Podcasts about emily it

WE HAVE A VILLAIN! Today, we learn the identity of Mr. Elliot's mysterious old friend, Molly makes some incorrect predictions, and Mrs. Smith does an absolute takedown of Mr. Elliot. Plus, we delve into why Elliot is anti-Mrs. Clay.Topics discussed include ignoring texts, ghost wives and faked deaths, yet another Charles, the circumstances of Mr. Elliot's marriage, the overindulgences of the gentry, Elliot's insatiability, and Mrs. Clay's elastic mind.Glossary of Terms and Phrases:officious (adj): intrusively enthusiastic in offering help or advice; interfering.reversion (n): the right, especially of the original owner or their heirs, to possess or succeed to property on the death of the present possessor or at the end of a lease.Glossary of People, Places, and Things: Satisfied (Hamilton), Thank Goodness (Wicked), Ralph Fiennes, Bradley Cooper, Theo James, Andrew Garfield, Laura Carmichael, Viola Davis, Alison Brie, Kate Winslet, Emma Thompson, Carey MulliganPatron Study Questions:Avi: What does the revelations about Mr. Elliot say about Anne's judge of character, and how does that change what you think about other characters in the book?  Ghenet: 1. How do you think Sir Walter, Elizabeth and Lady Russell will each react to this character reveal of the real Mr. Elliot (outside of what Anne speculates)? / 2. Let's discuss Mrs. Smith's dilemma for a moment. From the moment we meet her, she has this information about Mr. Elliot. What do you think her feelings or thoughts were in telling/not telling Anne the truth every time they were together, given her financial situation versus her caring for Anne.Emily: It is revealed that young Mr Elliot and Sir Walter sit on a spectrum of how the baronet title vs the money and land attached to it is valued. What does this add to the view of the upper classes shown in the book?Sarah: In your minds, who plays Mr. Elliot and Mrs. Smith? Who would you cast as Lady Russell (or any of the characters you haven't already discussed)?Lauren: Hilarious misunderstandings and incorrect romantic assumptions are abundant in Austen, and throughout romantic comedy history. But in this book, and especially in this chapter, Anne has no trouble recognizing what Wentworth is feeling. Do you think he feels the same way about her?Becca's Study Questions: Topics discussed include the morals of Mrs. Smith, where Elliot falls on the villain scale, what Austen is telling us about marriage, and what kind of social climbing is deemed appropriate.Funniest Quote: “But I ought to have looked about me more,” said Anne, conscious while she spoke that there had in fact been no want of looking about, that the object only had been deficient.Questions Moving Forward: What's Anne going to do with this information?Who wins the chapters? Nurse RookeNext Episode: Volume 2 Chapter 10Pod and Prejudice is brought to you by Kyte. Kyte is a car rental company that delivers your car to your front door, so you never have to wait on line. Save 15% on your first booking of two days or more when you use our code WHOMST. Your carriage awaits at kyte.com.Our show art was created by Torrence Browne, and our audio is produced by Graham Cook. For bios and transcripts, check out our website at podandprejudice.com. Pod and Prejudice is transcribed by speechdocs.com. To support the show, check out our Patreon!Instagram: @podandprejudiceTwitter: @podandprejudiceFacebook: Pod and PrejudiceYoutube: Pod and PrejudiceMerch store: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/pod-and-prejudice?ref_id=23216

During her first labor, Emily experienced a hyperactive uterus where she had constant squeezing with no breaks and minimal dilation. She was at a birth center but after exhausting all coping options decided to transfer to the hospital. After receiving an epidural and Pitocin, then detecting meconium, Emily was ready to consent to a Cesarean. Emily's second birth was a planned Cesarean, then her third and fourth births were both VBACs. Emily describes how even though her provider was the same for both vaginal deliveries, her experiences were so different. With her third, Emily had a beautiful pushing stage and easy recovery. However, pushing with her fourth felt rushed and she experienced a fourth-degree tear. Meagan and Emily share the importance of making your preferences known in every aspect of labor and delivery so your support team can speak up when you are not able to. Needed WebsiteHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull Transcript under Episode Details Meagan: Hello, Women of Strength. We have a 2VBA2C story for you today. We were just talking about it before we started recording all of the acronyms. I was like, “Oh, you're a VBAC after two C-sections story.” And your baby is 8– wait, did I see that right? 8 months? Emily: He's 9 months now. Meagan: 9 months. Emily: He's almost a year. 8 months, 9 months, 10 months, somewhere around there. Meagan: Still very little, still very fresh so I'm excited for you to share his story and your other babies' stories. We have Emily by the way. This is Emily. Hello, Emily. Emily: Hi. Meagan: Remind me. Where are you located? Emily: I'm in Texas. Meagan: Okay, you're in Texas. Awesome. Okay you guys, we're going to share her stories. We do have a Review of the Week so I want to hurry and get into that and then we'll jump into Emily's stories. This Review is from Rachel and it says, “Thanks for giving me the confidence to have a VBAC. I am glad I found this amazing podcast when I was newly pregnant with baby number two. After a long, traumatic experience that ended in a C-section, I was cautiously hopeful that I would have a VBAC. Using information that I learned from hearing other people's stories on The VBAC Link, I felt confident and prepared for the birth of my son. On October 9, 2020” so that was four years ago, “I had a beautifully redemptive VBAC and welcomed our boy into the world. Thank you so much for helping me achieve my dream.” Women of Strength, that review is for you. You and your stories and your participation in the community and on Instagram and all the places is seriously what builds this community up and helps these other Women of Strength find the courage just like she said and find the education.I'm so excited for you, Rachel. Congrats and as always, if you have time to leave a review, please do so. It helps other Women of Strength find stories. Meagan: Okay, Ms. Emily. Let's get into this. So you have four babies now. Emily: Yes. My oldest is about to be 7 and my youngest is 8 months or so. Meagan: Okay, so you were having your first C-section as I was pregnant with my VBA2C baby. Emily: Yeah, it was 2017. Meagan: When you had him? Emily: When I had her. I had three girls and then my youngest is a boy. Meagan: Yes. My VBA2C was in 2016 so just right before, yeah. Awesome. Okay, well I'm going to turn the time over to you. Emily: Sure. So my first pregnancy, I actually found out I was pregnant on my honeymoon when we were in Mexico. Meagan: Oh my gosh. Emily: Yeah. I was stressed out and working out a bunch and all of this planning the wedding. I expected my period to come while we were there so I'm like, “Oh, it's going to be the worst. I have all of these white clothes and I'm going to be on the beach and I'm going to have my period.” It just didn't come so it was right at the start of our honeymoon. I was like, “Let's take a test. I don't want to be drinking margaritas for the rest of the week,” then of course, I was. We came back from the honeymoon with another big announcement. I feel like a lot of people's stories is that you didn't know any better and you just showed up at the hospital and you did what the doctor said. I was the exact opposite at that point. I was reading all of the things. I read the Ina May book. I had a midwife at a birth center and I was going to the chiropractor constantly. I was doing all of the things to be ready to give birth at the birth center without medication and all of that. That's just not how it ended up. I think I was around 36 weeks and she was breech. I was going to the chiropractor all of the time trying to get her to turn. I was doing Spinning Babies. I was doing acupuncture. I was going upside down all of the time. I was finding swimming pools to do handstands and all of the things. I did moxibustion where you smoke–Meagan: Uh-huh, on your Bladder 6. Emily: She was still breech so my midwife set me up with the breech guy. People come to him from all over to do breech vaginal deliveries so I started seeing him. This was when we were living in Houston so I started seeing him and we did all of the things to try and get her to turn and ended up having a version. I went in. I had an epidural. They manually turned her and then afterward, they were monitoring me in the room and the nurses were like, “Okay, well do you want to be induced now?” I was like, “Nope. I've got a plan. I'm going home.” So I left the hospital after that. She stayed head down and then I went to 42 weeks and at about 42 weeks, I went into labor but my labor was weird. I was getting contractions but there was no break between them. It was just constant, squeezing pressure. I was texting my midwife asking, “I don't know what to do. I can't time them. There is no in-between.” It was mostly my back and after, I think it was 3 hours and I was like, “I can't do this. This is too weird.” I didn't have any guidance for what to do if you're not able to– they weren't broken up at all. Meagan: Were you dehydrated at all? Emily: No, I don't think so. I'm not sure. We finally went into the birthing center and it stayed that way for a really long time. We were there throughout the night. I was on a birthing ball and my husband was just elbow into my back for hours. I couldn't sleep because it was just constant pain. I tried the Rebozo scarf. We did all kinds of things while I was there. I will say though, I should have had a doula because my midwife kind of just left the room and was gone. She was somewhere in the center probably sleeping. I don't know. She would come in every once in a while and we were really just left to our own devices in there. We had done I think it was a six-week class. We went in every week trying to prepare. Yeah, we were just in this room together in the middle of the night really tired and in a lot of pain not knowing what to do to get this going. At one point, I was on an IV. She had given me all of the pain stuff that they can give you. At one point, she was like, “I've done all of my–” I wish I could remember. Meagan: I've exhausted all my tools type thing. Emily: Yeah, I've given you as many doses as I can in a time period. We did the catheter. That came out at some point. I think it was Monday when I went in there and then Wednesday when I ended up leaving there. At one point, she was checking to see. She was looking at my cervix and my water broke. There was a bunch of meconium and it was green crazy. She just looked at me and was like, “I think it's probably time for you to go.” I got back in the car in rush-hour traffic in Houston and headed to the hospital. There was a nurse in the back seat with me holding my IV bag. My husband drove us there. She had called the doctor who did my version so I had already met him and known him and known that he was pretty progressive as well doing breech vaginal deliveries and I know he did breech twin deliveries. He was a very cool guy so I felt good about that. We went. He was like, “All right. Let's do an epidural. You can sleep. You can relax and all these things.” That's what we did. I think I had the epidural for 8 hours and I was at 6 centimeters. They were like, “Okay, what about Pitocin?” I feel like they did give me a lot of time and I hate the saying “give me” but they gave me a lot of time and by the end of it, I was exhausted. I was done and ready to get her out. I only made it to 6 centimeters after all of that. It was 3 days of labor. By that time, just get her out of there. She was almost 10 pounds. She was big. Yeah. The C-section, that all went fine. I found recovery to be especially hard. My body was already so tired. Meagan: Exhausted. Emily: Exhausted. I wasn't prepared for it. I didn't expect it to be as painful as it was, but yeah. I know some people kind of just pop right up after and are moving around. That was not my experience. That was my first. I feel like I had 10 experiences in one. I did the midwife birth center thing. They tried to get my labor going with an epidural. I had already been there for an epidural once so by the time I was getting the second one, it was whatever, and then the C-section also all in that one pregnancy. Yeah. I feel like it was three births in one.But yeah, then we got pregnant with my second. I talked to my midwife again. She was like, “I don't do VBACs,” so the first person I called was the guy who did my C-section and my version. I said, “I want to do a VBAC.” He was like, “All right.” He was very cool about it and awesome. It was another really easy pregnancy. I got to the end. I was 41 weeks. Meagan: So you carry longer. Emily: Yes. I was 41 weeks with her and I went in for an appointment and they did a sonogram and I was like, “Please can you check my cervix? I just have to know where I'm at.” Yeah, I hadn't dilated at all and he was like, “Well, your sonogram's estimating that she's going to be 10 pounds also.” My mom had been in town at that point. They were trying to be there for the birth and helping me with my toddler and she had to leave the next day because my sister was being induced in Dallas. She had been staying with me for that whole last two weeks and it was like a now or never she's going to be gone. I'm already 41 weeks. I was also teaching and so every day, I was walking into work so pregnant. 1000 comments like, “You're still here? You're still pregnant?” It just felt like I was sick of it. Then hearing the 10 pounds, I was like, “All right. Let's just have a C-section I guess.” He left that up to me. I feel like he would have if I said. He wasn't even doing cervical checks at that point. It was me who asked for it. He left it up to me and he agreed when I said, “Okay. I guess we'll just do a C-section.” That one was different because it was scheduled. We went in the next morning. It was easy, breezy, and a little bit better of a recovery since I wasn't already so exhausted at that point. But yeah. I had a newborn and a toddler and a C-section again. It was rough. It kept opening because I was picking up my toddler. I went back to work I think when my second was six weeks old. Yeah. It was a lot. Those were my first two C-sections. Very different experiences for both of them with the same doctor. Then COVID happened and I finished the school year teaching online when COVID happened and my husband was working in oil and gas. We decided we were going to move to my parents' ranch. I finished the school year online from there and he was working with my dad. My dad does custom home building so that was something he wanted to get into. It was kind of the perfect segue out of there. Meagan: Mhmm. So where were your first two babies born? Emily: Houston. Meagan: In Houston. For people who are interested in breech, are you willing to share that provider's name? Emily: Yes. His name is Dr. Alfredo Gei. Meagan: Okay. Emily: Yeah. I mean, he was great. I don't know if he's still working or not down there, but he was awesome. He was a very, very cool guy. He was very calm, very respectful, friendly, and all of the things. Meagan: Yeah. Yes, good. Emily: Yeah. We moved up to my parents' ranch in Glen Rose, Texas. I finished the school year online. I decided I would stay home with my two kids. I think by the end of that summer, we were ready to have our third. It was perfect timing. I was staying home. We had my parents there. My husband had an easier work obligation working with my dad and all of that so I got pregnant with my third. That pregnancy was wild. We had a lot going on. I guess it was my first experience having a pregnancy that didn't go super smoothly and whatever test and all of the normal things you do like blood testing if you choose to do that. Everything came back weird so I'd have to go in and retest. I think at one point in the beginning, they thought she might have Down Syndrome so it was like, “Well, you can do the amnio to find out or you can wait until that anatomy scan.” I spent that time just waiting until 20 weeks to find out if she had Down Syndrome or not. I tried to do the gender test, one of those home ones. My first two were a surprise and with her, I just wanted to know. I needed something. I wanted to know what was going on in there. We did one of those gender tests and it came back inconclusive. Whatever could go wrong was going wrong with the pregnancy. I had found an OB/GYN who was VBAC-friendly who worked with a group of midwives so it was him and a bunch of midwives. I started seeing him and them because I thought– oh, I didn't even mention. When I had my second baby, they predicted her to be 10 pounds. She was 7 pounds. It made me so mad. It made me so mad. Meagan: Okay, so now I have a question for you because we talk about third-trimester ultrasounds. At 41 weeks, that is normal because they do non-stress tests and all of those things. Would you have chosen a different situation or would the scenario be the same because of your mom and convenience and all of that? Emily: That's a good question. I would like to say that I would have at least given myself a couple more days at that point, just a couple more days to see maybe. I always think, What if I had gone into labor in that next couple of days instead of the C-section? Would she have come out easier being 7 pounds and not 10 pounds? Of course, I thought, Maybe it's my pelvis. Big baby, small pelvis, and all of these things. I don't know. It's hard to say. I was really ready to have her. Meagan: Absolutely and you were given an opportunity. That goes to speak where you are in your pregnancy. That's a vulnerable state. That's a very vulnerable state. But you had her and it was an okay C-section and your mom was there and all sorts of things. Emily: Yeah. She came out and then they brought me back to the room and my mom was there. She got to meet the baby then drove all the way back up to Dallas and my sister had hers. They are a day apart. Meagan: Aww, that is so fun. Emily: Anyway, with my third, I was seeing him and I had some weird blood testing results and weird stuff happening at the beginning. It was the end of COVID sort of so COVID started around spring break. I got pregnant around that summer and by the next spring, it had been quite a while but hospitals and stuff still had all of those weird rules in place about people being in the room and all of the things. It was the tail end of that. My husband got to come in for the anatomy scan. He was there with me in the room when she did all of the scanning and everything and then he had to leave when the doctor came in. He went and waited outside in the car and the doctor came in and my first question obviously was, “Did you see any Down Syndrome markers?” They said, “No.” They didn't see that, but her head circumference and her cerebellum were measuring in the first percentile. The normal range is 1-100 and she was right there on the cusp of being abnormally small. He dropped that bomb on me while I was in there by myself. He waited until my husband had left. He told me that I was going to need to go and see a maternal-fetal medicine specialist and then I could come back after that. I left that appointment just in shambles not knowing what was going on or what to expect or what that meant and then I had to wait for an appointment to see a maternal-fetal medicine specialist. At that point, I just threw the whole VBAC idea out the window. It was all about what was going on with the baby and keeping the baby healthy and all of those things. My mom is a NICU nurse so I was like, “Well, I'm going to give birth at the hospital that she works with because if my baby goes into the NICU, I want her to be there, and all of these women that I had known her working with for 30 years.” I went to see a maternal-fetal medicine specialist. I switched providers and hospitals and I went to where my mom was working. I went in and they measured her cerebellum for the rest of my pregnancy. It was every other week or so I would go in and they measured. She stayed on that very tail end the entire time. I want to say that she might have reached the 6th percentile by the end in growth so it was still pretty precarious not really knowing what the deal was there. But by all accounts, she was healthy. They weren't giving me any kind of diagnosis or suspicions about anything. She kept falling in the normal range which meant they weren't going to do any further testing. They could have done an MRI or something on my stomach at one point but they didn't do any of that. I think around 34 weeks, I had an appointment and I was just like, “You know, if we're good to have a VBAC, I still want to do that.” I just looked at my provider and was like, “This was my plan. I don't see why it still can't be my plan. I've got two toddlers at home. I really can't have another surgery. I don't want to do that.” She was like, “Okay. Awesome.” I was expecting a fight. Meagan: You're like, you do. You really, really do. You expect this, “No” or “But, well–”. Those are the things that you automatically assume so when you have a provider who's like, “Okay, cool,” you're like, wait what? It throws you off. Emily: Yeah. I left there with a skip in my step. Meagan: I bet you did. Emily: Right after that, I contacted a friend of mine who is a doula and I started working with her. She shared your podcast with me so I was listening, listening, listening to as many episodes as I could in those couple of weeks and it was very helpful. I'm not a confrontational person or even a person who previously was good at advocating so I was mostly listening. I already knew what the hospital situation looked like. I already knew what a C-section looked like so I was really listening for how do these conversations happen with doctors and what does that look like when you're advocating for yourself? What are the words that I need to use? I listened for a lot of those kinds of examples of this is what I can say if she says this. This is what I can come back with or suggest if this happens. So that was very helpful for me to just go in and can we do a Foley? Can we do a Cook's? Meagan: To feel prepared to have that conversation. Emily: Yeah. I know at one point, they wanted to schedule an induction and I said, “Well, what if I just don't come?” She was like, “Well, we can't drive to your house and bring you,” kind of response. “What if I don't want to do Pitocin and all of this? Can you do a Foley or a Cook's?” I really came into those appointments with more of a two-sided conversation and not just “We're going to do this. We're going to do this. We're going to do this.” I remember I got there at my 36-week appointment and my nurse was like, “Okay, go get undressed.” I didn't get undressed. I just sat there with all my clothes. She came back in and I was like, “I don't want that. I don't want my cervix checked.” Meagan: Good job. Emily: Yeah, she didn't know what to do with that. She was like, “I think she's going to want to look.” I was like, “Well, why?” Meagan: I don't want it. Emily: “I don't want to know. It's going to get me in my head. What's going to change if I'm 36 weeks?” Obviously, that was the norm there to start doing that at that point. What happens if I'm 1 centimeter? What happens if I'm 3? I'm still going to go home. I remember that was the first time I did something out of the norm there. I didn't even say the whole doula thing since it was the end of COVID. They were still working out who was allowed in so I asked for a doula and they didn't know if they could even have them so we were asking the hospital for hospital policies and calling up there asking all kinds of questions. By the time we did show up, everybody there was like, “She's here. She's here.” My mom worked there too so it felt a little bit like maybe everyone else was walking on eggshells with me because– Meagan: Because of your mom too. Emily: Well, my mom too. She was working that day so I probably couldn't have had her if she had come in as an extra person with us, but she was working and so she just showed up in our room in her scrubs and everything. I went into labor. Meagan: What gestation on this one?Emily: I was 37 weeks. Meagan: Whoa! So way earlier. Emily: Yes, way earlier. It was Easter. I started having contractions during the whole Easter thing. I'm hiding eggs struggling around the yard and I went to bed that night thinking, This feels like it's it. They were not painful but they were stronger than the regular Braxton Hicks so I went to bed and I think at 3:00 or so in the morning, they started waking me up. I tried to keep sleeping until 6:00 in the morning. I woke my husband up and was like, “You've got to figure out getting the kids to school and stuff. We're going to be going into the hospital.” It was about an hour drive. So I got in the bath. My doula told me to get in the bath and she gave me some different positions and stuff to do so I did all of that and that sped things along a whole lot. I did some curb walking and then yeah, I showed up at the hospital ready to have her and I want to say I was in labor there for three or four hours. I asked to speak to the– is it the anesthesiologist who does the epidurals and stuff? Meagan: Yep. Emily: I told her that I wanted a walking epidural. A lot of people don't know that there is a range. You can have it on full blast or you can have just a little bit. She gave me a very light epidural. I was able to still move in the bed and get in different positions. They had the bar over the bed at one point. They wanted to do an internal monitor at some point because my heartbeat and the baby's heartbeat, they could not figure out where to put the strap. I declined that. The nurse really just had to stay in there with it pressed to my stomach for hours. Yeah, that's what we did. I moved around. There was a peanut ball at some point and then yeah. They checked my cervix and my water broke. I don't know if that was on purpose or not, but I then had another water break at a cervical check and things went pretty quickly after that. I think I pushed through three contractions. Right before I started pushing, my OB came in and said she was leaving and that another doctor would be coming in. I was like, “Does he know? Is he cool?” I was so confused. But yeah, he came in and he was great. He asked if I wanted a mirror. I know that he was using oil and he had a hot compress and whatever. Meagan: That's awesome. Emily: He let me pull her out so I reached down and I grabbed her. It was all very cool. We were blasting Enya's Sail Away. It was a whole vibe. Meagan: I love that. Oh my gosh, I can just picture it all. Emily: It was very easy. Hardest pregnancy, easiest labor and birth. Yeah, she came out. I would say she slid out, but pushing wasn't hard. I could see what was happening. I don't know. I felt very comfortable. Meagan: Good. Emily: I felt ready. Meagan: Good. At the end, was anything going on with her? Emily: Yes. That's another whole long story. She didn't pass her newborn hearing screening so when they do the hearing test, it's a couple of days after you have the baby. She didn't pass and they thought, Oh, she might have fluid in her ears and this and that. You'll have to go back and do it again in a week or so. We went back and did it again and she didn't pass again. We had to go to the Children's Hospital and they did another type of hearing test and we found out that she was deaf. Yeah, we went down the whole hearing aid route and that. Healthwise besides her hearing, she was having a really hard time holding her head up. I think we started having a PT come when she was 4 weeks because her head was just flopping all over. I guess she was diagnosed with a gross motor delay and so we did PT until she started walking at 2.5. We had the option of doing genetic testing and all of that to find out the reason for the hearing loss and we just kind of thought, What's it going to change? She's still not going to be hearing after all of these tests so whatever. We will just deal with what we've got going on right now. She got hearing aids at 4 months. We were going in and they would do all kinds of tests and stuff. She still wasn't responding to any sound so they wanted to do cochlear implants and in order to do that, you have to have an MRI. They look at everything structurally to make sure you are a good candidate for cochlear implants. They look at the nerve and the ear canal and all of those things. They came back and they said, “She can get them. She's a good candidate for that, but here's what we saw with her brain on the MRI.” She had white matter abnormalities which are just when they go in and they look, if you have all of these white spots, they indicate inactivity so she had a bunch of that that they couldn't explain and she had a cyst somewhere in there on some groove. I have forgotten all of the lingo at this point. They wanted to find out what the cause of all of those things were. They also didn't want to give her cochlear implants if they thought that these areas were going to grow so then we started doing all of the genetic and DNA testing. They wanted us to wait a year to do her next MRI and the cochlear implants to make sure in that year time period they didn't grow at all. We were just like, “We can't do that. One, we can't wait a year to find out if our child has this thing that's taking over her brain and two, it's a critical time for learning language and speech and all of those things.” We settled with 6 months so we waited another 6 months. We did another MRI. They checked. Nothing grew. She was still making growths and learned to crawl and all of those things. She just did everything about a year behind. Yeah, we did cochlear implants and we all learned sign language and that's how we communicate. Yeah, it's been 3 years now. She just started the deaf preschool last week. Meagan: Awesome. Emily: And now bringing it home with baby number four. Meagan: Baby number four who is 9 months old? Emily: Yes. He was a surprise. We had a lot going on with my third daughter. I've got Eloise who is 7, Violet who is 5, and Matilda who just turned 3. We thought, Maybe we'll have another. Let's see what's going on with her. Let's get her into kindergarten. Let's get her speaking and signing and all of these things. Then we had surprise baby number four. He ended up being a boy so that was fun. He was born in July of last year. Meagan: Okay. Emily: During all of that, our insurance had changed so I couldn't go back to the same OB/GYN and I went to another one at that same hospital. After I had my third, my hormones were just so wild and crazy and I had a lot of anxiety and obviously stress from all that was going on with her. I went in and I was like, “I just want to figure out what's going on with my hormones.” I remember the doctor asked me about my previous pregnancies and births and stuff. I told her, “I actually had a VBAC with Dr. So and so at this hospital.” She said, “Oh, if you want to do that again, you've got to go somewhere else because we don't do that here.” Meagan: But you're like, “But I did do it here.” Emily: I was like, “Don't worry about it because I don't want to have another one.” Of course, a few months after that, I ended up getting pregnant again so our insurance had changed yet again. If you have a baby who has special needs, you've got to get the insurance thing figured out all the time. We changed again. I was able to go back to the same doctor so when I was pregnant with him, I saw her and she was like, “I'm guessing you're going to want another VBAC.” I said, “You're right.” Same thing. I didn't let them check my cervix. I didn't have a late-term sonogram. I went into labor with him. I got induced. That's right. I got induced with him. Yeah, yeah. I was 41 weeks again. Meagan: Okay. Emily: I was so expecting another early one and then I got to 41 weeks and we started talking about inductions and stuff. I said, “If I come in and do this, I'm going to want to do Foley or something again.” So that's what we did. That put me into labor right away. I think I was 1 centimeter so they were able to put that in and it just went from there. I will say this about the fourth with the same provider. I specifically in my birth plan said, “No students.” I feel like I had already done all of that. I had already allowed all of them. I had paid my dues to society by letting them in. I had a student who did my epidural with my second. I was done. I was done with that. I didn't want a bunch of people in the room. When it was time to put in the Foley, she wasn't available so they were like, “Do you mind if a resident does it?” I'm like, “That's fine.” The question was raised about breaking my water. I think I was over 6 centimeters at that point when they were asking about breaking my water and I was like, “Eh.” I talked to my doula. She was there again. I talked to my doula about it and we decided that was okay to get things moving along. They said, “Oh, well she's not available still. Can a resident come in and do that?” I was like, “Okay.” Then it was time to push and deliver and a whole team of people came in. I was in the thick of it. I had another really low-dose epidural so I was still feeling a lot. I also thing one thing about the low-dose epidural managing pain and staying on top of pain is a real thing and you can reach a certain point where there's not much you can do about it where you are too far. That's where I got with that. Even though I had the epidural, I was too far along at that point for it to do much. I was like, “Turn it up. Turn it up.” It wasn't making any difference so just know that's something that does happen. When it was time to push, my doctor on her wheelie stool just scooted out of the way and someone else showed up. Meagan: What? Again? Emily: From the background and it was like, “Push, push, push!” The vibes were very different. I'm not sure why that happened because as far as I'm concerned, nothing was happening with me medically and nothing was happening with him medically to necessitate me to push vigorously. I had not been pushing for hours. I got him out in under 30 minutes. It felt like there was this need for me to get him out of there and get him out quickly. I'm not sure why that happened. So I guess it was a resident who was down there. There was no oil this time. There was no hot compress this time. There was more pulling during the pushing part and I ended up tearing fourth degree all the way. It was awful. Same provider, different experience. She's retired now. I wouldn't go as far to say that I'd recommend her to other people having a VBAC. I think she was more– what's the word? Not VBAC-friendly. Meagan: Tolerant. Emily: Tolerant. I think she didn't think I was going to get there so she said yes thinking that's not how it was going to go and we'd never get to that point where I was in labor there ready to push. That's what happened both times so it was thrust upon her also. She's not a bad doctor or anything. That's my one takeaway from that one. You're pushing and there's a lot of people in the room and there's a lot going on and you're very much focused. I wish that I or someone else in the room had said, “Oh wait, what's happening down there? Why is this person coming in? Why are we doing this so quickly? What's this need to rush?” Yeah. That's my takeaway from that one. At the end of the day, I had an easy pregnancy and an easy delivery. I did have another vaginal, but it also came with some bad as well. It was a bad recovery for me for sure. Meagan: You know, I think that's something to note. Like you said, you got your vaginal birth and everything, but not every vaginal birth always ends with an easy recovery or an easy experience or even a positive experience so it does help to have that support team but here you go. Still even then at the last second, you got switched out on like you did last time too. That's weird. I'm like, was she not confident in delivering babies or what? That's interesting. Emily: I don't know. I'm not sure. Of course, afterward, I'm like, If she had stayed sitting there, would I have torn as much? Meagan: Exactly, yeah. Emily: If I was pressured to go so quickly, would I have torn as much? I left that one feeling, What just happened? I talked to my doula afterward about it and she was like, “You know, I wish I had said something,” but unless we had talked about it before, for her to stop a doctor in the middle of what they are doing without me having already told her, “Hey, I don't want this,” it's weird. Meagan: It's a really tricky situation. As a doula, I will say it's very tricky when you're like, I don't like what I'm seeing, but she's not saying anything and didn't say anything to me before this. I would assume she doesn't like this, but at the same time, yeah. Like you said, it's tricky. You don't want to step on people's toes. You don't want to change the atmosphere. It doesn't sound like the atmosphere was exactly peaceful either, but yeah. Gosh. That's hard. Emily: Yeah. It was another unexpected thing. I hadn't prepared for that scenario. I had it in my birth plan that I didn't want students, but then I had said yes to them for these things, so I can see how we got there, but yeah. For those wondering, I pushed him out to Shania Twain's Man I Feel Like a Woman. There were some good vibes in there. Meagan: I'm loving all of your music choices. That is amazing. Oh my gosh. Well, I'm sorry that it was that type of an ending. I am happy for you that you were able to have both of your vaginal births. But it's such a good takeaway and a great note. Women of Strength, think about those things too even with pushing, what you are wanting. Talk about this to your team. “If nothing's wrong, if nothing is emergent, I need it to be this way,” because that is for sure tricky. I wanted to talk about way into the first birth. I wanted to give a couple of suggestions for people who are having a hyperactive uterus where the uterus is just too active. It's not releasing. Sometimes that can be a baby's position working through and trying to get into the right position and the uterus is trying to help but a lot of the time it can be due to things like dehydration or I know that sometimes if there's a UTI or an infection or something like that, that can cause a hyperactive uterus. Sometimes people just have hyperactive uteruses but with a uterus that is just not letting go like yours, something that a midwife a long time ago within my doula career suggested to a client of mine was called cramp bark. Cramp bark, yeah. It's a tincture and you can take it. It can try to help relax the uterus so if you are having really long prodromal labor or like Emily where her uterus just wouldn't give up and it was just constant– and you said it was in your back. Emily: I had that wrap-around experience. It was like, I'm in a whole lot of pain but it's right here in my back. It never eased up. No, and then I wasn't dilating at the same time after all of this time of being like that. I think it was definitely her positioning. She was sunny-side up by the time the C-section did happen. Meagan: That's what I was thinking. Were you dehydrated or was it a positional thing? A positional factor can do that. Sometimes the uterus needs to relax so we can work with position. I know you were working with position but your uterus wasn't giving up. Sometimes you can increase your hydration, but cramp bark and always, always, always ask your provider about it, but it was actually something that a midwife and I think Julie took it with one of her babies with her prodromal labor too and it helped her as well. I just wanted to bring back that note of if you're having that hyperactive uterus, there could be a few things like hydration, position, maybe it's an infection that is undetected or maybe you've just got a great uterus that likes to keep squeezing. Thank you so much for sharing all of your beautiful stories. I'm so happy for you and congratulations. Emily: Thank you for having me. ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan's bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

I was reminded of an important concept speaking to one of our team members who is a volleyball player converted to pickleball. The conversation went something like this (group setting): Me:      “Hard to lob Emily as she can get up in the air.”Emily:  “Yeah and I even like to jump when I do not have to.”Me:      “I've seen it. Ball can be at Emily's head height and she is full in the air smashing that ball.”Emily:  “It makes me happy to jump like that.”Me:      “Good point. Happiness is paramount (or words to this effect).” As coaches, CJ and I are spend a lot of time devising and sharing actionable guidance about the framework, objectives, strategies, and shots that a player can use to play a really good pickleball game. BUT … At the end of the day, we are playing a game. Or at least that is what it is supposed to be. As you go through your growth process, it is important not to lose sight of this. A few examples: 1.     You want to learn that “killer” serve because every time you serve like that it puts a big smile on your face. Awesome. Then you should pursue that shot. Not because it is strategically significant, but because it makes you happy.2.     You like hitting the ball hard. That is what makes you happiest in the world. Then, by all means, keep doing it. You may not be able to advance as far as a player as you would if you added a soft game component. But as long as you understand that and are still happier hitting hard, then continue doing what makes you happy. That is paramount.3.     If you like jumping to hit the shots (it makes you smile), then continue doing it. There is nothing wrong with playing pickleball in a way that makes you happy. And there is nothing inconsistent with understanding that X is better for you but choosing to do Y because you want to. It is no different than enjoying a doughnut or other sweet treat even though we know that is not what a dietitian would probably advise. If you like this sort of conversation, join me inside Pickleball Therapy. It is a podcast. And it is available everywhere, even on YouTube. I'll see you there.Join us inside The Pickleball Academy: https://betterpickleball.com/academy/The Winning Edge: Unbeatable Partner Play: https://betterpickleball.com/unbeatable-partner-play/Check out our recommended resources: https://betterpickleball.com/resources/ Join Better Pickleball Facebook Community: https://web.facebook.com/groups/1166083211224349/ Our upcoming summit:  https://www.pickleballsummit.com/

