris Marquardt, Rod Pyle, and more of your calls! Host: Leo Laporte Guests: Sam Abuelsamid, Chris Marquardt, and Rod Pyle Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/the-tech-guy. For detailed show notes, visit techguylabs.com. Sponsors: mintmobile.com/techguy twit.cachefly.com

Tori points out that using speech input like Dragon Naturally Speaking is hard when there’s no visual label, or the visual label doesn’t match the programmatic label. She also says that developers need to understand that assistive technology users is a category of users that encompass more than just screen reader users. Thanks to Tenon… Continue Reading Tori Clark talks about visible labels and Dragon

Food delivery business Menulog is set to roll out an employee model for delivery drivers in Australia in a big move to change the poor labour practices of the gig economy. Contractor models have been found to pay less than minimum wages and created poor working conditions and job security. The employee program will begin in the Sydney CBD and the company will work with the Transport Workers Union to set its pay rules.After LG's recent decision to exit the smartphone market, the company has announced a 'three year pledge' to deliver Android OS updates for owners of its handsets that are still out in the market. The promise aims to ensure every owner of its premium model devices will get three major Android system updates from the year they purchased the device. This includes G-series, V-series and VELVET devices from 2019 onward and LG Style and K series phones from 2020.Microsoft has acquired speech technology company Nuance, most famous to many for its Dragon Naturally Speaking software products that enabled high-quality speech to text ahead of many others. The company owns a number of other AI technologies in the space, and was where Apple's Siri originated – even more interesting in light of Microsoft's reduced focus on its AI assistant Cortana. The deal is said to be US$19.7B, Microsoft's fourth big acquisition in recent years after buying game developer ZeniMax, business social network LinkedIn, and software developer platform Github.Nvidia opened its GTC conference overnight, announcing its first CPUs for data centres. NVIDIA Grace CPUs are Arm-based and NVIDIA boasts the processors will be 10x faster than today's fastest servers for AI, neural networks and high performance workloads. NVIDIA also announced new RTX graphics processors for desktops, laptops and workstations for high-end use by artists, designers and engineers.In science, researchers at the Australian National University have applied adaptive optics technology to a new laser system for identifying and removing space debris in Earth's orbit. The system mounts to telescopes and beams visible light to create artificial stars out of space junk for easier identification and removal.In entertainment, Sony has made a deal with Netflix that will break the Disney+ stranglehold on the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The deal will see many Sony films go exclusively to Netflix after cinema release for 18-months, and will include Spider-Man and Venom sequels as well as a further Marvel-based film, Morbius. It will also make Netflix the place to find the Uncharted film and Ghostbusters Afterlife.Security research group The Secret Club announced it found a remote code execution flaw in Source Engine video games from developer Valve. Source Engine games include the popular esport shooter Counter Strike Global Offensive. Secret Club says it was reported to Valve five months ago with no response. The flaw is triggered through a Steam invite and loading an infected game server. In the absence of a fix, players are encouraged to disable messages and invites from non-Steam friends.Finally, Australia's most successful esports professional, Ana, is returning to OG to get back into DOTA 2. Ana, originally from Melbourne, has won DOTA's The International twice, part of the only team to have ever achieved the feat in the world's most lucrative esports tournament. The team won in 2018 and 2019 and Ana had retired from the team after the second win. After a recent poor performance by OG at the Singapore Major, Ana's position in the team opened up again and the team announced his return over the weekend. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Encrypting an audio stream and good TVs for gaming. Is there a future for flash, returning a defective phone, locating your Windows 10 serial number, alternatives to the software Dragon Naturally Speaking, a speech-to-text tool, disabling the Google Assistant button on phones that have it, why a caller's MacBook Air is making noise, and more of your calls! Host: Leo Laporte Guests: Scott Wilkinson, Johnny Jet, and Dick DeBartolo Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/the-tech-guy. For detailed show notes, visit techguylabs.com. Sponsor: twit.cachefly.com

Encrypting an audio stream and good TVs for gaming. Is there a future for flash, returning a defective phone, locating your Windows 10 serial number, alternatives to the software Dragon Naturally Speaking, a speech-to-text tool, disabling the Google Assistant button on phones that have it, why a caller's MacBook Air is making noise, and more of your calls! Host: Leo Laporte Guests: Scott Wilkinson, Johnny Jet, and Dick DeBartolo Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/the-tech-guy. For detailed show notes, visit techguylabs.com. Sponsor: twit.cachefly.com

Encrypting an audio stream and good TVs for gaming. Is there a future for flash, returning a defective phone, locating your Windows 10 serial number, alternatives to the software Dragon Naturally Speaking, a speech-to-text tool, disabling the Google Assistant button on phones that have it, why a caller's MacBook Air is making noise, and more of your calls! Host: Leo Laporte Guests: Scott Wilkinson, Johnny Jet, and Dick DeBartolo Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/the-tech-guy. For detailed show notes, visit techguylabs.com. Sponsor: twit.cachefly.com

Encrypting an audio stream and good TVs for gaming. Is there a future for flash, returning a defective phone, locating your Windows 10 serial number, alternatives to the software Dragon Naturally Speaking, a speech-to-text tool, disabling the Google Assistant button on phones that have it, why a caller's MacBook Air is making noise, and more of your calls! Host: Leo Laporte Guests: Scott Wilkinson, Johnny Jet, and Dick DeBartolo Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/the-tech-guy. For detailed show notes, visit techguylabs.com. Sponsor: twit.cachefly.com

Encrypting an audio stream and good TVs for gaming. Is there a future for flash, returning a defective phone, locating your Windows 10 serial number, alternatives to the software Dragon Naturally Speaking, a speech-to-text tool, disabling the Google Assistant button on phones that have it, why a caller's MacBook Air is making noise, and more of your calls! Host: Leo Laporte Guests: Scott Wilkinson, Johnny Jet, and Dick DeBartolo Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/the-tech-guy. For detailed show notes, visit techguylabs.com. Sponsor: twit.cachefly.com

Encrypting an audio stream and good TVs for gaming. Is there a future for flash, returning a defective phone, locating your Windows 10 serial number, alternatives to the software Dragon Naturally Speaking, a speech-to-text tool, disabling the Google Assistant button on phones that have it, why a caller's MacBook Air is making noise, and more of your calls! Host: Leo Laporte Guests: Scott Wilkinson, Johnny Jet, and Dick DeBartolo Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/the-tech-guy. For detailed show notes, visit techguylabs.com. Sponsor: twit.cachefly.com

Encrypting an audio stream and good TVs for gaming. Is there a future for flash, returning a defective phone, locating your Windows 10 serial number, alternatives to the software Dragon Naturally Speaking, a speech-to-text tool, disabling the Google Assistant button on phones that have it, why a caller's MacBook Air is making noise, and more of your calls! Host: Leo Laporte Guests: Scott Wilkinson, Johnny Jet, and Dick DeBartolo Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/the-tech-guy. For detailed show notes, visit techguylabs.com. Sponsor: twit.cachefly.com

Encrypting an audio stream and good TVs for gaming. Is there a future for flash, returning a defective phone, locating your Windows 10 serial number, alternatives to the software Dragon Naturally Speaking, a speech-to-text tool, disabling the Google Assistant button on phones that have it, why a caller's MacBook Air is making noise, and more of your calls! Host: Leo Laporte Guests: Scott Wilkinson, Johnny Jet, and Dick DeBartolo Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/the-tech-guy. For detailed show notes, visit techguylabs.com. Sponsor: twit.cachefly.com

Encrypting an audio stream and good TVs for gaming. Is there a future for flash, returning a defective phone, locating your Windows 10 serial number, alternatives to the software Dragon Naturally Speaking, a speech-to-text tool, disabling the Google Assistant button on phones that have it, why a caller's MacBook Air is making noise, and more of your calls! Host: Leo Laporte Guests: Scott Wilkinson, Johnny Jet, and Dick DeBartolo Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/the-tech-guy. For detailed show notes, visit techguylabs.com. Sponsor: twit.cachefly.com

UCR 007: Voice Recognition in Today's Practice with Brad SclarScott talks with voice recognition expert Brad Sclar. Learn how Brad, who has a Doctorate of Musical Arts, got involved with healthcare. Find out if voice recognition belongs in today's practice. Why the dictation software and algorithms on your phone and computer just don't cut it in the medical profession.Questions for Brad? Interested in Dragon Naturally Speaking?Click Here