Emily's first birth experience was a home birth turned hospital transfer which ended in a C-section and then a birth center VBAC ending in hospital transfer and another C-section with her second. She found herself feeling alone, frustrated, and surrounded by people who just didn't get it as she worked to process the trauma and grief of not one but two back-to-back traumatic births and C-sections. Throughout her journey, Emily took charge of what she could, learned about her options, and made the right decisions even when they were disappointing. Emily has been proactive about physical and emotional healing. She has been open to new perspectives. Emily is grateful to share her story and all that she has learned for other mamas who have found themselves in similar situations. And we are so grateful that we can feel of her strength! The VBAC Link Blog: How to Cope When You Don't Get Your VBACThe VBAC Link Blog: Deciding on VBAC vs Repeat CesareanNPR ArticleSpinning Babies: What to Do When...Needed WebsiteHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull Transcript under Episode Details 05:02 Review of the Week09:10 Emily's first pregnancy and labor14:59 First C-section17:47 Second pregnancy21:16 Moving and switching providers33:20 Pushing for 5 hours35:45 Transferring37:47 C-section41:29 Tips for adhesions44:20 Hospital births are beautiful49:09 All about transferringMeagan: Hello, everybody. It is Meagan and we have our friend, Emily, with us from Texas today. Hello, Emily. How are you?Emily: I'm good. How are you?Meagan: I am wonderful. I am so wonderful. I love recording these stories if you can't tell. We are producing them a lot because I love recording. I love hearing these stories and sharing these stories. Your story is a CBAC story which I think is so important to share on The VBAC Link Podcast. As technically a CBAC mama myself because I don't know if anybody knows who is listening, but I had a C-section then I wanted a VBAC and had a Cesarean and then I had a vaginal birth. So all over the place. CBAC is really special to my heart and I think that this is such an important topic to share on the podcast because we know that obviously, so many C-sections are happening, right? I also think it's important to know that sometimes even when we are preparing for a VBAC, it might end in a Cesarean birth and even more important, I think it's really important to know that Cesarean births can be healing and are a lot of the times healing. Would you agree with me, Emily? Emily: Yes. I mean, I loved hearing the healing stories. Mine was not and I think that's what I yearned for to her is that I'm not alone and it's okay to have a repeat C-section and I hate calling it a failed VBAC, but a repeat C-section that wasn't wanted and wasn't healing. I mean, my second birth was much more traumatic than my first. I mean, I hate saying traumatic because I have two beautiful, healthy babies, but I also want listeners to know that just because you have a healthy baby and you didn't have serious complications you can't feel what you felt about the trauma of it all. Meagan: Okay, and I love that you point that out too because just as much as Cesarean birth can be healing and can be amazing, it can also have a lot of that trauma. Trauma, I think, is a completely valid word to use. It can be used to be described as traumatic. It can be described as hurtful. I was angry. I was angry when I walked myself down for my second C-section. I didn't want that. That was not what I wanted. It was not what I planned. Yeah. Also, going into that it doesn't always happen the way we want to. It can go both ways so that's why I think sharing CBAC stories on this podcast is so important because we have to learn both sides of things. We have to know that Cesarean birth can be healing and it can be exactly what someone needs and it can also be traumatic and not what someone needs. I think that through these stories and through the journeys, this is how we learn how to try to avoid trauma and anger and hurt along the way. 05:02 Review of the WeekMeagan: Before we get into this story, I do want to read a review. Okay, Emily, so remind me. You had a home birth transfer? Emily: Yes. A home birth transfer C-section and then birth center transfer C-section. Meagan: Birth center transfer C-section, yeah. I also want to talk about transfers at the end. We're going to talk a little bit about transferring and when it might be a good time to transfer, when it might be starting to give us signs that we might not be in the best place, and then also how to go about what to do after you transfer if you're transferring because that can also be a big mess too sometimes transferring depending on how the hospital responds to you. We'll dive in to these stories but I do want to read a Review of the Week. This was from winben18 from Apple Podcasts and it was on May 19, 2023, so a year ago right now. It says, “I had my first baby in 2021 11 pounds at 42 weeks via Cesarean because he wouldn't descend. I was told I couldn't birth him because he was too big and my pelvis was too small, but I always knew that wasn't true. My mother, a very petite woman, birthed me naturally and I was 11 pounds, 9 ounces. In 2023, I had my VBAC with another 11-pound baby. No epidural, 7-hour labor, and I credit that success to The VBAC Link. I started listening to them religiously at 38 weeks when my provider started fearmongering me about birthing a big baby. I needed every little bit of encouragement and The VBAC Link provided that. It's incredible how your body's physical capabilities start with your mindset. Thank you ladies for all of your stories. I wouldn't have been able to do it without you.” Wow, that was an amazing review and so grateful. Holy cow, winben18, yay for an 11-pound, 8-ounce baby. I agree with what she said that it starts with our mindset. A lot of the time it does. We can also be in the best mindset ever and things might not unfold that way but if we can set our mindset and get going and get the education and the empowerment and the encouragement, you never know. Things can go a really long way. So as always, if you guys have a moment, we would love your reviews. You can leave it on Apple Podcasts. You can leave it on Google even or on Spotify. We would love a 5-star review and if you can, comment. Tell us what you guys think. Emily: I love stories of petite women birthing big babies actually because I'm smaller and I had big babies. I'm like, I know I could do it.Meagan: Yes. Yes. She talked about fearmongering. A lot of people do get fearmongered. They start saying, “Oh, I don't really think you can,” and it's so hard when we have a lot of people doubting our own bodies and then we start doubting them even though we didn't have doubt originally. It's so hard. It can be a tough cycle, but Women of Strength, it is possible. 09:10 Emily's first pregnancy and laborMeagan: Okay, Emily. Let's dive into these stories. I know you mentioned in the beginning that you had a second Cesarean and it wasn't amazing. It wasn't amazing, so I would love for you to of course share your stories but also maybe talk about tips you would suggest for someone in your situation maybe looking back where you're like, Oh, I could have done this, or tips for people in your situation. Emily: Okay, so my first son was born in May 2022. I got pregnant with him in September 2021 and I knew immediately that I wanted midwifery care. I wanted a home birth and to be honest, I had no fear. I was very confident. I was like, I can do this. I'm in shape. I eat healthy. There is no reason why this isn't going to go perfectly. I mean, I can't be the only one who has thought that and it was the complete opposite. It was a fine pregnancy. I was very, very sick until about 20 weeks. I lost almost 10 pounds in my first trimester, but it turned out to be a wonderful pregnancy. I love being pregnant. I love it. Anyway, I went into labor at 6:00 AM and I guess active labor really started around noon. We were at home. My husband started filling up the birth pool. My midwife was on the way and she had an assistant midwife with her. So really, we just labored at home. Then I would say probably about early evening, they checked me and I hadn't made very much progress. I think I was at a 4 or a 5 and I'm trying to remember correctly. I think that's when they told me that the baby was at a tilt. Meagan: Asynclitic or the whole body? Emily: You know, I really don't know and I think a lot of it has to do with why I have struggled so much with that birth because I feel like that birth catapulted me into the next C-section, but I feel like they had said anterior tilt, but I don't think that is correct. They broke my water because I wasn't progressing and then they were trying to turn him after the fact. I think that's where things went downhill. They checked me. I wasn't progressing. They were like, “We can break your water. It will speed things up.” And I agreed. I think that was my first mistake. I think a lot of that has to do with me not preparing as well as I should have and me with the mindset of, I can do this, no problem. That is my first regret from my first birth.Anyway, so they broke my water and then after that as everyone knows, contractions were off the wall. They had me laboring in one position on the bed on my left side to try to get him to turn and then they had me on the toilet so I went back and forth between there. Every other contraction, they were in there trying to turn him. So basically, this went on until about 4:00 AM at home. It was my first labor. I was in an extreme amount of pain and I just was exhausted. I felt like it wasn't going like I planned obviously. So anyway, we transferred to the hospital. That was about a 30-minute drive to the hospital which was not fun at all. It was the wee hours of the morning so we went in through the emergency room, got up to triage, and I think I got my epidural within 45 minutes to an hour and just from what I remember, that was a very intense hour. I just remember thinking, What the heck? This is not how childbirth should be. Anyway, so I got my epidural. I labored with an epidural for a few hours and they started me on Pitocin so epidural, Pitocin– Meagan: The usual. Emily: Yeah. Nothing was really happening. They were doing Spinning Babies with the peanut ball and the bed to try to get him positioned better. Long story short, we got to an 8 and this was probably gosh, almost 48 hours later that I got to an 8. The hospital where I birthed is very home-birth and transfer-friendly. I had midwives on staff there who cared for me. One of the midwives home birthed her babies too so that was cool to have her caring for me and understanding my mindset of wanting to birth at home and then obviously I wasn't at home anymore. But regardless, they were saying, my water hadn't broken for over 24 hours. They weren't concerned about that and I loved the evidence-based care there. I love that. But they did tell me, “You know, the way things are going, you could get to a 10. You could push for a couple of hours and end up in an emergency C-section.” It's almost like that verbiage right there was enough for me to be like, “This is it. Let's call it. Let's get the baby out. We want to meet our baby.” We were being surprised on the gender so we were very excited for this baby to get here. I went to 39+5 with him. 14:59 First C-sectionEmily: And so anyway, we called it and we did the C-section. I don't think– obviously the birth was traumatic for reasons like I explained, but the C-section wasn't awful. I didn't feel any tugging. It was a very pleasant Cesarean. They did delayed cord clamping, not traditional delayed clamping, but they waited for it to stop pulsing and cut it. They took him to the table and did all of the hospital things and then wrapped him all up and gave him to me. I was able to do skin-to-skin and nurse while they put me back together. Then they took him off to the nursery. I remember them asking, “Do you want your husband to go with him?” I'm like, “Yes.” I think it was just those little things. Those are the moments and tidbits that I think any mom who has experienced traumatic births thinks back on. I didn't get to touch him right away and I had all of these dreams. I wanted a water birth and my whole pregnancy, I was like, I'm going to pull this baby right up to my chest and nurse him and it's going to be beautiful. When you have that dream and then you get the most extreme opposite, I mean not to the fact that I was under general anesthesia and it was horrible, but in my mind, it was the complete opposite of what I wanted and it sucked. Anyway, so then we go back to recovery and I'm nursing him and everyone who has had a C-section listens to this podcast or most of them. You don't really feel a lot of pain until the second and third day when most everything wears off. It was just hard. It was a hard recovery. It was hard to hold him. He was almost 9 pounds. It was hard holding him. When you nurse a baby, they sit on your belly. It was just hard. I also struggled with vertigo and I got horrible vertigo on my last day at the hospital. I was throwing up which is awful after abdominal surgery and they gave me a pill to stop the vertigo. Then the lactation lady comes in and says, “Oh, that's a level 3 dry-you-up pill.” So then I'm into supply issues and it was just an awful, awful recovery. I hate saying that. I want to be positive, but it just was not fun then on top of that, I was doing triple feeds. I was nursing, then supplementing, and pumping. My milk really didn't come in for 3 weeks. I was very blessed. When it came in, it was in and I got over the dry-up. All in all, it wasn't great. 17:47 Second pregnancyEmily: Anyway, fast forward, I got pregnant 6 months later. It was not planned. I remember taking a shower and I have unscented face soap and I could smell it. I was like, Oh my gosh, no. I took a test and it was positive. The baby was asleep. He was asleep in his bassinet right by my bed and I went to my husband, “I'm pregnant.” My husband, I want to give a shoutout to husbands who are supportive and there. I could not ask for a better partner during labor, during births, and recoveries. He is right there. He is an amazing man, so I want to give a shoutout to him. But yeah, so then I'm pregnant again with a 6-month-old and I knew immediately I wanted to VBAC. I started to look for supportive providers and we were in Austin which you would think Austin has wonderful doctors. It is very progressive in the medical industry, but I was really struggling to find a provider who would accept me. A lot of midwives turned me away. Birth centers turned me away. Meagan: Was that because of the duration or just because you were a VBAC in general? Emily: It was the duration. Meagan: Okay. Emily: I should note that. My babies were 15 months apart. Most of the birth centers want you to be 12 months postpartum by the time you get pregnant and then OB offices are a hit-and-miss, I feel like, with any VBAC. But I found, for anyone who is local to central Texas, I found Austin Doulas I think it was what it was called. I called them and they gave me the name of an OB office. They assured me that all of the OBs on staff were very VBAC-friendly. I contacted them. I should note also that when I found out I was pregnant, I called my first midwife. I was like, “Listen.” I love my midwife. We connected on so many levels. I do think there were things done in labor that shouldn't have happened that catapulted me into the transfer and the C-section, but nonetheless, I loved her. I called her and I was like, “Hey, I would love to do my prenatal care with you and then maybe deliver at the hospital.” This is where my mindset was at the time. She basically told me that yes she could do my prenatal care but I would have to have a planned C-section at 39 weeks. At that point, I was like, Okay. I have learned enough in the little prep I had done in my first birth to know that was not necessary. So I go and she did schedule me for a growth scan because I did not know how far along I was. I ended up being almost 8 weeks pregnant by the time I did the growth scan. Anyway, so then I started my care at the OB office around 12 weeks. They were very supportive. I remember at one of my appointments, they gave me this sheet. It was a VBAC facts sheet and they had you initial every line on every item. It was very much saying that VBAC is safer than a repeat C-section for the right client. I told my husband, “Wow, this is great. I love this.” So we stayed there for a while. I know I shared in my notes I transferred care at 34 weeks. I feel like before I talk about that, I should say that at 6 months pregnant, we moved. 21:16 Moving and switching providersEmily: For anyone listening, unless you have to, I don't recommend that especially with a 10-month-old. I think he was 8 or 9 or 10 months at the time. It was a lot of work, but we were living in Austin. Austin is very busy. We didn't have any family around. Our friends were far. It was a good hour drive from any of our friends so we decided to move back to my husband's hometown where we had friends and family. It was just like we needed to go. As we know, the real estate market was in a really good position. I know it ebbs and flows but at the time, we were like, Now is a good time. Let's just do it.So anyway, we moved. I was 6 months pregnant when we moved and we continued care at my OB office in Austin. I was driving. I would take the baby to his grandma's and then I would drive into town, a 2-hour drive for these appointments. At this point, it felt so difficult for me to find care and we live in a small town. Now after the fact, it's hard to find supportive providers where we are without driving into Houston or Austin. So anyway, around 34 weeks, and this is probably silly on my part, but they stopped calling me a VBAC and started calling me a TOLAC, a trial of labor. Meagan: But they were calling you a VBAC prior. Emily: Yes. Yeah. We got closer and I think also when you've had midwifery care and you go to a traditional OB type of care, it's just worlds different. You get big and big and later and later in your pregnancy and you are hormonal. It was just like, I did not get the warm fuzzies. I was in and out in 5 minutes. I had to ask them to feel the belly to find the baby's positioning. I had a lot of trauma from the first birth about baby positioning. I worked very hard during this pregnancy to make sure I did everything that I could do to make sure this baby was in a good spot internally. So anyway, the appointments weren't great. They started calling me a TOLAC. They started telling me things I couldn't do in labor. They were talking about inductions at a certain time period and scheduled C-sections for X, Y, and Z. I told my husband, “Look, I know this is going to be expensive.” I prayed on it and I was like, I just feel like I need to switch. I should also note that I found this birth center when I was around 30 weeks pregnant and I was always like, Man, I wish I would have found them earlier. But they are extremely VBAC-supportive. For anyone in the Central Texas area, I cannot say more wonderful, amazing things about these women. They are Christian-based, very VBAC supportive, multiple VBAC supportive, wonderful success stories. They do breech births. Meagan: So good to know. Emily: Yeah. In my mind, I'm like, Oh gosh, with my last baby, positioning was hard. I know these women will be able to get this baby out. If the baby flips, I don't have to stress out about a repeat C-section. Blah, blah, blah. So I switched to them at 34 weeks and like I said, it was the most wonderful care. Everything you would want from a midwifery practice. Meagan: What was their group called again? Emily: They're called Dulce Birth and Wellness Center and they are in Killeen which if you are familiar with Texas, it's north of Austin in between Austin and Waco on 35. But yeah. I was driving to that so I was driving an hour and a half to my OB office. I started driving 2 hours to the birth center for appointments. For anyone who is scared to travel in to birth somewhere that you feel fully supported, comfortable, at home, yes it can be difficult, but it is so worth it and even though I didn't get my VBAC, I would have 1000% done it the same way that I did. 27:47 Going into laborEmily: So anyway, I'm with them at 34 weeks and I go into labor at literally 40 weeks on the dot at midnight on my due date. I was like, Wow, this baby is punctual. Meagan: Yeah. Emily: Yeah, so I started contractions around midnight. It wasn't active labor. I was in contact with the midwives throughout the night. Around 10:00 AM the next morning, my contractions were pretty steadily 10 minutes apart. My doula, I also had a VBAC-specific doula who works with the birth center pretty closely. She was turned to my point. I asked her, “Can you just be my point of contact?” She was like, “Yes.” So around 10:00 AM, my contractions were 10 minutes apart and they were like, “I think y'all should head in.” My husband was at a meeting 45 minutes from the house so he came home. We packed up. We had all of the birth center cooler food prepped. I was going to bring some beers for after the birth. I was ready. I was so excited.During this pregnancy, I prepared so much. I had chiropractic care. I had pelvic floor therapy once a week. I was doing the stretching, the exercises. I was doing breathwork. I was on it, on it, on it and I was so excited and I was so ready. I just knew that I could do this. So we drove in. I got adjusted as soon as we got into town because it's a 2-hour drive. We went to the chiropractor and got adjusted. We got a hotel so we could labor at the hotel for a while before we went in. I was talking to my doula and they were all like, “Go out to lunch. Have a good day in the city.” So we ate lunch, checked into the hotel, laid by the pool, went out to dinner, and that was really when we got to dinner. We walked into a Chinese buffet. I don't know why I thought that was a good idea. We got seated and I told my husband, “I can't. They are too intense to eat here.” So we went to a sandwich shop, ate some sandwiches and by the end of dinner, I was like, “Okay, we've got to get back to this hotel.” Things were picking up. They were 5 minutes apart at this point. We got to the hotel. Our doula comes over. Probably within 45 minutes, I was at 3 minutes apart. I remember thinking to myself, Oh my gosh, Emily. You're going to do this. Your labor is picking up. The contractions are how they should be. We packed up our bags. The birth center was 10 minutes away from the hotel and we went to the birth center. I was 3 minutes apart. I walked in and I think they got a new location since then, but regardless, the whole setting was just beautiful. Dimmed lights, we had a big birth suite with the pool, and bathroom. I labored and as soon as I got there, they welcomed me with open arms. They are just the sweetest ladies. Like I said, I would recommend this birth center a million times over to anyone even if you are not trying to VBAC. I labored in the shower for a while. That was nice. I had a birth ball in there. I was doing squats. Like I said, I was in a freaking good mindset. I was ready to have this baby. This baby was a surprise as well so I was excited. A surprise gender I should say. This baby was a surprise all around. So yeah, we labored in the shower for a little while then went back to the birth suite. I was in and out of the pool and the bed just doing whatever felt right which is another big reason that I wanted to switch because if you're birthing in a hospital, you're on a bed especially if you are a VBAC, you're strapped to a monitor. At least that's how they were going to do me. They weren't going to do the intermittent monitoring because of the VBAC.It was just a wonderful laboring experience. Contractions were picking up. They were starting to become not on top of each other yet, but I would say a minute apart. Meagan: They were a minute apart? Holy cow. That's on top of each other. Emily: When I tell my stories, my friends are just like, “Oh my gosh. You're just insane.” I'm like, I can't be the only one who labors like this who has had these types of births. Like I was sharing with you earlier, I just wanted to find similar stories because it's the similar stories that help you work through things in my opinion. So anyway, I got onto the toilet and they had the TENS unit on my back. That was okay. I had heard a lot of women. I listened to a natural birth podcast as well during this pregnancy and a lot of women were like, “The TENS unit was awesome.” Personally, it didn't do anything for me. We went back to the bed. My water broke naturally and that's when it was like contraction, contraction. It was no break at all. I guess I didn't know any of this, but they went and got Trevor, my husband and they were like, “The baby is coming. It's time.” They were like, “Okay, it's time to push.” I pushed forever. 33:20 Pushing for 5 hoursEmily: I was on the birth stool and I just kept pushing it felt like. I'd be like, you know you're in labor and you're unmedicated. You have choice words like, “Where is this baby? What's going on?” I had chosen not to get cervical checks because the last time, cervical checks just really messed with me mentally with progression and everything. Anyway, I was on the birth stool and I was pushing. It was nice. I was on the birth stool with the hanging thing from the ceiling. Meagan: Yeah, like a rebozo. Emily: Yes. Meagan: Were you having the urge to push? How did they feel like you knew?Emily: Yes. Meagan: Okay. Emily: And I'm sorry if my story is sporadic and all. Meagan: No, it's good. This is good. Emily: But yeah, I had the urge to push and I had really done a lot of practice of breathing. You hear these women, “Oh, I breathed my baby out.” Anyway, I was trying to breathe and finally, they were like, “Okay, I think it's time to push,” and I was like, “Okay, thank God. I'm ready.” So I pushed and my husband would tell me after the fact, “I mean, I was so excited. We were going to have this baby at a birth center.” He was like, “I could see this much of her head. She was coming.” Meagan: Oh, okay. Emily: Long story short, I pushed for 5 hours. I decided to get checked because I was like, What the heck is going on? I was fully dilated. I was practically crowning at this point, but she checked me and I had a cervical lip. I hadn't done a lot of research on that. I do know that sometimes they naturally push out of the way, but she had me do some different positions during contractions to get the lip to go away. Then finally, as a last resort, she tried to push it away during contractions and that was just so painful. I just remember it being so painful. I know you're unmedicated and you can feel everything. At that point, I was like, “Just give me the numbers. What are my chances to get this baby out here?” She was like, “Emily, I'm going to give you a 60/40.” At that point, I was like, “I need to transfer.” They were trying to get me to breathe through contractions and to not push because I was so swollen. It was like I couldn't. My body was just doing it and I had no control. 35:45 TransferringEmily: So to speed things up, we transferred to the hospital. It was the same hospital system which I was grateful for. That's St. David's in Austin. My first baby was born at Main. This baby was born at the North hospital, the women's center. They are very holistically minded, as much as you can be at hospitals. That transfer was a 50-minute drive so that was fun. I was like, Here we go again. Let's do this transfer. We busted into triage, guns hot. They knew I was coming. I got my epidural pretty quickly within 30 minutes. They had me push a couple of times then they checked me and they were like, “You're an 8.” I was like, Okay. Here we go again. Meagan: Swollen. Emily: Very swollen. I know I had probably regressed on the drive over just with everything going on. I'm trying to speed my story up so I can get to my thoughts and reflections on it, but basically, I labored at the hospital for a very long time. They started Pitocin. I know I keep saying long story short and it's just a long story, but they came in. The baby's heart rate wasn't doing well. They took my temperature. It was 103. Boom. I had an infection. They gave me Tylenol. It brought the fever down, then around 2:00 AM and this was two days later. I don't know with the timing how to explain it, but they were like, “It's time.” My midwife and my doula who came with me agreed. It was nice that I had that second opinion. I just was so upset. I was crying. My husband was crying just because he knew. I think he just knew how badly I wanted it and how hard we worked. Meagan: Yeah. Emily: Anyway, I met the surgeon and he was wonderful. He was like, “What do you want? I want to make sure this is done right.” He gave us everything we wanted. Delayed cord clamping, my doula was in there. She took photos and everything. 37:47 C-sectionEmily: The C-section wasn't great. I'm glad I had my doula in there. She was a VBA3C mama so she knew her stuff. I'm explaining, “I can feel tugging. I can feel this and that.” She was like, “That's normal.” I didn't feel that with my first C-section.Yeah, they pulled her out. She was a baby girl. She was freaking screaming bloody murder, nothing like my son. My husband had announced both babies. He said, “It's a girl,” and they let me touch her immediately. I just wanted to touch her and this is probably weird, but I feel like moms understand this. I wanted to touch her fresh out, blood and all. That's my baby. I was able to do that and they took her away. I had a really bad infection, chorio. They had to flush my uterus and my abdomen. I was on double antibiotics for three days in the hospital. They were having to– I call it stabbing. They stabbed the baby every day to check on her and it was tough. I had in my mind, “When did this infection start?” I didn't get checked until the very end. I don't know. Yeah. It was hard. When we were in the C-section, he was like, “Who did your last C-section?” In my mind, I'm like, That's a great question, why? “What's wrong?” He was like, “You have really bad adhesions.” He fixed everything up. He came and checked on me the next day. Long story short, I will birth at this hospital again. But it wasn't a healing Cesarean. It was tough. Again, the nursing, the pain. I feel like both times, I really struggled. I'm not saying I didn't bond with my babies, but I think the toughest part of my births were the postpartums. It's such a hard recovery. I feel like people who have never had a C-section before, they don't really understand. I'm not saying that vaginal births aren't difficult to recover from, but it's not full-blown abdominal surgery and then boom, caring for a new life. I couldn't hold the baby like I wanted to. I couldn't do the things I wanted that I dreamt so hard of when I was attempting this VBAC. This mentally was hard because it was like, boom. A double C-section. All I've ever wanted were hands-off, holistic births. That's why I struggled so much with the two C-sections. I don't want to knock anyone. I had very supportive friends and family, but the “at least you have healthy babies”. Yes, I know I am so blessed. I don't want to downplay that because I know a lot of women who don't get that, but it doesn't fix the birth and how awful it was. It was a tough C-section. I had incision issues, but I healed up and I was fine. I started scar work right away. I went to my pelvic floor therapist. She had me doing diaphragmatic breathing. I know I need to wrap up. So to kind of summarize, after my first C-section, I don't think I took the steps necessary to really heal myself with the scar work. I was petrified to touch my scar. I'm sure other people can relate to that. Then I was pregnant and I was like, Well, what's the point? It's stretching out anyway. 41:29 Tips for adhesionsEmily: To any mom who has just had a C-section or is preparing for a VBAC or a birth and you don't know if you are going to have a C-section, that scar work and that internal breathing, that pelvic floor is huge on your recovery. I learned so much about adhesions. Last time, it was the baby positioning. With this next baby, I'm going to be freaking out about adhesions. But yeah, it was tough. So my midwives, bless their hearts. They do a home visit 3 days post-birth. They drove all the way out to where we were to do a home visit. They brought us dinner and my midwife was saying, “Emily, I could not believe that that baby was not flying out of you. You have a great pelvis. Your contractions were so strong. Your pushes were strong. I just could not believe it.” She was like, “I think it was the adhesions.” I had never even heard about adhesions which is silly. Again, prepping on my part, why did I not know about that? But yeah, so that is what they think held her in. It was a baby girl. I don't know if I said that. Meagan: Adhesions, really, that's a really common side effect or I don't really know the right– it happens after a C-section. Sometimes it can happen more and we have really dense or many adhesions and then sometimes people have lower. That's why I love pelvic floor therapy and people like Ask Janette on Instagram because they do talk about that care early on and how important it is early on. So many people like you don't feel comfortable touching their C-section or their scar or they don't like looking at it or have a negative feeling when thinking about it so processing your birth can also help get to that next step of working through those adhesions. Emily: Yeah. I will say my second birth was much, looking back on my first birth, yeah it was kind of traumatic, but this second birth was tough. I was FaceTiming my friend in the hospital afterward just sobbing about the infection. I don't want to put this baby on antibiotics. I'm very holistically minded. The epidural and the Pitocin were a huge blow to me personally. I can't be the only one who feels that way and that has had to have two C-sections. 44:20 Hospital births are beautifulEmily: In summary, I really want to share this with listeners. From my first positive test in September 2021 to now, my views have changed drastically on the hospital system for the better. I didn't have an awful hospital experience. I think the trauma came from the extremities of my situation not getting what I wanted. It might seem selfish, but it's the truth. Anyway, I am very grateful. I am very, very grateful for conventional medicine. I don't know what would have happened with that first baby. He came out looking like he had been in a cage fight just beat up from whatever was going on in there and then my second baby with the infection and then myself, gosh. What a blessing that I didn't go septic. I'm very grateful for conventional medicine. I am grateful for that second C-section even though I am still struggling to process. I didn't want it, but to clean up the adhesions, to clean out the infection and all of that. But yeah, my views have changed drastically. I feel like I should share yes. I attempted a home birth. I don't want to call it failure. I didn't get my home birth. I didn't get my birth center birth. You know, I'm not done having babies. That's why VBAC is so important to me. Also, just pulling your baby out yourself, how cool. I want that so badly. I think I've wanted it from the get-go.My plan is I want to birth again at St. David's, at the women's center. Yeah, I will travel in to do that. I feel like also, I got to the point in my labors where I couldn't hold back pushing. I think it's important to note for any women to weigh your pros and cons of, Do I want to birth in a birth center? For me personally, I don't think that is a good option again. If I'm getting to the point where I can't breathe through contractions and I'm swelling, that's what modern medicine is there for. An epidural can calm you down and maybe get things going back on track. Between that, I told my sister-in-law, “I feel like God is working on my testimony through my births. I feel pulled by Him to share what I have gone through so other people know, yes. You may want a holistic pregnancy, a holistic birth, hands-off, do-it-yourself, midwifery, and that may not be in the cards. That's okay. Don't lose hope in the medical system. There are wonderful OBs. There are wonderful midwives who work in conjunction with hospitals and they know their stuff just as much as the holistic midwife does.” I think going in armed and ready and doing your research, not relying 100% on your provider to save the day is huge. But yeah, I just feel like that's important to note because I know the holistic community, I don't want to call it toxic, but you hear all these things like, “Oh, hospital births are bad. Epidural and Pitocin are so bad,” but it's not bad for everyone. I think that's something that needs to be shifted to where you have holistically minded medicine and conventional medicine working together. I feel like I'm the perfect example of how it didn't go as planned, but my views have changed on that and I am very grateful even though the births– I'm not trying to downplay it. I still struggle to come to terms with why. Why? It all goes back to that first birth. If I could have avoided that first C-section, what could I have done? But I did the best I could with what I knew at the time and what a blessing that I've learned as much as I have since then. I want to share that with other women who want that holistic birth. There's so much that you can be doing during pregnancy to set yourself up better than I did. Anyway, I'm rambling on and on. Meagan: No, you're just fine. The prep is really important and to know how to prep and all of the ways to prep and it's a lot. It's so much. It's so much for someone wanting to have a baby in general and then for VBAC moms, there is definitely this extra thing when it comes to preparing mentally, physically, emotionally, and all of the things. 49:09 All about transferringMeagan: I wanted to touch a little bit on transferring. If you are planning on a home birth or a birth center birth and it comes down to a potential transfer, one, what are some signs that we may need to transfer? For you, it was like, Okay. I just got this percentage. That, to me, was confirmation to transfer. You can have those questions. What are things looking like? Is this going to happen? What can we do? Is there something we can do? Sometimes in that holistic world with home birth and birth center, they may give Benadryl or they may have nitrous to help avoid the urge or whatever. They might have homeopathic stuff, I don't know what your location has, but there are things you can try and then sometimes you are like,  I don't know. We're going to go. Or maybe you want epidural relief or baby has been having some nonreassuring heart tones here and there and that's enough to make you want to transfer or for someone to want to transfer you. For first-time moms, I think NPR shares a little article and it says, “For first-time moms choosing home birth, up to 37% transfer to a hospital largely because the baby is unable to come out.” There is a lot of the time within this. I hear this and I'm like, why? Why are we not having babies come out? Sometimes I do feel like we push too early or we don't recognize a positional thing. So a lot of the time when there is a cervical lip, we might have a malpositioned head. I mean, literally ever so slightly that needs some help, but it's hard to know or there may be scarring or there may be something going on causing that lip to stay. Then, it can. It can swell so when people say, “Oh, you can't go backward.” Well, yeah. It can swell. You can get swelling which then closes. So transferring and getting an epidural or getting an epidural at that point even if you're in the hospital is a really great option for a lot of people because they want to avoid that urge to push causing more swelling. You just have to weigh out your pros and cons. They do point out that planned home births end up with fewer Cesareans. 53 births to 1,000 compared to 207 per 1000. This was in 2019. It's been a little bit. We'll include this in the show notes if you want to go give it read, but I think it also comes down to find the best location for you and then follow your heart. I love that you pointed out that hospital birth doesn't have to be bad. It's so true. There are so many beautiful hospital births. I've seen them personally as a doula. They don't have to be traumatic and they don't have to be crazy. Do your research. Find out the locations next to you and around you. I love that you mentioned that you traveled. Traveling is worth it if you find the right provider and right location that's going to help you feel supported and loved and guide you through. I am grateful that you shared both of your Cesarean stories. I am sorry that it didn't happen exactly how you wanted it to. It's so hard when you're like, The why. The why. Why did this happen? What could I have done? It reminds me of Julie's radical acceptance episode. I don't know if you've heard that, but it's so hard to not understand the why or take out the what if, but through these experiences, I think we learn and we grow and sometimes we have to let go of the why. I still don't know some of the why's that happened in my VBAC. It's frustrating and sometimes I find myself latching on and feeling very angry or frustrated or confused. It's so hard to have those feelings, but I think that we grow. We grow as individuals and I can see that you are growing. You also said that you changed perspectives which can be sometimes hard to do so you are. You're growing in the right directions. I hope that for your next births that whatever you decide to do, vaginal or a Cesarean, that they are a healing experience for you. Emily: Yeah. Well, I mean, like I said, I appreciate coming on so much. I just encourage everyone to listen to y'all even if you haven't had a C-section. Knowing what you can do to avoid it from the get-go is huge. Also, I feel like I should say that I found an OB close to where we live and I hear a lot of them say, “Well, if you would have just had a C-section because of a breech baby.” It's the trial of labors that turn people away from the VBA2Cs. “Your two C-sections were–” I already explained them, “and that's why you're not a good candidate for VBA2C.” You all have so many stories on here where people have failure to progress, small pelvis, you're too small, your babies are too big. This, that, or the other I don't feel are good reasons to just not attempt a VBAC if that's what you are wanting to do and that's where I have found myself is I'm trying to figure out what I want to do next because I already know the minute I find out I'm pregnant, people are going to be like, “No. No, no, no.” Meagan: Yeah. That is so hard. That is so hard. We'll include a blog, How to Process When Things Don't Go As Planned. We'll include the blog, Cesarean or VBAC: How to Decide to try and help anyone who is in your same boat and relating to at least have a starting point of how to go and what to do. I just really appreciate you. Congratulations on both of your babies. I am so grateful that you were here today and have a wonderful one. Emily: Thank you. You too.ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan's bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.Our Sponsors:* Check out Dr. Mom Butt Balm: drmombuttbalm.comSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Episode Summary This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Emily and Margaret talk about organizing against fascists while the Eye of Sauron is upon us. Emily breaks down the history of some far-right groups in the US as well as the history of opposition to them. She talks about how to organize against neo-Nazis, the interconnections of antifascism and transness, the perils of seeking asylum, and how to hunt Nazis and win. Guest Info Emily (she/her) can be found out in the world winning. Or, she can be found on Twitter @EmilyGorcenski or at www.emilygorcenski.com Host Info Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. Publisher Info This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. Transcript Live Like the World is Dying: Emily on Antifascist Organizing & Hunting Nazis Margaret: Hello and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcasts what feels like the end times. I'm when your host, Margaret Killjoy, and today I'm excited. I guess I say that every single time that I'm excited. But it's actually true. I really...I wouldn't interview people if I wasn't excited about it. Today, we're going to talk about antifascism. There's going to be a couple of weeks--I don't actually know what order they're gonna come out--And maybe you've already heard me talking about antifascism recently, but nothing feels more important in terms of community preparedness than stopping fascism. So, that's what we're going to talk about today. And today, we're going to talk with someone who was involved in organizing the counter protests in Charlottesville, the anti-Nazi side of Charlottesville, and has had to deal with the ramifications of that. And I think you'll get a lot out of it. But first, we're proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchists podcasts and here's a jingle from another show on the network da da duh da da. [humming a made up melody] Margaret: Alright, if you could introduce yourself with your name, your pronouns, and then I guess, a vague overview of who you are and why I had you on today. Emily: My name is Emily Gorcenski. She and her. And I am an activist from Charlottesville. I had called Charlottesville my home for about eight years before the infamous Unite the Right rally happened. And that sort of called me to anti- fascism. In the wake of all of that, I also started initiatives to digitally hunt Nazis and track them down, expose them, and understand how their networks operate, how their movements form and grow and evolve, and have been involved in sort of organizing against fascism for the last several years. Margaret: Awesome. This is going to be good stuff that we're going to talk about. Well, bad stuff, I suppose. So the Unite the Right rally, what was that? I mean? It's funny because it feels like it was either yesterday or 15 years ago. Emily: Yeah, both of those. It was both of those. Unite the Right was what a lot of people call "Charlottesville." It was the big neo-Nazi rally in August of 2017, August 11th and 12th to be precise, and it was one of several neo-Nazi rallies in Charlottesville. It was the biggest and got the most news coverage. During that summer...Locally, we call it the "summer of hate." We don't like to use the word "Charlottesville" to describe the moment in time because we are still a community, but it was the moment that you saw everything from the neo-Nazis marching with the swastika, to the terror attack, to Donald Trump saying there were very fine people on both sides. Margaret:Yeah, kind of it feels like the moment that sort of kicked off the modern Nazi-right. Like it feels like their big coming out party, their gender reveal--if Nazis a gender. I don't know if it's...Nazi might not be a gender. I hate to disrespect people's gender, but that might be not on the list. And I don't know what color they would use for fireworks. But it... Okay, so it feels like their coming-out, right, like it was this thing. And I'm kind of curious what your take on it is because from where I'm at it seems like kind of a little different than stuff had gone before and a lot of bad things happened. A lot of very bad things happened and we can talk about some of those things. But, it felt like kind of this like aberration. Everyone was like--I mean, except the president the US--everyone was like, "Oh fuck, that's bad. We don't like this. This is bad when Nazis march down the street with torches chanting, 'Jews will not replace us.'" Clearly this is bad. But it feels like...it does feel like it kind of worked for them to kick them off into the mainstream. Like it. It doesn't feel Like their movement has shrink since then, I guess I will say. Emily: I think it's a complicated. Yeah, that's a complicated topic. If you look at the history of what led up to Unite the Right, there were a number of neo-Nazi rallies, sort of the ascendance of the alt-right throughout the country, right. So we had Richard Spencer growing in prominence and forming the alt-right movement. We had these groups like Identity Europa and Vanguard America, and Traditionalist Worker Party. And all of them were sort of, they're holding these rallies all over the country, right. There were some in Pikeville, and there are some in in Huntington Beach, California, and there was some in in Berkeley, right, the the sort of infamous battles of Berkeley. And all of these events were sort of in the months around, I don't know, anywhere from one month before or two months before to a year, year and a half before, right. And this is sort of aligned with the ascendance of Donald Trump, the sort of hard shift right in American politics, the reaction to a lot of things, including Obergefell, the court case that legalized gay marriage, and two terms of a black man being president, right, there are a lot of factors that kind of started to swirl together and formed this vortex of the alt-right. And what happened in Unite the right was, this was...it was almost like that moment in an orchestra where everything was tuning up beforehand, right? You know, there was like the smaller rallies, there was some violence, there were some, you know, definitely some things that are fairly scary, but it was isolated. And it was easy for people to ignore. What happened in Charlottesville, everything came together. And when we saw on the night of August 11th, at the University of Virginia, the Nazis marching with the torches and chanting, "You will not replace us," and eventually, "Jews will not replace us," all of that started to come together to be like that moment that the orchestra starts playing, right. And I think ironically, August 11th was also their high watermark. Because even though we have seen fascism grow in power since then, the dynamics are much more complicated because those groups that organized and participated in Unite the Right have essentially been destroyed and that movement has essentially been destroyed. And so what we see is actually something that's morphing. And I think that's a much more important thing to understand. Margaret: Okay, that makes sense. That does kind of--because I don't hear people talking about the alt-right anymore, right? And a lot of the individual groups that made up yeah Unite the Right like, died, like the part of the Lord of the Rings, where the orc grabs the barrel of dynamite and runs towards the wall and blows up--maybe that...I think that was Lord of the Rings--to bring down the wall or whatever. Like because we don't talk about the alt-right anymore. We talked about the right wing. And now but it does seem like the right wing is now doing the things that the alt-right used to do. Like, why is it--I'm asking this like half earnestly and half to get a an answer from you--but like, why is it we got rid of, we voted out the far right politician and now things are going further and further right, even though he's gone. Does that relate to all of this? Emily: I think I think it does, right? So it's all about movement and counter-movement. We defeated the alt-right. We killed the alt-right. The alt-right didn't die. It didn't die of its own accord. it was killed. it was killed through through antifascist organizing, it was killed through through criminal charges being brought against key players, it was killed through alt-right people committing mass shootings and the movement being unable to recruit, and it was killed through civil court cases even. So there was a number of factors that killed that movement, but Margaret: I take back my comparison the to the Lord of the Rings guy. Emily: The thing about the alt-right, though, is that it doesn't need to exist anymore. Its purpose was simply to set an anchor point that everything else can be sort of tied around, right? And so actually what you see if you look at, over time. at these dynamics, you know, 2015, 2016, 2017, you had the alt-right movement on its upswing. 2018 It started to die. And by 2020 It was pretty much gone. On sort of that sort of downswing of the alt-right, you had groups like the Proud Boys starting to grow in power. So the Proud Boys existed as early as 2016. They participated in Unite the Right, but they were not a major factor. They didn't really participate in the organizing. They were kind of on the fence of "Should we? Should we not?" But they we're there. Enrique Tarrio was there. Many Proud Boys organizers were there. As the alt-right died, the Proud Boys started to gain in prominence. And the difference between the Proud Boys and the alt-right, is that the Proud Boys had more of a sanitized image in the public eye, right? They were led by a Hispanic man. And they were...they had these members that were like Samoan and Asian and they didn't look like the, you know, dapper Nazi with the fascy haircut and all that stuff. And that kind of...what the alt-right did is it created a foil for the Proud Boys, right? So, it was very easy for everyone to decry the alt-right after they committed a terror attack, murdered Heather Heyer, and did all this awful stuff using images of swastikas and stuff like that, right? It was to set a sort of expectation so far removed from what was acceptable, that as long as you weren't that, as long as you weren't the worst possible thing, you were probably pretty okay. And so now you see the Proud Boys and they got really involved in the electoral politics, right, they were really close to Roger Stone, and they had a really big part in the the J6 [January 6th] insurrection and all of this stuff, right? So, you see this sort of like...it's like a three phase current, right, as one, as one movement starts to decline, another movement starts to pick up, and now the Proud Boys are in the decline now. They're they're facing trial. The trial is currently ongoing. I don't know how it will end up. And you see these other movements start to pick up, right, and this is now more mainstream. Now we have more politicians like Ron DeSantis and they're bringing this explicitly fascist agenda into legislatures and into sort of normie spaces, even though it's the same exact thread that has been going through the alt-right, the Proud Boys, etc, all the way to like the white power movements. It's a lot of the same philosophy, but it presents itself differently. And so even though we elected out Trump, we didn't get rid of that undercurrent. We just changed the face of it. Margaret: Okay, so if we have these three phases, and this is a very--I'm not really saying...is a very convincing argument--that we have these three phases. And I really like focusing on this idea that this the first wave of it, at least, was stopped by antifascism and through a diversity of tactics, both electoral and direct action tactics. I want to come back to that because I want to talk about what those tactics are, but I want to ask about with this current wave, what do you think are effective organizing strategies? Like what can stop this? Because it does seem probably, legally speaking, no one's gonna go fistfight DeSantis in the street, right? No one's going to out him because we know who he is. He lives at Florida's White House. I don't know how governors live. What? Yeah, what do we do? Emily: I think this is why the diversity of tactics is so important, right? Because every movement has a different face. And it has a different way of operating. So you need to be able to confront it with different techniques. And I think that what's important about like the current wave of fascist organizing is that there actually does exist a long activist history of opposing what they're doing, right? This movement is not actually new. Everything that like Ron DeSantis is doing, Ron DeSantis is essentially a product of a decade's long evangelical project to essentially turn America into a theocracy, a christo-fascist theocracy. And so this is like, if you look at the history of how these groups have organized and tried to introduce bills and stuff like that, there's actually a really strong sort of cadre of people who can oppose those things through the systematic means that we have, right? And so some of the direct action, yes, you can go out on the street and you can punch Nazis and that's great. You don't want to go out into the street and punch Ron DeSantis. That's probably going to end really, really, really badly for you. Margaret: I feel like there's different ways of defining the word "want." "Shouldn't," maybe. Emily: Yeah, maybe yes. So I think that what we need to do is we actually need to look to these groups that have been opposing the other sort of things that this group that these these fascists have been focusing on over the last several years, like homeschooling, and parental rights, and the opposition to gay marriage, and, you know, things like the Tebow bill, if you remember the Tebow bill, right? It was this this whole thing about like using federal funds to allow home schooled athletes to participate in public college sports. And all of this is coming from the same core, right, and there are people who have been opposing this for a long time quite successfully. And so I think that what's important is actually to understand how to organize with them and follow their leadership and to try to muster up the resources that they can use to effectively oppose these things in the forms where these things can effectively be opposed. Now, there may come a time when that opposition renders itself ineffective, either the bills pass, or, you know, these groups just don't have enough money to fight all of the bills or whatever it might be, there will probably come a time when that no longer works. And then we have to look at other means, right? Funding battles in the courts, right? Use that system against them, you can protest outside of these people's houses, right, you can protest outside of these offices that our that are responsible for, you know, some of these consulting firms that are like, funding these politicians, right you can do, there's a bunch of direct action campaigns that you can choose to organize around that don't necessarily need to be movement versus movement in the streets type of confrontation, there are a lot of tools in the toolkit. And it's really important for us to be fluent with as many of them as we can, right. Organize boycotts, strikes, right, all of that stuff. Margaret: How do people get involved in that kind of stuff? Like, I mean, this would be true, regardless of the tactic, like one of the main questions that I get asked a lot, and I'm always sort of the wrong person ask because I don't have blanket answers and I can't necessarily speak to individuals and also I'm just not an organizer. If people say like, "Well, how do I get involved?" and whether it's how do I get involved in the groups that are fighting Nazis or doxing Nazis, or whatever, but also, how do you find the sorts of organizations that are fighting these bills? How do you? Yeah, how do you do it? Emily: Yeah, I think that the most important thing is to connect with your local community and see who's been organizing in your local community because they usually know the best, right. And even if they're not the ones that are opposing these things, they usually know who is and how to oppose it and stuff like that, or they usually know what groups are out there. There's also a lot of resources online, right. If you're opposed to like the hateful legislation that is being proposed and debated, there's like the Equality Network that tracks and, and lobbies against it and and they're different in each state--and some of the states are kind of mediocre, and some of them are actually pretty good--but they've been effective, right? And I think that what we forget is that what we're seeing now is not unique. It's barely even noteworthy compared to what we've seen over the last year. So right, there's like, 400 or so like anti-trans bills this year, right. But if you look at the last three years, there's been a thousand anti-LGBT bills that have been introduced, right? So, we know how to fight this stuff. And in these organizations that are putting themselves out there and raising funds and looking for volunteers and stuff like that have been showing leadership. Now, I don't always love equality, right? I don't the Equality Network, right. I love equality. But the Equality Network, right. I'm not always their biggest fan, right? If you don't know...like, you can start there and branch out. And I think that the most important thing is that a lot of people come to activism because they're upset with seeing something, they're hurt, they're feeling marginalized, they're feeling scared, and they feel like they need to do something. And that kind of gets bundled up with a feeling that nobody else is doing something. But it's not really true, right? There are people who are fighting these things. And the most important thing that you can do is actually just start with your local community, see who's doing what, go to your city council meetings, talk to your....you know, find your local Black Lives Matter chapter, find your local immigrant rights chapter, you know, whoever is fighting for....fighting against ICE, fighting against, you know, police violence, right? This exists in almost every community. And if it doesn't exist in your community, look at the neighboring community. Network with these people, because they have the leadership. Even if they're not fighting for the cause that you believe in directly, all of these causes are linked together and they will be able to help you. So that's the first step is just get to know people around you. Margaret: Well, it's good...that actually...you know, most of what we talked about on this show is preparedness, right, like how to store water and all that shit. And the number one thing in all of that is the same. It's literally the same. It's get to know your neighbors. And whether it's get to know your neighbors because you want to share water with them or get to know your neighbors because you want to know who is going to try and murder you as soon as it's legally allowed for them to murder you. getting to know the landscape of what's around you makes them a lot of sense to me. And it ties into something...Okay, so you're like talking about diversity of tactics often is used as this kind of like, way of saying, "Hey, more people should support more radical action." But it's worth also understanding that diversity of tactics also means like supporting action that like, isn't quite as radical seeming or as like revolutionary, like you might want in terms of just actually maintaining a decent platform from which to fight, right? It's like easier to fight for things when you're not in jail. It's easier to fight for things when you're not in the process of being forcibly detransitioned medically. And it's interesting because like, okay, earlier on, you talked about how one of the reasons that all this stuff came up is that people felt so aggrieved by the fact that we had two terms of a black president and we had gay marriage, you know, sanctified in law, or whatever. And it's funny, because in the crowds that I'm part of, two terms of a black president and gay marriage was like, so unimpressive. The left was like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah," right? Whereas meanwhile, I guess the right is, like frothing at the mouth that these things are happening, which makes me realize that they were a bigger deal all along, or something, you know, I don't know. Emily: Yeah, I think it's because the left is really good at judging situations as a...in their distance from where we want them to be. Right? So we judge things, as, you know, from how far are they from our ideal. The right doe opposite, right. They judge things as "How far is it from the norm," so things like gay marriage and a black president, those aren't really big things. Like a black president is not a big deal when they actually what you want to do is abolish the presidency, right? But if you're if you're a, you know, white Christian Evangelical that is a racist and, you know, maybe doesn't like openly support the Klan, but doesn't really denounce them either, right, like, that's a huge deal because you actually do believe in this notion that like white Christian men should be in charge of everything. And that means the presidency. And that means everything else, too. So, I think that part of what we have to do as organizers is actually try to look at where things are, and how our sort of political opponents are using change to drum up recruitment, and are using fear mongering and things like that, right. And we're so used to trying to judge based on the outcomes that we want that we miss that picture. Margaret: Now, I really liked that way of framing it. It's an interesting...do you think that relates to...there's there's sort of this cliche that the left will cast you out for one sin and the right will take you in for one virtue? Which I don't think is...doesn't have to be true, but... Emily: It doesn't have to. It doesn't have to be true. And it's not really true, right? Because there's much more complex dynamics on top of that. But I mean, it's really kind of like to same philosophy. Yeah, exactly. It's the right, well, if...they'll overlook a lot of failures if you can move the needle even one degree further, which is why you have things like fairly moderate, otherwise moderate politically women in the UK who are like, supporting the Proud Boys and these anti-trans issues, right? They're just like, "Oh, yeah, I don't care about the fact that you're basically a Nazi organization, as long as you also hate the trannies." Like, that's kind of how that is all working. Margaret: Yeah, and you have this thing that I wanted to be a bigger split than it was--although I think it's something worth holding on to--is that like, there's like Satanists and pagans throwing down alongside evangelical Christians because they're all Nazis together. And it like, it doesn't make any sense to me. I can't imagine--Well, it's hard to imagine being a Nazi period--but it's just like...You know, even like the rise of the Catholic right. I keep wanting to be like, "Y'all know that the evangelical right doesn't even think you're Christians. Like, they want to murder you too." That is the history of the United States. That is the history of large parts of Europe. Like, it's amazing who will decide the Nazis are on their side because they all hate the same people or whatever. Okay, so to tie this into the the trans thing, right? Both of us are in a book called No Pasarán on by Shane Burley, that you can go and get from wherever you get your books--this is really ad, this is a plug--and your piece in that talks about relating antifascism and transness. And when we talk about like a lot of the laws that are right now being challenged, a lot of the stuff that...currently, the Eye of Sauron seems to be on the trans community in particular. It's on lots of communities in particular, but like we're the ones in the news, even more than usual or something right now. I'm wondering if you kind of want to talk about antifascism and transness. And then we can kind of tie that back into this conversation. Emily: Yeah, sure. So the chapter I wrote is about looking at antifascism through the lens of transgender identity. And what I tried to do is to take a walk through the current day to the historical context and then back through to the current day of how fascist and far right movements have used trans people as scapegoats for a larger agenda, part of that agenda being hatred of other people, including hatred of the Jews, but also a power play, right? And I think part of the lesson of the chapter is that we need, we need to be much more careful and thoughtful in how we look at comparative analysis. Because there's sort of two schools of thought that are happening in the left, especially in social media discourse. One is, you know, you you sort of look at historical mapping, and you say, this is basically the same thing as this thing that happened in the past, right, like, the laws that are being passed against trans people now, it's like, just what happened in the Holocaust. And that's kind of a problematic comparison, right? But it's also, it's also like another thing where it's like, you also have people saying, "Oh, don't compare what like the bathroom bills are about to what happened during Jim Crow, because that's a problematic comparison," right? So these are two things, like two different perspectives. Or it's like, don't compare these two groups of people. And then another perspective is like, "Actually, these things are..." you know, because the first is like, "Don't compare these two, these two situations because, you know, people now don't have the same dynamics. There's not a racial element. There's not a history of slavery," for example, right? And the other school is kind of like, "Well, actually, you need to look at the causes. And you need to look at the factors that went into it." And I think that there's a little bit of both of these things that are going on, right. And so when we actually look at historically how trans people were targeted in the Holocaust and how gay people were targeted in the Holocaust--and they were. There were a lot of trans--what we would now, today, call transgender people--they didn't have those words back then and also they were speaking German--And, you know, and queer people. They were targeted in the Holocaust. But it's also impossible to separate the way that they were targeted from the anti-semitism, right. So a lot of trans people talk about, today, talk about like the raids and the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft [Institue for Sexual Science] in Tiergarten, Berlin. So, the Deutsche Studentenschaft, which was like kind of like the Proud Boys of its time, raided the archives of Magnus Hirschfeld, who is a sexual scientist at the time, and they burned those books and a lot of trans people love to focus on these images and say, "You know, these, these books were the archives of the Institute for Sexualwissenschaft, and it's partly true, right? But, it also erases a big part of that history because it wasn't only those books, it was also Jewish authors like Sigmund Freud. It was Carl Jung. It was Jewish scholars,and politicians, and philosophy. Margaret: So all of this homosexuality is all a Jewish plot to destroy the good German people? [said with dry sarcasm] Emily: Right. And if you actually look at the posters that the DST put up to recruit for what they were calling the aktion gegen den undeutschen Geist, the action against the un-German spirit. Their...one of their key like bold faced bullet points was "Our principle enemy is the Jew," and so what they were doing is they were using trans people as a way to attack Jews. It doesn't mean that trans people weren't attacked. What it means is that you have to recognize that, historically, there was an interconnection here. And so if when we're erasing that interconnection, we're losing out a big part of that history. And we're also losing out a big part of how we can fight against these movements. At the same time, when we, when we totally ignore these things, like when we say, "You know, don't compare the trans movement now to the civil rights struggle of before," we're missing out on how the right wing uses these arguments to recruit and to motivate, right. So yes, it's not true that trans people who are denied bathroom use now, they're not in the same position as black people were who were denied bathroom use during Jim Crow, right, but the arguments are very similar. The white Christians back then were saying "These black people are going to like go into the bathrooms and they're going to rape your women," right? They use the like the fragile virginity of the white American woman as this this sort of rallying cry to drum up support for their cause, which is very similar to the arguments that are being made against trans people now. So when we look at this sort of comparative analysis, we have to bring in sort of a two sided perspective. Margaret: Yeah, there's so much there. It's funny because my immediate instinct, and I don't know whether this comes from my position as a white American or something, is to...it would never occur to me to compare the bathroom bill to Jim Crow, right? That just, to me, seems like obvious that the foundation of slavery is so dramatic and so influential. When, as compared to when I think about being targeted by the Holocaust, you know, to me--and maybe it's just like, my Twitter brain or like constantly thinking about what people could say to undermine what I'm saying or find holes in it or whatever--to me, that feels like a not only a safer argument but a more logical argument because it's...I wouldn't compare what's happening to trans people as to what's happened to Jews in the Holocaust. I compare what happens to trans people, to what happened to trans people in the Holocaust. I can make that comparison. But I really, I think this is really useful, this thing that you're talking about because the way I've been talking about it lately, right, like a lot of the anti-trans stuff and the rhetoric right now on the not-far-right, but the middle right, is around trans athletes, right? Specifically, trans feminine people, participating in sports with other feminine people with similar levels of hormones and bone density and shit, or whatever. Whatever the fuck. And it's this wedge issue, right?. And if you take a step back--it's the reason I don't fucking discourse about that--is because it's a wedge issue. It is meant not to talk about trans people in sports but to use trans people in sports as to break off support for trans people in general from the rest of LGBT community with the eventual intention, I believe--I evade anything that seems conspiratorial, but this seems like the strategy that our enemies are taking--to then eventually, you weaken LGBT, you split them off. Homosexuality can be a larger wedge issue to start more and more just like basically dividing and conquering and, you know, with the eventual plan of making us no longer exist. Emily: Yeah, I don't think it's conspiracy, right, I think it's exactly true because they say so much. They say it like that. They say, "Let's split the T off of the LGB." I think that's absolutely true. And you're right, it is a wedge issue, it is a way to get us to fight amongst each other instead of fighting against them. At the same time, the answer to us fighting against each other, is actually to look outside of us and actually to go and seek the solidarity of other groups of people who are marginalized, right. And so I, like I'm really uncomfortable with some of the language. Like I've written about this, like, there's a big movement of like, "How do you apply for asylum?" right? I'm like, screaming at the top of my lungs, "Please do not do this." Because not only do you not understand how bad this process is for people who are actually seeking asylum--and you thinking that you're going to get some sort of preferential treatment to that is really problematic--but it will also ruin your life, and in ways that you don't yet know. And this is like that sort of, there's like a whiteness or an Americanness of the privilege to this, this thing that's being that's being promoted, right? And so I'm like really hesitant to embrace some of this catastrophizing language. Also, because we have seen stuff that is just as bad being done against people like immigrants at the southern border of the US, right, of Muslims during the early days of the Trump administration, right? We've seen this stuff, right. And what we should be doing is we should be banding together with solidarity with these groups and saying, "Look, it doesn't actually matter what our internal dramas are. What matters is that we must be united against this broader front, right? We have to unite against patriarchy, we have to unite against white supremacy, we have to unite against xenophobia, against anti-semitism, against Islamophobia, all of these things. And we have to, we have to come together, right. And so I'm a little uncomfortable with some of the things that have been sort of out there because it's such an internal focus on ourselves. And it's not really doing a great job at saying like, "Actually, you know, what, like, we've been saying, you know, 'First they came for the x...'" And we've been saying that about three different groups, four different groups over the last four years. At some point, you actually have to stop and think, "Actually, wait a second, I'm not the first. They were the first. And before them, or, you know, before them...before us, was them and before them was another group. Why don't we start building those connections? Why don't we start building those networks? Margaret: Right. Well, and that's actually why like, at the beginning, I was like, you know, the Eye of Sauron like currently on us, right? Like, it's not, it didn't start on us. We are not the primary....yeah, like, I guess I'm saying I agree with you. And then even in terms of when I think about the history of splitting up the movement and things like that, like I think about how the first thing that the Gay Liberation Front did after, in 1969, after Stonewall, you know, which was a very diverse crowd of different queer people fighting back against the repression as gay people, it was in this context of the late 60s in which all of these other struggles are happening. And the Gay Liberation Front, at least, and many other people, at least--whether because of their own intersectional marginalization or just out of having some awareness of history and present--worked together, right? Like the first actions of the Gay Liberation Front were to protest the Women's House of Detention where Afeni Shakur, Tupac Shakur's mother, was being held as part of the Panther 23 [Meant 21] trial, right. And the Gay Liberation Front, I don't think was even aware of Shakur's sexuality at this point--I don't actually know if she was at this point, it was around...I believe she had her realizations while she was in the Women's House of Detention--but they were doing that because they were part of the new left. They were part of...like, of course we roll with the Black Panthers, of course we work together with all of these other groups, all of these different marginalizations. And yeah, so in my mind, it's less like...yeah, rather than comparing ourselves one to one with other marginalized groups, yeah, we just need to be fucking working together. Emily: And I think it's also important, like, at the same time, that we don't...like the Eye of Sauron, as you said, it's on us now and it's going to look away. And it's probably going to look away pretty soon, right? The right wing doesn't have the attention span to stay focused on one thing for a long time, right. Like, over the last five years, I've been called a terrorist by a government organization of some sort at least four times, right? And I'm still hearing, I'm still walking free, right? I remember when Antifa was a terrorist organization that Donald Trump was going to like executive order in prisons all, right? I remember all of this stuff. And I've been through so much of this, right? This focus on the trans thing, it's going to go away and it's going to be on somebody else. And what we should be doing is actually preparing for supporting that group, whoever it goes on to next whether it's Muslims, whether it's immigrants, whether it's Asians, right, remember when it was the Asian hate, right? That was at the beginning of the pandemic. All of this stuff, right. It's going to be something else, pretty soon and we just need to be prepared for that. But at the same time, I think we also owe ourselves this look at history to look at how these groups have won and how they have succeeded, even in the face of these, you know, incredible odds, right? Because, we actually owe ourselves a little bit of joy and hope at the same time, right? You don't become an antifascist, because you like, are a cynic, right? antifascism is about creating a better future. Nobody goes out into the street and like maybe gets shot because they don't believe that they can create a better world. So we do need to think about this as a struggle but a struggle that we will win and a struggle that is going to, you know, lead to a better future at the end of the day. So, I think it's really important to like, keep that sort of focus in that perspective. Margaret: That makes sense to me. One thing, I kind of want to push back a little bit on is about the asylum thing, where--and maybe it's just because my standard is that I do not judge people on whether they choose to fight or whether they choose to go, right? Like, I'm a bit of a stay-and-fight person myself, right. But, I think that there's also this thing where I'm coming at this as an adult, right? Like, the state I'm in will probably pass a law this year that will make it illegal for me to go to the grocery store. It probably won't be used against me. And I can put on pants and pass as a weird looking cis man with bangs, you know? And, but like, I have the tools to navigate that, right? But, the children who can't access gender-affirming care or the adults in some states that will no longer be able to access gender-affirming care without breaking the law--and I do think that there is a difference between...I guess you don't seek asylum in Oregon, right. You just moved to Oregon. But, I think that the general...I dunno, frankly, I think that a lot of people should, if they're able to, keep their passports current. Like, I...go ahead. Emily: Absolutely. Like there's nothing wrong with with fleeing, right? Nobody has to fight. I moved to Germany because I had a Nazi that was trying to kill me and like there were multiple attempts on my life. Right. I was SWAT'd. There was all sorts of stuff. Yeah, there's nothing there's nothing shameful about fleeing. Asylum is a very specific word, however. It has a legal meaning and it means a specific thing and a lot of people...like, yes, keep your passports handy. But before you even think about moving overseas and requesting asylum, talk to people who have done this because there's a lot of options out there for how you can do this safely, and not request asylum. Because, the thing that a lot of trans folks who are not organizing in solidarity, or who have not yet organized in solidarity, let's just say, with immigrants with with refugees and stuff like that do not understand how bad this process is. If you apply for asylum in Europe, for example, like some people are like, "I'm gonna go to Europe" First of all, Europe will deny your claim, almost certainly. I'm not a lawyer. Not legal advice. But, they will almost surely deny your claim. But they will only deny after two years, maybe. During those two years, you have to live in a detention center, essentially...not a detention center. It's called an Arrival Center. But it's essentially a camp. You have four square meters to yourself. You cannot work. You cannot travel. You can't leave the city or the state that you're in. Right? The medical care is worse than the medical care that you'll get even under the laws that are being passed in the United States. The violence in those centers is off the charts horrible, right. And there are trans people who have tried to apply to asylum. There's a there's a case, that I am not going to name to the person, but this person went to Sweden and applied for asylum and spent like 16 or 18 months there, living on the equivalent of $6 a day. And at the end, her claim was denied and was deported. And now she can't even come back to Europe, most likely. So it's a really, it's a really dangerous thing. And I really want to stress this for anyone that's out there. Talk to people who can help with this because this is...the stuff that's going around is so dangerous that if you don't have an expert supporting you, it's going to ruin your life. Margaret: Okay, now that that makes a lot of sense. I was thinking of it mostly in the context of like, leaving the country versus the specifics of seeking asylum. Emily: It's way easier to move to Minneapolis than it is to move to Madrid. Margaret: Right. And there is kind of a like, "Where we'll stay safe" is a very blurry thing, right? It is unlikely, but not outside the realm of possibility that we'll see federal bans on various things in United States, depending on how power can move. But it's unlikely, right? And, but at the same time, it's like, "Oh, yeah, that place that everyone loves all the trans people, and no one thinks we're horrible monsters who are against the will of God," that place, you know, like, I mean, there are places that are better and worse, don't get me wrong. But okay, so I want to I want to change gears and talk about digitally hunting Nazis because I feel like that's something that you have some experience with, is that fair to say? Emily: I think that I'm a pretty decent Nazi Hunter. I've exposed a few. Margaret: What's, you know, cuz it's funny, because I think about like, Okay, we've talked about how the landscape has changed to where it's no longer doxing and holding physical space in cities as like the two primary...Well, they were never the primary, but they're certainly the most visible and some of the easiest to sort of get involved in in some weird way because you can just...you can't just go fight Nazis, right? It's not a good idea. You should have support networks and all that shit. But it is like...it's like the advantage of direct action, as you can imagine point A to point B fairly easily. But even though the landscape has changed, I feel like a lot of people....his, like, the grassroots Nazis still exist, right? And like, they still, like I have my Nazi doxers who occasionally remind me that they exist and things like that, you know? And like, so it still feels like there is still this territory. And I'm curious about what your experiences has been hunting Nazis, like, what are some of the...what are some of like, the wins, you've gotten out of that and some of the things that you've learned from doing that? Emily: I think that what really makes me proud when I do that work is when I get somebody out of the community that could have done harm to that community. And by exposing these folks and by helping a community defend itself, I think that's the greatest reward. So there's a young neo-Nazi, who with his 17 year old wife, lit a synagogue and fire in Indiana, and I did a lot of work tracking down his case and researching the documents. And in following his case, I found that he was recruited along with his wife into Identity Europa and found evidence of some of the people that recruited him and how they met and how they brought him into the network and her into the network and exposed this information. And as it turns out, this information helped connect to an online presence to a real name, and it turns out that this woman was running a stand in the Farmers Market in Bloomington, Indiana, and was just there in the community every day, and she was a neo-Nazi recruiter. And when the community found out, they mobilized and they organized and they work to get this woman kicked out and pushed out a farmers market and totally disrupted her ability to organize and recruit for that group. And I think for me, that's like the reward of sort of hunting Nazis and exposing them is that you actually get to help a community defend itself. I think the thing that I've learned from doing this is that it's fucking dangerous. Because, what you're doing is actually you're exposing people to shame. And the reason that this sort of--we can call it doxing--the way that this sort of doxing works is that it has to be bad enough for a person to be shamed out of their community, right. We don't do it to harass, we don't do it to intimidate. It's done to give people the tools to say, "I'm not willing to have this person in my midst. I'm not willing to employ them. I'm not willing to go to school. I'm not willing to work with them." Shame has to be a factor, right? And when you shame people, they can react, and they can come after you and yeah, that's why I had like an Atomwaffen hit squad tried to fly to Germany to assassinate me once, so I knew that was always a possibility. Margaret: Aw, that's exciting. Emily: Yeah, that was very strange. It was really strange when the Berlin police, like the Berlin polizei slid into my Twitter, DMs. That's 100% true story. I will show I will show you the DMs if you want some day. Margaret: No, I believe you. The interactions I've had with German police have all been incredibly authoritarian and incredibly polite. Those are the two...whatever, I've only been stopped by the German police twice. And both times, very polite, very stern. Emily: That's, the German dream, that that's Deutschland for you. Very authoritarian and very polite. Margaret: Which, you know, I have feelings about but yeah, it is what it is. I guess...Damn, okay. So wait, tell me more about this hit squad. Like what happened? Emily: Yeah. I don't exactly know what the motivation was. But I got a DM from the Berlin polizei. They were trying to find me. Because apparently--we think it was the CIA because the CIA is responsible for protecting Americans overseas--But somebody had, through whatever surveillance they had on Atomwaffen, the Atomic Division in English, whatever like surveillance they had on this group, they detected that these folks were flying overseas and had intentions to be in Germany and that they had intercepted chats apparently, saying that they're going to try to find me at a demo and stab me. Which is very funny, because I don't really go to demos in Berlin. But anyways, that was their plan. And I think I know who these folks are. They ended up getting arrested and sent to prison at some point, not for trying to murder me but for other things. Margaret: For being an Atomwaffen. So pretty...Yeah. Yeah. I don't feel like that group deter deserves to be pronounced properly in German because I feel like that's like what they want is to be like, "We're good, proper German Nazis," but there's just some fucking...I mean, obviously, I'm not trying to....Well it's interesting, I do want to diminish them and make fun of them, but at the same time, like, there's a weird balance here, where you kind of want to be like, "Oh, you dumb little assholes," you know? Well, not, while still accepting that they're a very serious threat in some ways. You know? Emily: I could always speak actual German around them. And watch them be dumbfounded. Margaret: Yeah. Okay, so one of the things that stands out from what you just said about all this stuff--besides the how complicated of strange times we're in where the CIA is stopping Nazis from murdering antifascists--is the fact that this recruiter was at the farmer's market instead of like...like when I was more actively involved in stuff, it was like metal shows, you know, it was this like, it was a very subcultural milieu, the the Nazi scene. And I feel like this like move to farmer's markets is like worth exploring and talking about, you know, you have the kind of like, the way I usually see it expressed is like the crunchy granola to Nazi pipeline and things like that. And like you talked about how, like homeschooling was like a big avenue. Yeah. Do you want to talk more about that just to the why they're at farmer's markets? Emily: I think it's, you know, there's so many different factions of the far-right. And one of them is sort of this traditionalist faction, right, there's a lot of like homesteading, and there's a lot of prepping, and there's a lot of like live off the land and be independent and have lots of white children and be pregnant and barefoot all the time. That's part of this sort of Christian, this this far-right, like, Christian sort of segment of the far right. And there's also like it's part of this white Christian sort of traditionalist second segment of the far-right. There's also like, Neo-pagan segments of the far-right that are similar. But yeah, I think that there's there's a lot of this like mythology, right? One of the essential elements of fascism is that what differentiates fascism from other far-right, authoritarian ideologies, is that Fascism is fundamentally around sort of this mythos of rebirth, right? So these these mythologies around like folkish culture and traditionalism, and the rebirth of like, return to like proper America, and like, when men were men and women were women and all of that stuff, right? Yeah, this is part of the mythology of it. And so the difference, like the shift between the skinhead Nazi to the traditionalist Nazi, it's as much a matter of ideology and aesthetic as it is the degree to which they understand and embrace those elements of the fascist belief, right? And I think it's dangerous because so much of American identity is also about nuclear family and home values, like you know, good old fashioned values and home cooking, and you know, doing things with your mom and your dad and your 2.7 kids and having a white picket fence, right. So much of American culture is wrapped up into that, fascists have realized that it's really easy to prey on that. That's why you have Nazis at the farmer's market. Margaret:Yeah. Makes me sad, but I get it. So what are what are we...we're coming up on an hour, and I'm kind of wondering what's the question I should have asked you? What else do you think? Do you have any, any final thoughts or any like, you know, rousing "How do we solve all of this?" not to put you in, not to give you an awkward question. Emily: I would have asked me about what it's like beyond the activism? Right, because I've actually kind of retired from the activism. And I think that a lot of my perspective now, is about what it feels like to be in the middle of this whole milieu of the shit. And then to walk away from it. Margaret: Yeah. Alright. What's that like? Emily: So I don't know. I think that there's a few years where like, I spent almost every day looking through Discord logs, doing alt-right research, tracking their cases. I was spending thousands of dollars on pacer fees, downloading and court documents and all this shit, right. And I would end my workday, and I would go home and I wouldn't play video games, I would start hunting Nazis. And I would wake up in the weekends and I would update my website where I tracked Nazis and I did this and this was my life. And it was a way of dealing with trauma. There was also a time, still today, probably a week doesn't go by that I don't see the torches from from the rally from August 11th, right? So