My guest today is Mary Parks. Mary's background is in communications and applied linguistics, and for the past twenty years she has worked on designing voice user interfaces for digital systems. In this conversation, we focus on what voice interfaces are and how voice-driven systems work. Listen to the full conversation https://theinformeddotlife.files.wordpress.com/2019/12/the-informed-life-episode-25-mary-parks.mp3   Show notes Mary Parks on Twitter Nuance Communications Honeywell Applied linguistics Siri Natural language understanding Dragon NaturallySpeaking The uncanny valley Pixel 4 Read the full transcript Jorge: So Mary, welcome to the show. Mary: Thank you. Jorge: For folks who don't know you, would you please tell us about yourself? Mary: I am a voice user interface designer, and if I had to say, where my voice user interface design background starts is actually in applied linguistics. So sometimes I would call myself an applied linguist. So, to give more background on that, I started out in my educational background going into cross-cultural communications for my bachelor's degree, and then, kind of got interested in becoming an English as a second language teacher. So, knew that I needed a degree in applied linguistics. A lot of people that teach English as a second language pursue applied linguistics degrees. So that's what I started working my master's degree in, was applied linguistics. And it took me a while actually to get my master's degree because it turned out that you could start teaching right away in that field. So, with a bachelor's in cross-cultural communications, I started teaching English as a second language, and I did that for 15 years. Had my master's, took a lot of linguistics classes, loved linguistics, got interested in theoretical linguistics, and I kept thinking about what I wanted to do after a while because I felt like I wanted to do something else with linguistics. I loved teaching. I was teaching at the university level, teaching students writing, listening all kinds of skills that they would need to succeed in a university. But I also taught other students as well, who are coming to the United States to learn conversation in English as well, or business English, other types of specialized English. I bring this up because it's relevant to my work actually, just that whole teaching background. But as I said, I kind of wanted to do something else in linguistics. So, I was aware as the internet wave in the 90s was happening, I knew that a lot of linguists were being hired in different roles in technology companies. So, I thought, “Oh, maybe I could do something in technology.” And kind of fell into voice user interface design because of various reasons. It was just one of the jobs that I applied for. But it was funny because I didn't have a background in design, nor did I have… I didn't think I had a background in design, and I didn't think that I had a background in UI. Like I didn't know what a UI was. And clearly, I didn't even have a technology background. The good news is that when I started working at… And the first company that hired me as a voice user interface designer was a startup here in San Francisco. Because it was a startup, I was able to just dive in and just start working in speech technology and seeing overlaps and bringing in… I knew then that I had a lot of relevant background. I had to learn, you know, what a UI is, I had to learn a lot about design. I just started reading a ton, going to workshops, going to conferences, doing all I could. I had mentors who were helping me learn. So, the first two years, my brain was on fire in this new career. And yeah, that was back in 2000. So, I've been working since then in voice user interface design. There was the first startup. I went to another startup here in the Bay area, and then joined a company called Nuance Communications. It wasn't called that at the time, but it was basically one of the primary vendors for speech recognition technology, and they had a large professional services organization. So, I was there for 10 years. It was great, to just get into a regular rhythm and practice of how to build these applications. And then, what I didn't say was, when I started in this field in 2000, I quickly learned about the notion of the internet of things that was already being talked about back then. So, living here in San Francisco, walking around using public transportation, I was constantly thinking about how could voice interfaces fit in an internet of things world. And I wasn't really thinking of a cloud-based internet of things world, I was thinking more about ground-based computing — “fog” computing, if you wanted to call it that. So that was already something going around in my mind. And then, a few years back, I ended up joining Honeywell, and was working there on basically what I would say, like location-based and internet of things-based applications of voice. So was there for a few years and then a few years back, I started contracting at a large tech company here in the Bay Area, working in voice and multimodal experiences, and I've been doing that for a couple of years. So it's coming up to about 20 years in this area. Jorge: This notion that you had — sounds like very early on — that there was a future where voice was going to overlap with the internet of things… Or rather, that there was such a thing as computing devices distributed all around us that would be driven by voice — seems very prescient. Mary: Yeah. In the startup that I was at, it was called Vocal Points, and there were a lot of people there that had been already thinking about this for years and they were very much thinking about how do we make it so that voice is available everywhere. You know this, it's just there. So how do you do that? And so, I was lucky, and I want to say: I think luck plays a lot in my story. I was just lucky that I was at a startup that was attacking that problem at the time. Jorge: But it also sounds like you had the right background. What should folks know about applied linguistics? Mary: Oh yeah. Linguistics is interesting. Applied linguistics means just… It's kind of like you have physics and you have applied physics. So. There's a part of linguistics that goes after theory and you could say kind of lab or field research. There's lots of different types of linguistics. And then there's the applied side, which tends to be, for example, how do you take what we know about linguistics, what we know about language learning, for example, and apply that to helping people learn another language. Or how do you apply it to helping people learn what they need to know in their own language. It could also be applied that way. There's also lots of clinical ways that you can use linguistics, for example, in speech pathology. Linguistics helps in something like that. So, there's forensic linguistics, is another field that I would say as applied linguistics. So, it's basically saying, how do you apply linguistics to solve real world needs? And to me, voice user interface design, you don't need to be a linguist to apply linguistics there. To do that work, you don't have to have a linguistics background. But I think it's always good to have some linguists around as designers who know how to apply linguistics to it. Jorge: I'm assuming that when you talk about applied linguistics, that covers both spoken and written language. Is that right? Mary: Yeah. It covers all language phenomena. Jorge: When I hear you say that you are a voice user interface designer, that to me speaks to the verbal part of that dichotomy. Yes? Mary: Yeah. Yeah. It's speech. Well, in the UI design, when you get into the UI design part, there's two big components. One is the speech input, what people input into the machine, and the speech output, what comes out of the machine. So, kind of technically it's usually divided that way, and it has to be. But then it's not like you have to have speech output tough. So, you could have speech input, and the machine does something else. It doesn't talk to you. It might do something. So those are two different kind of components of it, speech input and speech output. Jorge: And you work on both? Mary: Mm, yes. I think that it's really important that, in order to make sure the machine behaves as desired, you have to be able to… In other words, it's not just about the speech output side or the machine behavior side, but then just deciding how it's going to behave based on the input. So, if you have one group of people working on input and then the designers are over here deciding behavior, you can end up with a lot of trouble because you can't do it independently of each other. And there's multiple layers of talking about that. So, you can talk about it at the information architecture layer level, just saying you have to architecture how the speech input works. So, you know, you could say, what are the tags that are going to be associated with certain types of utterances, let's put it that way. So, you can have all this input coming in, it all has to be bucketed into different tags. Well, if that structure is being made in a way that doesn't really suit the needs of how the output needs to come, or how the machine behavior needs to be, you're going to have a complete disaster. Right? So, it's really important to be able to help guide how the input is handled and then on the pure output side of things. Yeah. Anyhow, you have to do both together. Long story short. Jorge: The voice interactions that I'm most familiar with are with my phone. When I'm in my commute, I'll be walking along with earphones and I will be listening to podcasts or an audio book or something like that and something will come up that makes me think I want to follow up with that idea. And I will speak into the air, I will say, “Hey, name, remind me to look up blah blah blah blah blah.” And the command “remind me to” is… I know it's a trigger that causes this voice-based assistant to place a transcription of whatever follows into my to do list. And I'm wondering if that “remind me to” trigger is what you're thinking of when you say “tags”? Mary: Okay. Yes. So, and that's a really great example of a use case, right? So basically, that's a tag, right. And there's a tag somewhere that says there's a bucket of utterances that will help the system know, “okay this is what the person wanted to do.” And it doesn't have to be “remind me to” like it could be… It's interesting as you as you play around with systems more you start to realize you could probably say something like, “I need to pick up some milk,” and the systems will know to put that in a list. That's kind of interesting. Recently I tested something on an Apple interface: instead of saying something like, “timer two minutes” — that's kind of I normally do set timers that way, I just say, “timer blah.” I thought, “Oh, two minutes.” And bam! It got it. I didn't even have to say “timer.” So, you don't even have to give the phrase “timer” there. So, the system knows that I'm referencing a time and it knows what it does. So, it knows when I say, “two minutes,” it's most likely that I wanted a timer. And there's some risk here, because what we're talking about — what I think is really important to understand — is that speech systems are probabilistic. So, when I brought up this notion of input… And there's also two systems happening that have to work to get the magic of voice working, at least two. One is the magic of speech recognition, which is taking an acoustic signal and trying to figure out how we can map an acoustic signal to a text string. So, the text string is not like if you remember earlier in our discussion, I said that speech and written forms of language are two different animals. But unfortunately, our speech systems don't work off of the acoustics side of it. They take the acoustics and then they translate that into a text string. So, they don't have a lot of signal, actually, in terms of what you were just… Like if you were yelling at it, the system only knows there's a text string of something. And the important thing about being probabilistic input is that it's trying to make the best guess based on what it has learned to date about translating acoustic signals into text strings. So, it's made its best guess about what that text string is, and then that text string is being put into one of these tags, which usually is called an intent. It doesn't matter what those things are called, what those tags are called doesn't matter. It's just this notion that there's a bucket of strings that are assumed will fall into a certain behavior that is desired from the end user. What's interesting about the example that you gave, “remind me to blah,” or that particular thing, is that when you get to the part about what you're reminding, there's two ways that a system can handle that. So, I told you there's the speech technology that takes the acoustics, and then you also now suddenly have a text string. Now there's still going to be some probabilistic things done with that text string as well, in modern systems. It's not just kind of a rule-based, you could be using machine learning on that system as well. Well, you are actually. Machine learning has been around for a long time, so there's always machine learning throughout the system. So, when you got the text string part, “remind me to” or “I need to pick up milk,” certain utterances, the system goes, “Oh, okay. I've got this string, ‘I need to pick up milk' or I've got this string, ‘remind me to pick up milk.' So “pick up milk…” Like, “I need to pick up milk…” “I need…” The string goes, “Oh, okay. That's a reminder request. We're putting it into that bucket.” And then the other part, “pick up milk.” “To pick up milk” is what the string is. So it sees “to pick up milk.” So it's almost like what you said before doesn't matter, it's about the “to pick up milk.” It's a reminder. Now the system can do two things with that part, “to pick up milk.” It could run what's called natural language understanding, which means that it tries to take that string and understand it and do something with it that kind of goes into a bucket of its own. Or it could just take that string, and the system can be built so that it literally takes the exact string that you said and puts it in word for word. So, this matters because there's different types of technologies going on. In the case where you have a text string and the system is just trying to understand it, that's a lot of our interactions with these devices that have voice interfaces on them, that's a lot of what goes on. You say something and it tries to put it in a bucket, and it does something with it. There's a whole other type of technology, and this is most commonly felt when we use dictation. That's a different technology. It's not the same. So, you can feel this the most when you're doing text messaging through one of these assistants. So, you could just open up your phone and tap the input field and hit the microphone and start dictating. When you do that as a person, you know you're dictating you see it happening, or you might've done this, you might've started it on the phone and then you can put the phone away and you're dictating to the machine, and it's an amazing feat. Or if you've ever used dictation on a computer or a product such as Dragon Naturally Speaking, which came from Nuance — that's an amazing technology. Apple has their own dictation; Microsoft has their own dictation; a lot of these companies have their own dictation algorithms, let's put it that way. And that's a different thing. That's taking your utterances and putting it in word for word and then there's this kind of modeling that's taking place that might… That makes it easier for the system to figure out what you want to say as a dictation thing. So that's one way of doing dictation, when you're asking Siri to, or some other device, to do dictation as part of an interaction with the assistant, in that case, you're saying something like, ” Hello, so and so.” You wake it up, you wake up the device, you get its attention, you press a button and then you say, “Send a message to my mother. Tell her I miss her and I'm going to call her tomorrow.” So, you say that and then suddenly everything you said is written down word for word: “I miss you. I'll call her tomorrow.” And you look at it and you go, “Oh no, Oh no. Oh no. That's not what I wanted.” See what's going on. There is, there's no interpretation of your input. It's doing other things to try to get the dictation right, but it's purely dictation and it's not the same as the whole part that came before. The whole part that came before was an interaction with the assistant or voice UI to kind of let it know, “Hey, I'm trying to send a message. Hey, it's to this person.” So, it's filling out fields, right? It's going, “Okay. They want to send a message, and oh, here's the person they want to send it to.” So, it's got those fields handled. But the whole message part, in order for it to be done correctly, you have to suddenly start dictating, not telling the voice UI what you want said in the message, because it can't do that yet. That technology isn't available. Jorge: It sounds to me like there are two distinct modalities of interacting using your voice with these digital systems. In one modality, you're dictating to the system and it's trying to capture what you're saying verbatim or as close to verbatim as possible. And in some cases, it's giving you live visual feedback of what it thinks it's hearing you say. And in the other modality, it's trying to guess — based on the intents that it's been programmed to understand — it's trying to guess from what has come before, what utterances you've made before, trying to guess what it is you're trying to get it to do. Mary: Yes. I mean, it's really important to realize that there may not be a visual component. But basically, you can imagine that you have a form. So, you have one sort of speech that comes in and the system goes, “Okay, we're filling out a form. So, this is the sendee, this is the sender, this is…” Oh, it's, you know… And then maybe you could say, “Oh, it's a text message.” You know? So, there's certain things that are being filled out that the system knows. And then there's these other parts that are really just capturing, trying to capture what you're saying verbatim. Jorge: Knowing the workings of these systems puts you in a different level than the rest of us, when interacting with them. And I'm wondering how this knowledge of how these things work influenced the way that you yourself interact using voice. Mary: Ah, that's a great question. It's really funny. So, speech is an amazing thing because we all use it automatically. It took a long time for us to learn it. And there are other forms of language, sign language, and you know, there's other forms of language. It's not that all of us learn speech. But that's what I specialize in, so when I talk about this, I'm just going to focus on the speech. It's amazing because all of us kind of use it automatically without thinking. And it's best when it's that way, because speech is this mechanism that you have a thought, or your brain has a focus on something and then it has a mechanism to take that thought and translate it into the stuff that comes out of your mouth. So, it's amazing. So, it's really hilarious because I run into the same problems that anybody else would. I'm constantly sending text messages where I realize, “Oh, I said that, but I should have said to my husband…” There's the one that always cracks me up is when I happen to say, “Send the message to my husband. Tell him I love him.” It's like I look at, you know… I hear it read back to me, for example, it says, “Okay, message to is saying I love him.” And I always laugh when I hear that. Right? I always correct it because I would hate for him to hear, you know, to get that message, and have to say, “No, change it. Tell him I love you.” And I like to send that message a lot, so for me, I would say maybe one out of 10 times it comes out the wrong way. So, some of this is, why do I say it right the right way? And I don't know. I really don't know the percentage of how it performs, to be honest, in the wild. And I think platforms matter. So, I don't know what, you know, Apple teams versus Google teams, who knows what they run into. But it's funny because I'm guessing because I'm aware of what's going on, maybe I'm less bothered by it or I have fewer questions in my mind. But speech itself is spontaneous. That's the beauty of it. It's this wonderful thing where you have a thought and it comes out of your mouth and you know, when you're talking with a person, the brain catches it and then quickly something, some interaction happens and it's a chain of these spoken packets, let's put it that way, that goes on, that builds up a conversation through time. So, for me personally, I probably have less curiosity or less kind of perplexity when I'm interacting with systems. But as a human, when I'm talking, I run into the exact same problems as everybody else does. Jorge: That is such a great example that you've brought up because it points out how the current state of these systems leads to this kind of uncanny valley of conversation, where this utterance, “tell my spouse that I love him or her” is perfectly normal if you're speaking with a conscious entity who will relay your message. Mary: Yeah. Jorge: But this is not a conscious entity that is receiving the message, right? It's a machine. It's an algorithm. Mary: Yeah. Jorge: And it does not know to change the subject of the sentence by itself. Mary: Right. I think I may be wrong; I think maybe the Pixel 4 phone might be doing some… You know, because when you're typing on your Apple phone, like there's all that predicting what you wanted to say and filling it in. Or you do this in search, for example, and it predicts what you wanted and fills it in ahead for you. You know what I'm talking about, right? Jorge: Yes. Mary: So that type of predictive stuff is happening now. But it raises a hornet's nest of issues because do you want a system to take what you say and interpret it and do a best guess? Or do you want it to take what you said and deliver it exactly as you said it? And I don't know. I mean, here's the thing: I think when it comes to spoken language or any form of language, it's very deeply tied to our identity. So, we didn't get to get into this aspect of it. The moment we open our mouths, a massive amount of identifying information is in the speech utterance, in the first two seconds of the utterance. Whenever we talk, there's a ton of information there. You hear things in the in the sound of the voice that tell you who the person is, elements of their identity, including perhaps the region they're from. You know, there's just all kinds of things that come up. And if you know the person, then your brain goes, “Oh, I know this voice.” Like you can hear only just to the two seconds of a voice, and if it's somebody you really know, you'll know who it is right away with pretty high confidence as a person. And so just identity and language are deeply tied. And I bring this up because I don't think that voice interfaces… It seems like right now we're at this phase where people are looking for some sort of universal way to have voice interactions meet the needs of all human beings. And I think it's going to be… We're going to we are going to have to get into adaptive type Interfaces that adapt to personal people, because I don't think everyone wants the same thing. Some people will love it that the system takes what they say and interprets it for them and delivers it more neatly. Other people will prefer more control and just having it more literal to what they want when they're using these types of technologies. The other problem that is going on right now is as we're talking about the dictation method — and even when we talk about text strings — is that this is an assumption therefore that the people that are using these systems are literate. But a lot of people are not literate, or they have lower rates of literacy. And so then how will these systems really meet their needs? And I mean these are big questions, and I think it's really easy also for the designers — I just want to take a plug for this — that is designers need to realize that we come from our own backgrounds and from our own communities and that when we are in our workplace, the way we behave and the way we talk is different from the people we are designing for. So, it's important to recognize that our own speech and our own behaviors when we're working on these systems. If we try to imagine our end users, how they talk or how they behave, probably there's a huge gap. And so, a ton of work is needed just to be in the field and out there with the people we're designing for in order to get how they talk and how they behave. Jorge: That is such a great observation and I just feel like there's so much more that we could talk about this subject. I think that we need to do a second part to this show. Alas, we're coming up to the end of our time together. Mary: Yeah Jorge: So, Mary, where can folks follow up with you? Mary: Ah! Best place for me is on Twitter and I'm Mary Parks. Jorge: Fantastic. I will link your Twitter account from the show notes. It's been such a pleasure having you on the show. Thank you. Mary: I'm so honored that you asked me to be on, and I really appreciate it. Thank you for this opportunity.