that trauma is still very present. And it was a response to it was my way of coping with it and dealing with it. And then when the insurrection happened, I kind of saw that as a passing of the torch. The insurrection was the moment that the alt-right stopped being relevant and the Republican-right started being relevant in this discussion of "Extremism," right? And I realized pretty quickly that I wasn't going to...one, I wasn't going to be able to keep up with it and two, my work was done. My goal was always to try to give tools to mainstream journalists so that they could write more effectively about what we were seeing in the world from the position of an antifascist, right? antifascist often have a really antagonistic relationship with the media and for very good reasons. At the same time, if you don't have relationships with the media, nobody's going to tell your story to that forum for you. You have to have some sort of ability to work with these groups of people in order to help get your message out. With these reporters and stuff, right. And I feel like since 2016 up until 2021 there were a lot of folks that actually started to figure out how to write about the far-right. They're not always perfect at it, they don't always do a good job, they sometimes fail to credit and stuff like that. All of those things are annoying, but I think that they covered substantively a lot of this much better. And I decided to retire from public activism. And now that I stepped back, and I can look at this, and I'm not on Twitter day to day, and I'm not, you know, in every debate and having every argument, I can actually sort of zoom out and feel like I can have a much broader picture. And it helps helps with like my mental health. And I think that's actually...I think it's actually important to also take breaks from this work. Because if you're just in the day after day, you're going to be fucking miserable. And it's, and you're not going to be able to change anything, you're not going to fix anything if you don't give yourself breaks. Margaret: That makes a lot of sense to me. I feel like there's a lot of cycling in and out. And I don't know, I do think that there's a difference between...I think that sometimes people and you're not necessarily doing it here, but sometimes people refer to it as sort of like leaving a thing, right, and being like done with it. Or like, sometimes people burn out so hard that they're like, "Now I'm apolitical," or, "Now I don't care," or whatever. And I think there's a very big difference between like, "My time in the front line of this particular struggle is done. And now I'm in this like, support role where mostly I'm living my life," you know, and I feel like--and maybe I say that, because that's what I do, right? Like, I'm no longer in the streets to the degree that I was when I was younger. But and I actually think it's useful for people to see folks like you, who are no longer doing something full time but still still existing in this. Like, I don't know how to say this. But it's just like, I think it's useful for people to see that it's like, this isn't everything. This is not the entire life, one's entire life is not the struggle and things like that, you know? Emily: Yeah. And I think one, people are doing it better than I ever have done it. The people, the work that's being done now is such high quality, like the antifascist groups that are out there, they're so good at what they do that I'm embarrassed to even be in the same breath as them, right? They're so much better. They're so much more rigorous, they're so much more careful, they're' so much more impersonal egoless, right, that I like, stand in awe watching what they do. And I don't even want to consider myself part of that because they're just on another plane. I think that when I started this, we didn't have enough people doing the work. And I'm happy that I was able to contribute. And I think that that's my chapter of it. antifascism is shift work, right? You can't work in solid...like part of solidarity work is knowing when to step up and knowing when to step back. I'm still writing, you know, I think I know that not everyone agrees with some of my takes. My goal is not to get everyone to agree with me. Right? I think that's also something that I'm trying to take away getting away from Twitter, right, is I don't actually necessarily need to convince you or to sell you or to get you to agree with me. What I want to do is actually give you something to think about. And I want to try to give you a lot of tools to view a problem from a variety of perspectives, knowing that we're all on the same side. Right. And so, I don't know, I'm just sort of hoping that that I can add, if there's anything that I still have to add to this fight, it's that there's a little bit of to add depth and sort of dimensionality to it, rather than just being front lines, whether it's digital front lines or physical front lines, just to try to add some...to broaden the spectrum. Margaret: That makes sense. Yeah, go ahead. Emily: And also, just to kind of live a good life. Like I was targeted by Andy Ngo for how long....I was like...Seb Gorka once followed me on Twitter, right, while he was in the White House, you know. There was like, Milo Yiannopoulos was targeting me, right. I went through all of this stuff. I had Atomwaffen trying, you know, flying overseas and threatening to execute me and all this stuff. It's like...none of them succeeded. None. Like Chris Danwell spent, has spent five years trying to put me in jail and has never succeeded. These folks, they're not winning. I won. Yeah. And what allowed me to say that I won is I can close my laptop whenever I want, I can walk out the door, I can breathe free air. And even though I will face oppression in everything that I do because I'm not white and because I'm trans, I still had the freedom of that choice. And that is something that the fascists can never take away from me. And I think that that is an act of defiance and antifascism too. Margaret: That makes a lot of sense. And that feels like maybe a good note to end on. If people want to find more of your work, or in a nice way, if people want to follow you do or....I mean, it sounds like you...do you want people to find your work? And if so, how can they do so? Emily: Um, you can you can google my name. I still syndicate stuff through Twitter, right? So you'll still see the links and the stuff that I do when I post, right. So you can twitter @EmilyGorcenski, you can go to emilygorcenski.com and see what I'm posting and half of it is about my day job working in technology and half of it is about trans issues or antifascism or politics and half of it is shitposting. And I know that that's three halves. But I'm a mathematician, so I get to make the rules with numbers. And yeah, I think that, you know, I'm on Mastodon as well, but it sounds complicated. So just like Google my name and figure it out. Margaret: Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you so much for coming on. And keep winning. It makes me happy. Emily: Thank you for having me and keep doing what you're doing because I couldn't be winning if it weren't for people like you. Thanks. Margaret: Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, you got something out of it then well, the main thing to do is to think about how to be in solidarity with different groups when the Eye of Sauron passes upon each of us, because it does stay in motion for better and worse. You can also, if you like this podcast, tell people about it. You can tell people about it on the internet. You can tell people about it in real life. You can tell your dog about it. Kind of the only person I'd be able to tell about it right now. Hey, Rintrah, I like this podcast. Rintrah doesn't care. I recommend telling people. Animals are great but people are most of our listeners as far as I'm aware. I'm about to shout out Hoss the Dog. Shout out to Hoss the Dog, our like longest standing Patreon backer. If you want to support us as well as Hoss the Dog has supported us, you can go to patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. And there you will see that we put out new content every month that actually anyone can access for free at tangledwilderness.org But, if you want it mailed to your house support us there. And also you get a discount on everything we do in the store. You can also check out our other podcasts. At the moment...well, there might even be a new one by the time this comes out because I'm recording this a little bit before this one comes out--but at the moment, there's Anarcho Geek Power Hour, for people who hate cops and like movies. And there's Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness for the content that we put out as Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. That one comes out monthly. And I want to thank some of our backers. I want to thank Hoss the motherfucking Dog, who has been with us as a Patreon backer for years. Thank you Hoss, Michaiah, Chris, Sam, Kirk, Eleanor, Jenipher, Staro, Kat J., Chelsea, Dana, David, Nicole, Mikki, Paige, SJ, Shawn, Hunter, Theo, Boise Mutual Aid, Milica, Paparouna, Aly, Paige, Janice, Oxalis, and Jans. If you'd like to see your name on here, you can do it. You can even make it be a silly name that I have to say every time but not an offensive one because I wont do it, not even for money. Anyway, I hope you're doing as well as you can and I or one of the other hosts will see you next Friday. Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co

You can now buy this amazing book on amazon by clicking on this link: https://amzn.to/3lCFs4n Also you can buy the Peppa figurines on discounted price from the link below: https://amzn.to/3TvPLUF It is springtime. Grandpa Pig has made a chocolate egg hunt. Grandpa Pig: Is everybody ready? Peppa: No, Grandpa. Freddy Fox isn't here. [horn honks] Freddy: [barks] Hello, everyone. The children except Freddy: Hello, Freddy. Grandpa Pig: Ah. Mr. Fox. Are you staying? Mr. Fox: I wish I could. I loved egg hunts when I was a little lad. See you later, Freddy. [Freddy barks and Mr. Fox drives off] Grandpa Pig: Now, are we ready for the egg hunt? The children: [in unison] Yes, Grandpa Pig. Grandpa Pig: There are lots of chocolate eggs hidden in my garden. You must find them. Freddy: Easy. Grandpa Pig: [oinks] But be careful not to step on my little plants. Oh, it's so exciting in springtime to see these baby plants starting to grow. Peppa: We promise to be careful, Grandpa. Grandpa Pig: Very good. Off you go, then. [giggling] Grandpa Pig's chocolate egg hunt has begun. Granny Pig: Have you got time for a cup of tea, Grandpa Pig? Grandpa Pig: Ho, ho, yes. It will take them ages to find my eggs. I've hidden them very well. Peppa: Here's an egg. [oinks] Peppa has found a chocolate egg in a plant pot. Rebecca: Here's another egg. [squeaks] Rebecca Rabbit has found a chocolate egg hiding under a leafy bush. Emily: Hooray, an egg for me. [trumpets] Emily Elephant has found a chocolate egg in a branches of a tree. [sniffs] Freddy: I think I can smell chocolate. Freddy Fox has a very good sense of smell. Freddy: Yes. Freddy Fox has found a chocolate egg in the middle of the birdbath. [giggling] Peppa: Grandpa, Grandpa. We found the chocolate eggs. Emily: It was really fun. Rebecca: But it was a bit easy. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/funwithanayra/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/funwithanayra/support

About EmilyEmily Ruppe is a Solutions Engineer at Jeli.io whose greatest accomplishment was once being referred to as “the Bob Ross of incident reviews.” Previously Emily has written hundreds of status posts, incident timelines and analyses at SendGrid, and was a founding member of the Incident Command team at Twilio. She's written on human centered incident management and facilitating incident reviews. Emily believes the most important thing in both life and incidents is having enough snacks.Links Referenced: Jeli.io: https://jeli.io Twitter: https://twitter.com/themortalemily Howie Guide: https://www.jeli.io/howie/welcome TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: This episode is sponsored by our friends at Logicworks. Getting to the cloud is challenging enough for many places, especially maintaining security, resiliency, cost control, agility, etc, etc, etc. Things break, configurations drift, technology advances, and organizations, frankly, need to evolve. How can you get to the cloud faster and ensure you have the right team in place to maintain success over time? Day 2 matters. Work with a partner who gets it - Logicworks combines the cloud expertise and platform automation to customize solutions to meet your unique requirements. Get started by chatting with a cloud specialist today at snark.cloud/logicworks. That's snark.cloud/logicworksCorey: Cloud native just means you've got more components or microservices than anyone (even a mythical 10x engineer) can keep track of. With OpsLevel, you can build a catalog in minutes and forget needing that mythical 10x engineer. Now, you'll have a 10x service catalog to accompany your 10x service count. Visit OpsLevel.com to learn how easy it is to build and manage your service catalog. Connect to your git provider and you're off to the races with service import, repo ownership, tech docs, and more. Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. My guest today is Emily Ruppe, who's a solutions engineer over at Jeli.io, but her entire career has generally focused around incident management. So, I sort of view her as being my eternal nemesis, just because I like to cause problems by and large and then I make incidents for other people to wind up solving. Emily, thank you for joining me and agreeing to suffer my slings and arrows here.Emily: Yeah. Hey, I like causing problems too. I am a solutions engineer, but sometimes we like to call ourselves problems engineers. So.Corey: Yeah, I'm a problems architect is generally how I tend to view it. But doing the work, ah, one wonders. So, you are a Jeli, where as of this recording, you've been for a year now. And before that, you spent some time over at Twilio slash SendGrid—spoiler, it's kind of the same company, given the way acquisitions tend to work and all. And—Emily: Now, it is.Corey: Yeah. Oh, yeah. You were there during the acquisition.Emily: Mm-hm. Yes, they acquired me and that's why they bought SendGrid.Corey: Indeed. It's a good reason to acquire a company. That one person I want to bring in. Absolutely. So, you started with email and then effectively continued in that general direction, given the Twilio now has eaten that business whole. And that's where I started my career.The one thing I've learned about email systems is that they love to cause problems because it's either completely invisible and no one knows, or suddenly an email didn't go through and everyone's screaming at you. And there's no upside, only down. So, let me ask the obvious question I suspect I know the answer to here. What made you decide to get into incident management?Emily: [laugh]. Well, I joined SendGrid actually, I've, I love mess. I run towards problems. I'm someone who really enjoys that. My ADHD, I hyperfocus, incidents are like that perfect environment of just, like, all of the problems are laying themselves out right in front of you, the distraction is the focus. It's kind of a wonderful place where I really enjoy the flow of that.But I've started in customer support. I've been in technical support and customer—I used to work at the Apple Store, I worked at the Genius Bar for a long time, moved into technical support over the phone, and whenever things broke really bad, I really enjoyed that process and kind of getting involved in incidents. And I came, I was one of two weekend support people at SendGrid, came in during a time of change and growth. And everyone knows that growth, usually exponential growth, usually happens very smoothly and nothing breaks during that time. So… no, there was a lot of incidents.And because I was on the weekend, one of the only people on the weekend, I kind of had to very quickly find my way and learn when do I escalate this. How do I make the determination that this is something that is an incident? And you know, is this worth paging engineers that are on their weekend? And getting involved in incidents and being kind of a core communication between our customers and engineers.Corey: For those who might not have been involved in sufficiently scaled-out environments, that sounds counterintuitive, but one of the things that you learn—very often the hard way—has been that as you continue down the path of building a site out and scaling it, it stops being an issue relatively quickly of, “Is the site up or down?” And instead becomes a question of, “How up is it?” So, it's it doesn't sound obvious until you've lived it, but declaring what is an incident versus what isn't an incident is incredibly nuanced and it's not the sort of thing that lends itself to casual solutions. Because every time a customer gets an error, we should open an incident on that. Well, I've worked at companies that throw dozens of 500 errors every second at their scale. You will never hire enough people to solve that if you do an incident process on even 10% of them.Emily: Yeah. So, I mean, it actually became something that when you join Twilio, they have you create a project using Twilio's API to earn your track jacket, essentially. It's kind of like an onboarding thing. And as they absorbed SendGrid, we all did that onboarding process. And mine was a number for support people to text and it would ask them six questions and if they answered yes to more than two of them, it would text back, “Okay, maybe you should escalate this.”And the questions were pretty simple of, “Can emails be sent?” [laugh]. Can customers log into their website? Are you able to view this particular part of the website? Because it is—with email in particular, at SendGrid in particular—the bulk of it is the email API. So, like, the site being up or down was the easiest type of incident, the easiest thing to flex on because that's so much easier to see.Being able to determine, like, what percentage or what level, like, how many emails are not processing? Are they getting stuck or is this, like, the correct amount of things that should be bouncing because of IP reput—there's, like, a thousand different things. We had kind of this visualization of this mail pipeline that was just a mess of all of these different pipes kind of connected together. And mail could get stuck in a lot of different places, so it was a lot of spending time trying to find that and segwayed into project management. I was a QA for a little while doing QA work.Became a project manager and learned a lot about imposing process because you're supposed to and that sometimes imposing process on teams that are working well can actually destroy them [laugh]. So, I learned a lot of interesting things about process the hard way. And during all of that time that I was doing project management, I kind of accidentally started owning the incident response process because a lot of people left, I had been a part of the incident analysis group as well, and so I kind of became the sole owner of that. And when Twilio purchase SendGrid, I found out they were creating an incident commander team and I just reached out and said, “Here's all of SendGrids incident response stuff. We just created a new Slackbot, I just retrained the entire team on how to talk to each other and recognize when something might be an incident. Please don't rewrite all of this to be Twillio's response process.”And Terry, the person who was putting together that team said, “Excellent. You're going to be [laugh] welcome to Twilio Incident Command. This is your problem and it's a lot worse than you thought because here's all the rest of it.” So yeah, it was really interesting experience coming into technically the same company, but an entirely different company and finding out—like, really trying to learn and understand all of the differences, and you know, the different problems, the different organizational history, the, like, fascia that has been built up between some of these parts of the organization to understand why things are the way that they are within process. It's very interesting.And I kind of get to do it now as my job. I get to learn about the full organizational subtext of [laugh] all of these different companies to understand how incident response works, how incident analysis works, and maybe some of the whys. Like, what are the places where there was a very bad incident, so we put in very specific, very strange process pieces in order to navigate that, or teams that are difficult to work with, so we've built up interesting process around them. So yeah.Corey: It feels like that can almost become ossified if you're not careful because you wind up with a release process that's two thousand steps long, and each one of them is there to wind up avoiding a specific type of failure that had happened previously. And this gets into a world where, in so many cases, there needs to be a level of dynamism to how you wind up going about your work. It feels almost like companies have this idealized vision of the future where if they can distill every task that happens within the company down to a series of inputs and responses—scripts almost—you can either wind up replacing your staff with a bunch of folks who just work from a runbook and cost way less money or computers in the ultimate sense of things. But that's been teased for generations now and I have a very hard time seeing a path where you're ever going to be able to replace the contextually informed level of human judgment that, honestly, has fixed every incident I've ever seen.Emily: Yeah. The problem comes down to in my opinion, the fact that humans wrote this code, people with specific context and specific understanding of how the thing needs to work in a specific way and the shortcomings and limitations they have for the libraries they're using or the different things are trying to integrate in, a human being is who's writing the code. Code is not being written by computers, it's being written by people who have understanding and subtext. And so, when you have that code written and then maybe that person leaves or that person joins a different team and they focus and priorities on something else, there is still human subtests that exists within the services that have been written. We have it call in this specific way and timeout in this specific amount of time because when we were writing it, there was this ancient service that we had to integrate with.Like, there's always just these little pieces of we had to do things because we were people trying to make connections with lines of code. We're trying to connect a bunch of things to do some sort of task, and we have a human understanding of how to get from A to B, and probably if A computer wrote this code, it would work in an entirely different way, so in order to debug a problem, the humans usually need some sort of context, like, why did we do this the way that we did this? And I think it's a really interesting thing that we're finding that it is very hard to replace humans around computers, even though intellectually we think, like, this is all computers. But it's not. It's people convincing computers to do things that maybe they shouldn't necessarily be doing. Sometimes they're things that computers shouldn't be doing, maybe, but a lot of the times, it's kind of a miracle [laugh] that any of these things continue to work on it on a given basis. And I think that it's very interesting when we, I think, we think that we can take people out of it.Corey: The problem I keep running into though, the more I think about this and the more I see it out there is I don't think that it necessarily did incident management any favors when it was originally cast as the idea of blamelessness and blameless postmortems. Just because it seems an awful lot to me like the people who are the most advocate champions of approaching things from a blameless perspective and having a blameless culture are the people who would otherwise have been blamed themselves. So, it really kind of feels on some broader level, like, “Oh, was this entire movement really just about being self-serving so that people don't themselves get in trouble?” Because if you're not going to blame no one, you're going to blame me instead. I think that, on some level, set up a framing that was not usually helpful for folks with only a limited understanding of what the incident lifecycle looks like.Emily: Mmm. Yeah, I think we've evolved, right? I think, from the blameless, I think there was good intentions there, but I think that we actually missed the really big part of that boat that a lot of folks glossed over because then, as it is now, it's a little bit harder to sell. When we're talking about being blameless, we have to talk about circumventing blame in order to get people to talk candidly about their experiences. And really, it's less about blaming someone and what they've done because we as humans blame—there's a great Brené Brown talk that she gives, I think it's a TED talk about blame and how we as humans cannot physically avoid blaming, placing blame on things.It's about understanding where that's coming from, and working through it that is actually how we grow. And I think that we're starting to kind of shift into this more blame-aware culture. But I think the hard pill to swallow about blamelessness is that we actually need to talk about the way that this stuff makes us feel as people. Like feelings, like emotions [laugh]. Talk about emotions during a technical incident review is not really an easy thing to get some tech executives to swallow.Or even engineers. There's a lot of engineers who are just kind of like, “Why do you care about how I felt about this problem?” But in reality, you can't measure emotions as easily as you can measure Mean Time to Resolution. But Mean Time to Resolution is impacted really heavily by, like, were we freaking out? Did we feel like we had absolutely no idea what we were trying to solve, or did we understand this problem, and we were confident that we could solve it; we just couldn't find the specific place where this bug was happening. All of that is really interesting and important context about how we work together and how our processes work for us, but it's hard because we have to talk about our feelings.Corey: I think that you're onto something here because I look back at the key outages that really define my perspective on things over the course of my career, and most of the early ones were beset by a sense of panic of am I going to get fired for this? Because at the time, I was firmly convinced that well, root cause is me. I am the person that did the thing that blew up production. And while I am certainly not blameless in some of those things, I was never setting out with an intent to wind up tiering things down. So, it was not that I was a bad actor subverting internal controls because, in many companies, you don't need that level of rigor.This was a combination of factors that made it easy or possible to wind up tiering things down when I did not mean to. So, there were absolutely systemic issues there. But I still remember that rising tide of panic. Like, should I be focused on getting the site backup or updating my resume? Which of these is going to be the better longer-term outcome? And now that I've been in this industry long enough and I've seen enough of these, it's, you almost don't feel the blood pressure rise anymore when you wind up having something gets panicky. But it takes time and nuance to get there.Emily: Yeah. Well, and it's also, in order to best understand how you got in that situation, like, were you willing to tell people that you were absolutely panicked? Would you have felt comfortable, like, if someone was saying like, “Okay, so what happened? How did—walk me through what you were experiencing?” Would you have said like, “I was scared out of my goddamn mind?”Were you absolutely panicking or did you feel like you had some, like, grasping at some straws? Like, where were you? Because uncovering that for the person who is experiencing that in the issue, in the incident can help understand, what resources did they feel like they knew where to go to. Or where did they go to? Like, what resource did they decide in the middle of this panicked haze to grasp for? Is that something that we should start using as, “Hey, if it's your first time on call, this is a great thing to pull into,” because that's where instinctively you went?Like, there's so much that we can learn from the people who are experiencing [laugh] this massive amount of panic during the incident. But sometimes we will, if we're being quote-unquote, “Blameless,” gloss over your entire, like, your involvement in that entirely. Because we don't want to blame Corey for this thing happening. Instead, we'll say, “An engineer made a decision and that's fine. We'll move past that.” But there's so much wealth of information there.Corey: Well, I wound up in postmortems later when I ran teams, I said, “Okay, so an engineer made a mistake.” It's like, “Well, hang on. There's always more to it than that”—Emily: Uh-huh.Corey: —“Because we don't hire malicious people and the people we have are competent for their role.” So, that goes a bit beyond that. We will never get into a scenario people do not make mistakes in a variety of different ways. So, that's not a helpful framing, it's a question of what—if they made a mistake, sure, what was it that brought them to that place because that's where it gets really interesting. The problem is when you're trying to figure out in a business context why a customer is super upset—if they're a major partner, for example—and there's a sense of, “All right, we're looking for a sacrificial lamb or someone that we can blame for this because we tend to think in relatively straight lines.”And in those scenarios, often, a nuanced understanding of the systemic failure modes within your organization that might wind up being useful in the mid to long-term are not helpful for the crisis there. So, trying to stuff too much into a given incident response might be a symptom there. I'm thinking of one or two incidents in the course of my later career that really had that stink to them, for lack of a better term. What's your take on the idea?Emily: I've been in a lot of incidents where it's the desire to be able to point and say a person made this mistake is high, it's definitely something that the, “organization”—and I put the organization in quotes there—and say technical leadership, or maybe PR or the comms team said like, “We're going to say, like, a person made this mistake,” when in reality, I mean, nine times out of ten, calling it a mistake is hindsight, right? Usually people—sometimes we know that we make a mistake and it's the recovery from that, that is response. But a lot of times we are making an informed decision, you know? An engineer has the information that they have available to them at the time and they're making an informed decision, and oh, no [laugh], it does not go as we planned, things in the system that we didn't fully understand are coexisting, it's a perfect storm of these events in order to lead to impact to this important customer.For me, I've been customer-facing for a very long time and I feel like from my observation, customers tend to—like if you say, like, “This person did something wrong,” versus, “We learned more about how the system works together and we understand how these kind of different pieces and mechanisms within our system are not necessarily single points of failure, but points at which they interact that we didn't understand could cause impact before, and now we have a better understanding of how our system works and we're making some changes to some pieces,” I feel like personally, as someone who has had to say that kind of stuff to customers a thousand times, saying, “It was a person who did this thing,” it shows so much less understanding of the event and understanding of the system than actually talking through the different components and different kind of contributing factors that were wrong. So, I feel like there's a lot of growth that we as an industry can could go from blaming things on an intern to actually saying, “No, we invested time and understanding how a single person could perform these actions that would lead to this impact, and now we have a deeper understanding of our system,” is in my opinion, builds a little bit more confidence from the customer side.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by Honeycomb. I'm not going to dance around the problem. Your. Engineers. Are. Burned. Out. They're tired from pagers waking them up at 2 am for something that could have waited until after their morning coffee. They're fed up with relying on two or three different “monitoring tools” that still require them to manually trudge through logs to decipher what might be wrong. Simply put, there's a better way. Observability tools like Honeycomb show you the patterns and outliers of how users experience your code in complex and unpredictable environments so you can spend less time firefighting and more time innovating. It's great for your business, great for your engineers, and, most importantly, great for your customers. Try FREE today at honeycomb.io/screaminginthecloud. That's honeycomb.io/screaminginthecloud.Corey: I think so much of this is—I mean, it gets back to your question to me that I sort of dodged was I willing to talk about how my emotional state in these moments? And yeah, I was visibly sweating and very nervous and I've always been relatively okay with calling out the fact that I'm not in a great place at the moment, and I'm panicking. And it wasn't helped in some cases by, in those early days, the CEO of the company standing over my shoulder, coming down from the upstairs building to know what was going on, and everything had broken. And in that case, I was only coming in to do mop-up I wasn't one of the factors contributing to this, at least not by a primary or secondary degree, and it still was incredibly stress-inducing. So, from that perspective, it feels odd.But you also talk about ‘we,' in the sense of as an industry, as a culture, and the rest. I'm going to push back on that a little bit because there are still companies today in the closing days of 2022 that are extraordinarily far behind where many of us are at the companies we work for. And they're still stuck in the relative Dark Ages technically, were, “Well, are VMs okay, or should we stay on bare metal?” Is still the era that they're in, let alone cloud, let alone containerization, let alone infrastructure as code, et cetera, et cetera. I'm unconvinced that they have meaningfully progressed on the interpersonal aspects of incident management when they've been effectively frozen in amber from a technical basis.Emily: Mmm, I don't think that's fair [laugh].Corey: No. Excellent. Let's talk about that.Emily: [laugh]. I think just because an organization is still, like, maybe in DCs and using hardware and maybe hasn't advanced so thoroughly within the technical aspect of things, that doesn't necessarily mean that they haven't adopted new—Corey: Ah, very fair. Let me add one point of clarification, then, on this because what I'm talking about here is the fact there are companies who are that far behind on a technical basis, they are not necessarily one and the same, too—Emily: Correct.Corey: Because you're using older technology, that means your processes are stuck in the past, too.Emily: Right.Corey: But rather, just as there are companies that are anxious on the technology basis, there are also companies who will be 20 years behind in learnings—Emily: Yes.Corey: —compared to how the more progressive folks have already internalized some of these things ages ago. Blamelessness is still in the future for them. They haven't gotten there yet.Emily: I mean, yeah, there's still places that are doing root cause analysis, that are doing the five whys. And I think that we're doing our best [laugh]. I mean, I think it really takes—that's a cultural change. A lot of the actual change in approach of incident analysis and incident response is a cultural change. And I can speak from firsthand experience that that's really hard to do, especially from the inside it's very hard to do.So luckily, with the role that I'm in now at Jeli.io, I get to kind of support those folks who are trying to champion a change like that internally. And right now, my perspective is just trying to generate as much material for those folks to send internally, to say like, “Hey, there's a better way. Hey, there's a different approach for this that can maybe get us around these things that are difficult.” I do think that there's this tendency—and I've used this analogy before—is for us to think that our junk drawers are better than somebody else's junk drawers.I see an organization as just a junk drawer, a drawer full of weird odds and ends and spilled glue and, like, a broken box of tacks. And when you pull out somebody else's junk drawer, you're like, “This is a mess. This is an absolute mess. How can anyone live like this?” But when you pull out your own junk drawer, like, I know there are 17 rubber bands in this drawer, somehow. I am going to just completely rifle through this drawer until I find those things that I know are in here.Just a difference of knowing where our mess is, knowing where the bodies are buried, or the skeletons are in each closet, whatever analogy works best. But I think that some organizations have this thought process that—by organizations, I mean, executive leadership organizations are not an entity with an opinion, they're made up of a bunch of individuals doing [laugh] the work that they need to do—but they think that their problems are harder or more unique than at other organizations. And so, it's a lot harder to kind of help them see that, yes, there is a very unique situation, the way that your people work together with their technology is unique to every single different organization, but it's not that those problems cannot be solved in new and different ways. Just because we've always done something in this way does not mean that is the way that is serving us the best in this moment. So, we can experiment and we can make some changes.Especially with process, especially with the human aspect of things of how we talk to each other during incidents and how we communicate externally during incidents. Those aren't hard-coded. We don't have to do a bunch of code reviews and make sure it's working with existing integrations to be able to make those changes. We can experiment with that kind of stuff and I really would like to try to encourage folks to do that even though it seems scary because incidents are… [unintelligible 00:24:33] people think they're scary. They're not. They're [unintelligible 00:24:35].Corey: They seem to be. For a lot of folks, they are. Let's not be too dismissive on that.Emily: But we were both talking about panic [laugh] and the panic that we have felt during incidents. And I don't want to dismiss that and say that it's not real. But I also think that we feel that way because we're worried about how we're going to be judged for our involvement in them. We're panicking because, “Oh no, we have contributed to this in some way, and the fact that I don't know what to do, or the fact that I did something is going to reflect poorly on me, or maybe I'm going to get fired.” And I think that the panic associated with incidents also very often has to do with the environment in which you are experiencing that incident and how that is going to be accepted and discussed. Are you going to be blamed regardless of how, quote-unquote, “Blameless,” your organization is?Corey: I wish there was a better awareness of a lot of these things, but I don't think that we are at a point yet where we're there.Emily: No.Corey: How does this map what you do, day-to-day over at Jeli.io?Emily: It is what I do every single day. So, I mean, I do a ton of different things. We're a very small startup, so I'm doing a lot, but the main thing that I'm doing is working with our customers to tackle these hurdles within each of their organizations. Our customers vary from very small organizations to very, very large organizations, and working with them to find how to make movement, how to sell this internally, sell this idea of let's talk about our incidents a little bit differently, let's maybe dial back some of the hard-coded automation that we're doing around response and change that to speaking to each other, as opposed to, we need 11 emails sent automatically upon the creation of an incident that will automatically map to these three PagerDuty schedules, and a lot more of it can be us working through the issue together and then talking about it afterwards, not just in reference to the root cause, but in how we interfaced: how did it go, how did response work, as well as how did we solve the problem of the technical problem that occurred?So, I kind of pinch myself. I feel very lucky that I get to work with a lot of different companies to understand these human aspects and the technical aspects of how to do these experiments and make some change within organizations to help make incidents easier. That's the whole feeling, right? We were talking about the panic. It doesn't need to be as hard as it feels, sometimes. And I think that it can be easier than we let ourselves think.Corey: That's a good way of framing it. It just feels on so many levels like this is one of the hardest areas to build a company in because you're not really talking about fixing technical, broken systems out there. You're talking about solving people problems. And I have some software that solves your people problems, I'm not sure if that's ever been true.Emily: Yeah, it's not the software that's going to solve the people problems. It's building the skills. A lot of what we do is we have software that helps you immensely in the analysis process and build out a story as opposed to just building out a timeline, trying to tell, kind of, the narrative of the incident because that's what works. Like anthropologically, we've been conveying information through folklore, through tales, telling tales of things that happened in order to help teach people lessons is kind of how we've—oral history has worked for [laugh] thousands of years. And we aren't better than that just because we have technology, so it's really about helping people uncover those things by using the technology we have: pulling in Slack transcripts, and PagerDuty alerts, and Zoom transcripts, and all of this different information that we have available to us, and help people tell that story and convey that story to the folks that were involved in it, as well as other peoples in your organization who might have similar things come up in the future.And that's how we learn. That's how we teach. But that's what we learn. I feel like there's a big difference—I'm understanding, there's a big difference between being taught something and learning something because you usually have to earn that knowledge when you learn it. You can be taught something a thousand times and then you've learned that once.And so, we're trying to use those moments that we actually learn it where we earn that hard-earned information through an incident and tell those stories and convey that, and our team—the solutions team—is in there, helping people build these skills, teaching people how to talk to each other [laugh] and really find out this information during incidents, not after them.Corey: I really want to thank you for being as generous with your time as you have been. And if people want to learn more, where's the best place to find you?Emily: Oh. I was going to say Twitter, but… [laugh].Corey: Yeah, that's a big open question these days, isn't it? Assuming it's still there by the time this episode airs, it might be a few days between now and then. Where should they find you on Twitter, with a big asterisk next to it?Emily: It's at @themortalemily. Which, I started this by saying I like mess and I'm someone who loves incidents, so I'll be on Twitter [laugh].Corey: We're there to watch it all burn.Emily: Oh, I feel terrible saying that. Actually, if any Twitter engineers are listening to this, someone is found that the TLS certificate is going to expire at the end of this year. Please check Twitter for where that TLS certificate lives so that you all can renew that. Also, Jeli.io, we have a blog that a lot of us write, our solutions team, we—and honestly a lot of us, we tend to hire folks who have a lot of experience in incident response and analysis.I've never been a solutions engineer before in my life, but I've done a lot of incident response. So, we put up a lot of stuff and our goal is to build resources that are available to folks who are trying to make these changes happen, who are in those organizations where they're still doing five whys, and RCAs, and are trying to convince people to experiment and change. We have our Howie Guide, which is available for free. It's ‘How We Got Here' which is, like, a full, free incident analysis guide and a lot of cool blogs and stuff there. So, if you can't find me on Twitter, we're writing… things… there [laugh].Corey: We will, of course, put links to all of that in the [show notes 00:30:46]. Thank you so much for your time today. It's appreciated.Emily: Thank you, Corey. This was great.Corey: Emily Ruppe, solutions engineer at Jeli.io. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn, and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this episode, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, along with an angry comment talking about how we've gotten it wrong and it is always someone's fault.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.