Get Together with Technology (GTT) Sponsored by the Canadian Council of the Blind (CCB)   Show Notes: October 9, 2019 On October 9, 2019 the GTT National Conference Call discussed the above topic with the help of the below presenters, which was followed by a number of spirited questions from the floor.  The presenters were asked to talk about 3 of the things they like and don't like about the version being used on that date, namely iOS 13.1.2.  Since then additional updates have been released so depending on the date you read these Summary Notes your experience may be different.    To learn more about iOS 13 visit this Apple Website:   To access many fantastic iOS 13 AppleVis Podcasts follow this link:   Presenters: Michael Feir, Elmer Thiesen, Tom Dekker, Kim Kilpatrick, Brian Bibeault and David Green.    Michael Feir: Michael expressed frustration over the hang-up bug, and suggested that in iOS 13.1.2 users can use triple click on the home button three times to turn off Voice Over, which always resolves the freeze being experienced. To set the triple tap on the Home or Side buttons to Voice Over do the following: Go to Settings, Accessibility and select the Accessibility Shortcut to launch Voice Over. Be careful not to accidently click the button five times in a row without sufficient pause or you can activate the SOS call to 911. Custom Controls Can Be used to limit or expand the haptic feedback and sounds given off by iOS 13 devices. The user can also re-define existing gestures, and define undefined gestures to functions that are difficult to manage, like the turning of the Rotor dial. The Reminders app is another area where iOS 13 has made great strides. It is far more customizable and configurable to the needs of the end user. It now boasts some project management features that make it really good to use.   Elmer Thiesen: Elmer indicated that for him the ability to customize gestures is a really big deal, and the first one he changed was the Rotor gesture to use two fingers sliding across the screen left or right to turn it in those directions. He also expressed that the Vertical Scroll Bar is a great addition to iOS 13. It allows the user to scroll pages of information far more easily and efficiently. Elmer likes the ability to establish Activities with desired features like, having a specific voice read emails with no punctuation, and another voice work on word processing apps with all punctuation turned on. These can now be customized to the user's preference. One of the bugs Elmer has struggled with is that Siri would get lost in what she was asked to access and keep repeating the same irrelevant thing over and over again until he re-set the Network Settings. Apple Support assisted in getting this sorted out.   Tom Dekker: Screen Recording is the thing Tom likes most about the upgrade to iOS 13. it never quite worked well before iOS 13, and now works very well with good quality sound. Commands and the ability to customize them is another of Tom's favourite things about iOS 13. On Screen Braille keyboard is better than ever. He can now type more quickly and with more accuracy than before. Tom thinks that a weird thing is the iPhone User Guide downloaded to the iOS Books app. It only reads the first line or two of each paragraph. It doesn't track anything correctly. Older Guides work well, but not this one.   Kim Kilpatrick: Kim agreed that the iOS 13 User Guide doesn't work well. As for the hang-up bug, her experience seems to be that it only happens when she uses the microphone button on the wired earbuds. She also indicated that this bug didn't come up during the beta testing phase, which she has been on since the beginning. Kim expressed that a great feature of iOS 13 is that Accessibility is not buried in General and that it has its own spot in Settings. Kim has heard that Low Vision users are liking the Dark Mode offered in iOS 13. She indicated that there are some good things added to Braille support that allows Voice Over to have more things read back to the user as they type, however a bug seems to have been introduced that creates a disconnect when back spacing to delete errors. Kim also agrees that Braille Screen Input has improved dramatically. Voice Control is another item Kim appreciates about iOS 13. Although it isn't a Voice Over specific feature, it never-the-less works well with it, and it will really help those with limited hand function to access even more functions of their iOS devices. Voice Over users must use earbuds when accessing Voice Controls otherwise the Voice Over speech will interfere. The strong point about using Voice Control when dictating in an edit field is that Voice Over will read back what is being dictated periodically. It functions more like Dragon Naturally Speaking in that regard. this should only be used in quiet places otherwise it makes many errors. Kim told the group that in Activities you can also adjust punctuation for different apps and activities according to your personal preferences, the voice, rate and punctuation can all be set for different apps and tasks.   David Green: David told the assembled that when inserting passwords and code numbers for voicemail iOS 13 seems to be far faster in echoing the touch screen presses, which leads to increased accuracy in typing those characters. This is especially noticeable in voicemail entry codes. One bug David noticed is in the Native Mail app. When he tries to move from one account to another focus seems to go into Edit Mode instead of activating the new account. It will also do this in the Messages app sometimes.   David found that after the upgrade to iOS 13 the speaking voice was changed from his favourite American voice to a British one. The only way to fix this was to set the Location to America in order to get those voices back. Slide to Type is one feature that David will have to practice a lot before it will become comfortable, if it ever does. Many of the new features and functions of iOS 13 are not of interest to David, so he will likely give them a pass.   Brian Bibeault: Brian wasn't going to upgrade yet, however having forgotten to shut off his phone one evening he woke up to an upgraded iPhone. Since this event he has worked at trying to learn its new features and is getting comfortable with them. The first day was a nightmare, but he recommended that anyone intending to make the move go to AppleVis and listen to the many Thomas Domville podcasts about iOS 13. He provides a great set of tutorials and guides to the important features and upgrades. One glitch Brian found is when using the Bluetooth Keyboard, the focus jumps all over the place unexpectedly. Brian suggested that if one is going to use Voice Control, turn it off after using it, otherwise it'll drive you nuts if you answer a phone call with it still turned on. It'll keep repeating text not relevant to the conversation. He found that his recent move to Bell Fib Cablevision has improved since iOS 13, whereas the app was not accessible with iOS 12.4.   For more information please contact your GTT Coordinators:   Albert Ruel                   or                        Kim Kilpatrick 1-877-304-0968,550                               1-877-304-0968,513 albert.GTT@CCBNational.net                GTTProgram@Gmail.com   GTT is an exciting initiative of the Canadian Council of the Blind, founded in Ottawa in 2011 by Kim Kilpatrick and Ellen Goodman.  GTT aims to help people who are blind or have low vision in their exploration of low vision and blindness related access technology.  Through involvement with GTT participants can learn from and discuss assistive technology with others walking the same path of discovery.    GTT is made up of blindness related assistive technology users, and those who have an interest in using assistive technology designed to help blind and vision impaired people level the playing field.  GTT groups interact through social media, and periodically meet in-person or by teleconference to share their passions for assistive technology and to learn what others can offer from their individual perspectives.    CCB Backgrounder:   The CCB was founded in 1944 by a coalition of blind war veterans, schools of the blind and local chapters to create a national self-governing organization. The CCB was incorporated by Letters Patent on May 10, 1950 and is a registered charity under the provisions of the Income Tax Act (Canada). The purpose of the CCB is to give people with vision loss a distinctive and unique perspective before governments.  CCB deals with the ongoing effects of vision loss by encouraging active living and rehabilitation through peer support and social and recreational activities.   CCB promotes measures to conserve sight, create a close relationship with the sighted community and provide employment opportunities.   The CCB recognizes that vision loss has no boundaries with respect to gender, income, ethnicity, culture, other disabilities or age.  The CCB understands in many instances vision loss is preventable and sometimes is symptomatic of other health issues.  For the 21st century, the CCB is committed to an integrated proactive health approach for early detection to improve the quality of life for all Canadians. As the largest membership organization of the blind and partially sighted in Canada the CCB is the "Voice of the Blind™".    CCB National Office 100-20 James Street Ottawa ON  K2P 0T6 Toll Free: 1-877-304-0968 Email: info@ccbnational.net URL: www.ccbnational.net      

Hey colleague! In fact, before you decide to start your career in the translation and localization industry, you should take a bird’s eye view of many aspects related to the local and/or global market. Since the market is very competitive, I’ve shed some light on 15 aspects you should consider during your journey to professionalism. Enjoy listening to the episode and all your comments and suggestions are appreciated in the ‘comments‘ section below. Important topics I discussed in this episode: Language services you should be aware of when starting you translation career; A quick overview of the linguistic, computer, and soft skills necessary for would-be translators; Areas of expertise that are highly required; A quick overview of productivity and how you can maximize it; The importance of documenting your experience; A quick look at rates and pricing, locally and globally; Potential risks translators might have; The importance of getting certified; When and Where to join memberships; A quick overview of payment methods; A quick look at Pro bono work for translators; Why marketing matters; Ergonomics for translators. Useful links I mentioned in this episode: Proz website: www.proz.com Translatorscafe website: www.translatorscafe.com Skrill: www.skrill.com PayPal: www.paypal.com Translators Without Borders Website: translatorswithoutborders.org Austrian Standards: www.austrian-standards.at Dragon Naturally Speaking: www.nuance.com/dragon This roadmap is necessary for any translators, newbies, and career shifters. If you are interested in attending my training session ‘Translation Career Roadmap: How to start your career as a freelance translator’, do not hesitate to click here.

We speak to two authors about how they use dictation software for write their books and they answer our listeners' questions. Win Kelly Charlies returns to the podcast and she has written all of her books using dictation software, from an iPhone to Dragon Naturally Speaking. And we welcome Richard Bat Brewster, who has been using speech recognition software since 1999 and recently wrote an excellent blog dispelling many of the myths surrounding speech dictation. To support the show go to bestsellerexperiment.com/support Our novel Back To Reality is out now bestsellerexperiment.com/backtoreality  

Special project with Dragon naturally speaking

Jeff Adams has spent more than two decades in the voice industry. During that time he worked for well recognized industry names that include Scansoft, Nuance and Amazon. At Nuance, he worked on the famous Dragon Naturally Speaking dictation software. At Amazon, Jeff led the original ASR and NLU teams for Alexa where he is also listed as the author on 21 patents. Just before Alexa's launch, he left Amazon to start Cobalt Speech & Language which helps companies solve the biggest technical challenges in voice technology. Jeff has undergraduate and graduated degrees in Math from Brigham Young, Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz and the University of Oregon. 

Technology Podcast Episode 74: July 2018Lucy Greco is with Stuart to talk about the recent release of Dictation Bridge, a solution offering a free link between your screen reader and the Microsoft Speech Recognition, or Dragon Naturally Speaking systems.We have follow-up information regarding the availability of the FlickType app, which Dave Nason told us about last month.Stuart tells us about the Freedom Scientific seminar and huge giveaways, taking place at NCBI on July 13th.Rebecca Curtis from NCBI's Library and Media service joins us to talk about the library's production of Twin Vision books.Greg Stilson, product manager with Aira is here to tell us all about the service and explains how people in Ireland can now get involved in an exciting pilot test.Finally, NCBI's Fionnuala Murphy is with Stuart to announce the winner of our podcast competition, which we launched in June.Support the show (https://www.ncbi.ie/supporting-us/donate-now/)

Alexander Buschek has been an IT professional for many years. He is passionate about digital transformation and the opportunities it will give businesses — especially SMBs. He is convinced that every business has to embrace digital transformation in one way or another, in order to survive. The sooner a business starts its digital transformation, the better. To support this process, spread awareness, and share experiences, he started a digital transformation blog. Today he is the CIO of Cherry GmbH, well known for their excellent keyboards and MX switches, who hired him because of his profound knowledge of digital transformation and digitalization. Until January 2018, he was the CDO and CIO of Braunschweiger Flammenfilter GmbH, an international valve manufacturing company that employs more than 500 people in several locations worldwide. His main responsibility was the overall digitalization and IT development for the entire PROTEGO® Group. Before joining PROTEGO®, he worked as an entrepreneur consulting SMBs about their IT strategies, providing external project management and overseeing various IT projects, including ERP and CAD implementation and migration. Working with many SMBs gave him a deep understanding of this market. Key Takeaways: [1:18] Marc welcomes you to Episode 72 and invites you to share this episode with like-minded souls. Please subscribe wherever you listen to this podcast, share it on social media, and tell your neighbors and colleagues. [1:47] This week, Marc interviews Alexander Buschek, who is the poster child for someone who completely rebranded himself to become a digital transformation thought leader. [2:00] Last week was the monthly Q&A episode. If you’d like to submit a question to be answered on this podcast, just go to CareerPivot.com, and click on the Contact Me link to submit a question by email, or click on the Send Voicemail tab on the right side of the screen to submit your question by voice. Marc will play your question in the episode. [2:27] Next week’s episode will be Marc’s interview on the Next Avenue podcast. NextAvenue.org is the PBS website for the Baby Boomer generation. Marc was interviewed on Episode 3 about making career pivots. [2:44] Marc reads Alexander’s bio. [4:30] Marc introduces Alexander. Alexander talks about looking for a new job before working with Marc. He sent applications everywhere and didn’t get answers. He also had a difficult bio, being self-employed for more than 24 years, then became the CIO of one of his customers. He decided he needed help and he found Marc. [5:34] Marc started Alexander through the rebranding process. Alexander shares the roadmap he followed. [5:45] The first step was the Birkman assessment to find out who he was, what were his strengths and weaknesses. He learned new things about himself. Marc encouraged him to have a blog, videos, and write a book. He’s still working on the book. [6:38] The roadmap was getting to know himself and writing a white paper, as a preliminary for the blog. Then he started writing the blog and became the thought leader in digital transformation. Then his visibility started. People asked him to speak at conferences, which was a great experience for him. [7:13] Marc frequently told Alexander to be bold. At first, Alexander didn’t see himself as bold. Then he found out he was. He was not reluctant to speak up and do the things he thought were necessary. [8:03] Marc was blown away by Alexander’s resume. Alexander didn’t see himself as a hot commodity, however. He had to learn to understand his achievements and tell people about his experience. [9:16] Alexander’s white paper was about cloud technology. In Germany, many were reluctant to even look into it. So he thought, at least he needed to look into it. He figured out that cloud technology is the future. [10:31] Alexander used Dragon Naturally Speaking to write. You just talk and you see it written in Word. It was very helpful. [11:55] While Alexander was networking as the CIO of Protego he approached Autodesk to ask if CAD systems could be based in the cloud. Autodesk invited him to look at how it was being used at the time, including Fusion 360. After talking with a manager there, they invited him to be part of a panel discussion in Berlin. [13:15] The panel was on digital transformation, in English. Alexander used it for his blog with great success. Personal branding is making sure people get the impression of you that you want them to have. [14:13] After being on the Financial Times panel, Alexander started writing his blog posts. He spoke at another event for Autodesk. It snowballed from there. [15:29] Alexander spent the Christmas holidays in 2016 shooting videos about digital transformation, based on his conference presentations. Headhunters started to approach him. He expanded his LinkedIn network significantly. [17:18] Doing videos helped Alexander’s presentation skills a lot. [18:49] Making a video requires one hour or more of effort for every minute of finished video. [20:14] Alexander is proudest of getting his new job that is challenging. He is proud that he was asked, rather than sending in his application. He branded himself doing what he loved to do and showing his expertise, with the goal of getting a new job. [21:17] Alexander was passionate about digital transformation. His previous job had given him no opportunity in that area. It is present or will be present in every company. Alexander became an expert on it after a lot of work. There is no way around hard work with a lot of discipline. [22:21] Alexander credits Marc with inspiring him to push forward, not just because he needed a job but because he loved the field. [22:23] Digital transformation is so present these days, but so few people understand it. [23:37] The first positive feedback from Alexander’s white paper was very helpful. Marc gave Alexander small steps to do one at a time that really kept him going. The next step is to write the book. [25:25] Alexander’s advice: you can do it, however, you need to be patient and put a lot of effort into it. With the effort comes the success. Be bold. Get some advice and get a jobs coach. Reading a book alone does not usually provide the motivation. Be patient. [28:08] Alexander looked off into the future and positioned himself in a niche with SMBs. [29:13] Marc hopes Alexander has inspired listeners to be bold! [30:05] Alexander first contacted Marc by LinkedIn after reading Personal Branding for Baby Boomers: What It Is, How to Manage It, and Why It's No Longer Optional. When he contacted Marc he had 70 LinkedIn contacts; today he has 1,200 or so. [30:29] Marc hopes you enjoyed this episode. Alexander proves that with dedication and hard work you can create a professional brand that will get you where you want to go. [32:08] Check back next week for Marc’s interview on NextAvenue.org.   Mentioned in This Episode: Careerpivot.com Your Next Avenue Podcast Birkman Assessment Infor ERP Systems AutoDesk Inventor Autodesk Fusion 360 Financial Times Agile DigitalTransformationBlog.com Alex@Buschek.info Personal Branding for Baby Boomers: What It Is, How to Manage It, and Why It's No Longer Optional, by Marc Miller Please pick up a copy of Repurpose Your Career: A Practical Guide for the 2nd Half of Life, by Marc Miller and Susan Lahey. The paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats are available now. When you have completed reading the book, Marc would very much appreciate your leaving an honest review on Amazon.com. The audio version of the book is available on iTunes app, Audible, and Amazon. Marc has the paid membership community running on the CareerPivot.com website. The website is alive and in production. Marc is contacting people on the waitlist. Sign up for the waitlist at CareerPivot.com/Community. Marc has three initial cohorts of 10 members in the second half of life and they are guiding him on what to build. He is looking for individuals for the fourth cohort who are motivated to take action and give Marc input on what he should produce next. He’s currently working on LinkedIn, blogging, and book publishing training. Marc is bringing someone in to guide members on how to write a book. The next topic will be business formation and there will be lots of other things. Beta groups will be brought in 10 at a time. This is a unique paid membership community where Marc will offer group coaching, special content, and a community where you can seek help. CareerPivot.com/Episode-72 Show Notes for this episode. Please subscribe at CareerPivot.com to get updates on all the other happenings at Career Pivot. Marc publishes a blog with Show Notes every Tuesday morning. If you subscribe to the Career Pivots blog, every Sunday you will receive the Career Pivot Insights email, which includes a link to this podcast. Please take a moment — go to iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, or Spotify through the Spotify app. Give this podcast an honest review and subscribe! If you’re not sure how to leave a review, please go to CareerPivot.com/review, and read the detailed instructions there. Email Marc at Podcast@CareerPivot.com. Contact Marc, and ask questions at Careerpivot.com/contact-me You can find Show Notes at Careerpivot.com/repurpose-career-podcast. To subscribe from an iPhone: CareerPivot.com/iTunes To subscribe from an Android: CareerPivot.com/Android Careerpivot.com