INTRODUCTION: Emily Dufton“An oracle ofknowledge on all things marijuana” - BostonHeraldI'm a drug historian and writer based near Washington,D.C. I received my BA from New York University and earned my Ph.D. in AmericanStudies from George Washington University. My first book, Grass Roots: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Marijuana inAmerica, traced over 50 years of cannabis activism and wasnamed one of “The8 Best Weed Books to Read Right Now” by RollingStone and one of “The Top 5Cannabis Books to Have In Your Personal Library” by 10buds.com.Since its publication,I've become a commentator on America's changing cannabisscene. I've appeared on CNN,the History Channel andNPR's BackStory with the American History Guys, and my writing has been featured on TIME, CNN,SmithsonianMagazine, and the WashingtonPost. I'm currentlyworking on my second book, Addiction,Inc.: Medication-Assisted Treatment and the War on Drugs (under contractwith the University of Chicago Press). It's the history of the development andcommercialization of the opioid addiction medication industry. In 2021 I won a LukasWork-in-Progress Award to help finance its writing. In 2022 I won a Robert B. SilversGrant. I'm deeply grateful for all the support.I'm also a podcasthost on the NewBooks Network, where I interview authors on new books about drugs,addiction and recovery. I live in the People's Republic of TakomaPark, Maryland, with my husband Dickson Mercerand our two children.  INCLUDED IN THIS EPISODE (But not limited to):  ·      A Look At The History Of Marijuana ·      Emily's Halloween Candy Advice·      De'Vannon's Experience With Hallucinogenics·      Great Grassroots Advice For Marijuana/Drug Activists ·      President Joe Biden's Major Moves For Marijuana·      The Inappropriate Relationship Between - Church + Media + Government·      Political Influences And Implications On Drugs·      The Balance Between Parents Rights And Kids Rights·      How Grassroots Organizations Impact Federal Policy·      Why We Shouldn't Assume Decriminalization Is Here To Stay  CONNECT WITH EMILY: Website: https://www.emilydufton.com/Grass Roots: https://www.emilydufton.com/grass-rootsLinkedIn: https://bit.ly/3ganBPgFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/emily.duftonInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/author_emily_dufton/Twitter: https://twitter.com/emily_duftonMedium: https://medium.com/@ebdufton   CONNECT WITH DE'VANNON: Website: https://www.SexDrugsAndJesus.comWebsite: https://www.DownUnderApparel.comYouTube: https://bit.ly/3daTqCMFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/SexDrugsAndJesus/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sexdrugsandjesuspodcast/Twitter: https://twitter.com/TabooTopixLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/devannonPinterest: https://www.pinterest.es/SexDrugsAndJesus/_saved/Email: DeVannon@SexDrugsAndJesus.com  DE'VANNON'S RECOMMENDATIONS: ·      Pray Away Documentary (NETFLIX)o  https://www.netflix.com/title/81040370o  TRAILER: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk_CqGVfxEs ·      OverviewBible (Jeffrey Kranz)o  https://overviewbible.como  https://www.youtube.com/c/OverviewBible ·      Hillsong: A Megachurch Exposed (Documentary)o  https://press.discoveryplus.com/lifestyle/discovery-announces-key-participants-featured-in-upcoming-expose-of-the-hillsong-church-controversy-hillsong-a-megachurch-exposed/ ·      Leaving Hillsong Podcast With Tanya Levino  https://leavinghillsong.podbean.com  ·      Upwork: https://www.upwork.com·      FreeUp: https://freeup.net VETERAN'S SERVICE ORGANIZATIONS ·      Disabled American Veterans (DAV): https://www.dav.org·      American Legion: https://www.legion.org ·      What The World Needs Now (Dionne Warwick): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfHAs9cdTqg INTERESTED IN PODCASTING OR BEING A GUEST?: ·      PodMatch is awesome! This application streamlines the process of finding guests for your show and also helps you find shows to be a guest on. The PodMatch Community is a part of this and that is where you can ask questions and get help from an entire network of people so that you save both money and time on your podcasting journey.https://podmatch.com/signup/devannon  TRANSCRIPT: [00:00:00]You're listening to the sex drugs and Jesus podcast, where we discuss whatever the fuck we want to! And yes, we can put sex and drugs and Jesus all in the same bed and still be all right at the end of the day. My name is De'Vannon and I'll be interviewing guests from every corner of this world as we dig into topics that are too risqué for the morning show, as we strive to help you understand what's really going on in your life.There is nothing off the table and we've got a lot to talk about. So let's dive right into this episode.De'Vannon: Emily Dufton is an author, podcast host, and a drug historian who has blessed the world with a phenomenal book, which is entitled Grass Roots. The rise and fall and rise of marijuana in America. This book offers phenomenal advice for marijuana slash drug activists and encourages us to not arrest on our laurels, assuming that drug decriminalization is here to stay.Now, I fell in love with Ms. Emily when I discovered her while [00:01:00] listening to the, the. To The ReidOut podcast hosted by the great Joy-Ann Reid over on msnbc, and it was a surreal delight to sit down and talk with Emily about what's going on with drugs right now, as well as what was going on with drugs back then.Also, would like everyone to please check out our YouTube channel because for this very special episode, Emily and I have dawned our Halloween costumes. She's a hot dog, and I'm Fred Flintstone, and you have got to check them out. Have a super safe Halloween everyone.Hello and happy Halloween everyone, and welcome to this very special edition of The Sex Drugs in Jesus podcast. I wish you all a very, very spooky weekend. I have with me the great. Multi talented, multifaceted, delicious, and nutritious. Emily din, How are you, girl? Emily: Oh my God, I'm feeling delicious and nutritious.Thank [00:02:00] you. I'm so happy to be here. Thank you for having me. I'm De'Vannon: so fucking lely. Like you look delicious and nutritious. So you're dressed as a hot dog. I am. So I'm curious and you told me, Previously that you're a hot dog every year, and so I've been wondering, so some years, are you like a vegan hot dog another year?You're like a Polish sausage. You switch up the bond, like how exactly does it go? Emily: Oh, the hot dog is in the eye of the beholder. I, that's how it is. I think, you know, I live in Tacoma Park, Maryland. It's known as the Berkeley of the East. I think many people see me as a tofu dog, as a beyond beyond.Hot dog. Others as DC adjacent, you know, were like, I could be a half smoke. I could be, I'm just I just wear this because it's a costume I found on the side of the street in Capitol Hill in DC where I was living at the time, and I thought, [00:03:00] This is amazing. Someone is just giving away a hot dog costume.I'm going to give it a home and I'm going to be a hot dog every year from now until it literally falls apart. And so that's why I'm a hot dog every year. De'Vannon: looks brand new. I love it. Emily: Thank you. It gets washed from time to time. De'Vannon: from time. Good time. Look, I love me a good wier girl. So , Emily: I could be, I could be the wier of your dreams.Who knows? Let's see. We can put the, the top up for a minute. See you. De'Vannon: It's great. That is one. Okay. All right. There y'all. So . So Emily is an author and a drug historian. She holds a PhD in American Studies from George Washington University. She is the author of a fabulous book called Grassroots, the Rise and Fall and Rise of Marijuana in America.Has to do with how, how, how, how, [00:04:00] how earnest hippies, frightened parents suffering patients and other ordinary Americans went to war over the marijuana. It was a little mm-hmm. description I had of that. Before we go much further, I wanna take a moment to give a shout out to Ms. Joy and re over at the readout on msnbc, because that is how I discovered.Oh wow. . I saw you on her podcast and then I heard what you had to say about your grassroots book, and then I fell in love with you and when I built up the courage and got, got, got more bodies of works under my belt, I sent you a message, you know, hoping and praying that you would respond and you did.And so, Emily: Paul touch my heart. I'm so happy to be here. And honestly, like I The idea that, that, oh, you would be at all nervous to talk to me, makes me just like ache a little bit on the inside. I'm so happy to talk to you and this is such an honor for me to [00:05:00] be here. We are. You wrote a book, We Are equals, We know, We know what it is to go into the, the pain cave of writing and, and try to create something intelligible and lengthy about complicated subjects.You know, so writer to writer, you and I are, we are. Eye to eye. I'm so happy to be here. Thank you. De'Vannon: The sausage and so, So I'm like a glittery version of Fred Flinstone because, As far as I'm concerned, we all know what Fred Freestone and Barney Rubble were really doing over in Bed Rock, Honey and Emily: Rock. I mean, come on.Yeah, it was right inDe'Vannon: Barney Rubs a total bottom. I know. It . So, So in your own words, I've given like my take on, is there anything you'd like to say about yourself, your own personal history or anything? Emily: Gosh. [00:06:00] Like, like about writing grassroots or about like what? Like about me as a human being. De'Vannon: Anything about you at all.Your favorite color, Favorite place you've traveled. We're gonna get into grassroots right after you. Tell us whatever you'd like to say. Just about yourself. Oh my at all since I've already given a little history, so you don't have to Oh, Emily: lovely. I'm a Piy, Sun Sagittarius, Rising Pisces Moon. I have two children a boy who's six and a little girl who's almost three.I'm working on my second book right now, which is about the history of medication assisted treatment for opioid use disorder, and I won a couple grants to fund the work, and it's been super awesome. And hopefully I'm gonna go to Switzerland either at the end of this year or the beginning of next year to compare addiction treatment programs over there with America's treatments.So those are, I think by far the most pertinent facts about me that everyone should, [00:07:00] should know. .De'Vannon: I think those are pretty damn good and relevant facts. the, the, the resurgence of healing with the drugs. Look, I just got back from Portland, Oregon dealing shrooms. And sell. So that is a cell aside, but, and what the fuck else I did?Mdm a I had never been shrooms before in my life and since I'm a veteran who suffers from ptsd, O C D and you know, all of these things and I saw on Netflix and the How to Change Your Mind documentary on PBS history of Mil illness. Documentary, how they've been using these hallucinogenics to help veterans.And I thought, Okay, I'm not gonna wait for this to be approved. I'm gonna fly my happy ass up here and do these shrooms. Man, it took seven grams for me to like fill anything. And apparently that's like a lot. And wow. I don't know, apparently besides the Emily: social work. Oh, that context. Yeah. So you did like an official, like, like clinical trial?It De'Vannon: wasn't a trial I paid for this. I [00:08:00] found a social worker who was willing to to do it in a psychiatric setting. Uhhuh, he feel like his woods are like an hour north of Portland into his cabin in the woods. So that, cuz he was like insistent that the environment be like, Right. And so it was like a guided assistant thing.It was, it was clinical, but I paid for it. I wasn't, I didn't wait for a trial Emily: to come. Totally, totally understood. That's awesome. How was it? Was it a good experience?De'Vannon: It follows me, so in a good way. So like if I smoke weed, it does not have an effect on me. I've tried different strands, different states, different times.I used to sell the hell out of it back in my drug dealing days, but I never fool with it too much. I used to sell shrooms. I never did 'em either. But I have discovered that if I do like a CBD gummy, I will be sitting around looking like EE from South Park. I feel that. But, so the, the C B D [00:09:00] does the same thing that the MDM A and the shrooms did.It quiet hit my mind. So I was expecting to have one of those like, really jerky experiences like I saw in the documentary, but that did not happen for me at all because my mind is always like this with the OCD and the PTSD and everything. Mm-hmm. . So for me, what those, what those hallucinogenics did was it just neutralized.And so I was just like, still just silent, quiet. And so I have found things that I used to, that I used to have anxiety over. I don't anymore. And so basically that peace, it, it attached itself to me in those, in that state of mind. Emily: I love that. So, so quieted your minds downed. How long did the quietness.De'Vannon: It's ongoing. So I was, while the drugs had their effect on me, okay, on this room, you know, the trees started to like move and the prints, you know, the pattern in the carpet started [00:10:00] dancing and doing his own thing and whatnot. So that was kind of freaky. But once that all settled down, , you know, you know, So it's not like it was, I, I have found, this has been like maybe three weeks ago that I was in Portland.It hasn't changed. You know, I still feel peace. It's like, and I experienced the same thing when I started experiment, the CBD gummies, which has only been like maybe two or three months ago. Mm-hmm. That I discovered that these gummies will have an impact on me. That's interesting. It's like, it's, it's a permanent thing with me.Emily: Wow. And have you had any kind of I don't know, like sessions or counseling or anything to kind of talk about like, But you know, sort of digesting the effects of it or like, maybe I don't even, I don't even know what the word is, but have, have you communicated at all with the guy who led the session since he, De'Vannon: He was, he is open to that and he wanted to schedule a follow up, but [00:11:00] I, and I can reach out to him if I want to, Emily, but I, I was ready, you know, like writing my blog and my books in the show and I see a, a social worker every week anyway.I see a licensed family marriage, the. A couple of times a month for me and my boyfriend, and then I see a hypno therapist once a month. And so I'm always professing and manifesting the change that I want. I went into it already. I didn't really embody to do too much handholding, and I'm all like, I'm ready to let this shit go.Like we talk about it, but it's already done . Emily: That's great. And this is the thing that allowed you to do that. Like you're just like, I just need that final push to get it out. Right. I love that there's a guy. Oh yeah. Sorry. Keep going. De'Vannon: You go, You're the guest girl. Oh, Emily: no. I'm just saying there's someone so I live right outside of DC in Tacoma Park, Maryland, and which I think I've said already but.There's this doctor who just moved here and [00:12:00] started a practice where he's doing exactly that. He's using Ketamine though. And so he's doing these like lead ketamine therapy sessions. And then afterwards he offers sessions to, I'm trying to remember like the verb he used. It wasn't like aggregate, but it was like to sort of like digest the experience.So you have this experience with ketamine that will hopefully release in the patient, the same kind of things that released in your experience. And then he would kind of provide the counseling or the, the therapy sessions to help sort of bring, make, make manifest the effects. And I thought, Oh my God, like, here it is.It's, it's, it's here. You know, like sort of this pro, this ability to access these drugs in a therapeutic. You know, private, like obviously like , you know, industrial way, but it's here. And God, that is like 10 years ago. I think experiences like yours are like the one that this doctor is offering would've been like [00:13:00] unimaginable.And yet now they're here and they're moving into all these communities. You know, it's not just Portland, Oregon, it's like here in, right outside of DC it's everywhere. And that to me is a totally fascinating aspect of like drug policy in the United States. It's wild. Totally. De'Vannon: I'm so happy to have it here too.But as you warn in your book grassroots that we're about to get into you know, these things tend to come and. At times. Yeah. Because this wasn't the first time that we were on the border of finding therapeutic uses for drugs before the drug war on drugs. Shut it down. Right. And so we're happy to have it back.And towards the end of the interview, I was most intrigued with the, the six lessons that you have for grassroots advocate for people at the end. And so I really gotta let you give that advice because I really feel like people need to hear that because people. Are feeling really grass rooty these days.It'll be . Emily: That's true. ,De'Vannon: it would be great for them to to to hear, hear [00:14:00] your advice so that they can be helped. Emily: I had to go get my copy. I haven't looked at that in a while. That's right. I forgot. I had like six little lessons in the back. Yeah. The one I remember, the Yes. Make your argument as sympathetic as possible was lesson one.Mm-hmm. . Because the more you center like a really sympathetic identity in the middle of your campaign, the more likely people are to. Feel bad for you and generate empathic warmth and support, right? Which is why you always see like puppies, like with their ribs exposed cuz they're starving in the rain, chained to a box and you're like, Please take my money to save the puppy.Lesson two. It's all about the money, which is exactly what we were talking about. Money buys influence. Lesson three, Be prepared to watch your progress disappear. Lesson four, don't rely too heavily on the White House. Lesson five, Respect your opposition and lesson six, keep a sense of perspective.Wow. I forgot I wrote these. That's so interesting. Yeah, [00:15:00] like, you know what's, Sorry, De'Vannon: keep going. No saying. So. We'll talk about those towards the end, cuz I thought those would be cute. Okay. So you can just kind of like, you know, peruse over that while we're going through. And and then of course people go by the books.So if you're a grassroots person and you wanna figure out. How to escape some pitfalls and things like that. I think this is a really good book and if you wanna have insight cause we're all also passionate about this, you know, this resurgence and everything. But I think that your book, you know, is like so evergreen, you know, in the, in the sense that, you know, it's an ongoing battle in this country because as you say, it's the rise, the fall, the rise, you know, it goes back and forth.There's no reason for us to be so arrogant as to assume that it can't fall again, because as you lay out in the book, every time we have. Arise for decriminalization. There's an opposing force that wants to fight that. Right. And so, and it was no different then. It's the same way now. So you wanted to give a warning though, for Halloween candy.I [00:16:00] wanted to be sure that we have time for that, because that was something you specifically requested. And so tell us your, this is, this is Emily's warning about this Halloween came to y'all. Oh Emily: my God. It's less of warning and just more of like a. I, I just every year, Well, this year in particular, I feel like there have been a lot of news stories about the rainbow colored fentanyl that apparently is going to show up in children's Halloween staes nationwide.And I love it because like, it just goes to show how. Drugs. The concept of drugs, right? When we talk about drugs, we're never just talking about drugs, right? We're always talking about larger issues and larger questions and larger ideas. And I feel like this, like the new fear of 2022, Halloween, 2022 of Fentanyl being dispersed widely in like Halloween candy is just, it's a really convenient vehicle for like political mud slinging, right?And. [00:17:00] You know, so the right can mud sling at the left by saying, Oh, it's the liberal's open border policies that is allowing Mexican cartels to funnel this rainbow colored fentanyl across the borders. And now it's gonna, now my kid's gonna eat it thinking it's a sweet tart and die. So that's how, like the right is mudslinging the left and then the left mud slings the right in return by saying, right.You're so stupid. No drug dealer is going to give away drugs for free. That is not how drug dealing works. . So there's just this and like, you know, so whenever we're talking about drugs, we're always talking about so much more than just drugs. Like there, like the concept of drugs is weighted with all of these other topics that we like, press upon it.And it becomes something that's like, kind of like a football, right? It's just always being thrown back and forth, you know? People are always going to use the concept of drugs or the concept of punishment or the concept of treatment as a political vehicle to achieve [00:18:00] other ends, right? Whether those are financial or moral or law enforcement, whatever.But I just feel like the Halloween candy saga that we go through every year is like kind of a good sort of visual entry point on to this topic that like, Drugs are always much more than just drugs, right? There are ways for us to discuss as Americans and as human beings, concepts that are obviously like much more complicated and oftentimes more complex than just like fentanyl or pot or whatever else itself.So I guess that's like my opening concept for conversation . De'Vannon: Yes, as a former drug dealer, I can attest to what Mr. Mrs. Dustin is saying is true. We don't to run around giving away drugs for free honey, especially not to little children who don't have money to come back and buy any once they get addicted.That's . Emily: It's, it is a profoundly bad marketing plan. No one [00:19:00] benefits from it. No one benefits . De'Vannon: But you know, just like, you know, as you state in your book You know, the fear mongering, you know, the fear mongering is like a big deal coming from the left. And so, I mean, coming from the right and so Emily: and sometimes the De'Vannon: left , it can, it can, mm-hmm.it pains me to say, but it's just so true. You know, Emily: sometimes we have to be honest about our own, you know, . De'Vannon: You know what? I don't, I don't, I don't want, I don't want a political party. I just wanna be like me. I just wanna be like me. I know. Whatever makes free to be you and me. What do you think about what Biden did though with the rolling back the the, the, the legal, the, the cases against people with the marijuana charges?Emily: I mean, it was really interesting, right? It was kind of came out in nowhere, right? He hadn't talked [00:20:00] much about. Marijuana policy at all on the campaign trail or during these first two years? I remember Kamala Harris during the Vice presidential debate was the very first presidential or vice presidential candidate to ever say during a debate, like, Yes, I support decriminalization.And she said that. So Kamala mentioned it, but like Biden never did. So he comes out and he makes this announcement and. Like it's immediate effect is going to be relatively small because the only marijuana convictions he's allowed to overturn are ones that he can control and he can only control federal convictions for possession.And that's not the, like that many it's about 6,500 nationally and it's, I don't know the number. No one would gave it. No one would give it. But it's also convictions for possession in DC because DC is federal. So that actually, that number might be more considerable than 6,500, but like I have not seen [00:21:00] a news outlet give it yet.But anyway, like that's pretty small compared to the millions of people who have been arrested. It's kind of a drop in the bucket. But what he also said was he was going to talk to eight, the Department of Health and HHS Health and Human. Services. He's going to talk to the FDA and he is going to talk to the DEA for the three federal agencies in charge of drug policy and talk about, and he wanted to talk about descheduling cannabis.So right now, pot is a schedule one drug and it's been a Schedule one drug since 1970. And, Being schedule one, that means that the federal government considers it to have no medical utility and a high risk for abuse, which is of course very silly. Since 1996, it became medical marijuana. So of course it has some medical utilities.Schedule one placement has been kind of nuts for at least since 1996. [00:22:00] He wants to talk about descheduling it, taking it outta the schedules completely. And if you deschedule a. That means it can become a legitimate legal marketplace item like cigarettes or alcohol. It could become a commercial product, and that is a really big decision.It's already kind of becoming a commercial product, but those industries are like very cottage still. Like there is a huge medical marijuana industry and there is a growing recreational cannabis industry, but there's still like, In the span of things, right, Like along the spectrum of, of products, it's still fairly small.So to deschedule it completely and turn it into a commercial product that would transform the cannabis industry in the United States and ultimately worldwide. So it's a huge decision. It's a huge, it's this, this the beginning of a huge conversation. So like right [00:23:00] after he made that announcement it was right before last weekend.People were like, I didn't really know what to make of it, honestly. But the more I've read, like things on Twitter from people I respect and some articles, the more I realize he's launching like a pretty huge conversation. And now would be the time for activists who are interested in creating, as, you know, equitable and kind.Fundamentally good natured and industry as possible, like now would be the time for them to really get involved because, you know, conversations about, about descheduling are happening and those are, those are important. And you know, the time to influence the marketplaces now cuz it's starting to take shape, which is crazy.I mean, it's like the same thing we were talking about before where like now you can go someplace and have like ketamine treatment, like these things are available. So it's time to figure out what, like we actually want the industry to look. De'Vannon: [00:24:00] Hell yeah. Something to tap into that energy and push it forward.I feel you on that. So, so, so in your book, you, you take us from like prohibition back in the first part of the last century, you know, all the way up to the day and I thought it was very artfully done. So I wanted to read a little excerpt about about the way. Marijuana was viewed back then from way back in 1917 from, from your book, if I may.And so those said, the 1917 report from the Treasury Department noted that in Texas only Mexicans and sometimes Negroes and lower class whites smoked the marijuana for pleasure and warned that that drug crazed minorities could harm or assault upper class white women. I felt like this, you know, that sort of thinking still informs policy today and I felt like when movies like The Terrible [00:25:00]Truth and Reefer Madness, which you mentioned, the book came out, I felt like that was like media's way of locking arms with the government and echoing what they're saying.And you don't really get into too religion deeply. But I feel like the church also. Touched and agreed. Yes. Emily: So, so the church was responsible for paying for the production of the movie Reef for Madness. I don't which church it, it was, I don't remember, but it was funded by Evangelical Christians. There you go.There's your connection. Mm-hmm. . De'Vannon: And see, I don't know, like, I, I hate the fact that the church. I would've rather the church stand up and say, You know what? It's not for the government to enforce morality because God is not forced. He's always gave the children of Israel a choice. He never came down here and mandated things in the way that we're trying to mandate them.So why don't we back off and leave this whole morality [00:26:00] thing to the church instead? The church was like, Well, we like to control people. The government likes to control people, so why don't we see if we can control them all together? Hmm. So I Emily: collaborate. Oh my God, it's so true. And it's been so powerful, like for so long, for so long.But it's true, like can you legislate morality? I mean, like, that's just this eternal question and you know, you really, you really can't, you can't punish someone until they're good. It just doesn't work that way. You. De'Vannon: No, nobody responds to that. You know, our children don't. And I love that your kids are like, pretty much the same age as my two kids, which happen to be like Maine Coon mixed cats.You know, My oldest boys about is about to be six in March, and then my girl is threeOh, Emily: we have babies the same age. That's so funny. That's crazy. Wild. But it's true, like you can't make them be good through [00:27:00] fear or punishment like ever. Ever and . And then it just always makes things worse. It always makes things worse. And that's why like, I mean, that's why it's so hard oftentimes to have like rational discussions about things like drugs or religion because like people just get too emotionally involved and you kind of think like, you're gonna, you're gonna believe my way or I'm going to hurt you.Like I'm going to defend this to the point of violence. And it's just like, that's why I , some people get mad at me. Grassroots because they felt like I didn't take a firm enough stand, you know, either way. And some people also like seem to have a really hard, a hard, they seem to have some difficulty with differentiating between smoking pot and writing about pot as like a historical phenomenon.So like a lot of people just like make these really dumb jokes, like yeah, I bet you're using a lot. Grass when you're writing grassroots or whatever. And I was like, No. I was writing like a [00:28:00] deeply researched, like historical book based off of my PhD dissertation. Like, no, I wasn't high the whole time. Like, that's ridiculous.But people were upset with me because I wasn't taking firm enough stand. Like I wasn't coming out like very strongly as an activist for legalization or, or alternatively against it. I didn't make my, my political position clear enough. And I don't know if. Like in the same way you're saying like, Well who should legislate morality?You know, in the same way, I don't feel like history books necessarily have to be legislating morality, right? Like I don't feel like I needed to tell people what to believe. I just wanted to tell them what happened and how we got here. So that as things move forward and as we continue to watch this really like unique historical period evolve, we'll be more prepared to understand.The potential downsides that might occur or the potential benefits that might occur, and like try to maybe guide the process [00:29:00] more toward the benefits, like rather than the downsides. So it's, you know, I do feel like there's a real need to understand drugs in like a non-emotional, non hot take, non, like just understanding them as like a historical artifact where.Certain things have happened from 1917 to today to create the world we live in, and we should probably understand how we got here. And so I wrote a book about it, , and now we're talking about it. All right, , De'Vannon: just bring it full circle. I love it. And you're right, your book is very energetically neutral. It is very energetically like neutral.Yeah, I did pick up on that. And you know, most of you know historians, they just tell what happened and so I, you know, I was interviewing somebody else and I was, and he had gotten some reviews that kind of roughed his feathers and I was telling him, You know what, I'll tell you the same thing. Like Amazon and all these different book places don't.Perform mental health test [00:30:00] on people who go in there and leave reviews . So there's no tell on what you're gonna get, so Emily: please gimme the most recent report from your therapist before you post on this review. . Oh my God. The best review I got was someone was really mad that I was mean to Nancy Reagan, and they were like, it's not like she committed tax fraud.Nancy Reagan's not that bad. And I was like, Is that your bar? Like tax fraud? Or? So that was everyone else's reviews on Amazon are almost all from my friends, so those are all nice that Perfect. They're all the friends. I ask like, Please leave an Amazon review for my book. Thank you. De'Vannon: Hey, nothing like that inner circle chosen family, baby.Oh baby. That person commented on the tax fraud, though, probably commits tax fraud and they were projecting that. Oh my Emily: god. 100%. De'Vannon: Yeah. . So I wanted to talk about Atlanta 1976 because. [00:31:00] I felt like Miss, Miss Marsha Sard, and I have to admit when I read that name immediately, Andrew DeMar Shinard from Rent from the MusicalOh my God. It came to my mind and I had to go look it up. I was like, Is there a relation here today, tomorrow for me? What's going on ? So, but there is no relation. So it's, it's Emily: inside a gay boy. No, I can't unsee it. I can't unsee it. De'Vannon: and Atlanta especially. Cause my boyfriend is from Atlanta, you know, from that area.And so Hills, well todo neighborhood. Marsha is you know, she's walks into like her teens having this party and everyone's. you know, paring it up. Her and her husband go out fine, like the weed butts and everything like that. And, and then she goes run snitch to all the other parents because of course there was other teenage there.And we all know [00:32:00] snitches get stitches, y'all. And so what I documented was the parents' reactions usually that the parents' reactions ran the gamut from shock, confusion, indignation, concern, denial, and hostility. Now in the book, you, you know, this woman is like, Slated to be a Democrat. Mm-hmm. . And so that really, really shocked me.And and her, her emotions. I don't feel like those emotions have changed over the years. I feel like that's the same way people react to Dave. Would you agree? Emily: Yeah, I think, I think you're onto something there. Yeah. Like it, it was her, her politics are really interesting. So Keith, she goes by Keith, which again is kind of.You have to get, wrap your head around this woman, this like mom of three who goes by Keith. And then it's hard cuz I'm also writing about Keith Strop, the founder of Normal, the National Organization for the reform of marijuana laws, which are like, you know, going gangbusters at this time. [00:33:00]So there's a lot of Keith's, you know, so keep the Keiths straight in your mind.But so Keith Shart is this mom She has a PhD in British literature. She's not teaching, but her husband is at Emory, and so she's like home with these kids. So like I see her as being really smart. probably pretty bored, right? Being home with kids, like when you have a PhD and you're clearly like a life of the mind kind of person.Being home with little kids can be like really boring and you can have like maybe a lot of leftover energy. And so she throws this like backyard birthday party for her 13 year old daughter. And like the kids are acting weird and she's kind of freaking out and she sees like they're up in their bedroom, like looking out in the backyard, her and her husband and they see the lighters flicker in the bushes, but they assume it's cigarettes.But the kids are like really acting funny. And so once everybody leaves, they go into the backyard and they're searching around and they [00:34:00] find. Roaches. And they also find like, like alcohol containers, right? So the kids aren't just smoke smoking pot, they're, they're drinking too. , The scandal, the scandal 13, I mean 13 is young.Like for, like, I was not, I was not playing those games at 13, but I understand that my experience is not the experience of everyone. And, and now I'm like, as a mom, I'm kind of like, Oh, if I caught Henry doing that, like I'd be probably be pretty pissed. But but anyway, so she. She goes into like hardcore activist mode, like right away, you know, she was like, Boom.And she is buoyed by the concepts of. Second wave feminism that are like really prominent at the time where you do consciousness raising groups and you get together with people who are sharing your same experience and you talk about it, right? Because the personal is political and you try to figure out a way to change society for the better.Like that is very much like the kind of social [00:35:00] milu that shoe hard is coming from in, in 76 in Atlanta. Because remember, like Atlanta's pretty liberal at this time. Like Jimmy Carter is governor and he is running for president. You know, like it's the bicentennial. Everybody's like super patriotic, right?It's an interesting time. So she gets together with all the other parents and she's like, Our kids are smoking pot. This seems to be an issue like this. This. This is, this is something we should probably pay attention to. And she kind of blames it on the fact that for the past three years, more and more states had steadily been decriminalizing marijuana possession.So it started in Oregon in 73, but by 76, I think there were probably like,Probably like six, five or six states by that point that had decriminalized, right? Georgia wasn't one of them, but others did. And so there's this burgeoning drug paraphernalia industry, like basically just like today, this was happening in the mid, the early [00:36:00] 1970s where like. A semi-legal cannabis marketplace was taking shape in America.And when a marketplace builds and expands, more people tend to utilize it. So more people were using pot, more people were smoking pot, and then it was trickling down and it was getting to kids. So like Keith Shoe hard's, daughter 13 found some pot and was smoking it at her birthday party. And like that made shard really upset.So even though she was a Democrat and she was a liberal, She was really opposed to what the liberal agenda had pushed, which was decriminalization. So she starts basically a nationwide grassroots army of parents to overturn decriminalization laws and kind of stop the burgeoning paraphernalia industry.And it just so happens that in 1984 years later, when Ronald Reagan gets elected, he takes their concept. Nationalizes [00:37:00] it further and then turns it into federal policy. So it was the parent movement that gave us basically the entire concept of just say no. So yeah, the 1980s were birthed in the 1970s in Atlanta, Georgia in 1976.De'Vannon: Right. And right. Thank you for breaking that down so beautifully. And I, and I felt like from, from the way that you wrote, you really, really wanted people to know the importance that small community groups like this actually, the impact that they have on federal policy, not as, so that we don't undervalue this or underestimate.Totally. Emily: And so it's amazing. Well, when you tap into a zeitgeist like that, like, like what, what Shoe hard and other people in Atlanta tapped into was something that And ended up people were feeling nationwide. And that's the exact same thing that was happening with medical marijuana laws. And it's the exact same thing that's happening with legalization laws now.I mean, people are tapping into like it's a zeitgeist straight now. You know? Like more like I think Maryland, where I live is, I think we're [00:38:00] voting to legalize this. I think we're voting to legalize next month. Like it's movement, baby. It's movement. De'Vannon: May the force be with you? May Emily: the force be, I think it'll pass pretty easily.I think it'll pass pretty easily. Now it's just a matter of what the market will look like, what we'll actually do with it in the. Which is crazy. It's a De'Vannon: step. The thing that stood out to me about Mrs. Manas, was she, she, she kept saying like, it was like, for the children, you, the children, half of the children, you know, I'm getting like flashbacks to one division, you know, for Disney when they're, you know, her and vision, you know, Wanda Envision, you know, wanting to max him off.Yeah. Marvel, you know, I'm like, geeking out right now. But , they kept saying that thing for the children and there weren't any fucking children. Because she had, she had put 'em all to sleep, but she, I, I was like, Okay, I wonder if she asked the children what they want or was she just using them to enforce her agenda every time?I see like a [00:39:00] politician, especially like, I mean, you know, especially like the Republican and stuff like that, wanting to enact negative policies on behalf of veterans. For instance, me being a military veteran, I always, I'm like, I don't want you to do that. Like everything you're doing, I don't want you to do.You didn't ask me . So, but they're like, Our veterans wouldn't want my choice. Yeah. no. And so, I don't know. That stood out to me like right, like the children, but they don't. I don't know what to call that. What do you call that when people do that? Are they, are they calling themselves doing it in the name of righteousness?Are they getting, Now you're a parent now, so you have this feeling. Would you go and do something this adverse on behalf of your children without consulting their opinion FirstAnd I don't understand Emily: that they prefer that. Right. They would love to, they'd love to gimme their opinions. Right. But you know, I. I think you're to a really important question, right? Which is like, [00:40:00] where do the rights of children end and the rights of adults begin, right? So like when, when Keith, Shar, and every and everybody else in the parent movement is saying, Oh my God.We have to repeal decriminalization laws because of the children. Like do it for the children. The children are being harmed by these drugs. But then that transforms from like, we have to have these laws for the children to, We have to excessively punish. Adults for drug possession or dealing or whatever else excessively punish them.Like especially after the 1986 Drug Abuse Act, right? When you're getting mandatory minimums of 5, 10, 15 years when we're locking up millions of people for drug possession. Like where does the rights of children end And like the range of adults in and the pushback to that. But what about the children line of thought did finally start to come in the nineties, right?[00:41:00] When marijuana legalization efforts dovetailed with the gay rights movement in what I think is just one of the most fascinating, like historical co ever, right? So in California, in San Francisco, as AIDS is starting to. Decimate the gay population. You have a couple of activists, including Dennis Perran and Brownie Mary Rath Fund, whose real name is Mary Jane, which is crazy.They're using marijuana to like give to these aids patients who, like doctors don't wanna touch, nobody wants to get near them. No one knows what to do. No one knows how to treat hiv. It's brand new. Right? And Brownie Mary and Dennis Perran are. Have a, have a pot and infuse brownie, like you're gonna get your appetite back, Your nausea is gonna chill out.You're gonna feel pretty good. You're gonna have some energy. You can like go to the [00:42:00] bank. You can do like an errand right before you die. A horribly of aids like my God. Right? So they're saying, where did the rights of children end? Yes. We kept children so safe from pot that like by the early eighties, like no one is smoking pot anymore and we're locking.Tens of thousands of people, right? Like every month, right? Okay, great. We've done it. We won the drug war. But now it turns out this substance does have some medical utility for a patient group that is increasingly becoming like really sympathetic. You know, like cuz you have, I mean Arthur Ash contracts, hiv God, that little boy got it through like a blood transfusion or something.So you start to like have like really sympathetic feelings towards, Oh, Princess Diana visits the HIV clinic in the San Francisco General Hospital. Right? Like suddenly it becomes really sympathetic and laws start to change, right? Suddenly adults rights, especially like adults dying of AIDS and cancer, like their rights become much more important than protecting children from pot.And then, [00:43:00] Can kind of move like fast forward into the two thousands. 2010, the legalization movement joins with the social justice movement. So in 2010, Michelle Alexander publishes her book The New Jim Crow, Mass Incarceration in the Age of Color Blindness, which is canonical at this point. Canonical, I tell you, and like it is all.The effects of locking up nonviolent offenders, the vast majority of which are black men. Like, well, what have we done in America By locking up millions of people, more people, more black people are incarcerated in the United States than in South Africa at the height of apartheid. Like what effects does that have culturally, socially, economically?It has effects. And she lays them out and we're all like, Oh my God. Now we know. And laws started to change right after that, right? In 2012, you have the first states legalized Colorado and Washington by combining legalization [00:44:00] with calls for social justice, right? If cannabis is the source of massive amounts of black incarceration, legalized cannabis, right?That's one way to like act on social justice, and it was also legalized through. Outright calls for generating tax revenue, right? Like here is something that we can legalize and tax the be Jesus out of. And not only are we like doing good on social justice initiatives, but we're also gonna make a boatload of money.Like it's a total win-win at the moment. And that's basically, again, arguments for the rights of adults, right? Should we, should we incarcerate X number of million of people, millions of people for cannabis possession? So again, like. Argument for its children's rights, which was like so immensely powerful in the 1970s and eighties has now I would say, really been pushed to the back burner by almost three decades of really concerted and very powerful and very influential activism for adults rights to access cannabis, [00:45:00] for medical, and then social justice and economic initiatives.De'Vannon: And that's the tea. Y'all, Y'all have it? Emily . Emily: There's, there's 50 years of cannabis history guys. Woo. . De'Vannon: And, you know, I work with you know, so many people right now, and I, and I, I love how you, I feel like your book is almost like a, a user's manual for people who wanna get into this fight. You know, you're giving historical context, you're giving advice and everything.And so You know, I'm thinking about, you know, a friend of mine if her name is iFit Harvey, she runs the people of Color Collective. People of color, Psychedelic Collective, which is based out of New York City. And you know, and I, and I work with them, you know, I just did an interview, you know, for, I gave them an interview the other day and we were talking about like you know, marijuana, you know, the way it's, you know, criminalized here in Louisiana where I live versus where one of their.[00:46:00]Satellite locations is in Oregon, in Portland. And so, you know, things like this are very helpful you know, for young people cuz these people are really, really like young who have started this, you know, psychedelic collective and everything like that. And so I think, yeah. Right. I think books like this are so like, useful.So we're nearing the end of our hour and so I just wanted to mention. You mentioned normal earlier. I wanna tell people that stands for the I think you said, at the National Organization for the Reform rather than repe of marijuana laws. And then we'll go right into talking about like your your lessons and things like that.And, and we may just pick like one or two that that's important to you. But and so another little, a final ex sweep from the book. I'm channeling my inner Bugs Bunny, so an ex. From the book, it says normal, you know, or ML argue that marijuana smokers or consumers not deviance and deserve the same rights to protection and [00:47:00] safety as any other group.Including access to the drug without pollutants or contaminants. A competitive marketplace free from monopolies and conglomerates, and especially freedom from harassment by the poll lease. Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. felt like a, a Southern Sunday. GodEmily: I love it. I want you to record the audio book. That's great. I love it. . De'Vannon: Oh, I'll do it. I love getting on this microphone right here and do it. I did my own audio book. Oh, that's awesome. And so I wanted to bring that up because like you had normal fighting for it. You had Miss, Miss Minnaar fighting against it back then.Like you say in the book, we have the same thing now because I don't want people to wrestling their laurels and get so comfortable thinking that it's a home run. It's a clean slate. You know? We must stay vigilant. Emily: Mm. Yes, totally. I think that's, I mean, it, it does [00:48:00] feel like to me, I feel like. Pot becomes the scariest drug around when there's no other boogie in.So in like the 1970s, early 1970s when the first decriminalization laws were being passed, we're also kind of going through a heroin epidemic, right? And right now we've been going through the opioid epidemic for like, whoa, 30 years or so, . But it's kind of coming to its natural. At the same time that the legal cannabis marketplace is really starting to heat up and when opioids become like, when there's no like, like meth was a boogieman for a while.Crack was a boogieman for a while, but opioids have been a bo the boogieman for like 30 years. And if that starts to tamp down, if we start to feel less scared about that and there's like sort of like a void in like the drug boogieman cuz you know, we always need a drug boogieman. We're America, we need a drug boogieman and.Pot. Well sometimes I think come back and fill that [00:49:00] role. Like there, there could be widespread rejection of the legal marketplace. I mean, in certain places, right? Like in Massachusetts that legalized. However long ago, some communities don't want it, and they are allowed to say within that state's jurisdiction.We do not want any cannabis marketplaces within our community borders. So there's gonna be some nimbyism and there's going to be some nimbyism like, yes, in my backyard to it. But again, it's, you don't know what's like, we don't know what's going to happen. This is a brand new marketplace that could bust its boots like.I mean, it's been around for a decade now, which is amazing. But things are gonna get big fast and if people don't like it, it could very well turn, turn back around. I mean, that's not impossible. It's not, it's improbable, but not impossible. Mm-hmm. . De'Vannon: So what I'll do in the interest of time, I'll just read the title of each of the six letter , then people can go and buy the book to get the advice that you have in there.Do it. I think that and after I [00:50:00] read the titles, and I'll let you have our last word. . Which is a, which is another a page I borrowed from the book of Joy read because she she always gives her guests, you know, like the last word and everything like that. And so I thought you a good idea. I'm very inspired by that woman, and so, oh, I love it.So, lesson one, make your argument as sympathetic as possible. The lesson two, it's all about the money. lesson three. Be prepared to watch your progress disappear. That's the most shocking one for me and in my inten, in my opinion, the most sobering, less than four. Don't rely too heavily on the White House, and she means over multiple administrations.And then less than five, respect your opposition, less than six. Keep a sense of perspective, which is also a statement of humility. So her website is emily din.com, Social media, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, India, [00:51:00] Instagram, medium. Oh podcast. You can listen to Emily conduct interviews, new books.Networks has a Drugs Addiction and Recovery podcast. This book is grass Roots. And then she already mentioned the other one she has coming out. So with that, I'm gonna shut my cock up. And any last , anything that you would like to say and just take it away, darling. Emily: Oh, My gratitude is to you for, for having me, but also for bringing your message and your love, and your light and your spirit to the people.I am grateful to you and for all the work you do. So thank you very much. De'Vannon: All right. Thanks everybody for tuning in. Happy Halloween. Happy Halloween. Emily: Don't eat Fentanyl Candy .De'Vannon: Thank you all so much for taking time to listen to the Sex Drugs in Jesus podcast. It really means everything to me. Look, if you love the show, you [00:52:00] can find more information and resources at Sex Drugs and jesus.com or wherever you listen to your podcast. Feel free to reach out to me directly at DeVannon@SexDrugsAndJesus.com and on Twitter and Facebook as well.My name is De'Vannon, and it's been wonderful being your host today. And just remember that everything is gonna be right. 