In this episode of Grad Coach Radio, we look at 5 essential tools to make your life a little easier when preparing for and writing academic assignments. Stop living in the stone age! Make use of these tools to ease the load while working on your assignments: 1- Cloud storage (Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, iCloud) - https://www.dropbox.com - https://www.google.com/drive/ - https://onedrive.live.com/ - https://www.icloud.com/ 2 - Evernote & Penultimate - https://evernote.com/ - https://evernote.com/products/penultimate 3 - Dragon Naturally Speaking (and Dragon Anywhere App) - https://www.nuance.com/dragon.html - https://www.nuance.com/dragon/dragon-anywhere.html 4 - Reference Management Software (Mendeley, Zotero, Endnote) - https://www.mendeley.com - https://www.zotero.org/ - http://endnote.com/ 5 - Grammarly - https://www.grammarly.com/ For more study advice, tips and guides, visit the Grad Coach blog at https://grad.coach/blog/

Conversamos con Grisel Ruiz de Transcripcionstudio.com.ar, ella es la persona que transcribe cada episodio de Emprende365. Lo hace ya desde hace más de dos décadas, creo que de los 13 años trabaja con su mamá desde la casa, haciendo subtítulos. Y bueno, vamos a escuchar la entrevista que es muy interesante.    Notas del programa (Separador) 00:42 Buen día, ¿cómo estás, Grisel?. Contanos quién sos y a qué te dedicás. –           Soy periodista. Hice muchas notas para Infomedia, para Crónica, algunas, en su momento, y quedé embarazada desde muy joven y decidí hacer de mi profesión una especie de invento que era transcribir las notas de mis colegas. Y quería emprender algo que se pudiera hacer desde casa sin la necesidad de salir a trabajar ni de dejar al chico sólo. –           01:22 ¿Qué edad tiene tu hijo? –            Ahora tiene 15. Es un adolescente. Y empecé a transcribir las entrevistas estas porque mi mamá que es subtituladora a ser dactilógrafa desde muy jovencita. Entonces estoy como trabajando desde mis 13 años en esto. –           01:56 Woooah, bueno, contemos cómo nos conocimos. ¿Querés? –           Bueno, nos conocimos…. ¿Empiezo yo o empezás vos? –           02:06Yo puedo decir que estaba en una estación de servicio, y necesitaba transcribir mi primer episodio, y busqué transcripciones de podcast, y fuiste la primera. Y te llamé por teléfono. Y ahí empezó nuestra historia. Y ya hace 9 episodios que transcribis todo lo que grabo. –           Sí, lo mío no fue tan fortuito (Risas). Yo estaba en la calle atendiendo el teléfono, de hecho me reía mucho porque eran las 9 de la mañana y generalmente no me llama un cliente a esa hora. –           ¡Es verdad! (Risas) Es cierto. –           Nunca. Nunca en la vida. En general me escriben un mail. Y ese día estaba en la calle y despierta. Andá a saber por qué. Y cedimos los dos a trabajar juntos. –           03:10Es verdad. Y yo nunca había trabajado con una persona que transcriba lo que yo hablaba y fue una linda primera experiencia. Te pasé los primeros 3 episodios y a la semana lo tenía todo transcripto. –            Me acuerdo que esa semana fue complicada, estaba enferma trabajando con 39 grados de fiebre, no fue una primera experiencia muy…. (Risas) Pero después nos fuimos amoldando a los tiempos y a las entregas. 04:00 Entonces vos sos independiente desde chica básicamente en lo que hacés. –           En verdad vengo de padres hippies independientes. Mi mamá hace subtítulos de videos y es una de las que empezaron con esto en Argentina, junto a lo que era Videograbadora en su momento, que tenían la marca I-SAT y Space en el país, y cuando era chica me veía todas las películas en inglés. Y veía como mi mamá le ponía el subtítulo. Cuando fui adolescente decidí ayudarlas en esas máquinas “betas”, “islas”, se llamaban, hasta que llegaron las computadoras preparadas para este tipo de trabajo. Es ahí donde llega una primera MAC a mi casa. Me dice mi mamá “Ponete a tipear con esta computadora”. Antes se tipeaba con códigos, para hacer un ascento tenías que tocar 3 teclas, en ese tipo de “islas”, y ahora simplificó la digitalización. Es muy más fácil. Y empecé a transcribir a una velocidad que antes no lo hacía. Después me dediqué al periodismo, me gustaba mucho lo que tenía que ver con la comunicación, primero hice un año de Asistente social, y empecé a realizar entrevistas para Infomedia. Mi tía que era ya periodista, me mandaba a hacer pequeñas notas y la primera persona que entrevisté fue Cecilia Milone, en el Teatro Maipo. 06:14 O sea, que te mandó  ahí. –           Sí, empecé a hacer entrevistas a muchos artistas, cubrir shows, y con un chico encima me costaba organizarme. En casa, era mi mamá, una niñera… Traté de independizarme de la forma que pude para poder criar a mi hijo cerca sin la necesidad de dejarlo con alguien y verlo crecer dentro de lo que se puede. Porque él, pobre, se bancó las mil y una. Mamá que no le daba bola por estar enfrente de una computadora. –           07:01¿Qué edad tenía cuando hiciste la primera entrevista? –           Yo tenía 22, y mi hijo casi un año o por ahí. –           07:27 Claro, piden mucha atención. –           Sí, viajaba con mi abuela. Iba a todas partes con alguien que me tuviera el nene por 20 minutos. Mucho sacrificio. –            07:35 Pero lo hiciste. Y pudiste dedicarte a eso. Sí, tal cual. –           07:47 ¿Y después? –           Después nació lo que es Transcripción Studio, que no era tal, era yo. Sí existían las computadoras pero no lo que es el “boom” de Internet como lo es ahora. Entonces lo que empecé a hacer era distribuir panfletos en las universidades. –           08:26 ¿Y ellos qué tenían que transcribir? –           Yo tenía este trabajo que era transcribir subtítulos y películas, que no tiene nada que ver con la transcripción que puedo hacer de una tesis, de un congreso, de una entrevista. Porque a las transcripciones de videos se le ponen los llamados “Tiempos” o “Time codes”. Se temporiza todo. En cambio las transcripciones comunes pueden ser al verbatim, que es la manera de transcribir en forma literal, o puede ser editada. Sabía que los estudiantes transcribían para luego estudiar para rendir los parciales. Y ahí es cuando contraté a alguien que distribuyera panfletos y me empezaron a llamar. Transcribía con el casette. –           09:51 ¡Mirá! Y después tenían para estudiar leyendo. Si  hoy te encontrás en la calle con alguien que no veías hace bastante tiempo. ¿Qué le decís? ¿Hago transcripciones de audio? ¿Así te definís? –           Les digo: Hola, soy periodista y hago transcripciones de audio y subtítulos. –           10:25 Vos me mencionaste que habías estudiado locución, ¿es posible? –           Estudié dos años de locución y estoy viendo cómo termino esa carrera. La abandoné el año pasado. Estudié en ISEC y si bien no lleva mucha carga horaria, es una carrera muy rígida desde lo crítico. Se le busca el error a la forma de hablar. A la oratoria. –           11:12 Es muy difícil aparte. –           Es como estudiar ballet. –           11:15 Te miran cómo moves el piecito. –           Te están observando hasta el último detalle. Y sentís mucha presión. –           11:28 Hasta que yo empecé con lo del podcast y no escuché mi voz por más de dos minutos seguidos, ahí realmente te das cuenta cómo hablás y qué tenés que corregir, qué tenés que decir menos… Todas esas muletillas que tenemos que uno se las tiene que quitar porque si no es como demasiado en una grabación o en un programa. –            En un programa radial, sí. En una entrevista gráfica no hay problema porque uno le habla al otro como si fuese un amigo. Eso no se transcribe, pero obviamente no está mal que quieras ser amigable con el otro. El tema es que uno se olvida que se está grabando. Entonces es ahí donde uno debe pensar antes de decir, escuchar primero lo que dice el otro. Hay que estar muy atento  a lo que uno habla y lo que expresa el otro. –           12:49 Eso cuando estás en persona. Porque como estamos ahora vía Skype. –           Cuando no hay nada que te grabe al menos. Si vos estás en vivo en la televisión y el periodista empieza a repetir muletillas, dirías “al periodista le pasa algo”. (Risas) –           13:14 Tienen un tic. –           Tiene un TOC. Gráficamente no está mal, porque luego todo se edita,  excepto que tengan una expresión fundamental. 13:50 En tu carrera, cuando seriamente te pusiste a transcribir, tuviste algún momento donde sentiste el fracaso. –           Sabés que estaba preparada para esta pregunta. –           14:11 Porque ya conocés las entrevistas…. –           (Risas) Es muy gracioso. Mi primer cliente fue Pablo Winokur, y él es periodista del Congreso. Entonces a él le mandaban a hacer entrevistas con chicos de la calle, donde las entrevistas eran con grabador, no eran digitales, y hablaban de sus dolencias, de lo que sucede en la calle, y la pregunta era: ¿Vos cuando te enfermás o tenés una dolencia con qué te curás? Y resulta que el chico había dicho “Yo me curo con Detebensil”.  Una droga que es para la piel, para la dermatitis… para afecciones de la piel. Y cuando hice la desgrabación, y encima con entrega urgente, y estaba medio dormida, y con falta de concentración… puse: “Yo me curo con té de perejil”. (Risas) –           15:48  Te de Perejil versus la droga… ¿Y qué repercusión tuvo eso? –           Después el chico me siguió dando trabajo, pero yo le preguntaba a mi mamá, porque no estaba segura que la dermatitis se cure con té de perejil. Y volví a revisar el audio…. Y ahí me di cuenta que existía esta droga. Entonces le escribo al periodista y le digo “Perdón, Pablo, puse té de perejil en vez de Detebensil”.  Nunca me respondió con un “jajajaja”, pero yo creo que se habrá muerto de risa. 16:57 ¿Pero qué garrón para vos que no te diga “Bueno, ya lo corregí yo, no te preocupes”? No, no tuve un feedback, de ahí en más aprendí a tener sentido común cuando se transcribe. Porque sino los transcriptores vamos para atrás. –           17:26 ¿Sentiste en algún momento que se te prendió la lamparita? –           Yo me especializo en varias cosas. Lo que es autoría de DVD, subtítulos. Pero primero empecé con las transcripciones. Después vi que eso sólo no era suficiente y agregué los demás servicios. Y después con respecto a las transcripciones empecé a innovarme. Antes ponía “inaudible” ante una palabra que no se entiende. Ahora pongo el “Time code”. Como para que el cliente revise en ese minuto y sepa dónde el transcriptor no pudo entender la terminología o sobre el tema que se estaba refiriendo esa transcripción. –           18:27 A mí me ayudó en varias de las transcripciones que hiciste. Aparte lo sobresaltas en amarillo. –            Claro, porque poniendo “Inaudible”, tal vez no se puede acordar qué quiso decir, y tiene que tal vez escuchar un choclo de audio para saber dónde el transcriptor no entendió. Pero con el time code ayuda a que vayas justo al punto de la equivocación. –           19:10 ¿Qué te apasiona de tu trabajo aparte de la flexibilización en el tiempo? –           A veces no me apasiona, pero creo que lo que me apasiona es ver las películas o enterarme de cosas que son confidenciales, que sólo yo y nadie más que yo, sé, como cuando transcribí el juicio del narcotraficante Mi Sangre. Me apasiona ver documentales, productos audiovisuales que sé que van a salir y ver Canal Encuentro expresando “Lo hice yo”. Después trabajé para Miami Herald, que necesitaban los subtitulados en francés y español. –           20:15 ¿Cuántos idiomas hablás? Hablo español y tengo un nivel bastante alto de inglés. Pero cuando se hace una subtitulación se trabaja con el script y con el traductor al lado. –           21:12  Eso me gustó. Me parece que es algo que vamos a implementar lo de los time codes. –           Si hacés algo como lo que es el Closed Caption que es para sordomudos, que es algo que me apasiona. Porque hay un tema que quiero aclarar: Me apasiona porque es una posibilidad…. Me  gustaría que el cine argentino implemente el closed caption para que la gente discapacitada auditivamente pueda ver películas en el mismo idioma. Pero mi meta sea con colaboradores que tengan alguna discapacidad, porque es un trabajo adaptable. De hecho una de mis transcriptoras es discapacitada motriz. –           22:30 Y aparte sienten que pueden hacer algo con su vida y utilizar la mente. Es muy importante para ellos. –           Sí, ese es mi sueño. Si vos vieras mi estudio, que también es mi casa, yo tengo un lugar grande con varias computadoras, y vienen durante el día diferentes transcriptoras o nos vamos comunicando con “team viewer”. Después implementamos tecnología. –           23:17 ¿Y cómo la implementan? –           Se trabaja con pedales y un programa que se llama Dragon Naturally Speaking que es dictado de voz. Y con el pedal vas manejando las pausas. –           23:51 ¿Eso lo usás para hacer subtítulos o transcripciones? Sobre todo transcripciones.  Es para no utilizar justamente las manos. Por eso te digo que mi trabajo se adecua para muchos tipos de discapacidad. 24:17 Está perfecto.  O sea que la persona puede hablar a la computadora y pausar con los pedales. –           Obviamente un ojo humano lo tiene  que corregir porque el programa no identifica todas las palabras. Es un trabajo piola para hacer inclusión. –           24:48 De hecho en los iphones tenés un teléfono en la barra de espacio, a la izquierda y ahí podés dictarle. Te entiende perfectamente en inglés, en español, o cualquiera que fuese tu lengua. –           Sí. –           25:11 ¿Cuál es el mejor consejo de negocios que recibiste y de quién fue? –           No sé si es que tuve, pero mi mamá me dijo una frase hace mucho que yo la contradije cuando era muy chica, pero es “Cada segundo de tu vida es irrepetible”. Entonces vos para tener un emprendimiento tenés que visualizar tu idea y no irte de tu meta aunque estés trabajando de otra cosa. Todos los días repetirte como un Ave María, la meta que querés hacer y escribirla, y ponerla en papelitos, y luego empezar a sacar presupuestos, empezar a comprar los elementos aunque sigas trabajando en relación de dependencia. Y un día decir “Me dedico mitad a esto y mitad a lo otro”. Y ver qué podés implementar todos los días para regar esa semilla y ver que va floreciendo. –           26:32 ¿Vos qué hacés todos los días para hacer eso? ¿Y cuál sería tu sueño para lo que me dijiste recién que se pueda implementar con la gente discapacitada este tipo de trabajo? –           Estoy tratando de moverme en forma gubernamental para poner un estudio adaptado a las diferentes discapacidades, qué es lo que me gustaría cumplir. La otra meta es hacer el estudio más grande de closed caption en Argentina porque el Closed Caption que se usa habitualmente que es poner el subtitulado tal cual lo dice una película, no es el mismo que interpreta los sordomudos. Ellos ponen el verbo de forma diferente. –           28:20 No me digas. ¿Cómo lo ponen? –           Creo que ellos hablan siempre en infinitivo. Yo no soy maestra de señas, pero por lo que estuve investigando, el verbo va adelante del sujeto. –           28:48 Qué interesante. No sabía eso. –            Si hablás con una persona que sepa de señas, te va a saber explicar. Pero conjugan las oraciones de forma diferente. –           28:50 Tenés un desafío por delante. –           Sí. –           28:55 Suerte con eso. –           Ojalá se dé. ¿Y qué es lo que hago todos los días? Es aconsejar. Sentido común, tener buena tecnología, investigar sobre lo que se está hablando o diciendo en un audio, uno no puede poner o escribir cualquier cosa. Y ser confidencial. Eso es muy importante. Vos no podés estar transmitiendo todo lo que escuchas, o todo lo que transcribis, porque en este trabajo están en juego los médicos, los pacientes, congresistas, empresas audiovisuales. Por eso firmamos muchos contratos de confidencialidad. –           29:55 ¿Qué aplicaciones utilizas en tu celular y en tu pc para trabajar? Por ejemplo “Evernote” “Google Kit”,… “Apple Calender”… “Dropbox ¿Cómo hacen el cronograma? Nosotros usamos “Google Drive” para pasarnos los archivos, ¿pero vos usás algunas otras? –           Para comunicarse, whatsapp. Hoy en día es fundamental. A través de ahí contestamos cualquier inquietud que el cliente tenga. Sí me preguntan por un presupuesto, se contesta al toque por Whatsapp. Si tienen alguna duda del audio, seresponde por Whatsapp. El mail, que es un juego de palabras en español y en inglés: Transcripcion + Studio, sin “e”. transcripcionstudio@gmail.com Utilizamos la aplicación de dictado: Dragon Naturally Speaking. –          31:20 Imagínate que despertás mañana en un mundo nuevo idéntico a la Tierra,  pero no conocés a nadie, poseés toda la experiencia y el conocimiento que tenés actualmente. Tu alimentación y vivienda están resueltos. Todo lo que tenés es: una laptop, un smarthphone, 500,00 dólares,  y, por supuesto, acceso a Internet: ¿cómo empezarías tu negocio nuevamente? –          Busco a un buen posicionador web, invertiría en avisos de Google, o me haría una página de Facebook, compraría otra computadora más para encontrar gente que me ayude, y poner plata en panfletos para que la gente me vaya conociendo. –           ¡Me encanta! Puntual! –           32:26 ¿Cuál es tu libro favorito? –           El Poder del Ahora de Eckhart Tolle. –           Me encantó. Lo conozco. 32:38 ¿Alguna sugerencia o consejo para la audiencia? Que necesitamos transcriptores, está abierto a todos los que sepan de lenguas, sin discriminación de ningún tipo. De 18 a 99 pueden inscribirse. Está bueno, porque estoy ofreciendo trabajo. –           En realidad está buenísimo. Y para una persona que no quiera dedicarse a esto y quiere independizarse. –           Tener una meta y escribirla. Escribirla permanentemente. Segundo, que empiece a preguntarse cuántas personas necesita para ese proyecto. O los materiales que necesita. Y que empiece ya a averiguar presupuesto. Y que ese presupuesto también lo tenga latente. Y tercero, es que busque los medios donde pueda dar a conocer a su trabajo. La mío es muy puntual y el periodismo está cayendo porque las editoriales están cerrando. Pero si alguien quiere hacer galletitas en su casa o viandas, o lo que fuese, contar con un presupuesto es fundamental. Y apostar. Tener mucha confianza en sí mismo y dar con la persona correcta. Golpear puertas, preguntarles a los negocios o a las personas que se dedican a lo mismo: cómo hicieron. Tener conocimiento es muy importante. Yo no podría transcribir sino hubiese sido periodista, o si no hubiese sabido de corrección, o si no hubiese tenido una madre subtituladora que me hacia transcribir de chica para que la ayudara, o si no hubiese tenido una tía periodista… Y hacer lobby. –           Te agradezco muchísimo, Grisel. Gracias por la paciencia de llamarnos varías veces porque contémosle a la audiencia de que tuvimos problemas técnicos. –           Igual yo soy cero tecnológica. Más allá de las computadoras que las tengo para trabajar, trato de desconectar porque si no es demasiada información. La mente no para un segundo. –           35:52 Es cierto eso. A mí me pasa que me duele la cabeza o los ojos después de estas todo el día enfrente de una computadora. –           Hay que tratar de estar un poco solo con uno mismo. Eso renueva y ayuda a tener buenas ideas, y a seguir adelante. –           Te agradezco muchísimo el tiempo. Y vamos a implementar los “times codes” en esta transcripción. –           Vamos a ver cómo hacemos. Lo bueno sería que hagamos un programa juntos. Potenciamos. –           Dale, me encantaría. Vamos a tener que hablarlo más en profundidad (Risas) –           Porque yo amo los micrófonos pero para preguntar al otro, no para ser la preguntada. –           ¿Tenés alguna pregunta para mí? –           ¿Por qué Emprende 365? –           Primero, la palabra “emprende” está muy trillada. Todos somos emprendedores. Se usa en todo. Y estuve meses buscando un lindo nombre que sea corto un porque no podía ser “Emprendimientos Online…”. No quería que sea tan largo. Y 365… Por dos razones: 1) había un sitio que escuché en un podcast de Estados Unidos, que entrevistaron a la dueña y se llamaba “Organize365.com.” Y me gustó el sitio, y me encanta a mí “Organize”. Soy un loco de la organización. Entonces me gustó  poner “Emprende 365”. Y 2) es porque el emprendedor todos los días tiene que hacer algo. Todos los días del año. Es corto, es fácil y es como algo pegadizo. –           ¿O sea, sos un innovador nato? –           No sé si soy nato, pero estoy tratando de innovar y de llevar el mensaje a la gente que emprende. Inspirar y motivar. Es más, hoy a la mañana una conocida escuchó unos episodios y me dijo que ayer estuvo un poco depresiva y le sirvió mucho escuchar a los entrevistados a contar cómo fue su historia. Eso es por ahora la misión del programa: Dar empuje. –           Te hago la última. –           Dale. –           ¿Te motivó hacer un nuevo emprendimiento con las entrevistas que hiciste? –           Interesante la pregunta. En realidad, no. Esta es mi emprendimiento. Yo me motivó haciendo este emprendimiento. El sitio, las entrevistas, me contactó con diferente tipo de gente. Esas mi motivación. Y la motivación mayor obviamente es cuando alguien me dice que le inspiró algo o le alegró el día. O le hizo bien. Para mí eso es lo fabuloso. –           ¡Maravilloso! –           Te doy una última pregunta, si querés. –           ¿Cómo repercute esto en la audiencia? –           En realidad es muy pronto para decirte. Por ahora las críticas y las personas que escucharon les gustó. –           En unos meses nos volvemos a encontrar y en nuestro programa me vas a responder (Risas) –           ¡Dale! ¡Me encantó! Terminamos el programa acá,  así que te saludo, te agradezco y la seguimos en la próxima. –           Gracias, Moses. Chau. (Separador) Moses: Espero que les haya gustado el programa con Grisel Ruiz de www.transcripcionstudio.com.ar, sin la “e”. Gracias, Grisel por haberme entrevistado a mí. O una mini entrevista. Entiendo que sos un poco tímida y te agradezco doblemente por haber estado en el programa conmigo. Muchas gracias de verdad.   Muchas gracias por estar, que lo pasen bien. Hasta la próxima.  Si te gustó el programa: Suscribite al Podcast en iTunes o Spotify para enterarte cuando publico nuevos episodios. Podés calificar el programa en iTunes escribiendo una breve reseña desde acá. Seguime en: Instagram Facebook Twitter Gracias por escuchar! Hasta la próxima semana! Moses Levy    