What you'll learn in this episode: What's included in the Jill and Byron Crawford collection that will be auctioned by Bonhams on November 10th, and how they developed such a sweeping collection Why buying jewelry at auction is one of the best ways to find real treasures Tips for first-time auction buyers Why working at an auction house is the best jewelry education How collectors determine it's time to say goodbye to a piece   About Emily Waterfall Based in Los Angeles, Emily Waterfall is the Director of the Jewelry Department for Bonhams Auction House. With over 16 years of experience, Emily is responsible for business-getting, client development, appraisals and sourcing property for jewelry sales in Los Angeles and in New York. Emily began her career as an intern in London at an auction house where she caught her first glance of exquisite things in 2004. Once completing her internship, she worked in New York as a jewelry cataloguer for a leading international auction house for seven years working on several important jewelry auctions including the jewels of Kelly and Calvin Klein, Eunice Gardiner, Lucia Moreira Salles and others. Prior to joining Bonhams, Emily worked for a prominent jewelry buying firm based in Atlanta, GA from 2012 to 2018.   A native of San Diego, CA, Emily graduated with an undergraduate degree in Art History from Brigham Young University and has completed courses at the Gemological Institute of America and published articles in the American Society of Jewelry Historians newsletters. Additional Resources: Bonhams L.A. Website Bonhams Instagram Emily's Instagram   Photos are available on TheJewelryJourney.com Transcript: Auctions can seem intimidating to first-time buyers, but they are the best way to get a deal on a true, one-of-a-kind treasure, and auction house staff, like Emily Waterfall, Head of the Jewelry Department at Bonhams Los Angeles, are there to help buyers through the process. Emily joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about what to expect at Bonhams' upcoming auction of the Jill and Byron Crawford collection of artist jewelry; the most impressive pieces she's seen during her career; and how collectors can enter the world of auctions confidently. Read the episode transcript here.  Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. If you haven't heard part one, please head to TheJewelryJourney.com. Today, my guest is Emily Waterfall, who is head of the jewelry department in the L.A. office of the auction house Bonhams. Welcome back.    Tell us more about this auction coming up. You're previewing online. How do you handle everything? If you're the auctioneer, how do you handle it when—this is one reason I'm a little frightened by auctions, because there's the bid on the line and there's yours, and there are about five different people from all over the world. How do you handle it? Could I have a chance, basically, is the question.   Emily: Absolutely. There are various ways to bid. You can register a bid online. You can bid on our app. Maybe you have a busy day and you're running around. You can register to bid on the telephone on the Bonhams website, or you can leave an absentee bid. I get carried away at auctions. I'll do an absentee bid when I want to put myself on a budget and say I will not spend above this, regardless. That's a fantastic way. Or come and bid in person.    Nowadays, we are very digital. Most people are bidding online. The days of auctions being full and everyone dressed to the nines are kind of over. Now, we're more online based. I'll be auctioneering, and I'll have bids from absentee bidders; I'll have telephone bidders; but I see a lot of activity online. It's funny to me, because I always say when I'm auctioneering, “I see you out there.” I don't see them, but I know they're online, and I want to give them presence because they're just as important as any bidder in the room. I hope that explains that.   Sharon: Yeah. You say, “I see you out there.” Do you have a computer? Is everybody on a computer, and you can see that this person has bid five times and their name? How does that work?   Emily: Everyone has a paddle number, like you'd have if you were in the room. We see those paddle numbers bidding on a computer screen in front of us, so I can track this person's bid a few times. Maybe we have a new bidder entering online. It's fascinating. For me, I love every second of auctioneering. It's exciting to see who's going to jump in and bid, and sometimes it's really nerve-wracking.   Sharon: Do you get flustered? When you say nerve-wracking, do you get flustered?   Emily: Absolutely. There are moments when I feel like my heart is racing. We all make mistakes, so I try to brush those off because it's a pretty intense moment. We have to give ourselves some grace, but in general, we're well-trained. We all go through very similar training, and it takes years to perfect the craft of it.    Sharon: What kind of training do you go through to become an auctioneer?   Emily: It depends on your house. Everybody's different. They have their different styles of training, but you usually go through an intensive training where you just practice auctions over and over and over. You have people come in and observe you. They record you. You can see if you have any weirds ticks or anything like that. It's an interesting process. Then you're given an opportunity to start selling, but for short periods of time and just to start practicing. It takes years. It takes years to feel the flow and the energy of it, to know what to anticipate, to know how to engage an audience. We also have to engage them. So, there are a lot of layers to it.   Sharon: If a piece comes up and you know the history, will you say, “It comes from the collection of X, Y, Z, but the history is that they bought it in Mexico 40 years ago”?   Emily: I typically just say which estate it's from. We like to mention the provenance, but we definitely don't do anything historical. At that point, everyone who's bidding has heard me singing its praises, so we just notate the important provenance and that we're so excited to sell it, and then we go on to sell it.   Sharon: I have a friend who's really big on getting a deal. I don't feel so much like that. I feel like you're getting something one of a kind; there's not another one. Is it because it's one of a kind that people should be participating in auctions? I realize dealers sometimes do it for a deal, but why do you think people should participate in auctions?   Emily: There are all types of buyers at auctions. I think it's just particular to your taste. Absolutely, it's a great value. I cannot argue that enough. Jewelry at auction is substantially less than retail. We're determining the market daily, but what I'm covering typically has not been seen on the market for 20 to 40 to hundreds of years. It's the time to find true treasures. We have a lot of repeat buyers in every sale, and I love to see what they lean towards, what they love and want to buy. It shows me their personalities. We all have a different item that might our eye, right?   Sharon: Right.   Emily: And it's the hunt of it; it's the excitement of the auction. I think a lot of different things bring people to auctions, but we're uncovering property that genuinely has not been on the market. That's the best part of it.   Sharon: You can do that because people call you and say, “Hey, my grandmother died and she left all this jewelry I have no interest in.” I bet you get a lot of those today.   Emily: I do. I wish I remembered this quote. There's something about how the new generation foolishly laughs at the past. It's interesting; there are always amazing collections that the next generation has no interest in. It happens often.   Sharon: That's true.   Emily: So, our job is to help protect that story, sell it well, promote it as well as we can to help the family. Our job is to help people. It's funny; a lot of people forget that. Our job is actually to work for the consigners, to help them and make the most amount we can for them.   Sharon: It's interesting, too, when you say that about the past generations. It's so amazing to me that people didn't like Art Deco or Tiffany and were like, “Where's the garbage can?”    Emily: I think they should adopt me, all of them. I love history. The history of jewelry to me is the most fascinating part of this job. Every generation has its own amazing personality to it, and we have to learn how to appreciate that.    Sharon: How is the history the most fascinating?   Emily: I love the stories of who owned it. I love the stories of how it was acquired. I love the stories of the makers and the periods of time that they were made. Jewelry is hand in hand with cultural events and fashion. Everything has evolved together. Jewelry has not been in a bubble by itself; it's a reaction to what's going on globally, and every area has had different events occur.    Jewelry, to me, embodies artistic expression, and I love different periods of expression. Studio jewelry art was amazing when it was coming out because everyone was reacting to boring diamond jewelry. Then again, French Art Deco was very much a reaction, and the amazing results of creative thinking were happening together from poets and artists, interior designers and architects and jewelry. It's all hand in hand, and that to me is extraordinary.   Sharon: People can look at jewelry and say, “Oh, it's so dated,” but you can look around the corner, let's say. Can you see what's next? Do you identify it? You don't have to say it, but can you identify what's next when you look at pieces?   Emily: I can't find out exactly what's next, but to me, it's funny that yellow gold is king right now, whereas 15, 20 years ago, it was all white gold platinum. Again, this is the generation shifting from what their mothers had or what everyone was wearing. Tastes are changing, so it's always evolving. I think there's room for all of it. I don't think anything should be neglected, because anyone who is expressing themselves expresses their view differently. It might be a chunky, 80s Bulgari gold necklace, or it might be a Graff perfect diamond necklace. Everyone has their different view of expression.    Sharon: It's interesting; there are some pieces I'll avoid because I remember they were all trying to get rid of it 40 years ago, and now it's the hottest thing around.   This auction that's coming up on November do you have a favorite?   Emily: I don't think I can pick a favorite at all. To me, it's a great collection across the board. It's this idea that it's not about the monetary value of what's constructed; it's more about the theory behind it and what was made. I have some pieces by Claire Falkenstein which are really interesting. We have some great Zuni Tunes pieces, which are wonderful, magical, Disney-inspired rings, quite a large collection of those. I'm excited to be selling those, and that in particular I'm going to have my eye on. Then I have Spratling and Pineda which I loved selling. Some Jensen—   Sharon: So, Claire Falkenstein, the artist who did some jewelry.    Emily: Yes.   Sharon: You're selling some of that. O.K. And then the Disney rings, you said Zuni Tunes?   Emily: Zuni Tunes.   Sharon: Were they made by Disney or by different makers?   Emily: No, this is Native American. This is made by Native Americans selling on the side of the road. These are interesting pieces. We see them on the secondary market. We've not had any international auctions, so this is our first attempt, and I'm really excited about them. They have a wonderful collection of Zuni Tunes. So, for any Zuni Tunes collectors out there, please contact me. I'm so excited to sell them.     Sharon: You said William Spratling and Antonio Pineda?   Emily: Yes. I'm just looking at my list now. Los Castillo, Aguilar. It's quite an amazing collection of Mexican silver. One private collector in particular is a wealth of knowledge. I can't mention the name. I wish I could, but a very important buyer in that world is now selling their collection with me, and I'm honored to be selling that.   Sharon: Why would somebody sell a collection if they've spent years putting it together?   Emily: I think it depends on if we're wearing it, if it has use to us. They might have moved on. It's not ours to say. It's all per collector and where they're at. Like you were saying, there are some pieces you are willing to say goodbye to. This time, this client is prepared to say goodbye.    Sharon: That's what I'm talking about with the hidden stuff. You mentioned a person in Orange County, which is not so far away. How do you find out about these things?   Emily: A lot of times people are recommended, which I'm honored by; I love those referrals. A lot of people saw how well we did with the Jill and Byron collection last October, and we are selling some pieces just because of that sale. We were contacted because it did well on an international market.   Sharon: Was that the first international modernist sale, you said?   Emily: It was for us. That was the first sale, and I believe that was the largest single collection to come to markets internationally at any house. It was an extraordinary event. We definitely broke records for certain artists like Betty Cooke. We had great sales for Native American of Laloma and Monongya and Spratling. Across the board, we commanded very high prices for some of those pieces. It was wonderful.   Sharon: As a buyer, I could understand that. If it's a Spratling, there's only so much Spratling around. I'm just using that because he's a known name. You say there's great value. Is there value because it's one of a kind? Is it something that a normal person on the ground should consider? What should I consider, and do I have a chance?   Emily: You absolutely have a chance. It just depends on how many people are interested in that one lot. If you're the only buyer, you're going to get it at a fantastic price with little competition, or there will be quite a bit of people bidding against you and you need to be prepared to fight for it. Every lot we don't really know who's going to be interested and who's going to bid until the auction starts, but it's absolutely worth fighting, hands down. My best advice is to be prepared, know what number you're going to spend, and just go for it. How exciting! It's a great story to tell when you wear it. You can say, “Oh, I bought this at auction.” It's a great conversation starter, and jewelry sparks a lot of conversation.    Sharon: I've only really looked at auction catalogues and online. Is it something where, if I talk to you or the specialist, you could say, “There's been a lot of interest in this piece. I've had a lot of calls about it,” or “You're the first person I've talked to”?   Emily: We don't typically talk about interest because obviously we try to keep people's interest private, but we can say to you the importance of it. We can talk about it. Sometimes they're not one of a kind. With Spratling, there are several versions of some designs. So, we can speak on that for you.    We can advise you, not necessarily on how much to spend, but what to anticipate. Our job is to be helpful. Our job is to help guide you through it. We can be on the phone with you and cheer you on, be with you, and make sure we don't let you go over a certain amount. We can be your buddy through that part of it.    Sharon: Is it best to go through Bonhams for an auction, or is it better to bid online? There are usually about five different places.   Emily: We love it when people contact us. We want to be helpful and answer questions you might have. Some people are being honest and just want to bid online, and that's fantastic. Honestly, there are multiple ways today, but always ask an expert your questions. We definitely don't want buyer's remorse. We want to help you through the process and make sure it brings you joy. It should be a great experience.   Sharon: For example, let's say I won the piece. Then you wrap the piece up and send it out? What do you do?   Emily: It depends on what you'd like to do. You can either pick it up from us at our office, which we love—we love to see what people bought—or we can do shipments. There are all sorts of ways we can make it happen.   Sharon: What do you want to accomplish with the preview at Art Jewelry Forum on October 4? It's online. What do you want to do?   Emily: I want to express the breadth of all the amazing jewelry we have, let people know about it and discuss certain areas of it that are of interest. It's letting people know what we have. That's the most wonderful part of it, speaking to the importance of it. Again, I have an art history background. I know a lot about fine jewelry. I've been fortunate enough to have some phenomenal mentors in my crew, but art jewelry, to me, is a new market in terms of international recognition. I think it's time for it to be considered as valuable. It's time for it to be on the market on a regular basis. There are buyers all over the world for this, and I've seen that first-hand.   Sharon: Because art jewelry means so many different things to different people, are you talking about—is historical art jewelry different than Manfred Bischoff, who's still alive? What are you talking about?   Emily: It's across the board. It encompasses quite a large audience, being from different areas geographically, different time periods. I would like to encompass all of it. I would like it to be its own entity for auction and have regular sales and have property coming up for sale, because sometimes they're hard to find. It's a little more of a hunt. I would like to have artists that are here and artists of the past. I'd like to encompass all of it.   Sharon: Do you think Bonhams is pursuing art jewelry, in the sense of becoming the house you go to?   Emily: I'd love that, but I realize there's room for everybody. We tested the market last year. We saw a great response. This year, we already had a Clifford Mexican silver sale. I think we're just starting to step into the ladder of it and see what it is. I hope it evolves to where people choose Bonhams, absolutely.    Sharon: What is my next step? If I am listening to this, what would the next step be for somebody like me? Do I go online to your site or go online to place a bid? I've never done anything like that. What would somebody do?   Emily: Yes, go to Bonhams. The sale will be published online around October 4. So, go on there and just shop. Look and see what you like. Contact us. All our information will be available for you online. See what you like. We aren't printing catalogues anymore. I've noticed that people that are very savvy to jewelry are looking on their phones, their iPads or computers. We'll have additional shots of the items. We'll have model shots so you can understand size and scale. From there, you can register to bid. And always ask us, the experts, for that sale. We want to help you.    Sharon: I'm laughing because when you say it's online, who looks at a computer? I do if I'm at my desk, but I'm on my phone on Instagram. Some of the auction houses promote their auctions on Instagram. It's the only way you hear about them sometimes.    Emily: Absolutely. Everything's now really digital, which is great because it gives us more room to reach out to more people. I love looking through attractions. I love looking at different angles of the piece, looking at model shots, reading the descriptions. It's very enjoyable.   Sharon: I bet it would be. I'm always surprised when there's only one angle of a piece showed. You're like, “Where's the back?”    Emily: For modern studio jewelry, you need to see signatures. The signatures really matter. So do different angles, understanding scale. You want to know how that necklace will fit. You want to understand the scale of a brooch or a ring. You need to see it in proportion. That's very, very important.   Sharon: Emily, I really appreciate you telling us about all of this today. I will remind everybody that the auction itself is November 10th. It starts Los Angeles time, or does it start New York time?   Emily: Los Angeles time. It starts at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Standard Time.   Sharon: And it goes until everything is sold?   Emily: Yes, until the very end.    Sharon: You have your work cut out for you. Then on October 4, I don't know about the other previews, but for Art Jewelry Forum, if you go online, you can sign up there. It's free. Thank you so much for being with us today. We greatly, greatly appreciate it.   Emily: Thank you so much. I loved all your questions today. It was great speaking with you.   Sharon: Thank you so much.   We will have photos posted on the website. Please head to TheJewelryJourney.com to check them out. Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey.

What you'll learn in this episode: What's included in the Jill and Byron Crawford collection that will be auctioned by Bonhams on November 10th, and how they developed such a sweeping collection Why buying jewelry at auction is one of the best ways to find real treasures Tips for first-time auction buyers Why working at an auction house is the best jewelry education How collectors determine it's time to say goodbye to a piece About Emily Waterfall Based in Los Angeles, Emily Waterfall is the Director of the Jewelry Department for Bonhams Auction House. With over 16 years of experience, Emily is responsible for business-getting, client development, appraisals and sourcing property for jewelry sales in Los Angeles and in New York. Emily began her career as an intern in London at an auction house where she caught her first glance of exquisite things in 2004. Once completing her internship, she worked in New York as a jewelry cataloguer for a leading international auction house for seven years working on several important jewelry auctions including the jewels of Kelly and Calvin Klein, Eunice Gardiner, Lucia Moreira Salles and others. Prior to joining Bonhams, Emily worked for a prominent jewelry buying firm based in Atlanta, GA from 2012 to 2018. A native of San Diego, CA, Emily graduated with an undergraduate degree in Art History from Brigham Young University and has completed courses at the Gemological Institute of America and published articles in the American Society of Jewelry Historians newsletters.Find One-of-a-Kind Additional Resources: Bonhams L.A. Website Bonhams Instagram Emily's Instagram Photos are available on TheJewelryJourney.com Transcript: Auctions can seem intimidating to first-time buyers, but they are the best way to get a deal on a true, one-of-a-kind treasure, and auction house staff, like Emily Waterfall, Head of the Jewelry Department at Bonhams Los Angeles, are there to help buyers through the process. Emily joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about what to expect at Bonhams' upcoming auction of the Jill and Byron Crawford collection of artist jewelry; the most impressive pieces she's seen during her career; and how collectors can enter the world of auctions confidently. Read the episode transcript here.  Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the first part of a two-part episode. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it's released later this week.    Today my guest is Emily Waterfall, who is head of the jewelry department in the L.A. office of the auction house Bonhams. They will be having their second auction of modernist jewelry from the collection of Jill and Byron Crawford. This includes many masters of silver jewelry. We will hear more about this from Emily today and her own jewelry journey. Emily, welcome to the program.   Emily: Thank you for having me.   Sharon: So glad you could be here. Give us an overview of your jewelry journey. Did you like jewelry when you were young? Did your education lead you to this?   Emily: I loved jewelry when I was little. My mom had some fun pieces, in particular a butterfly necklace that I always coveted. It was a simple gold necklace. I remember when she wore it, I would play with it. Since then, she's gifted it to me, so it's a very sentimental item for me.    My journey actually began in art history. I studied art history for many years and was given an internship with Sotheby's in London and moved myself across to the U.K. I worked there for many years and then made my way into the jewelry department where I truly found my calling.   Sharon: So, you weren't studying in London; you moved to take the internship at Sotheby's.   Emily: Yes, I was very lucky. A gentleman, who was a scholar of archiving, helped me make my way to the 19th century, which was hilarious because now obviously digital archives are everywhere. When I started, it was the days of cutting and pasting from printed catalogues using glue sticks. My job was to basically archive all the recent sales of any paintings that were important because we didn't have search engines. We didn't have those things, so my very first job in the art world was cutting and pasting and gluing.   Sharon: You're bringing back memories. I remember working with a cartoonist who worked the old-fashioned way, and I thought, “Oh my god, O.K.”    So, did you study at GIA after? In art history, you don't really study GIA, right?   Emily: I studied at GIA after. I was fortunate enough to do that during my time at Sotheby's when I was a cataloguer in the department in the New York office. I took my courses then.   Sharon: So, you moved from London back to New York?    Emily: Yes, my visa was about to end, and Sotheby's offered me a job in New York. So, I moved there and was working in several different departments. I started getting into jewelry and truly found love. I studied a lot of 19th century sculpture, and with jewelry, my art history background just blossomed. I was so excited to see all the pieces I was seeing. As a cataloguer in the jewelry department, every piece we sold went through my desk, so you can imagine the type of education I got. It was extraordinary. It was a very special time in my career.   Sharon: There are a lot of jewelers or people in the jewelry industry who study art history. Jewelry history isn't really taught, so they study art history and either continue in that or they segue into jewelry.    So, why should I consider Bonhams? If I had art or jewelry to sell, why would I consider Bonhams?   Emily: There's definitely room for every house in the world. That's one thing I've learned. But in particular at Bonhams, we've had exponential growth over the last three years. In Los Angeles, we went from four auctions a year to 13, speaking to the fervor of which we're growing. We've also invested a lot into art jewelry, Mexican silver, and other areas in the international market that weren't necessarily being addressed.    Seeing a collection, if I'm not enthusiastic about it and I'm not enthusiastic about selling it, I'm doing a disservice to the collection. So, my advice to people is when they're picking a house, make sure whoever is selling it for you has energy and the fervor to sell it well. That's what my key is.   Sharon: So, you went from four to 13 auctions?   Emily: Yes.   Sharon: That's a lot. Are you in charge of most of them? Is that just in jewelry, or is that art and jewelry? What is that?   Emily: That's just jewelry in Los Angeles.    Sharon: Wow!   Emily: That's my department. We run 13 auctions a year. It's pretty exciting.   Sharon: You have to have passion to do something like that.   Emily: Yeah.   Sharon: Would you consider that Bonhams has a modernist bent? If somebody has a modernist collection, should they consider Bonhams?   Emily: Yes, I would say the sale we had last year for Jill and Byron Crawford was a huge success. That was across the board, from modern to Mexican to Scandinavian jewelry artists. We really covered the gamut with that sale and showed what we can accomplish with that.    A lot of what we're doing is taking in collections, because collections come us. We hunt for them as well, but we have to take what we see and figure out how best to sell it, who's the best market for it, how to speak to other departments or other areas, because every buyer at auction is interested in jewelry. Jewelry is the most common denominator. You might not collect Chinese works of art or cars or Impressionists, but everyone has jewelry.   Sharon: Wow! How is that? Let's say if I collect Chinese export stuff, how is it that I come to jewelry through that?   Emily: Again, we reach out to clients that have shown interest in our area from other departments and we promote that, but a lot of people know to come to us with jewelry because they see on our website our sales. They might have been looking at the Chinese work. Right now, it's Asia week at Bonhams in New York. They might see on the site that we've just had two big sales, one in Los Angeles this week, one in London, so they know to come to us for jewelry as well.   Sharon: You're having a second auction of the Jill and Byron Crawford collection. Is that what's left over?   Emily: Jill and Byron have been amazing to work with. They're such amazing collectors, not only for the type of properties, but for the quantity. So, we'll still have plenty to sell for them. We're so excited to be selling it. The whole sale is not just Jill and Byron; a portion of it is. We also have an important collection of Mexican silver from an important collector from the Orange County area. We also have a collection of John de Spray jewelry which I'm really excited to sell. French jewelry, very industrial, right?   Sharon: Yes.   Emily: And we also have similar Scandinavian pieces, some studio artists. There are over 1,500 pieces, so we'll be selling it for quite some time.   Sharon: And the next major sale for this particular collection is? What is it?   Emily: November 10th   Sharon: You're also previewing it for Art Jewelry Forum in October. I don't know if I'll be able to watch, but who else are you previewing for? There's so much.   Emily: Just you two. I'll be previewing at Bonhams and digitally on our website.   Sharon: Wow! That's interesting to know that you have an interest in modernists. There are not many houses that one would think to bring their stuff if they have a modernist collection.    What is it that you like about the auction business? You like jewelry; I understand that. What is it that you like about the auction business?   Emily: I tried to leave it many times. I truly love it because of the speed of it. It's a very rapid, fast-paced place to be. I love auction day. There's nothing better than auctioning property you fought for, to see it do well on the auction block. I'm an auctioneer as well, so it's very rewarding standing up there selling it on behalf of a client and doing well on it. I love the quantity of property we see. We're on the front line. We're the sale market value, right?   Sharon: Yeah.   Emily: We're on the front line of it. We're seeing thousands and thousands of pieces a year, and with that comes the education through osmosis. There might have been benchmarks I hadn't seen or another studio artist I hadn't known about. We're seeing more and more daily than you would see anywhere else, and that's my favorite part of it.   Sharon: I think that would be very hard to match in any other profession, the excitement, the action. I could understand feeling like, “Let me try something else,” but that would be very hard to match. Do you think you'd be as happy if you were auctioning something else, like art jewelry or rugs?   Emily: Yesterday I was auctioning a furniture sale, and I didn't feel as much pressure because it wasn't clients I had consigned. It was a different feeling. I love auction. I would work in any part of it, absolutely, but my passion for jewelry will never be subdued. I love it. I love every part of it. I love screaming from the rooftop when a collection is selling. That's just my personality. I probably wouldn't be as happy, but I'd be happy to work anywhere in the auction world.    Sharon: What's the best thing you've ever auctioned, maybe the highest price or the most interesting? What's the best thing you remember?   Emily: There are maybe two of those. I can split those up. My favorite collection was a collection of Lady Ashley. It was in our main New York sale, and it was a collection of fantastic Art Deco jewelry. This was a treasure trove. She was married to a lord, then Douglas Fairbanks, Clark Gable next, another lord, and then a prince. She had amazing Cartier Art Deco boxes, compacts in their cases. Some I'd never seen in that style before. One in particular was a polka dot pattern, and it was black and white. It was amazing. She also had some impressive Cartier aquamarine bracelets, which we all know those are rare to find. That was such an amazing collection because it was an amazing story; it was an amazing property, and it sold exceptionally well at auction.    By value, though, it's the sale we did last year. We sold an emerald bracelet. It was over 107 carats of emeralds perfectly matched. It's most likely they were cut from the same stone. This one was from the Crocker Fagan family from San Francisco. We are so excited to work with them again. We also sold a Cartier egret from them. The emerald bracelet was estimated at $1.8-$2.2 million and we sold it for $3.2 million.   Sharon: Wow!    Emily: So, that was a joy.   Sharon: Do the numbers scare you when you're auctioning? Do they mean anything when you put the hammer down and you're at $3.2?   Emily: It's exciting. At that point, you're just full of adrenaline when you're selling higher value lots. There's a lot of elegance in part of it. There's a lot of communication of bidders either on the phone, on the internet or in the room, so there's a lot of conversation going on about value. It's a very exciting moment. I smile. I'm the worst at bluffing. You can see what's on my face 99% of the time, so in those moments, I have definitely a big smile on my face.   Sharon: Are you given auctions from New York? Do they tell you the things that are going to come? If you have a sale in London, Hong Kong and, by the way, we're going to do it in Los Angeles, can you preview it or tout it? Is that part of your work?   Emily: Yes, the New York office and myself work hand in hand. I source property for both sales as well as my New York colleague, Caroline. We work daily together, and we both preview our sales in each other's offices. I just previewed our September sale in New York. She previews every New York sale in L.A. We also preview up in San Francisco. We love our San Francisco clients. It's a fantastic place to be. So, we're making sure we're everywhere we can be, and we work together. In terms of property, though, let's not discount the West Coast. My goodness, I found the best property of my career on the West Coast.   Sharon: I'd like to know where it is. I was talking to somebody yesterday, and I thought, “Where's the jewelry on the West Coast?” It's all so bling. There's no history.    Emily: There are major hidden gems on the West Coast. We have found extraordinary collections. Again, Lady Ashley was acquired in California, Crocker Fagan up in San Francisco, Jill and Byron Crawford here in Malibu. There's amazing property in California. We have such phenomenal heritage and history here, and with that there are major, major collectors. They just might not be wearing it to the grocery store.   Sharon: I had never heard of Jill and Byron Crawford. They had an amazing collection and, yes, they're not wearing it to the grocery store. Is part of your job developing new business?   Emily: Absolutely. I've worked with some clients for years. Sometimes they might not feel comfortable yet. They might want to see where the markets are, or it's sentimental. Jewelry is the most sentimental category, absolutely. A lot of times, clients need time to part with pieces, but they know they have to say goodbye. It's my job to make sure I'm writing whenever they say want to sell it.   Sharon: That's a good way to think of it. There's somebody I know who will ask me, “Are you finished with it?” and I'll think, “Yeah, I guess I am.” I've only had it for a couple of years, but I'm finished with it. I've worn it. I'm not going to wear it more for whatever reason.    When it comes to larger auctions, do you handle them differently? This is a big auction. Is it being handled differently than the smaller one?   Emily: Every sale takes a different nuance to it. It depends on the property we have. We're definitely not like a jewelry store, where we have a ton of one lot. We have just one, and every sale has different property, so we have to cater to every sale as its own entity.    We just had this September sale, where we had property from a motion picture director, Mankiewicz, who directed All About Eve. We also had a collection of Disney in there, art jewelry. Shifting to art jewelry is entirely different. We have to create a new narrative for the sale, how to handle it, how we can do the best for it. I love that part of it. I love the storytelling. We're the keepers of these stories. When these collections are given to us, it's our job to tell the story, get people excited and get them registered to bid, basically.   Sharon: I think that's very important. When you buy something, who cares who it used to belong to? But still, it used to belong to somebody, a name that people recognize.    Do you work with dealers? Do you work with lawyers? Do they call and say, “Hey, Emily, have I something for you”? How does that work?   Emily: Every day is different. I guess that's another part of the job I love. I can be called by a trust attorney tomorrow. I could be called by a tax attorney, dealers. On Tuesday, we had our jewelry auction—this is just to give you context.    Sharon: Yes, please.   Emily: I was auctioneering all day until about 2:30, and then I got an email from a colleague about a collection that someone wanted me to pick up that day. So, I jump in my car, go pick up the collection, back to work. Every day is super different. We get a lot of interest through attorneys, through dealers, through other colleagues, through friends. My favorite interaction is by word of mouth. I love when people recommend me. It's very, very important for me, not only for selling, but for buying. Whatever you're looking for, let me hunt for it. I'm a hunter. That's my job. Let me find it for you. Let me help you sell it.    Sharon: Do people call you and say, “Please let me know if there's an emerald ring or an emerald bracelet”? I never see them, but do people call you and say, “Call me if something comes up”?   Emily: Yes, we have wish lists. I think I have my own personal wish list. We're constantly working on those. We try to make sure we can help and find those pieces for anyone.    Sharon: What's on your wish list?   Emily: I have quite a big one.   Sharon: What's at the top or near the top?   Emily: Obscure French Art Deco is at the top. Now I have a much better love for some studio jewelry, in particular Betty Cooke. I'm really obsessed with her. They were in the Crawford sale. Those are on my wish lists right now.    Sharon: Betty Cooke is still alive, isn't she? I think she's still alive.   Emily: Yeah. She's another of these dynamic women that I adore because she started a business. These were the times when we weren't necessarily allowed to have bank accounts and credit cards. She started a whole business for herself that's still running today. I love having pieces of history like that.   Sharon: And she's affordable too. It's expensive, but it's affordable.   Emily: She's in my price range.    Sharon: As opposed to a huge diamond. I'm not saying you couldn't buy a huge diamond, but it's more affordable than buying a huge diamond, I think.   Emily: Yeah, exactly. It's more like the jewelry I can wear daily going to my son's baseball game, things like that.   Sharon: Is that why you have come to like modernist jewelry, because it's wearable?   Emily: Yes. Again, having my art history background, I love concepts. I love intention in design. I love expression. For me, art jewelry really embodies all of that.   Sharon: Does it make a difference to you if you're looking at a piece—I might look at a piece of art jewelry, modernist jewelry, and not understand it, but then I understand it better if somebody explains it. Does that happen?   Emily: All the time. It's funny; when I first started out in art history, I always ran into people who would criticize contemporary art and say, “Oh, I could do that.” I think it's similar in art jewelry. “Oh, it's too crude,” or “It doesn't sense,” but once you explain it, their eyes light up, right?   Sharon: Yes.   Emily: They completely understand it and embrace it. Art Smith, he was making jewelry that was more about form. It was more about dynamic shapes and lines, and that wasn't being done before. It was different from the Harry Winston diamond necklaces at the time.   Sharon: That's true. You have to recognize what's coming next, what's around the bend, what's around the corner. And it's hard to wear a diamond to go grocery shopping.