The leap may seem physical, but it's mostly mental. In your head you don't know if it's the right time to jump into being an entrepreneur. What about the mortgage, the family and the bills? And how do you deal with the fear? How do you stay steadfast to your vision? And what about focus? These are the questions that spin in your head over and over again. This episode isn't an answer to your question. No one can answer the questions, but you. However, it helps you understand how to keep true to your vision, how to keep your focus in a distracted world. And then, how to take that leap. ----------------------------- Today I sat down to install one of my most-used programs: Dragon Naturally Speaking. I use Dragon a lot in the membership site, on our courses and also for e-mail. So when I got a notification that a newer version of Dragon was available, I paid my $99, downloaded the software and started to install it. Except it wouldn’t install The software informed me I needed to upgrade from Yosemite to El Capitan —which is the Mac’s current operating system. And therein lay the problem. All my computers were humming nicely on Yosemite, and there seemed no need to rock the boat and install a new operating system. At least if I were having some trouble with the existing system, it would be worth the trouble, but I was doing just fine. Then along came this new version of Dragon and it was forcing me to do something that involved a whole lot of risk. When you’re in a job, it’s like living in Yosemite land It’s not the best thing ever and you know there’s a world of entrepreneurship you’d rather explore. But it’s safe in Yosemite-land so why make the leap into the unknown? And how do you know things will work out anyway? You don’t. That’s the whole point of being an entrepreneur. You have no clue if or when things will work out. The only thing you know for sure is that change is happening. That the Dragon wants to be let loose in your world and you’re holding back. I understand there’s a huge difference between taking a leap from a job into the world of business. I know that the fear is a lot greater when you have a family, a mortgage, and bills to pay. Yet, there comes a time when your hand seems to be forced. You can stay where you are, or you can take the leap. In this series we deal with three recurring questions 1) Managing the fear 2) Keeping the vision strong 3) Focus—And why you need a hatchet person Part 1: Managing the Fear I hated my job as a web designer. I’d just immigrated to Auckland, New Zealand in Feb 2000 and my priority was to find a job. Compared with India, where I came from, Auckland was terribly expensive. And anyway, I couldn’t see myself starting up in business right away. To my utter amazement, I found a job that was going to pay me $50,000 a year to build websites. By the second day, I was ready to quit. My wife, Renuka, wasn’t so sure To get a job that was reasonably well-paying was not an easy task. At the time she was still in India, and she asked me to hang on until she showed up in the following month and got a job of her own. “Then you can quit your job if you like, ” she told me. However, things don’t exactly pan out the way we imagine When Renuka got to New Zealand, she found it hard to find a job that fit her position. For the next few month, she bounced between temporary jobs and at least at the time, my job was the one that paid the bills—and the mortgage. Barely three months after we entered the country, we bought ourselves a house and had a mortgage of $200k. The week after we bought the house, I was made redundant. The fat, it seems, was in the proverbial fire. What I experienced was a no-choice situation It wasn’t entirely no-choice. I could have clambered back into the job market and got myself another job. After all, I was pretty good at Photoshop, illustration and had a decent track record in copywriting. Instead, I decided to say goodbye to the workplace once and for all. Put yourself in my shoes for a second: new country, we had no family in New Zealand, Renuka had only temporary jobs (that she hated just as much). Plus there was that small matter of a $200,000 mortgage. A no-choice situation doesn’t give you time to be fearful All of the fear comes from waiting. While you’re waiting to quit your job, a thousand thoughts go through your head. You wonder if you’re making the right decision. You worry about your future and the future of your family. And you look for a bit of a safety net online. This morning as I wrestled with the Yosemite vs. El Capitan operating system, I went through a similar tug of war. I looked for a safety net as I have for the past year or so. I read through the reviews. And there were over 5000 reviews, some new some old. Some saying the upgrade was a breeze, others claiming it was an absolute nightmare. All of this build up fear and frustration. You’re put in a position where you don’t really know what to do or whom to trust. And yet the outcome has already been decided well in advance The reason you’re reading this article is because you too want to escape from that cubicle but you don’t know how. And no one can answer the question for you. No one can tell you the right time to quit. To find out if it’s going to work, you have to force a redundancy. Bass guitarist, Paul Wolfe had a real problem back in 2008 or so Paul was a bass player in a band that played at weddings and functions. While the going was good, the band was kept busy and profitable. Then along came the recession of the 2000s. Paul talks about a situation where the floor seemed to disappear under his feet. Soon gig after gig began to dry up. Paul was in a state of limbo, unsure what to do next. Unlike my situation where I was in a job one day and out on the street the next, Paul’s situation dragged out for months. However, faced with no option and rising debt, he decided to teach what he knew. And what did he know? He knew how to play bass guitar. Paul then set about creating a simple site which talked about how to play bass guitar. Then he started buying some rudimentary equipment to record videos. Posting video after video online, he created a sort of catchment area. Aspiring bass guitarists would see his videos, and Paul used a bit of his marketing knowledge to drive them to his website and list. Today, Paul Wolfe does just fine with his guitar site. He’s into writing fiction novels on the side, bikes to work and lives a life that’s different from the one he once knew.   Part 2: Having a no-choice situation is probably the only way to deal with fear You have to take the plunge, and so you do. The longer you wait, the more fear keeps you paralysed. When a Psychotactics subscriber, Kai Huang, asked me to write about “how to make the leap” this was one of the first questions: how do you deal with the fear? And the answer is, you can’t. Once I was made redundant, I enjoyed the quiet for a few days and then I started knocking on doors. I went back to what I knew best and decided to sell my cartoons to advertising agencies, magazines, and newspapers. I was lucky that the Internet was still an unviable place back then. I was lucky that e-books and fancy software were still to take off. If that were the case, I might have built a website and sat around and waited for a stream of clients to come through the door. But I didn’t have that luxury And so I decided to go out and do what freelancers do to this day: they go out and meet clients. They get freelance assignments. They spend time working on those assignments and get paid. If you sit around hoping that something magical will happen, there’s a pretty good chance you’ll be back in your cubicle faster than you think. If that so-called guru is exploiting your fear and telling you that his program will certainly get you to sell thousands of books, then you’re buying into the wrong idea. And it’s the wrong idea because the failure rate is extremely high. You can’t just waltz into a business and expect everyone to pay attention. I got work freelancing, I taught some people how to use Photoshop, and then slowly but surely I had my first presentation. That presentation was a disaster, and the fear came rushing back. But with some practice that fear went away. I spoke at tiny events like at a Rotary club. And with every outing, I tried to sell the spindly version of The Brain Audit (back then it was just 20 pages). And the fear diminished. In 2001, a year after we moved to Auckland, Renuka quit her job She had a high paying job at the giant beauty and cosmetic giant, L’Oreal. She had a two-hour daily commute; a rancid workplace atmosphere and a boss that took credit for everything. If you’ve met Renuka you know she’s a happy, jumpy person with a mischievous smile on her face. Some days she’d come home with tears in her eyes. Then one day, she had enough She just quit. We were still saddled with our mortgage. With all the freelancing it wasn’t like I was earning a lot. But we decided we couldn’t deal with the jobs. We needed to cover our bills, and that’s what we’d do. We cut back on our spending (just $150 for entertainment per month), and we did what we needed to keep ourselves happy. And yet, Renuka wasn’t quite done with her career. Even back then we’d go for a walk every day. And every day it seemed like I asked her the same question: “What will you do if something happens to me?” I’d ask. And her response was the same every time. “I’ll just get a job.” This is 2016. That was 2001. We were more scared when we had the jobs than when we had no safety net at all I’m not saying your story will turn out like ours. I’m just saying that the fear is greatest where you are right now—in that job. That once you get out of that job you’ll have to do something. It won’t be easy, and it may take a year, and definitely more. But the fear, that will be gone. Gone forever. That brings us to the end of the first factor: Dealing with fear. But let’s say we make the leap. How do we then maintain a sense of vision and focus? Let’s get started with vision because that’s probably the one thing that will keep you going when things get tough. Keeping the Vision Let me give you the short version of my vision. You probably know this, but back in 2000, my website had the embarrassing name of “million bucks.” That, in short, was my vision. And yet that wasn’t my vision at all Back in India, when I got my first job at Chaitra Leo Burnett, I had a very kind and protective boss: Tannaz Kalyaniwalla. All around me, there were creative people whose company I enjoyed. And yet, despite the generosity and warmth of the people around me, I yearned to be free to do what I liked, when I wanted to do it. Which meant that if it were a rainy day and I wanted to stay at home and do nothing, that’s exactly what I could do. If I asked for leave, my boss never said no, but I didn’t like the thought of asking. My earliest vision was to simply be free to do whatever I pleased. This vision clashes strongly with reality In the first few years, I could do whatever I pleased, but I had to pay the price for goofing off. I had to make sure I met with potential ad agencies and editors (when I was a cartoonist). When I moved over to marketing, it was all about getting in touch with potential clients and some incredibly mindless meetings. Meetings where you spent three hours debating whether the logo should go ⅛th of an inch to the left or right. Add early morning drives to make presentations and the endless needing to learn new skills and the vision seems to be nowhere in sight. Vision starts off being a tiny spark of an idea In 2004, we’d only been selling The Brain Audit online for little over a year. We’d done two workshops for companies, and one workshop of our own. The few people we had on our e-mail list weren’t always enough, and we reached out to networking groups and friends of friends. Even so, there was no reason to be optimistic because we were still working quite a lot. We worked all week and then on weekends too. Getting a business off the ground seemed to quite rough, and it’s not like we had a lot of expenses. We were operating from a spare bedroom We didn’t even have a computer of our own. Renuka would sit at the computer for an hour; then it would be my turn. And then an hour later, it was her turn again. We didn’t go around buying fancy equipment; even the books we read were all from the library (and we read hundreds of them). The vision was shriveling. In that year alone we seemed to be moving away from the reason why we started the business. We started it to get more free time, not to double our income or get a squillion clients. Which is why 2004 became our benchmark year We were going to do something incredibly crazy: we were going to take three months off—just like that! Your vision may not be to take three months off. It may be to buy that mansion on the hill and take over half the countryside. You may revel in the fact that you have 100,000 people on your list. We didn’t care much for all those trappings. For us, the vision of the three-month vacation embodied who were—and who we are. When we take three months off, we have to make the other nine months really count As a result, we got more efficient. It might seem like it’s easy to just scoot off on vacation, but like any project, it takes a lot of planning. And then when you get back, you need another plan, because you’re so relaxed that you don’t feel like working for quite a while. I’d like to say it was all in place right at the start—this vision of the three-month vacation. But it wasn’t. And we still keep tweaking the way we work and we take our vacations. Most businesses lose sight of their tuna sandwich You’ve probably read or heard about this tuna sandwich episode because it was covered in articles and podcasts before. There’s this story in the comic strip, Calvin and Hobbes. And how Calvin is drawing up his list for Santa Claus. At which point, Calvin turns to Hobbes and says: What would you like for Christmas? And Hobbes says: I’d like a tuna sandwich. Calvin thinks Hobbes is crazy because Calvin has a list that seems to have rocket launchers, trains, boats, and a whole bunch of stuff he wants for Christmas. And all Hobbes wants is a tuna sandwich. As is inevitable, Christmas morn arrives And Calvin is now throwing a massive tantrum because Santa hasn’t brought him all he wanted. And Hobbes sits with a big smile on his face and says: “I got my tuna sandwich.” The tuna sandwich of your life can be incredibly simple. Hold on to that vision. Never let it go. We too have our tuna sandwich But there’s no telling when the winds change. In 2005, Renuka had an accident in the garden that required hospitalisation and three months off work. In 2009, we took on a personal project to help a family member. That made a big dent in the way we did things. And I think about the tuna sandwich every single day, even after all these years. I’m super-generous with my time and advice (I know that), but I also need that down time to recuperate, to learn or just to enjoy a rainy day (and yes, we both love rainy days. Sunny days can be kind of boring). Vision is hard to hold on to when you’re making the leap. It sounds insane to do what you set out to do when there’s so much other stuff to be done. But we kept the vision simple and worked around it. You know the funny part about that million bucks? Today we could stop working, and we could live the life of The Three Month Vacation for the next thirty years or more. We ditched the million bucks idea, and it came right after us. Instead, we focused on what was important, our work, our clients and our break time. And in doing so, we continue to create the products we want, go to places we want, do the things we want. The vision, if you keep it strong, will breakthrough at some point in time. It had taken almost four-five years before we felt comfortable regarding revenue and clientele. Even then there were some ups and downs. But the vision was always robust and straightforward. Keep it simple so that you can focus on it every single day. So that you know exactly what your tuna sandwich is all about. Which takes us to our third question—our third point: why focus is going to need a hatchet person. Click here to listen to: Part 2-How To Make The Leap From A Job To A Business http://traffic.libsyn.com/psychotactics/Episode_110-How_To_Make_The_Leap_From_a_Job_to_Business_Part_2.mp    