Today I'm speaking to Emily McGuire about Building Community Through Your Email List Emily is the Customer Evangelist at AWeber - a people-first Email Service Provider. With lessons learned over a decade in tech, sending thousands of email campaigns, and working on email campaigns earning over $80 million in revenue, Emily loves sharing the mistakes and strategies of email marketing done well. You'll typically find her with a cup of coffee in hand because #momlife. When her head isn't on her laptop, you can find her chasing her kid, reading a book, or binging trashy TV. In this episode, you'll learn about building community through your email list as well as...   Whether we should really still bother with email What works well now to grow our email lists The Frequency sweet spot: how often is too much? The danger and warning signs of writing emails that are too transactional 3 big mistakes to fix to avoid people unsubscribing from your email list And so much more Emily's Resources   Emily's Website Emily's Resources Connect with Emily on: LinkedIn Facebook Twitter   Sarah's Resources Watch this episode on Youtube (FREE) Sarah's One Page Marketing Plan (FREE) Sarah Suggests Newsletter (FREE) The Humane Business Manifesto (FREE) Gentle Confidence Mini-Course Marketing Like We're Human - Sarah's book The Humane Marketing Circle Authentic & Fair Pricing Mini-Course Podcast Show Notes We use Descript to edit our episodes and it's fantastic! Email Sarah at sarah@sarahsantacroce.com Thanks for listening!   After you listen, check out Humane Business Manifesto, an invitation to belong to a movement of people who do business the humane and gentle way and disrupt the current marketing paradigm. You can download it for free at this page. There's no opt-in. Just an instant download. Are you enjoying the podcast?  The Humane Marketing show is listener-supported—I'd love for you to become an active supporter of the show and join the Humane Marketing Circle. You will be invited to a private monthly Q&A call with me and fellow Humane Marketers -  a safe zone to hang out with like-minded conscious entrepreneurs and help each other build our business and grow our impact.  — I'd love for you to join us! Learn more at humane.marketing/circle Don't forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes or on Android to get notified for all my future shows and why not sign up for my weekly(ish) "Sarah Suggests Saturdays", a round-up of best practices, tools I use, books I read, podcasts, and other resources. Raise your hand and join the Humane Business Revolution. Warmly, Sarah Imperfect Transcript of the show We use and love Descript to edit our podcast and provide this free transcript of the episode. And yes, that's an affiliate link. Sarah: [00:00:00] Hi, Emily. So good to see you speak to you today.  Emily: Hi there. Thank you for having me. Yeah,  Sarah: it's We're focusing on email marketing in this episode. And that goes under my, P of promotion because, , if you think email, usually you're thinking, okay, I'm promoting something, even though you're probably gonna tell us, well, it's not just promotion , but that's where I placed it under. So, Yeah. With that, let's just dive right in. , I think my first question would be, do you feel that email is still alive and kicking with all , you know, our over full inboxes? What, what's your take  Emily: on that? Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, a lot of people like to say email is dad. They've been saying that since I started in email marketing, about eight years ago. And, , you know, what I would say is, you know, email marketing, definitely isn't dad, [00:01:00] the way we think about it is, and I, that, People had adopted email, originally as a direct extension of direct mail. And so, , there's still some lingering ideas that email is this long form content where you can link, dump a bunch of articles and podcasts you're listening to, or the latest book you're reading in a newsletter and people are gonna read the whole thing. And, you know, in today's world, in digital marketing, we're competing with constant distractions. And I think that we need to be really aware of helping our readers focus, , on the main goal of our campaigns, , rather than just throwing a ton of content at them, hoping they'll find the right thing for. yeah.  Sarah: What I hear you say is, is this idea of the [00:02:00] newsletter, right? It's like, here is my newsletter and there's like 20 pieces of news. And I actually expect you to buy something from, from that newsletter, I think. Yeah. That's what I'm hearing. And, and, and you're right there, there is this tendency still, and that, I guess, Dates back from the days that we have these newsletters, whereas like, oh, I'm signing up. I'm giving my email away for just to be on a newsletter and that's just not true anymore. So, you know, I guess that makes me think of. , this idea of getting people onto you, your newsletter, or having them subscribe. So since this term newsletter clearly doesn't work anymore. What's the latest trend. What works well now to grow your email list, to have more subscribers on, on your.  Emily: Yeah. So,[00:03:00] you know, always a lead magnet of some kind is going to help. So lead magnet, , I'm sure you've probably addressed this before, but in case not, or if anybody needs a refresher, is a piece of content or a freebie or something, you can offer somebody in exchange for their email. So you are essentially setting up the relationship, whether you're a subscriber by saying, Hey, I can help solve a, a pain point for you with, Again, with some sort of guide or workbook or, um, maybe a quiz or here's a free discount or gift, , in exchange for your email address and that way you are, again, incentivizing people and not just saying, being really vague and saying, sign up for our newsletters. Well, what does your newsletter offer to people? Value are you offering to people? And that's where people, I think people really need to get specific around growing your [00:04:00] email list. Like, what is it you have to say and how are you actually helping folks?  Sarah: So these eBooks you're saying they're still work because they, they have been around for a long time as well. And it feels almost like. Maybe that's done too, but you're saying like, if the, I guess it depends on the topic. If the topic feels like, okay, this is going to help me, then I would give my email an exchange for the ebook.  Emily: Yeah. I mean, an ebook is still, you know, is still a strategy. Some people use, but you know, you can do many courses that you deliver over email. Mm-hmm , it doesn't have to be fancy. Like you can even take an ebook that you already have and turn it into little lessons that you drip out to your subscribers and, you know, send an email. What, after the other, so I think that, you know, starting with an ebook is a good place to start, but like, thinking about how are you interacting with your audience? How are you really engaging them with [00:05:00] the lead magnet will help again, get people really excited about your brand instead of you dumping content. On them and saying here here's a 10 page, 10, 20 page PDF to read. , I know because everybody's busy, right? Like I said, everybody's busy. , and so how are you, , giving people smaller chunks, right. Of information that is easy to digest.  Sarah: Right. So, so let's talk about then the emails. You know, if they're not newsletters, what are we putting in those emails? And, and you're kind of talking about emails that are transactional, transactional, and, and some warning signs where we can tell. Okay. There's something not working. People are not opening our emails or they're unsubscribing. So what are some signs of maybe, emails that are too transactional and then how do we fix that and how do [00:06:00] we make them non transactional?  Emily: Right. So I like to encourage people to think about, Different, email campaign categories. Mm-hmm that they want out. So, you know, obviously you're gonna have different goals for your emails. You might have, you might want to be pushing, you know, sales more often. Right? Of course, you're, everybody's trying to make money. Right. We gotta pay the bills. but you know, sending sale or emails that are really, only around.  Getting a sale or conversion. If you're only sending emails like that, you're gonna start seeing high unsubscribed rates, right? Mm-hmm and, uh, list churn is what they call that mm-hmm . And so you're not engaging people, you're not giving, you're only asking right. For them to give you their money. And so a varying that, I mean, having sale oriented emails is important, but also putting in content that is engaging. So maybe. You know, talking about, thought leadership [00:07:00] what's thought leadership in your industry having one email. So I recommend at least sending one email per week to keep. Engaged. So maybe one email a month is dedicated to that's more sales focused, one email a month. That's dedicated to thought leadership, around your specific, subject area.  Another one that's more personal, you know, because people wanna connect with you as a human. So do you have a story to tell about your business? Maybe what's going on behind the scenes and how can you show your humanity? And then maybe one that's a customer focused success story. So how are you helping your customers? What is something that, what are successes they're having? So you're sort of giving a whole picture to your business, keeping folks engaged, but also selling. Right. So metrics to look at for that are, you know, there are industry benchmarks that people like to cite. I've seen those very widely [00:08:00] across businesses. I don't think that they're very accurate. What I recommend people doing is setting your own internal benchmark. So what are your open rates for the past three months? Look at that. And then if something is dipping below that or jumping above that, then you know, you've got some successes or you've got some warning signs. So, open rates, I like to tell people. Anything over 20%, you're doing pretty good. Obviously you can do better. Anything under 10%. There's a problem. And usually when you've got, when open rates might dip, there's usually something else going. Else going on and that's usually a result of your list health. So it might be something going on with your subscriber base. Maybe you've got a lot of really unengaged people that need to be reengaged. Maybe they've never opened an email. If you have really low clicks on your email, then you need to start looking at, okay, what are you asking people to click on?[00:09:00]  Are you giving them incentive to click through to something else? And is that click really gonna get you where you want them to go? So is that going to lead to a sale or is it gonna lead them down their buying journey with you and then, and then another one is unsubscribe. So I already mentioned that, you know, just keeping an eye on that. What's your benchmark for your business over the last three months. And if you're starting to see your unsubscribed rates tick up and up, people are unengaged, with your emails. They're not there. There's something wrong with the content of your email, and then you need to come back and look at what were my most successful emails. Mm-hmm what were. With and how can I take those lessons and replicate it for future emails?  Sarah: Mm-hmm yeah, I don't do that enough. yeah. And the one thing that you didn't mention, but I guess would also play into that is when you actually get [00:10:00] replies, that's my favorite, you know, when you send an email and then you get replies, people telling you their stories and that's when I'm. Wow. I just love my lists. They're , you know, they're right there. They know that I'm the one sending the, the emails and then they can tell that it's personal and it's not, obviously it's automated because that's what we do nowadays. We use these tools, but they, if they hit reply, they feel like, okay, I can talk to Sarah and she's, she's gonna reply back. Emily: Right. Exactly. Yeah. Replies are a great one too. Not everybody, some people might have a contact center that is managing those replies for them. But yeah, if you're managing your own list and those replies are beautiful, they're, they're a great way to gauge engagement.  Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. And then you talked about, opening rates and, and I know I have heard this number before the 30% or 20% is. Still always surprises me. Like it seems [00:11:00] so low. Right. But that is just a sign of how overly busy we all keep ourselves and how much email. Stuff were subscribed to you. Like it just always, this just surprises me. I always tell my clients and my listeners to unsubscribe from the things that they're not actually using, but I, I guess the big majority of people are just, yeah, they still have too much stuff in their inbox. It's  Emily: amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and that's why, Well, but it also presents you an opportunity, right? So I like to tell people to resend their emails, , cuz people really have a lot of concern around redundancy. Mm-hmm . You know, well, if I already sent that content out in an email, people have already seen it before. They're not gonna wanna see it again. And it's like, well, if a good open rate is 20%, that means 80% of your E your list never [00:12:00] sought to begin with. Right. Yeah. And so that, that's a really great to me. It's a great opportunity to, , recycle your content, send out the same email content, you know, maybe three months apart, pick out your best performing emails and queue them up. So if you're having a busy week or, you know, you're, you're, you've got writer's block. You're not sure what you wanna send out that week. You've got a queue of old email. That you know, people like that you can resend. , yeah. And  Sarah: would you then target it in a way that the ones that had opened it wouldn't get it again or you're like, doesn't matter. Emily: It doesn't matter. I think a lot of people assume that just because somebody opened an email, , they think that it means that a they read it. not everybody does just because they opened the email, , B that they, remember. Everything or remembered what was in the email? Mm. And C , took the [00:13:00] action. They intended to mm-hmm . Again, we are competing with distractions. And so in my opinion, , you know, repetition is helpful. It's not a burden, it's not annoying. you're just reinforcing the points that, you know, people need. , cuz you're, you're listening to your customers and you know what help they need and hopefully your emails are helping. Sarah: Mm. Yeah. I, I kind of struggle with that idea cuz I feel like, well then what if you know, 10 people already read it and they're like, Sarah are, you know, are you ING with what's wrong? Like why are you sending me the same email? Like that? yeah, but, but I guess if you just kind of make the intro a bit differently or, or like rapid. Yeah. I, what I started doing actually. Uh, and I heard that on, on Jenny Blake's podcast is, Using the email. So a single email and then adding it to a sequence because [00:14:00] people who are on my list now, well, they're getting it now, but then if I add it to a sequence, then these people will get it once they get to that sequence. And so that I, I have started doing and. Stopped again, but do do that again. I think that that's a great strategy because you're right. It, we create so much content and, and especially those emails that, you know, resonated with our audience. Why not reuse them again? Sometimes I even used the email text and then just post it on LinkedIn, the same text, because you're right. Maybe they didn't see it on LinkedIn or they didn't see it on, on email. Yeah.  Emily: Yeah, exactly. I think, you know, we. Because we are so in our own content that people are not paying as close attention to it as we are. Yeah. You know, we know our content, but our audience, you know, they, they mostly don't care. right. Yeah. And you know, I've gotten, you know, from my own email list for,[00:15:00] , when I had a consulting business, I. I had a couple emails that people loved that I would send out once every six months. And I had the same people replying to that email saying they loved it every single day. like, remember that they got it before they had remarkable, you know, we have very short memories. Yeah.  Sarah: It's like goldfish memories. How much should we worry about these unsubscribed rates? When clients tell me, you know, they're always like freaking out when, when people unsubscribe and I actually try to tell 'em, well, maybe it's a good thing. Depends. You know? So what's your take on that and, and, and then maybe also tell us how can we avoid unsubscribes at at least. You know, big numbers of unsubscribes cuz the, the equational one, I think it's  Emily: actually healthy. Yeah. I mean it's [00:16:00] healthy, right. You know, not every, you know, not everybody's good for fit for us all the time. Right. , and you don't want people who are not interested you in you on your email list, cuz that drags down your engagement. Right. But there are a couple things that you can do to help with unsubscribes. One is, you know, if you see a spike in unsubscribes, something's wrong, you know, and usually what I see in that is, you know, maybe, , your subject line over promised what was in your email, right? Those things match up. You were not matching expectations up correctly for people. So I, I see people trying to get a little bit tricky and click Beatty with their subject lines. Yeah. And that ultimately, , loses trust with your subscribers, right? Yeah. The other thing you can consider is, , what I've done. For, businesses and myself, , is allowed people to pause their subscriptions. Mm. So you can, instead of saying, I let's break up [00:17:00] forever, you can say, you know what, I need a bit of a break three or six months, you know, you can decide that number for yourself three months seems to be a good option for folks and all you have to do. You know, depending on your email service provider, you can have a little button, or add a button above. Your unsubscribed link that says, you know, I need a break, something like that pop for three months and click, when they click it, send them to a really simple landing page that says, , you know, that confirms that their subscriptions paused. And again, depending on your email service provider, you should be able to tag somebody if they click that link. Right. And then them in an automation. that has that tag on them for three months. And at the end of this three months, you remove that tag and then all you have to do [00:18:00] is make sure that in your newsletter segment or your regular email campaign segment, you're excluding that tag. So, yeah, that's another option you can do is that you, they call that opting down instead of opting out. Sarah: I like that. Yeah. , I'm not sure I'm using Kajabi. I, I would need to check with, with them if they offer that option. But it, I think that's a great idea. , it's kind of like I'm, I'm on a. You know, email sabbatical, please, you know, please, please pause me for six months. Yeah,  Emily: yeah. And I've also done this for, you know, if you're running a, a campaign over a few weeks that is more maybe sales focused or if you're running, a challenge or, or something else, if instead of having people unsubscribed, if they're not interested in that particular thing, I let them know, Hey, you're not interested in this right now. You can pause for the duration. Yeah. Yeah. So, , it's another option to save those subscribers.  Sarah: Yeah. Any, any other, , [00:19:00] tips to yeah. Have stop people from unsubscribing, I guess also in terms of the. the links, , before you said, you know, it's, it's not a good idea to have this newsletter with a hundred links. So is the idea then to just have one link per email that used to be the, when I studied email marketing, that used to be the message. Is that still the case or how do we  Emily: approach links? Yeah. I mean, I would, you know, depending on what's in your email campaign or your newsletter, , you know, just being really intentional about putting links in your email. So, you know, if you are, you know, writing on a piece of thought leadership, right? If you're talking about something in your industry, if you have. Relevant to that piece that people might find helpful then, yeah. You know, hyperlinking it in the text saying, you know, if you need more help with this here's this resource. And then, to help [00:20:00] you with conversions have. Between one. And at the end of your email have one between one and three calls to action that are related to helping guide people through your sales process. So whether that's, Hey, if you need more help around this topic here, here is, , a list, another resource mm-hmm if you wanna talk about this topic more, here's how to get in touch with somebody mm-hmm . And, , or here is another piece of content that will help with this, right. Making sure that you're really intentional about, , guiding people through your sales process, and relating it back to how you're helping them in adding value. , I think that is, it's just being really, really intentional about what your goals are. For your emails, what your subscriber's goals are and marrying those two with, , guiding [00:21:00] them through your sales process. What's the next action they need to take in order to get help, right? Yeah.  Sarah: Yeah. I get that. , We used to also say that the PS in the newsletter that like sometimes people read the, the subject line and then they, you know, scroll down and, and so the PS had this big importance. Would you still recommend putting something in the PS as well?  Emily: Yeah. And that's where those three calls to action to live. Yeah. And bullet rate those don't make it a long block, a big block of text mm-hmm bullet. So they're easy to scan and read.  Sarah: Okay, great. And is there a difference between a hyperlink and a button link? Like is there stats that show the people click more than one or the other.  Emily: It I've seen stats very widely on that. And I think it depends on your, the kind of campaign you're running. I recommend, you know, at least [00:22:00] having one bold call to action with a button, , unless your email template is more of a letter format, then that might not make sense, right. With the, with the style and feel of the email. Mm. And then, you know, having some hyperlinked links in your text, if it's relevant and it's not a distraction for your subscriber, if it will help them and guide them further down their sales path.  Sarah: Hmm. Yeah. I'm also thinking you just mentioned design, like back in the days we used to have, or some people still have that, like the header and then the signature block, and it looks like this branded email. Right. , but then there was a trend where people were saying actually, what works better is just like text that looks just like any regular email. What do you recommend to your clients?  Emily: Yeah, I mean, it depends on the business. Again, I've seen, I've [00:23:00] tested those kinds of templates and results have varied widely mm-hmm I've seen a lot of success with text based emails. It's a really good place to start. It's a lot, it's a lot lighter load on somebody. Building emails. And I think that's definitely something you have to consider. Yeah. If you don't have a designer on a dedicated designer on your team or they're stretched really thin, , then, , yeah, it just bogs down the process. And so, but some brands are very visual mm-hmm and that makes sense for them. Mm-hmm so I think, , again, I do a mix typically, depending on the type of campaign, but, , text very simple text formatting works really, really well.  Sarah: Nice. Okay. The last topic I wanted to talk to you about, and, and you brought this up. When we had an email exchanges, this idea of community building, so using email for community building, [00:24:00] and that is of personal interest to me because we, we have our humane marketing circle, our community. So, so yeah. What's your experience there? And, and how do we use email for community?  Emily: Yeah. So I think, , you know, particularly in the last couple of years, you know, globally, we have seen a lot of, really hard things. Right. And. . I have seen a lot of businesses really miss the mark on it. Hmm. And instead of taking it as an opportunity to address people's humanity and the very real anxieties and fears people are experiencing, they instead use it as an opportunity to just give updates about the company mm-hmm . And although that information can be really important. I think that it. You know, ultimately human beings are emotional. We are emotional things who like to think we are [00:25:00] rational thinkers and, addressing people's emotions is just as important as educating them. Right. Mm-hmm because emotions can stop us, from doing the work right from showing up fully. And so, , I have seen brands, Incredible strides with their audiences and really bond, with their brands and build community by addressing their emotional states, especially when it comes to public crises. So, I think it's I, and, and it doesn't have to be something that big, but really thinking about what are your people struggling with emotionally? What anxieties do they have around the work that you're trying to help them do? , or. Personally, and really speaking to that, lets them know that you see them not only, or that, , you see them not just as a business [00:26:00] transaction, you see them as a whole human being and that builds trust and likability very quickly. Yeah,  Sarah: that reminds me of, , something I saw on LinkedIn. And I can't remember what brand it was, but basically it was mother's day and they were acknowledging that, you know, it being mother's day and usually there was like a mother's day sale and this was just after COVID and so they were acknowledging that. , it probably was a difficult day for a lot of people who, well, they had lost their moms. Right. And so instead of just sending out another sales email, oh, happy mother's day, they addressed that. And there was a lot of, yeah. Very positive feedback. , and it was, you know, going viral on, on social. Unfortunately, I don't remember that company name, but still, it was a really good example.  Emily: Yeah, that seems to be a growing trend in email marketing, where people are very aware of, you know, mother's day and father's day. And these relationships can be very complicated. Yeah. Um, [00:27:00] and, you know, allowing people to opt out for that season, again, opting down instead of opting out, Addresses their emotions and makes them say, Hey, we know you're a human being too, like yeah, yeah. Not just a potential dollar sign. Yeah.  Sarah: Yeah. And, and I think it does this human side should really be. All over, you know, your emails, , especially for our listeners who are more like entrepreneurs. So entrepreneurs, coaches, consultants, you are the business, right? So it's all about community building for you. Of course. Yes. It's also about selling, but it's. Much more about community building because that will lead to the sales. So, so that human aspect is, is so important. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I agree. Wonderful. Any, any final thoughts? Anything else that we didn't touch on that you wanted to add here to this wonderful [00:28:00] conversation? Emily: Yeah. And I wanna address one specific, anxiety that I know that people experience with email and people get really anxious around hitting that send button. , and because, you know, we wanna be, we wanna do it right. We wanna do it. We wanna make sure we didn't do any errors or typos or wrong links. And I just wanna let people know that the next time you make an email mistake, we've all done it. , I've done it. , more than once and done it with teams who have five people reviewing the email. And so, , just wanna let you know. It's never gonna be perfect. And again, people appreciate the humanity sometimes and sending out that oops, email afterwards where addressing the mistake, , sometimes those do even better than the email you intended to send out that day. Yeah. So, , nobody's perfect and we're all just doing our best. And so, um, I wanna make sure people know that, , to not let that get in the way of sending out that next. [00:29:00]  Sarah: Yeah. In fact, it really shows you, which people should not be on your list are the ones that, you know, point out that you have misspelled this or that word or that, you know, I'm like, you know what? Yeah. Can be bothered. Exactly.  Emily: They're trying to get along. Exactly.  Sarah: Yeah. I'm just, you know, a one woman show here. So I don't have time to like, yeah. People sometimes suggested that I have a, you know, someone edited my emails and, and I'm like, look, it's pretty clear that English is not my mother tongue. I'm not gonna hire a copy editor for each email. that's just not gonna be authentic anymore. But yeah. I think you're right. It is. Idea for perfections that we have to overcome first. And then, and then eventually you get to the point where you're like, you know what? Yeah. Things happen. Yeah. Let it go. Yeah. [00:30:00] Wonderful. Well, Emily, why don't you share, with people where, they can find you and maybe you have a, a free giveaway. Well, as well that they can download, tell us  Emily: all. Yeah, so you can, I'm pretty active on LinkedIn. I like sharing things about email marketing there. You can find me on LinkedIn, , Emily McGuire, and also, you know, I'm the cur I'm the current customer evangelist at AWeber, which is an email service provider. And, we do have free accounts. So if you're looking for a new email service provider, feel free to head over to E aweber.com and check it out.  Sarah: Wonderful. Yeah. I used to, , use AWeber , when was that? Before I switched to active campaign and then to Kajabi, but I think if I had to switch again, I would probably go back to AWeber. It's a, it's a really good service. So, , yeah. Thank you. The last question that I always ask all my guests is what are you grateful for this week? Or  Emily: today? Today. I am grateful for [00:31:00] sunshine. I've been getting over a cold and so I've been inside a little too much. And so this morning, even though I'm not feeling a hundred percent, I'm like, I was like, I'm taking a walk around the block and I'm gonna get some sunshine gonna get that vitamin D in. Yeah, definitely. Especially, you know, in I'm in Michigan, in the us. And we have very long winters, so I'm soaking it up while I've got it. .  Sarah: Wonderful. Yeah. Wishing you a speedy recovery. Take care of yourself and thanks so much for your  Emily: time here. Thank you.

Welcome to Life in the Leadership Lane where I am talking to leaders making a difference in the workplace and in our communities. How did they get to where they are and what are they doing to stay there! Buckle up and get ready to accelerate in the Leadership Lane! This week, I am talking with Emily Watson, Chief Operating Officer at Landtower Residential How did Emily get started in her career? What led her to the world of Leadership? When did Emily “find her lane” in her career? How important have mentors been for Emily on her journey? What does Emily share about her mission statement? How does Emily describe leadership? What does Emily share about the employee experience? What tips does Emily share about developing indluence? What drives Emily in her every day? What advice does Emily share to help others in their career? …and more as we spend “Time to Accelerate” with a few more questions. Interview resources: Favorite quote(s) from Emily: “It is your honor to be able to lead the person you're working with to a better place than they were before.” “If you can't say it nice, get it said.” Connect with Emily on LinkedIn Learn more about Landtower Residential Check out Bruce's books · NEW Life in the Leadership Lane Moving Leaders to Inspire and Change the Workplace · “Find Your Lane Change your GPS, Change your Career (“Book Authority” Best Books) · “Milemarkers” A 5 Year Journey …helping you record daily highlights to keep you on track. Subscribe to Bruce's Blog “Move to Inspire” https://brucewaller.com/blog-2/ Connect with Bruce on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/brucewaller/ Connect with Bruce on Twitter https://twitter.com/BruceWaller Connect with Bruce on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bruceww300/ Connect with Bruce on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/brucewwaller Get relocation support for your next household goods or commercial office move across the US by reaching out to Bruce at bwaller@goarmstrong.com or visit Armstrong Relocation https://www.armstrongrelocation.com/ Visit www.brucewaller.com for more information on Life in the Leadership Lane podcast and more!