Translator City Radio covers four topics this week. We think we're getting better at podcasting, too. Music is by The Apples. Specifically, Run This Town from their album Buzzin' About. It's literally impossible to license legit tracks for podcasts, so if you like funk and horns, listen to this record via a paid channel like iTunes or Spotify. :PWe cover...Manage Flitter, which is a tool for Twitter that helps you follow/unfollow people.Dragon Naturally Speaking. Gil has been using it for a few weeks now and has some interesting comments for translators considering Dragon.ELSA pronunciation app. Neither of us has used it, but we talked about it anyway.The news about certified translations in Europe.

Win Charles talks about taking charge of your destiny and moving forward with your dreams and aspirations regardless of the obstacles that present themselves on your way is a perfect example of living spiritually, at least in my book.   Our guest is living her life fully as if she is an able bodied person. She manages to take charge of her life regardless of a disability which is caused by a lack of oxygen to the brain. This can be caused by so many events and everyone can have this disability at any stage of her life. When the term able bodied person is used it means being ‘mainstream' and going through life with people without disabilities.   Win shares her experience of participating in the Kona IronMan Triathlon which taught her how to be in her own body, being her person, learning to say no and how it changed her life. One of the key lessons was the importance of saying no as well as the role of a vision in major life undertakings.   She brings forward an attitude of letting mother nature taking care of the unfolding of events. There is a brief mention of Win's Women of Wisdom podcast where you can get more insights a behind the scenes understanding of Pol's journey. Then Win goes into more details as to living a life with a greater mission and how to live beyond the mechanics of ticking off actions from a to-do list.   Win talks about 2 key moments in which she started to smell the roses. One of them was losing her ability to walk and the second was seeing her mother die. She asked for her mother's approval to write a book about her disability and challenges for which she received approval to do it gracefully. As we continue our conversation the concept of glamorous illnesses is put out there for us to consider the implication this has on people's lives.   As we get into the core of the interview Win goes into the concept of uncertainties, not knowing and facing life without being able to predict what is next. Who doesn't face life without the certainty of what will by their next step? Could your life's event and challenges trigger a journey of soul searching and discovering who you are?   Win's spiritual journey took her from one religion to becoming atheist to finally find a new religion that speaks well with her. Listen to interview to tune in to Win's message and what it means for your life.   'Havens Above' theme music taken from 'Aural Architecture' by alucidnation. www.alucidnation.co.uk / www.fabermusic.com / www.interchill.com .   If you're interested in buying CDs and/or digital then you could use the 'gift' facility via BandCamp:http://alucidnation.bandcamp.com/album/aural-architecture .   To learn more about The Spiritual Voice and our global community visit www.thespiritualvoice.com . You will also find all the show notes and our guest's contact information. Technique / Practice for Direct Experience   Win offers you a process to begin writing your first book which will offer you a tool to connect with a deeper mission and purpose for your life.   Open an iPhone notepad and then ask ‘Siri I want to write'. This will type out what you are saying in the notepad. Use this technique to write a page every day. Start with Chapter 1 and then go to Chapter 10.   Start this practice with 20 minutes a day and next thing you know you will be an author.   You can also find a resource Dictate Your Book on Amazon or Audible so that you can use Dragon Naturally Speaking to write a book.

(RPF is on Spring Break this week, so I'm sharing some interviews with you where I've been featured on other shows. Enjoy! -Joshua) “I don’t think failure is a mark of shame. Failure and mistakes are inevitable.” Things Joshua talks about in this episode: Why a “hunch” helped him move into his podcast career Why he had to ignore the advice of people around him to start the podcast Why he had to quit his job to start his podcast How he “mitigated” the details of failure When we do fail, let’s fail in small, manageable ways and make sure we have backup plans Why his podcast fills a gap he could not find anyone else filling Why he started his business with a podcast What social media platforms he uses to engage his audience and market the podcast His advice for people who want to start their business on digital platforms Why he thinks people confuse a platform and a tool with content and a strategy The podcast is not the benefit, it’s simply the tool that we use to deliver the content Why he follows NO ONE on social media Why he schedules free time and focus days Resources Patreon (for tips) Voice Dictation on iPhone 6+ Dragon Naturally Speaking

No matter where you go, you run into people with the same problem?time. Whether you're a small business owner, or run a big company, it's all about time, and getting things done. A lot of time saving can be done without too much effort on your part?and by simply using software. Software that does very smart stuff is what we all need. Here's the list of three core areas where I use the software. -------------------- Useful Resources To access this audio + transcript: http://www.psychotactics.com/57 Email me at: sean@psychotactics.com Twitter/Facebook: seandsouza Magic? Yes, magic: http://www.psychotactics.com/magic -------------------- Software and Hardware Mentioned In This Episode: Mac  Default Folder: http://www.stclairsoft.com/DefaultFolderX/ Text Expander: https://smilesoftware.com/TextExpander/index.html Dragon Naturally Speaking: http://www.nuance.com/dragon/index.htm Mailbox: http://www.mailboxapp.com Evernote: http://www.evernote.com Dropzone: http://www.mailboxapp.com Plantronics DSP400: Plantronics DSP-400 Digitally-Enhanced USB Foldable Stereo Headset and Software -------------------- In this episode Sean lists three core areas where he uses software to save time. Part 1: How to handle repetitive tasks Part 2: What are the factors of communication Part 3: How to store all your ideas Right click here and ‘save as’ to download this episode to your computer.   Useful Resources and Links Read about: The Four Critical Zones Required to Speed Up Your Learning Episode 3: Unusual Time Management Ideas (Audio and Transcript) Chaos Planning: Why you should Forget Business Planning and Goal Stting ----------------------- The Transcript   This is The 3 Month Vacation and I’m Sean D’Souza. It was almost the end of the Second World War when Boeing came out with a plane that was called the B-29. It was the first ever high-altitude bomber. It could fly at over 22,000 feet. It’s one thing to have a plane that can fly at such heights, but you also have to be able to predict what’s going to happen to the plane at that height. These planes they were at a Pacific air base and 2 Air Force meteorologists were given the job to prepare wind forecast so that they could figure out how they could get that plane going in that height. Using the information that they had, they decided that the speed was 168 knots. However, their commanding officer could not believe the forecast. He thought that they had overestimated the speed of the wind. He thought it was too high. However, on the very next day the B-29 pilots reported wind speeds of 170 knots and that moment in time was when the jet stream was discovered. The question is how do you get to jet stream, because when we look at very successful people what we’re seeing is that they’re flying at these very high altitudes at very high speeds. While our lives might be completely different from these people, what we have in common is the factor of time. They have the same 24 hours as we do and they make use of their time. Today I’m going to talk about time yet again, but this time I’m going to focus on software. We’re going to look at how software can make your life a lot better and a lot quicker and, of course, you have more time to do the things that you really want to do. In today’s broadcast we’re going to cover 3 elements. One is repetitive tasks; the second is tasks that involve communication; and the third one which is tasks that involve storage in finding things. This is where we come to a fork in the road because many of you might be using a PC and I’m using a Mac and I switched from a PC to Mac in 2008 and I have never looked back. There is going to be some overlap. You’re going to get some of the software that is available both in PC and Mac, but what you’ve got to understand is the concept. The concept is more about repetitive, about communication and storage software. You’ll find that on a PC. Don’t be too stressed out that this is like a Mac presentation. Let’s start off with the first one, which is the repetitive task that I have to do every day. Part 1: Repetitive Tasks The first thing that you have to do every single day no matter whether you’re a PC or Mac is to find folder. You save something and you need to find a folder and on the Mac you get something called Default Folder. This is one of the best tools that I have found. What this does is immediately it gives you a little heart option and that makes it a favorite, which means that when you’ve got sudden folders that you use on a regular basis you can assign a little heart to them and then every time you save it you click on the heart, those folders show up and goes to box. My set up is across computers. It would be this folder and subfolder and I would spend a few seconds maybe 10 seconds, 20 seconds, 30 seconds trying to get to that folder and what Default Folder does is it takes me there in 1 second. I can also set up Default Folder so that it very quickly gets me to that folder by pressing a shortcut and this is in the preferences. Without getting very technical about it, what you’ve got to do is have a software that can get you to the folder very, very quickly. You can generate thousands of shortcuts all sitting on the desktop. This saves you 10 seconds here, 5 seconds there, 20 seconds there but more importantly it saves you all that energy of opening up folders and subfolders, which is what we do on a regular basis. That’s the first thing that is very repetitive. The second thing that we do, which is very repetitive, is answer the same questions over and over again, like for instance your email address. You might be typing it several times a day, maybe your website or a website that you go to. The point is that software like Text Expander will do that for you. You just have a little shortcut, like for instance with me, I just type SX and it types out sean@psychotactics.com. If I type browser X, it will spit out 3 paragraphs that tell the person who’s just emailed me, “Wait a second. You want this download, you have to go and check on another browser because maybe this browser is not working.” It gives us long message of 2 or 3 paragraphs and it does so in 1 second. Every single day what I have is a whole bunch of messages that come to me that are quite repetitive in nature. When I answer, Text Expander will actually say, “You have been using this on a regular basis. You have been answering this way on a regular basis. Would you like to save this as a snippet?” For instance, I use the word The Brain Audit several times, because I wrote the book. Text Expander will watch while I’m doing this The Brain Audit, The Brain Audit, The Brain Audit and then it will say, “Do you want to save this as a snippet,” and then I can put in a little shortcut like TBA and then I have The Brain Audit. Not only do I have The Brain Audit, but it’s capitalized like T capitalized and B capitalized and A capitalized. All of this stuff is very repetitive and within The Brain Audit I have terms like target profile or reverse testimonials and I have shortcuts for all this. Who’s going to remember all those shortcuts? The program does it for you. It reminds you every time you don’t use the shortcut, “You had the shortcut TBA for The Brain Audit. Use it the nest time.” After a while, the program is starting to think for you as well. These are 2 repetitive things that you have to do, open up folders and store things in folders and for that you have Default Folder. The second thing is just answers that you give clients, stuff that you have to write in email, email addresses, maybe just your address, maybe you just have to type in your address send this to whatever PO Box number, whatever. That can be made very unrepetitive with this software called Text Expander, which then takes us to the second one which is a factor of communication. Part 2: Factor of Communication When I moved to New Zealand in the year 2000, I moved into a rental place. I didn’t really want to spend a lot of money so I bought myself a little plastic chair, which was about $10 at the store. Every one who was back home; my wife Renuka was still in India, all my friends were in India, I didn’t know anyone in New Zealand. What I was doing is using messenger. Back then I was using the PC, so MSN messenger. I would spend several hours on MSN messenger just chatting. At some point I got what is called RSI, that’s Repetitive Stress Injury. The RSI got so bad that I couldn’t sleep at night. My shoulders hurt. My forearms hurt. My fingers felt like there was an electric current going through them. I had to go for physiotherapy and then I had to go for acupuncture and it seemed I was so afraid of so much as opening the garage door because I was in so much pain all the time. If you just wrapped me on the knuckles, I would fall down on the floor in pain. At that point in time, I didn’t have this software. When Renuka got to New Zealand, she was actually doing a lot of typing for me. I wasn’t working. I had to stop working and she started doing typing and the point I was building websites. What is the point of this story? The point of the story is that you don’t need to get RSI to get on to the software. This software is Dragon Naturally Speaking. If you use Dragon Naturally Speaking several years ago, you’re probably very frustrated with the way it worked. You needed to practice for about half an hour train the system then it would get most of the stuff wrong. It wouldn’t work on browsers. It wouldn’t work on forums. It would do this and it would do that. It is got very good in recent years. You can now train it for as little as 5 to 7 minutes and it will recognize your accent and it will start to work just out of the box. Almost out of the box, 5 to 7 minutes is not a lot of time. The point is that it’s not very easy to get into that mode where you’re dictating, but think about every single bus in the ’60s and ’70s was already doing this form of dictation. They would say a sentence, putting the punctuation, do all that stuff to their secretaries. It’s not like it’s something that is very hard to do. You just have to get used to it and the way to get used to it is to use a phone. A lot of phones have this system where you can dictate into the phone and that’s how I started. I started using Siri on my iPhone and I would just respond to emails and after a while I got used to speaking like this, which is I will return your email later, full stop. In fact I got so used to it that one day I had to leave a message on an answer phone and I said, “I will call you back later, full stop.” You can actually switch very quickly between the way we speak or the way I’m speaking right now and then moving into punctuation. This saves you a lot of time, because you cannot believe how fast you can go through this whole system of dictating answers and that is how I get through a lot of my email every day. I have to be careful that I read whatever I have dictated, because the pronunciation is not always very clear. The computer will spit out whatever your say, because fort may sound like fourth and that’s what the computer will type. You’ve got to do the editing and you can’t afford to be sloppy. I’ll admit I had been sloppy and then I’ll hit send too quickly, so you have to do that a little bit at least, but it saves you enormous amount of time. This is just communication and this is just 1 software in communication. The second software that I use with communication and this saves me an enormous amount of time is something that Dropbox gives absolutely free. It’s called Mailbox. What it does is it allows you to postpone your email for later. You can postpone it for a month or you can postpone it for a day or tomorrow or later this evening or whatever. When you think of it the first time you think, “Wait a second. You were just procrastinating.” No, what I’m trying to do at all times is keep my inbox down to zero. Here’s the reason why I have to do that. I have to do that because every time the inbox is filled with, I don’t know, a dozen, 2-dozen, 3-dozen, 4-dozen emails I have to scan through all those emails and that’s no good. Either I act on the emails or I put them off until later. What I do is supposing I have to get in touch with someone a month later. I will swipe and say, “Get this email back to me after a month,” and then exactly a month later it will show up and then I can act on it, so it acts like a to-do list. Of course, you’re human and you don’t want to deal with some email and you will procrastinate and that’s fine. Most of the time your goal should be to get that email box down to zero. There is other software like SaneBox and other stuff that you can use. This Mailbox it’s free and it works really well. The goal is to keep your inbox down to zero. You cannot believe how addictive this is. After a while you’re swiping and deleting and responding and finishing off your email so that you don’t have to deal with it and you don’t have to scan through al those read emails and figure out which one do I have to get open into the box and put in that folder and this folder; no, nothing like. I know you’re skeptical. My wife Renuka she is skeptical off a lot of stuff that I think I wonderful because I think a lot of stuff is wonderful. I showed it to her a few months ago, she wasn’t interested. I showed it to her 2 weeks ago, she wasn’t interested. Then last week for some reason she got interested and now she’s hooked. I can tell you, you will be hooked. Try and get your inbox down to zero by using Mailbox. With communication, there are these 2 things that helped me get to jet stream and that is Dragon naturally Speaking. It’s amazing and often enough they give it to you at a discount so go and look for the discount. You’ll get a Dragon Naturally Speaking and get yourself a Plantronics. If you’re swayed by Dragon telling you to buy their own microphone, don’t do it. Get yourself a Plantronics 400 and that’s a very good microphone. I’ll list this at the bottom of the podcast. The second thing you want to do is you want to get Mailbox. What we’ve covered so far is we’ve looked at stuff that’s repetitive in nature and Default Folder will help you there and Text Expander will help you there. We’ve also looked at communication and what I use a lot is Dragon Naturally Speaking and Mailbox and finally we’ll look at storage. Let’s go to the third part which is storage. Part 3: Storage When you write articles, when you create presentations, when you have to write books, you’re going to put facts and figures and let me tell you this. Facts and figures are really, really boring. They are so boring because they first of all are intimidating the hard to remember. The only thing that your clients really remember are stories, but the problem is that you cannot the stories. You cannot get to the case studies. You cannot get to the examples and so then you spend enormous amounts of time in research. The worst time to do research is when you’re sitting down to write your article. The worst time to do research is when you’re sitting down to do your presentation. You need to have all of this information in advance and episode 41 covered that. It said, “How to save 2 zillion hours in research using Evernote.” Go back to episode number 41. Listen to that or read the transcript and you will learn how I use Evernote. The second thing that I use and we have brought Default Folder right back. Default Folder allows you to tag your files. If you’re even slightly interested in finding a file then you want to tag it when you save it. This is very important because let’s say you did a cartoon and the cartoon was about a bear. Then later on you wanted to find something to do with intimidation or fear and you typed in intimidation or fear. What kind of results would you get? Nothing. What you do when you save a file is you put in some little tags. When you put in those tags and Default Folder does this really well then every time you type in those keywords or something close to those keywords it will bring up that file, which is called bear.psd. You look for intimidation and fear and you got bear and you go, “I could use the bear,” and that’s what I do. When I’m saving files, I’ll give them little tags. You might not do this because you think it takes time, but it only takes time on the front-end. Once you get started and you really are in a project you need all the energy and all the resources at your disposal and all of this software really comes to help you and that brings us to the end of this episode. Summary We’ve covered 3 things. The first is repetitive, the second one is communicative, and the third one is the storage. We looked at Default Folder and how it will take you exactly where you need to be. We also looked at Text Expander and how it expands little snippets of text or huge amounts of texts and it does it in a matter of seconds. We then went to communication. We looked at Dragon Naturally Speaking and we looked at Mailbox, which can also be procrastination heaven, but let’s face it. Your inbox is procrastination heaven already. You might as well have an empty inbox. Finally, we looked at storage and we looked at Evernote and that’s episode number 41. Go and listen to it, read it. Default Folder, if you use tags well you will find things like you can’t imagine. These are the 3 things that will get you into jet stream, but what’s the one thing that you can do today? The one thing that you can do today is find a Text Expander. I know this for sure that the PC has Text Expander as well. I think one of them is called Breevy that is B, R, E, E, V, Y. I don’t know how well it works. I know Text Expander works really well. Get yourself a Text Expander and stop this typing over and over and over again. You will thank me later. You will send me chocolates. You will send me to Disneyland. You will be really thankful that you use this software. When you finish this podcast, go back to your office and buy a Text Expander, whichever one for the Mac or the PC and there you will enter your own jet stream. An interesting fact about the jet stream with climate change that jet stream has changed. It’s taking pilots 11 minutes more to get to their destination. Of course, when they spend 11 minutes more in the sky they are causing more climate change so it might take you longer to get to your destination. You don’t want to do that in your office. You want to get to that jet stream and you want to get there as quickly as possible. Get the software and start using it today and then you can send me the tickets later. You can send me the chocolates later. Before we go, there is a storytelling workshop coming up. It’s in Nashville, Tennessee and it’s on the 2nd, 3rd and 4th of December. We have dates and we’re also in Europe in Amsterdam in the Netherlands and that’s on the 15th, 16th and 17th of December. Story telling is used everywhere, but the beauty of storytelling is its stickiness. When I tell you the story about The Brain Audit, I only have to tell you that story once and then you can tell it 100 times over and never lose the impact and that is the beauty of storytelling,. Storytelling is used for podcast that’s why you like this podcast because there are so many stories. You read The Brain Audit, there are so many stories and so many case studies and so many examples. It’s not enough to just tell the story. It’s how you craft the story and that’s what we’re going to learn. We’re going to learn how you find the story, how you craft the story and then how you connect the story to your business. It’s very easy to create … It’s not easy to create story but once you know how to do it, it’s easy. The hard thing is connecting it back to your business in a professional way and we’re going to do this at the storytelling workshop, where learning how to create a driveway moment, where people just want to listen to the end of your story. Go topsychotactics.com/story-telling-workshop and we’ll see you either in Nashville, Tennessee or in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You have to have read The Brain Audit however, because that’s the condition, that’s the barrier. If you haven’t read The Brain Audit, you should be reading it anyway. It’s at psychotactics.com/brainaudit. Read the stories. Read the examples. See for yourself how facts and figures intimidate and get yourself into the jet stream of storytelling. That’s me, Sean D’Souza, saying bye for now and thanks for listening to The 3 Month Vacation. Bye-bye. Still Reading?  In business to save time, we have to learn time crunching software. And to get better at our marketing, we have to understand our customers. One of the ways to get better is to understand how the brain works. Does the brain actually process thoughts in a step-by-step manner? Click here to get a free excerpt on Why Customers Buy (And Why They Don’t). Get ready to enjoy the concise and easy to absorb information.  

Going Linux #280 · Listener Feedback We received a lot of feedback on Episode 279 - Getting Started with Linux. Mark is looking for a Linux alternative to Dragon Naturally Speaking. Ambrose finds the fame a burden. Martyn shares a Gone Linux story... and more! Episode 280 Time Stamps 00:00 Going Linux #280 · Listener Feedback 00:15 Introduction 00:51 Welcome back Bill! 02:02 Mark: Dragon alternatives 07:53 Alex: Linuxtracker.org 09:26 David: Episode 279 was excellent summary 10:57 Knightwise: Episode 279 clears up FUD 11:16 Martin: Episode 279 is excellent 11:32 Ambrose: Struggling with fame 13:42 Tony: Audio balance issues 16:43 Gone Linux in 6 parts from Martyn 29:14 Picks: Git and BitBucket 29:47 goinglinux.com, goinglinux@gmail.com, +1-904-468-7889, @goinglinux, feedback, listen, subscribe 30:54 End

Podcasters Are Taking Home Award - Because of my Podcast Amateur Traveler Podcast wins Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Award Chris Christensen is a winner in the 2014 Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Competition, taking an Honorable Mention in the Travel Broadcast — Audio category for “Amateur Traveler: Travel to Flanders in Belgium” (http://europe.amateurtraveler.com/travel-flanders-belgium-travel- podcast/) on AmateurTraveler.com. The awards are named for Lowell Thomas, acclaimed broadcast journalist, prolific author and world explorer during five decades in journalism. This is the 30th annual competition sponsored by the Society of American Travel Writers Foundation. Winners of the awards, the most prestigious in the field of travel journalism, were announced Sept. 16 at the SATW convention, held in Iceland. The competition drew 1,177 entries and was judged by members of the faculty at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill School of Journalism and Mass Communication. This year, the SATW Foundation presented 90 awards in 25 categories and nearly $20,000 in prize money to journalists. Since the first competition for work in 1984, the SATW Foundation has presented more than 2,100 awards and $420,000-plus in recognition of outstanding travel journalism. In honoring work, the judges said: "The Amateur Traveler podcast by Chris Christensen was well done. The first episode only featured narration by Christensen, which is challenging to produce. His incorporation of natural sound was a great addition to keep the show interesting and engaging. It offered both great historical context as well as important tips for travel to Flanders. The show was well produced and interesting". Among other winners, Jill Schensul, senior writer for The Record of northern New Jersey, earned the title of Lowell Thomas Travel Journalist of the Year for a portfolio of her work in the past year. It is the third top title for Schensul, who over the years has won 29 Lowell Thomas awards for herself, and The Record travel section has taken 39 in total. National Geographic Traveler, Islands, Travel + Leisure and AFAR magazines are top media winners in 2014. The Foundation distributes nearly $20,000 annually in prize money to individual winners. Donations by this year’s Underwriter, the Tourist Office for Flanders-Brussels, and many other supporters helped make the prizes possible. For more information about the awards, including a full list of winners and judges’ comments, and SATW, visit www.satwf.com andwww.satw.org. Money Plan SOS Wins Plutus Award Steve Stewart was nominated in the Best personal finance blog, and best debt reduction blog categories. Joe Saul-Sehy won for best financial blog (Joe was on the show this year talking co-hosts), and Steve won for the best debt reduction blog. The interesting thing is Steve's blog is just his "show notes" for his podcast. Congrats to both! Portable Recording With Zoom iQ5B I was Podcast Movement when I met Shawn Smith who had a bunch of microphones set up and was interviewing him. I went over and introduced myself. Shawn has gone out to help people answer the question, "What is the best way to record on the road." His is actively positioning himself as THE mobile recording person at http://www.themobilepro.net/ This was recorded on my iPhone using Boss Jock Studio and using Shawn's Zoom iQ5B microphone. It is a condenser microphone so it does pick up background noise. It has adjustable settings so you can pick how wide the stereo separation is. You will here Shawn and I go through some of the  settings on the microphone. It sounds good (and would work in a quiet place like any quiet place). The FREE Ebook From Shwn: 28 pages of high-rez photos and links to all the road-tested apps and gear in each of the 5 Mobile Pro Podcast Set-Ups, pros & cons of each, best-use guide, and Mobile Pro tips plus 3 bonus set-ups. TheMobilePro.net Question from Listeners In a previous episode we spoke about Dragon Naturally Speaking and Ryan Parker I just wanted to let you know that the Mac does have a dictation function and you can find that function in the system preferences file. It works pretty much just like Siri does. And yes you have to enunciate your punctuation.(It works really great!) In fact I am voice typing this comment to you directly with no corrections. It actually works really fast. The only thing is you have to get used to using the program just like anything else. Okay I lied I did correct a few things. And you have to correct manually if you speak an incorrect word or it picks up punctuation incorrectly. Here’s a great tutorial from YouTube for you and your audience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lU7oiTTAxNkIt does not allow you to correct by voice which is one of the advantages of dragon speaking naturally. They have a Mac version called Dragon dictate that seems to work pretty well I have use that in the past. Have a great day keep podcasting because we I’ll love you so much ha ha! - - Q: What kind of advice would you give to someone who's podcast was driven by fiction content (a bit like Scott Sigler but with no where near such an outgoing personality) and not interviews, or helping people, or a professional focus? It seems that a lot of advice about podcasting is more geared toward all of those things that I mentioned above that I don't really do.  My latest episode has the most conversation I've done with the audience....ever and its only like seven minutes. Thank you for your time I love your show. Caine Dorr   A: Caine Who likes Fiction books?. I did a quick search for "fiction book lovers" and came up with a few sites.   http://themindofafictionbooklover.tumblr.com/me is in the top 5 of Google for this search. Go read his blog, and leave comments. When somethng strikes you send him an email and start a conversation. Later ask him if he'd like to listen to your book. Be sure to have your signature with a link to your website so when you send him an email he will see your website.   http://www.thrall.org/booklovers/ Has all sorts of things about book clubs   http://www.booktalk.org/online-reading-group.html This is a huge forum (be careful not to spam here and read the rules of posting)   Figure out who your audience is, go there and make friends. then tell them about or mention your book. Podcast Reviews  by Filopastry88 from Australia on October 8, 2014 Dave gives amazing value every episode . so many great action things to do. Last 5 of 5 is top idea Thanks so much for the reivews! You can add your review at www.schoolofpodcasting.com Leave a review at www.schoolofpodcasting.com/itunes Join the Shcool of Podcasting www.schoolofpodcasting.com/become-a-member

One of the most hated steps of podcasting is writing show notes. They are a necessary evil and they help search engines like Google and Bing find you. So how long should my show notes be? We will take a look at that question today.   Podcasting is up to 13 Million Listeners a Day   5% of Americans (so this number is bigger in reality) listen to podcasts every day. That would be 13 million people. This video explains more.   Dragon Naturally Speaking Review   I tried Dragon Naturally Speaking back when they were on version 6. It was impressive. I received some questions about creating show notes, and more and more people are having them transcribed. That can get a little costly at $1 a minute. So would something like Dragon Naturally speaking solve this issue for those who don't like to type? My answer is maybe. I used a transcribe feature where I put an audio file into the software and it typed out over 10,000 words (13 pages). From my test, this software is around 90% accurate. The more you use it the better it gets as it learns your voice. The bad news is it doesn't do a bit of punctuation. How could it? It doesn't understand what it is transcribing. So the time you save by not having to type is now used by going in and adding punctuation.   Now if you are a "hunt and pack" kind of typist, this might be for you. It took me 10 minutes to go through an interactive tutorial and I was ready to go full force with the software. You can use it not only to type what you are saying, but to open programs, click buttons and more. Can I get up to speed this fast learning the keyboard? I don't think so. I will say, talking your punctuation is not something that comes naturally, but it does force you to finalize your thought before speaking (which I think we all can use).   The software is smart as if you say something and it types if wrong, you can say "Select (whatever the word is) and then go through a number of choices to edit it. Then there are more commands to tell it to go back to where you were. It's pretty slick. If you are in a chat room you could easily just speak your words and have them show up.   What does it cost? The premium version (that allows you to transcribe prerecorded files is $199 at amazon (affiliate link). The basic version is $49 that does the live transcription.   Do I Need Show Notes?   In a quick word yes. At its core, a podcast is media in a blog post. The question then becomes:   How Many Words Do I Need in My Podcast Show Notes?   The Wordpress Plugin Wordpress SEO Recommend at least 300.   Some reports who that you need 2000 words. WOA! What is this based on? A report that show that most of the top ranking pages had over 2000 words. It makes perfect sense. Google indexes every part of your site. The more it finds, the more of a trail you leave behind to be found.   You can also point at Seth Godin who has one of the most popular blogs on the planet is short and to the point. His post None of this makes sense was 125 words.   When I interviewed Pat Flynn, we spoke about his writing style. He often writes posts that can be seen as a definitive source on that subject. His original posts helped people pass an architecture exam. They were that detailed.   Things to Consider When Writing Show Notes   Your audience. It always starts with your audience. Some of your audience may want the full story. Some of them may just want the bullet points. What is the purpose of your show notes? Pat's original posts were his notes on passing the exam. Maybe your notes are just a summary with links to resources. What is the subject? If you hate typing show notes, then one thing you can do to save time is identify your subject and stick to it. Most people skim when they read. Break it up in to bite sized chunks and using different heading tags. These can carry more Google juice. Use images to break up the intimidating screen of non-stop text. How to Speed Things Up   1. Type it once.   Use tools like Google Docs, Evernote, OneNote, etc to capture your ideas. Then later when you put together your show notes you can copy and paste from your resources.   2. If you are pasting, paste as plain text.   Programs like Microsoft Word can put weird characters into your site that can cause issues and headaches.   3. Listen to your show at 2X   If you are a person who creates their show notes after they record, listen to your show at 2X. If you are listening on a Windows machine, Windows media player can speed the audio/video. While you are listening in windows media player, you can right click on the image and choose Enhancements > Play Speed and adjust it up to 2X.   4. Check to See if Your Recorder Can Create Marks   Dragon Naturally SpeakingIf you are recording into a portable recorder, some of them like the Zoom H5 allow you to press a button and "Mark" your audio. This allows you later to go in and jump to a specific section. This can make it easier for you to remember what you spoke about (although you should have things identified before you press record).   5. If You Can't Type - Speak   There are tools such as Dragon Naturally Speaking that have come a long way in their accuracy. If you can type, it is probably easier to type. When you use a voice to text converter you have to speak your punctuation. You would say something like, "This is my sentence period." The screen would should "This is my sentence." (where the word period has been turned into a period).   6. Farm It Out - Transcriptions    The typical rate for having your podcast subscribed is around $1 a minute. This means a 60 minute podcast costs $60. Keep in mind you then have to edit the text as you typically don't write the way you speak. Keep this in mind when you see services like Show Notes Made Easy. I interviewed Lara and she quoted me $60 an episode (her prices may change). While it may be tempting to use someone overseas for transcription you may want someone how has your language (English in my case) as their primary language. You can find transcription services in our resource section   Here are some resources I used   Quick Sprout   Forbes   How Many Words Are In Your Show Notes?   Do you have any tips on writing show notes? How many words do you typically put in your posts? (leave a comment below).   Start Podcasting Today JOIN HERE    

Jonathan Mosen speaks with Brian Hartgen about j-Say version 12, providing users of our JAWS® screen reading software comprehensive access to Dragon Naturally Speaking. We then hear from Terry Bray, who evaluates assistive technology for one of Canada's major banks. Our JAWS Bytes section demonstrates the power of the JAWS Dictionary Manager. Show Host: Jonathan Mosen Episode 89 - April, 2014

In this special episode, we discuss with the wise Dave Robison one question: "What is your most important tool for writing? " With answers from authors and podcasters at Dragon*Con we give you a run-down of things to help you during the upcoming NaNoWriMo challenge!We hear from the great minds of Kevin J. Anderson, Christiana Ellis, Veronica Giguere, Starla Huchton, Tom Merritt, Scott Sigler, and Jon Strickland.Some of the products we've talked about:Software: Scrivener, Aeon Timeline , Dragon Naturally SpeakingBooks: Save The Cat, 20 Master Plots, 45 Master CharactersOnline Services: DropboxPromo for Gail Carriger's Crudrat 

Das wäre toll: Alles, was wir sagen, wird vom Computer verstanden und ausgeführt, es gäbe keine Tastatur und keine Maus mehr! Tja - wäre! Aber in bestimmten Bereichen klappt so etwas heute schon. Preiswerte Spezialsoftware ermöglicht - nach einer Einarbeitung - tatsächlich Erkennungsraten von über 99%. Auch die Übernahme von Diktiergeräten klappt gut. Im Test: Dragon Naturally Speaking 11 Home (PK-4335-821), Dragon Naturally Speaking 11 Premium Mobile (PK-4337-821). Produkt-Übersicht: http://www.pearl.de/rca88/ Podcast-Übersicht: http://www.pearl.de/podcast/ Zu den besprochenen Produkten im PEARL-Shop

I've been spending most of my free time completing the transcription process. This is critical for me to figure out what remains to be shot in order to complete my film, as well as speed up the editing process.Transcribing is boring, tedious work and there's not a lot of stuff I can say about it, though I try my best. I've tried to speed things up by using transcription software. I started out with iListen from MacSpeech and then, when they came out with Dictate I switched to that, Dictate uses a vastly improved software translation engine that was licensed from Dragon Naturally Speaking on the Windows platform. I think I will have to look into using Dragon on my next project and see if that tops them all.I've also been using my time to talk with instructors and get critiques on how well my film works. I know it needs improvment. I've spoken to a number of film faculty at CDIA. It's interesting to see how each person views the essentials of filmmaking.One instructor, who is not a documentarian, emphasized the story elements and how the story is presented. Franco Sacchi, our resident documentary filmmaker was all over the structure of the film and how to use visuals to connect the ideas. I have another critique coming up soon with an instructor who is a strong editing and sound person, so it will be interesting to see how he views the needs of my film.

21 days left. I've used my time during the past week transcribing all the interviews I recorded using a tool called MacSpeech Dictate. It does a good job of converting the spoken word to text. It's a new program that uses the dictation software engine developed by the people who created Dragon Naturally Speaking, a PC only program. It took me a week, but I was able to do it during my hour plus commute. I still have to go back and review the text and correct any errors. The best part of all of this is that I'm reacquainting myself with the words of my interviewees and I've fallen back in love with my story and my film. I don't know where I went, but I'm back. So the next step is to subclip the footage based on topic and then I can use that to build my story.

Dragon Naturally Speaking

In this edition of the CompuSchmooze podcast, we present a collection of interviews: 1. Reporting on the floor of BlogPhiladelphia, the first of two "un-conferences" being held in Philadelphia this year. 2. Interview with Chris Stramiello, director of product management for Nuance, about Dragon Naturally Speaking version 9. 3. Mark-Jan Harte, founder of collectorz.com, at right with partner Alwin Hoogerdijk. 4. Mary Madden, Pew Internet Project, about teenagers' use of social media websites. Download the podcast file here (73.8 mb stereo MP3 file, 53:48 length). Keywords: blogphiladelphia,dragon naturally speaking,otterbox,podcamp philly,collectorz.com,Pew,philadelphia,cherry hill,compuschmooze,voice,jewish,print,media Produced in the studios of Professional Podcasts LLC, Cherry Hill, NJ.

CompuSchmooze Podcast #10: Interview with Mike Revis, Product Marketing Manager for Dragon Naturally Speaking This is the podcast of my interview with Mike Revis, product marketing manager for Dragon Naturally Speaking, the subject of my October 2005 CompuSchmooze column. The podcast file is 22.5 mb stereo MP3 file; program is 15:36. Podcast friendly theme music: "Trizano Bridge," by Organic!, from Odeo's Podcast NYC Podsafe Music (Yeah, we got it wrong in the podcast and said it was from GarageBand.com, but we figured out the mistake when we were preparing the show notes and looked for the link.) Band's website is http://www.organicnyc.com/