Thinking there was no way she would go into labor with her VBAC baby at 37 weeks, Emily and her husband traveled to a family wedding. It was only a four-hour drive away from her birthing place. It was just for one night. She'd be laboring for the first time. Even if labor started, she'd have plenty of time to get back home. Right? Thanks to her physical, mental, and emotional birth preparation, Emily was able to stay calm and present when her birth took a wild turn. She rode each wave gracefully and allowed her body to take over when it needed to. You are sure to be left feeling inspired by Emily's impressive strength!Additional linksGentle Birth App Meditation and Contraction TimerThe VBAC Link CommunityHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull transcriptNote: All transcripts are edited to correct grammar, false starts, and filler words. Meagan: Happy Wednesday, everybody. This is Meagan and Julie with The VBAC Link and we are so excited, as always, to share with you another amazing story. We have our friend, Emily, today and she is going to share her VBAC story. She's actually in New York if I remember correctly and has quite the story to share, you guys. I kind of feel like we have a celebrity right now on the podcast because her story has seriously been featured everywhere. Like, seriously everywhere. People, USAToday, Inside Edition, Good Morning America, and yours truly, The VBAC Link here now. Julie: Almost right up there with them. Meagan: If we were as all of those platforms, then that would be really cool, but yeah. We are so excited to bring this story to you today. We are going to dive into her story really soon, but Julie has a Review of the Week, so we will hurry and do that, and then we'll dive right in. Review of the WeekJulie: Yeah, absolutely. I love it. I am so excited to hear this story. I love a good– type of story that this is. I almost gave a spoiler alert. This is my favorite type of birth story, so I can't wait to hear it. But yes, our review this week is from Kaytjtvgml on Apple Podcasts.Meagan: Alphabet soup there. Julie: It's called, “Thankful for the timing of this preparation tool! I have been listening to this podcast as well as following along with the Facebook group ‘The VBAC Link Community.'” Plug-in for the Facebook group.“I desired a VBAC right after having my elective Cesarean but just started off with a little hope and faith. Having tools and knowledge helps me sooo much mentally. I have learned and continue to learn from every episode. Each one makes me feel closer and closer to that victorious moment when my second baby is born vaginally. Even if things don't work in my favor, I still wouldn't trade this knowledge for anything. Hoping for a late June (or early July!)” Oh, that's like right now! “vaginal birth and to be able to share my story.”Well, we are so excited about your upcoming delivery, and definitely let us know how things go. If you are listening and you haven't had a chance to leave a review yet, drop us a review on Apple Podcasts, Facebook, or on Google. We just got a couple of Google reviews last week and that made my heart really, really happy. So if we have helped you in any way, please let us know. You can shoot us a message on Instagram or Facebook. I don't know. You can contact us in all the ways. We love hearing from you and we love knowing how we have helped you along your journey. So thanks so much “Kaytjtvgml” on Apple Podcasts and everyone else who has taken their time to leave us a sweet review.  Emily's StoryMeagan: Awesome. All right well, let's get into this story. I'm so excited about this story. Julie: All right, Emily. Do you want to take it over?Emily: Sure. Thanks for having me. I just want to say that I listened to The VBAC Link podcast a lot while I was pregnant and I am also a part of the Facebook group and all of that stuff. I actually bought the course as well. I had the book and all of that, so thanks for that. Julie: Yay. Absolutely. Emily: I think the best place to start is with my first birth because I won't go into too much detail with it, but I think because of that birth– obviously, I had the VBAC, but I think because of that birth, I don't know if I would have had the kind of experience I had if that makes sense. I think I had such a positive experience because it really lit a fire under me. I did so much more research and really prepared myself to the point where I just wanted this VBAC more than anything, so I really ended up having a positive experience.With my first, I was with midwives. I had a doula. I was planning unmedicated at a birthing center. I felt pretty educated and looking back, I honestly was. I did a lot of research. My doula was fabulous. We had a bunch of prenatal appointments. I was reading all of the books, watching documentaries, and listening to a ton of podcasts, so I felt really good about it, and then it turns out that my son was breech. For me, I desperately wanted to deliver vaginally. I was very comfortable assessing the risks and benefits of vaginal breech birth and I wanted to do vaginal. But unfortunately, when I found out and when I was due, which was right around Labor Day, anyone who was trained in vaginal breech birth was either on vacation, or they weren't accepting any more clients, or the hospital put a ban on breech births. At the time of my first birth, I didn't feel comfortable traveling more than four hours away at that point. So the best decision at the time was a planned C-section. I'd also like to mention that I did everything under the sun to try to get my son to turn including an ECV and it was not happening. I was seeing a chiropractor. I did lots of moxibustion. I was doing Spinning Babies and actually, even during the ECV, the doctor was able to turn my son head-down actually pretty easy. As soon as the doctor took his hands away, my son scurried back to head-up, butt-down. And then we tried it the other way. Counterclockwise, same thing. He just went right back into the same position. I am not sure why, but that did happen. With the planned C-section, I decided, “Okay, if I'm going to have a C-section, I want it to be the absolute most gentle, best family-centered C-section that I could possibly have. So I did advocate for myself quite a bit. I did have my choice of music playing and my husband had lavender oil that I was smelling. I was basically completely naked because I wanted my son to be on my chest as soon as he was born. They took him out pretty slowly because I wanted to try to have as much of a vaginal squeeze-type experience for him. We did delay cord clamping for about 90 seconds. They wrapped him in a warm towel during that and then put him on my chest so while they were sewing me up, he was on my chest the whole time which was great. I also did vaginal seeding with him and I had some expressed colostrum with me that I brought to the hospital that I used a little bit but he pretty much latched right when we were in the recovery room. My doula was able to come with me to the recovery room before I got to my main room. So all in all, a really great C-section.It was still an incredibly devastating experience which I think mentally was very isolating for me because to everyone else, it looked like a great experience. I healed really well. I had instant skin-to-skin and breastfeeding was going well. On paper, it looked like everything was fine. It was a planned C-section so I had a good night's sleep. We woke up, but I did miss all of the rushes of hormones. I missed the experience of giving birth vaginally which I desperately wanted. So it really was not the experience that I was planning on. Everyone's situation is different, but I think for a lot of people, a very common story is they didn't really do a lot of research. They didn't know. They just trusted their doctor. They walked into the hospital. There was a cascade of interventions, and then they ended up with an unplanned C-section. That's unfortunately very common for me. I was like, “I am at a birthing center. I have a doula. I know what I am doing.” So when I did have the C-section, it felt incredibly devastating. I don't know how to describe it, but it just felt like I did all of the work, and also, what I think made it really difficult was that I wanted to deliver him vaginally breach. I wasn't like, “Oh well, he is breech so that sucks. C-section is the safest route.” That's not how I felt. It may have been. There is no way to know. More than likely, it would have been fine to deliver him vaginally, so I just felt like I didn't have that experience. So I very much wanted a VBAC. So much so that when the surgeon was sewing me up, one of the nurses was taking pictures of my uterus and I was like, “Do a double-layer closure.” Even as she was closing me up, she was like, “You are going to get your VBAC. Don't worry. I'm doing great stitching. You're going to be great.” Because everyone in the room, including my midwife who was actually in the room with me during the surgery, all knew how badly I wanted a vaginal birth. So anyway, fast forward. I got pregnant when my son was two. We were team green this time because part of that was that I felt like it was no surprise to us with my first birth. I found out the gender and it was a planned C-section, and I felt that because I didn't have any of the hormones of labor, I just kind of went in for brunch or something or just an appointment, and then all of a sudden they were like, “Your baby is here,” and I wasn't feeling anything. I did want some element of surprise, so I thought, “Okay. Even if I don't get my VBAC and I have to do another C-section, at least I will have the element of surprise of finding out the gender.” In hindsight, my birth was plenty exciting and I did not need to find out the gender of my child.Moving forward, my pregnancy was totally fine. I had the same midwives and the same doulas, and I didn't get to really use them in labor the first time. They are great. I really like them. And from this pregnancy, some things that I was doing differently: I was very concerned about the positioning of the baby. I was seeing a Webster-certified chiropractor even before I was pregnant. She was doing (inaudible) and dry needling on my C-section scar, and really just making sure that I was in the best alignment and had the most space possible to have this baby get into the best position. Certainly, I don't want a breech baby, but even if the baby is head down, I wanted the baby in an optimal position for the easiest labor which ended up working. That worked really well for me. One other thing that I actually haven't mentioned when talking about this birth is that I was born with hip dysplasia and dislocated hips when I was born. It was discovered late, so I was put in a cast and then a brace, and then when I was in my twenties, I had something called a Periacetabular osteotomy which was a pretty intense surgery on my hips. So also, in the back of my mind, there is some asymmetry in my hips and I wasn't sure of the way my pelvis would move and flex during labor. So that was another reason why I really wanted chiropractic work during it. I also was doing Spinning Babies religiously. It's something that my doula mentioned the first time and I was like, “Yay. Okay, cool.” I didn't really do it too much. I was wearing heels all of the time. This time, I was very careful with all of the Spinning Babies stuff, never leaning back, and getting into the right position. So anyway, all of that is to say the pregnancy went super well and smoothly. I had a C-section with my son when I was 39 weeks and 1 day. Obviously, this was during the pandemic and I wasn't seeing a lot of people during the pregnancy. My husband‘s cousin was getting married in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. We hadn't seen our family in a long time, so I thought, “Let's go out and go to the wedding. It's fine.” I live in Westchester, New York, so it's about a 3-3 1/2 hour drive from our house. The hospital where I was planning on having a VBAC with the midwives was in Connecticut, so from the wedding to the hospital is about fourish hours away. I thought, “First of all, I am only 37 1/2 weeks at the time of this wedding. The chances of me going into labor– it's possible, but it's not likely. I'm not super far along.” Especially since I was only 39+1 with my son and there were no real signs of labor. So I drove out to the wedding. I figured, “Okay. If I happen to go into labor on this one day, I will just be in early labor. We will just drive back and we will go to the hospital, or I will go home, labor at home for a little bit, call the doula, and then we will head over to the hospital when things are progressing.It seemed like a very reasonable plan because who has a baby in less than three or four hours for their first-time labor? That just seems like yes it's possible, but again, I was just trying to look at the statistics as well. How long is first-time labor? I'm thinking, “Okay, somewhere in the realm of 16-24 hours. Something in that kind of range.” Anyway, so we went to the wedding. It was great and super fun. We left. There was a hotel where we were where the wedding was, so we went back to the hotel probably around 11-ish at night and we were in bed in our hotel room at 11:30, so it was close to midnight. I maybe had fallen asleep for a minute. I felt like I had to pee which happens when you're pregnant, but I had just peed at 11:30 so I'm like, “How is it that I have to pee again?” But whatever. I stood up to go pee and I just felt all of this warm liquid rush out of me.My first thought, like a lot of people's first thought is, “Am I peeing?” But it wasn't stopping so then I felt like, “Okay. This might be my water.” I went to the bathroom, changed, tried to go back to bed and the water was still leaking. At that point, I was like, “Okay. My water has broken. This is definitely a thing.” The liquid was clear. I was GBS negative. There was no odor. Everything was good. Obviously at that point, no one had checked how dilated I was or anything, so I was not concerned about any kind of infection. Obviously, I was pretty much at term and I had good prenatal care with no concerns. There was no kind of panicking.So I woke up my husband around midnight. He was just sleeping for a second and I was like, “Hey, my water broke. I'm not really concerned. I'm not really having any kind of contractions. If contractions start, let's pack it up and head back, but this could be a day or two before contractions even begin and then once that happens, it could be another 16 to 24 hours.” So correct me if I'm wrong, but that seems like how it is when the water breaks and you are not going into labor immediately.Meagan: It happened with me, three for three.Emily: Yeah.Meagan: Every single time. I mean, with the third, I didn't really go into labor for over 24 hours.Emily: Yeah. That's kind of what I thought. Obviously, sometimes your water breaks and you're in labor, but I was thinking, “Okay. If my water breaks and then I am in labor, will just leave.”Meagan: Right.Emily: And then also, I'm in the middle-of-nowhere Pennsylvania. I'm not going to go find an Amish midwife and run into her house or run to a random hospital where they know nothing about me other than I had a previous C-section and just be like, “I am not in labor, but my water broke.” That just seems insane.Meagan: I know. Yeah. A lot of the times, it's better to just chill and hang out and monitor your symptoms.Emily: Yeah and wait for labor to start.Meagan: For things to start, yeah.Emily: Granted, hindsight is 20/20. I should have just left, but I figured, “Okay. If this is going to be–” My water broke and I said, “Okay. Here we go. Contractions haven't started, but I have to get ready. I have to get my head in the game. This is going to be an adventure and I need to save my energy. I need to eat something. I need to try to sleep and just relax because this is going to be a wild ride. This is not the time for me to be awake and freaking out and all that.” So I told my husband basically all of that and I said, “Let's just try to get some sleep and we will wake up at 5:00 or 6:00 a.m.. We will just try to get a couple of hours and then we will drive early in the morning. There won't be any traffic and we will just head back when we are close or when it is a reasonable time in the morning like 7:00 or 8:00 a.m.. I can let our doula and our midwife know what's up and they can come in the morning if I am not in labor to see the midwives or whatever they want to do. My husband is half asleep and he was like, “Okay. I mean, I guess that sounds good. If the fluid was clear, let's just try to get some sleep.” All of the midwives and doulas that I have spoken to have been like, “Yes. That sounds very reasonable.” All of the general public is– you know my story went viral. I've had some comments here and there of people being like, “Why didn't you immediately scream and run into a hospital?” I just don't think that would have been the right decision for me. So anyways, I tried to go back to sleep but I couldn't understandably.Meagan: Well, when your mind knows what's happening, you are like, “I can't go to sleep.”Emily: Yeah. So I was trying to fall asleep but I kept leaking fluid. It wouldn't stop and I didn't have diapers or anything with me, so the fluid is just leaking, and leaking, and leaking. I'm actually texting with one of my friends who has had two home births and she knows how badly I wanted this. She was like, “Girl, you need to pack up your stuff and get out of there. What are you doing? You are going to have this baby in the car.” I am like, “No. I am fine. It's fine.” I have all of these text messages of our conversation now with her. It is hilarious.Meagan: So funny, yeah.Emily: But again, I was just like, “I'm fine.” I also really understood the pain-fear cycle and I just was so committed to being “chill”-- I'm putting that in quotes– during labor and just being focused, and staying positive, and breathing, and not letting fear sneak in. I feel like that almost pushed me so much that I was in denial a little bit about what was going on.So anyway at some point, I think it was probably around 2:30 a.m.,, I am up and down every two seconds. My poor hotel room was covered in amniotic fluid. I went to the bathroom and there was the bloody show. I am like, “Okay. Here we go.” Still, no contractions but things are picking up. At some point, I am pooping a lot, TMI, and I am like, “Okay. Here we go. Another sign. We are getting ready.”Meagan: Yeah. Your body is preparing to begin labor.Emily: Yes and I was like, “All of these signs are good.” 3:00 a.m. hit, so this is three hours after my water broke and contractions hit. They hit hard, and fast, and heavy and it completely took my breath away. I woke up my husband and I said, “Hey, contractions started. We should go.”I had maybe two or three contractions at that point and he was like, “Okay. I am going to run to the drugstore. I will pick up some adult diapers because you are still leaking or whatever just to protect the car,” which again, in hindsight, is very funny. So he goes to get the adult diapers and I do have a thought in my mind. I remember panicking for a second and thinking in my mind, “Don't leave. Don't leave me.” But I was just like, “Okay.” He left and he was like, “You pack up the room,” and I was like, “Okay. I looked over at my make-up, because we had just gone to a wedding, so I had my bra, and my dress, and my fake eyelashes, and my makeup and clothes are everywhere. It was a disaster. Meanwhile, these contractions are coming every four minutes, every three minutes and they are lasting a minute or more.Meagan: And strong.Emily: And strong. I am completely bent over on the bed having to breathe and I remember that one of the thoughts I was having was, “Oh my gosh. Is this early labor? If this is early labor, I can't do this.” I was like, “No.” I shooed that thought away. I was like, “Nope. We are doing this. It's happening, so get on board. We are doing this.” At on point as I am throwing everything into my suitcase, I stumble into the bathroom because I was jumping out of my skin and I felt like I needed some relief, and so I turned on the tub. I was like, “Oh, I will just get in the shower or the tub for a minute just for a second,” and then the other side of my brain was like, “Emily, you cannot take a bath. Get your crap and go. You don't have time for a luxurious bath in this hotel. You have to get going.” So I had those two sides of my brain chatting with each other the whole time.I will say one of the things that I found incredibly helpful–  I mentioned a Webster certified chiropractor and having a very supportive team. I had my midwife, my doula and really educated myself so I didn't have fear. Not necessarily in advocating for myself which of course, education is good for that, but also, I feel like the more you know about birth, the more normalized it is. I think if you don't know anything about it, there is a certain level of fear of the unknown. I was very much in that world. A lot of my friends have had home births so I'm kind of in the universe, so birth did seem very normal to me. I don't know if normal is the right word, but borderline uneventful. It is a very natural process most of the time.Meagan: Right.Emily: Where things most of the time go well. So that was kind of my mindset but the other thing I think that is incredibly important that I would like to mention is that I was using the Gentle Birth App for meditations during my pregnancy. I really doubled down on it the last couple of weeks. I was doing meditations and then about a week before this wedding, I downloaded their contraction timer which just came out. It was a new app. It was the same woman talking through the meditations, but it is with a contraction timer so you press the button when a contraction starts and it's a woman's voice. I couldn't tell you what she said now, but it was all sorts of calming, wonderful things, and you turn it off and you rate the contraction. I forget how they label it, but it's mild, medium and I forget. Intense might be the wrong word but it is three different levels. I just kept rating them as the lowest level because I was like, “It's fine. This is fine. We are good. Everything is good,” and I kept rating them as mild even though I am completely doubled over. I am having to breathe through them and can't talk.So my husband comes back. We are in the car at 4:00 a.m.. So at this point, it was an hour from when my contractions started. My water broke at midnight. So I was in labor for an hour at that point. We get in in the car. I am texting my sister-in-law. The other huge part of this– I feel like, with a lot of the headlines of my birth story, it's hard. I want to share my story because I feel like I had such a wonderful, and powerful, and empowering experience. I want to hopefully help people, and educate people, and make people feel confident that they can do this, but with sharing something so personal, you do put a target on your back and there are some other comments from people about different things. I had to deal with people just reading a headline and not knowing any of the details of why did I make the decisions I made.I was at this wedding. I was supposed to drive my sister-in-law back in the morning. There was a brunch in the morning for everyone and we were supposed to drive her back to New York with us. So in my mind, I felt like, “Well, this baby isn't coming for a day or two at least. I don't want to abandon my sister-in-law in Amish country. I will wait a couple of hours and then maybe we will wake her up at 5:00 or 6:00 a.m. and then we go.” That seemed very reasonable to me. So as I am doubled over, I'm trying to get into my husband‘s car. I have a Jeep that is bigger. He has a Honda Accord which is pretty roomy, but not roomy enough for labor. I don't know what car would be roomy enough for labor. But I was texting her and I was like, “Hey. Contractions started,” or something. “Everything is fine,” and then later, at 4:00 a.m. when I was in the car, I said something like, “This is getting really intense. We have to go. Sorry.” And then a half an hour later, I think she saw the text message. She starts calling me. She starts calling my husband. She was texting us and she was like, “What's going on? Are you guys okay? What's going on?” I couldn't text back or answer and my husband just kept ignoring the call. This whole time, I am using the contraction timer not so much to time the contractions, but more for the meditation that went along with it. I was in the car in the front seat for a little bit, and then at some point, I moved to the backseat. But I ended up laboring in the car. We were driving for an hour and 45 minutes. That is the other part of the story that I think—Meagan: That sounds miserable.Emily: It was miserable. Yes. It's so funny because when I listen to these podcasts with any kind of birth story and people talk about how, “I had to go into the car to get to the hospital.” They say that the first intervention is moving spaces when you are laboring and they are like, “That car ride was the worst.” I am like, “Oh yeah? How about almost 2 hours of it?” I mean, not that it's a competition of whose labor sucks, but it's very different– spoiler alert– having a baby in the car versus laboring in the car for hours. So anyway, I was in the front seat for a little bit. At some point, I was like, “I have to get out. Pull over. Pull over.” I sat up for a little bit and went to the backseat but this whole time, I was listening to the app. Also, I am not sponsored at all. This is just for a reference. I was just breathing and I was really focusing on everything that I learned. I was relaxing my jaw. I was doing low moans, nothing high-pitched. I was doing lip trills, like horse lips, when things were getting more intense. For some reason actually, keeping my eyes opened was better for me. At the time I felt like, “Oh, let me close my eyes and go inward,” but that almost made it more intense for me, so keeping my eyes open was helpful. However, I will say that at one point, I think it was probably right before transition or during transition, it was incredibly intense. I had those two sides of my brain talking. It was so intense and still, I was never screaming. I was never really loud. In my husband's defense, it just seemed like I was hanging out in the backseat just going, “Ohhhh,” for two hours. So I remember that it got really intense and one side of my brain was saying, “Okay. Your options are, you can open the door and throw yourself into traffic or you can just ride these waves and this is just what it is.” And I just thought, “Okay. This is just what it is. Obviously, I am not throwing myself into traffic, so I just have to breathe. I just have to breathe. I don't have to do anything. My body is doing it for me. I just have to breathe. This isn't going to last forever.” I think that at one point I said out loud to my husband, “Remind me that there is a baby at the end of this,” because I was so in it. I couldn't even really remember that I was in labor and there was a baby. It was just a tornado that was happening. Also sorry, the story is jumping around, but again in hindsight, I was having prodromal labor for about a week or two before this night.Meagan: So plug-in, sometimes a history of prolonged prodromal labor can result in a precipitous birth. I'm going to throw that out there.Emily: Ah, good to know.Meagan: When our doula clients have prodromal labor for weeks or even for a week, it is like, “Okay. When things seem to turn, we need to be on full alert.”Julie: That was how mine was.Emily: That is so interesting.Julie: By the time I realized it was real and by the time things actually shifted, it was less than three hours before she was born. My prodromal labor was 22 days. It was awful.Meagan: Anyway, keep going. So you had prodromal labor–Emily: I was having prodromal labor and again, I was in denial. At one point, I actually took a Pepto-Bismol. That's how strong of denial I was in. However, at one point it was happening so much, especially at night. The waves were coming every 15 minutes. I could time it, like set my watch to it, and then they were coming consistently every 10 minutes. I was having a contraction about every 10 minutes but it was only lasting 30-45 seconds. That was happening not every single night but every couple of nights for two weeks before this. I just kept ignoring it because it just felt like period cramps.Meagan: Kind of stagnant and never really progressed in a forward motion.Emily: Yeah. It was never at a point where I was like, “Here we go.”Meagan: “Here we go,” yeah.Emily: It was kind of just like Braxton Hicks but more intense.Meagan: I don't know though. Even when things are seeming, “Here we go,” you didn't respond like, “Here we go.”Emily: No.Meagan: I totally get what you are saying, but I am just joking. You have a really strong pain tolerance or discomfort tolerance.Emily: Yes. Even in the throes of labor, again in my defense, I still thought I was in early labor because labor started at 3:00 a.m., and here I am and it is 5:00 a.m. in the car.Meagan: Right, yeah.Emily: That baby isn't coming out of me now. That is insane. Of course, you hear of stories like that on podcasts once in a while. You are like, “Well, that is a crazy story. Obviously, statistically that will not happen to me. I'm going to have the normal, long labor that stalls that I need to do curb walking for. That is going to be me because that is the majority or at least that is what it the majority seems like. I did not think I was going to have a precipitous birth. Again, sorry. I am ruining this whole story but I am sure if there is a title on this episode, people already know.Meagan: I don't think you are ruining it at all.Emily: Thank you. Long story short, there was another point. Oh and it's contraction timer, but you also get it saved in your phone so I actually have a printout and a saved PDF of all of my contractions, and the times of them, and how long they were, and how I rated them. I was timing my contractions up until five minutes before my daughter was born, so that is how much of in denial I was that I was still timing my contractions when I'm literally pushing.Meagan: Still thinking it's early, yes.Emily: Yes, yes. I texted my doula at some point because I knew that she kept her phone off and that if we needed her to answer in the middle of the night, we call her from this other number. But in general, she kept her phone off so I figured, “Okay. I will text her and if she happened to be up, she will see it.” I just let her know what was happening. She called us and I couldn't talk at that point but my husband was talking to her. At that point, it was maybe 5:00 a.m., 5:15 a.m., maybe two hours into labor and we were still somewhere out of Pennsylvania or maybe somewhere in New Jersey. We were chatting. Well, I wasn't chatting but he was chatting, “Okay, maybe we will meet at the house. Maybe we will meet at the hospital. Maybe we should meet at the house and pick up the bag, and labor a little bit there and see how we feel.” That's where my mind was. I thought we had time to get from where we were in New Jersey all the way back to Westchester, New York, labor and hang out, grab my bag, maybe eat something, and then go to the hospital and labor there. So that's where I was.Meagan: I keep giggling, but that's where you were. That's where your mind was. You believed that's where you were.Emily: Yes.Meagan: As a doula, that's like, “Pedal to the metal! Let's have a line of cops to follow. Let's get there.”Emily: Yes and in hindsight, looking at my contraction timer, it was every three minutes or less for like a minute, a minute and a half long the whole time. At one point, I was rating the contractions moderately which were at a middle zone when they were incredibly intense. I was like, “Oh. These are a little stronger,” during the time, but I wasn't going to throw myself into traffic. At one point, I think it was 5:15 AM. I have the exact timeline because of that PDF from the timer, but somewhere around there I was like, “I have to get out. I have to get out of the car and pull over.” So my husband pulled over and I stood up as soon as I stood up, it felt so nice to just stand and move because remember, I'm in the back of a Honda Accord with a gigantic toddler car seat next to me Also, my toddler was with my parents in New York. He was not in the car. But it was a huge, empty car seat, so I really did not have a luxurious amount of room. Also, mentioning the position that I was in– so I was behind the driver's side. I had my right leg on the floor. My left leg up on the seat. I don't know how you would describe the position, and then I had my left arm holding the dry cleaning bar. So I was holding myself up and I was consciously thinking, “Get off your tailbone. Get off your tailbone. Let your pelvis open. You need flexibility here. Don't sit on anything.” So I was up on my side, my right hip whole time. At some point, my thinking brain was turning on and I was like, “Okay, why don't you lean over the car seat, and get on all fours, and lean your arms over the car seat so your hips can really open up,” but every time I tried to move it all, I just couldn't. It was too much. It was too intense. I was basically just frozen and stuck in that position the entire time. So around 5:15, I get up out of the car. I'm moving around. I put my wrist on the top of the car and I had to remember that being a very nice moment because the car was cold. I was sweating and disgusting and it felt so nice to have the cool car on my wrists. I will also say at that point, I took off my adult diaper just instinctually. I think I just needed to take it off and I was pushing. This is, I don't know, like 5:20-5:30, something in there. I felt myself pushing and I felt like, “Oh my gosh. Why are you pushing if you are in early labor? And even if it is not early labor, there is no way you are at a 10.” So I just thought, “No Emily. You cannot push. Stop pushing.” I just thought that maybe it was so intense that my body was just tightening up because it was so much and I just need to relaxed. I felt like the answer was just to relax and don't push. Relax. Breathe through it, so I was just relaxing my jaw by doing lip trills and low moans as I'm trying to push and just relax through it.Which again, in hindsight, just opened me up more. I was concerned about whether I was going to be pushing too early and be swollen. I was thinking like, “Oh my gosh. I'm going to get to the hospital and I'm going to be so swollen,” because I would have been pushing before 10 centimeters, and they were going to try to give me Benadryl, and I was going to be going backward in dilation and I was like, “Okay. I have to not push. Don't push. Don't push.” But of course, my body was just pushing for me at that point. I had no control over pushing or not pushing or anything. All I was doing was breathing and in heavy denial at that point. My husband didn't realize that I was pushing either. So that point, I willed myself to get back into the backseat because I thought like, “Okay. Things are really ramping up in this early labor. I have to get back to my house and/or the hospital with my midwives, and my support team, and my doula, and everyone. Also for reference, we did call the midwives at some point. I think it was around when we got back in the car. I didn't want to call in the middle of the night. I didn't want to wake them up. I just figured, “Okay. We will call them when we are close to Connecticut. When we are close to the hospital, we will give them a heads up and say, ‘Hey. We are an hour away' or ‘Hey, we are 45 minutes away. Just want to let you know.'” That seemed very reasonable to me. It didn't really make sense in my mind to call them in the middle of the night to be like, “Hi. We are four hours away.” I don't really know what they would have told me.So again in hindsight, with my water broke, I should have called them and they probably would have said, “Hey, because you are so far away, you should leave now.” But at the time I didn't wanna wake them up. So I just figured, “I've got this. It's fine. I will call them when something is happening.”Meagan: When something is happening.Emily: Yes. So anyway, I am in the backseat and I am, in hindsight, definitely pushing and all of a sudden– this is a little before 5:45 a.m.. So I got into the car at 3:00 a.m. and this is a little less than two hours and 45 minutes after labor started and about an hour and 45 minutes in the car. I suddenly just say, “Pull over. Pull over.” My husband was like, “There's nowhere to pull over. We are on the highway. There's no shoulder. I will pull over at the next exit.” I reached down and I said, “There is a head,” because I felt the top of a baby's head. He was like, “Okay.” So he just immediately pulled over, or he was trying to pull over, and then a couple of seconds later, her entire body just shot out of me. I caught her and I was holding her onto my chest. I just said, “There is a baby!” My husband looked in the rearview mirror and I am just holding this squishy, little baby. It just happened incredibly fast. It went from, “Pull over,” “There is a head,” “There is a baby,” in less than a minute. I mean really, my body was pushing for me. I was not doing anything.Meagan: True fetal ejection.Emily: Yes. I knew that it was a thing, so it was really cool to feel it and to get into it. Also, I am laboring at night so it was a dark environment. I was by myself. I felt as comfortable as you can in a car and I was watching the sunrise, so that was kind of nice. Just to jump back, one of the things when I was saying I was going to throw myself into traffic, not to scare anyone, it's not that bad. It's very doable. But at the time, I had that momentary transition, looking back, of that “I can't do it” moment, but I did rally pretty quickly until like, “No. You have to. You don't have a choice.” I do remember looking at the GPS on the screen because where I was leaning over, I could see the screen. It said I had two more hours or some ridiculous number like that and I remember thinking, “No. No, no, no. I can't. There cannot be two more hours of this. I absolutely cannot do this for two more hours. There's no way.” And then I thought, “Okay.” Again denial, I was like, “I'm going to pretend like I didn't see that,” and then I just looked out the window and watched the sunrise. I was like, “That GPS doesn't exist.” I kind of had my eyes like those magic eye books. I don't know their name. Do you know what I'm talking about?Meagan: Yeah I do, but I don't remember the name of them either. Like iSpy but not.Emily: Yeah. Not iSpy, but the magnifying glass where you put—Meagan: Yeah, not iSpy but that is coming to my mind.Emily: You put your nose to the page, and you slowly move it, and your eyes kind of fuzz, and then you see a different image? I was doing that with my eyeballs with the screen. I was like, “Nope. Can't see that screen two hours ahead.” So anyway, I caught my daughter and eventually my husband pulled over. I mean, I did it but it was crazy. I remember thinking, “Oh my god. What even happened?” I don't even know what I was thinking. It was like, “What even just happened? That was insane.” So I think we called 911 because after the fact with the birth story, Inside Edition was one of the news outlets that reached out. They were able to obtain the 911 audio, so we actually have that.Meagan: That's awesome.Emily: I am happy to send it your way. But we have the 911 audio and you just hear me in the background saying, “Hi. Hi baby. Hi baby. Can you cry for me? Can you cry? Hi,” and I am trying to get her to cry because she wasn't. So I am rubbing her back and I somehow had the wherewithal to grab a towel from the hotel room and wrap her. She was skin-to-skin with me but I put a towel over her over us. I am rubbing her and trying to get her to cry, and it probably took a minute or two minutes for her to cry. She was breathing. Her body was moving. I could see her lungs expanding, but it took a little while for her to cry.One of the things that happened that I didn't– I am careful with where I share this because the birth was so wonderful and I have such fond, wonderful memories of it so I don't want to add any kind of fear into the story. However, I do want to be authentic and truthful about it so one thing that actually did happen was when she was born– and I don't know when this happened in the process– but I am holding her and I look to see the gender of the baby. At some point, I looked and I said that it was a girl, but who cares? Because at that point it was, “What even just happened?” But I looked down and the umbilical cord had snapped. So on her, there were maybe three inches and then the rest of the umbilical cord was somewhere inside of me.Meagan: Attached to the placenta still?Emily: Yes.Meagan: Okay, yeah. But still. It still snapped and was not clamped.Emily: Not clamped but it wasn't bleeding.Meagan: Bleeding out, yeah.Emily: It instantly clotted on both sides so I wasn't hemorrhaging at all. That was something I was checking. I looked down. “Am I losing blood? Am I good?” And I actually didn't. I barely lost any blood.Meagan: Great. That's good.Emily: So I was fine. She was breathing. I'm not a doctor, but she was breathing. She was pinking up. She started crying. The umbilical cord wasn't bleeding but that is– I was a little in shock but looking back, that isn't ideal for sure. And unfortunately, the 911 operator, although very sweet, had no idea what to say or do which is what I felt at the moment but then afterward I was like, “I don't know. Maybe I was just out of it,” but then now that I have the 911 audio, I was listening back and I had no idea what was happening. He was literally like, “Oh. Okay. Well, I guess you already had the baby so congratulations. I guess you did that part. Let me get my sheet. Why does my sheet say to do? Okay. Can you clamp the cord?” And I am like, “The cord snapped.” He was like, “Okay. I don't know.” You just hear me saying, “Is someone coming? Is someone coming to get us?” I know. It was wild. And basically a minute into that incompetent conversation, my husband was like, “Okay. We're going to call our midwives now.” He was like, “Okay. Congratulations. Help is on the way.” Because we're not gonna hang out on the phone with someone who literally has no idea what he was talking about, although very sweet.Meagan: Yeah. Yeah.Emily: So we called the midwives but someone was going to call us back. I don't know. I think it went to an answering service and I'm not really sure what happened there, but we called our doula and she was like, “Okay. Crank up the heat. Get the blanket. Warm her up.” You know, giving us all these directions. I think we gave her a heart attack for sure because we talked to her twenty minutes before then and we were like, “Maybe we will meet at the house and eat a meal together.” And then we were like, “Hi. The baby is born.” And she was like, “What? What is happening?” So yeah. That is basically the story but she is all good. My daughter is all good. She was fine. I was fine.Meagan: You were okay?Emily: Yep. I was doing great. She breastfed like a champ. We rode in the ambulance together and she was on my chest the whole time. Me and the ambulance workers– I was taking selfies with them and they were taking videos for me. I birthed my placenta in the ambulance and I have a video of that. One of the female EMS workers was like, “Yay!” So it was really chill. They wanted to give me an IV in the ambulance and I said, “Why? I am done.” They were like, “Well, the hospital wants it.”Meagan: Yeah.Emily: I just said, “Yeah.” I declined that part and they were like, “Okay.” So I didn't get one. We just went to the hospital and I left 24 hours later and went home.Meagan: Oh my gosh. That's amazing. What a rush. Totally not expected and like you said, not out of the ordinary in a lot of things. You were like, “Yeah I'm taking my time,” and then boom bang bam, you have a baby. That is so awesome and so exciting. So exciting. I can't imagine being in that position but I am sure it would be quite the whirlwind.Emily: Yeah, and then looking back, I think it was about 15 minutes of pushing maybe?Meagan: Wow, yikes.Emily: Her whole body flew out and actually surprisingly, I didn't tear at all.Meagan: That's awesome. So awesome. Well, congratulations again. I know everyone has probably said, “Congratulations.”Emily: Thank you.Meagan: That's so awesome. So awesome to have you on the podcast and excited for the world to continue to hear your story.Emily: Thank you. I'm super passionate about birth and all of that stuff. So if anyone ever wants to reach out to me, they are more than welcome to.ClosingInterested in sharing your VBAC story on the podcast? Submit your story at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Julie and Meagan's bios, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Podcast Intro: Yoga Health Coaches, Patrick Heffernan, and Emily Cole were on many different journeys two years ago when life events and the state of the world catapulted them into a new direction.   While Patrick has an acting and yoga background and Emily leads wilderness adventures to at-risk youth, both are now on a similar journey as Yoga Health Coaches, leading others into transformation and being “Digital Nomads” (Emily's term)! Listen in on this entertaining and enlightening conversation about finding and crossing new thresholds, overcoming mainstream culture, feeling into identity evolution, and so much more! What you'll get out of tuning in: How to step confidently over new life thresholds. How to optimize habits through a big change. Why work through cultural beliefs in our communities. When to find flexibility with the habits. How to guide others out of a fixed mindset. Links/CTA: Join our Wisdom+Wealth Facebook Group Gap vs Gain by Dan Sallivan & Dr. Benjamin Hardy Emily Cole Socials + Website: Emily Cole IG: @wild.within.coaching Emily Cole website: Wild Within Coaching Patrick Heffernan Socials + Website: IG: @heff_patrick Twitter: @pat_Heffnyc Website: www.patrickyoga.com Jordan Peterson Highlights: Emily shares her story of honoring her identity evolution at a recent Mexican Fiesta. Patrick talks about his experience with the Wild Habits challenge and the Fast mimicking diet. Patrick tells us about helpful practices for liminal thinking from Jordan Peterson. Timestamps: [3:40]- Understanding our own story as an important self-study.  [8:40]- Willingness and awareness around thresholds. [11:42]- Kaizen approach to habits in new locations.    [13:35]- Overcoming cultural beliefs around new habits. [14:10]- Honoring our desires when culture doesn't. [16:00]- YHC Community support.    [19:01]- Building body wisdom through habits. [21:23]- Consciousness and flexibility in habits. [24:02]- The Identity evolution of being in choice and releasing judgment.  [29:09]- Shining the light of consciousness onto the trigger. [30:43]- Spirituality in the business journey. [35:00]- Collaboration in looking within vs. outsourcing wisdom.  [38:40]- Guiding others out of a fixed mindset.   [40:15]- The push/pull dynamic of identity evolution Quotes: “I just need to be present right here, because I don't know where else to be.” -Emily “Every time I change locations, I get a chance to reset my habits.” -Emily It's one thing to make the decision just to go against culture, but then you are going to get little kind of continuous pushback or reminders or friction or resistance in all these different forms and it's going to show up in our relationships.  Our relationships, I think, are a real big part of identity evolution.  It shows how much I am evolving based on how much the people around me are reacting to what I'm doing.” -Patrick “Now there is this pull of I know, my body knows and I know in all layers of myself, how good it feels to feel good and I know that that can keep getting better.” -Emily “When we can shine light of consciousness onto the trigger, that's as much of a win as changing the habit of letting the thing go.” -Patrick Guest Bio: Patrick Heffernan and Emily Cole Emily Cole: As the founder of Wild Within Coaching, Emily believes in, supports, and models going deep within ourselves for a wild journey. With a decade of wilderness guiding experience, she knows intimately the transformative power of adventure and how good it feels to be centered in oneself. Through coaching, she has seen the same process of people coming into their own guidance, wisdom, and power and loves supporting and guiding these exciting journeys too.   Patrick Heffernan: Patrick Heffernan is a wellness professional based two hours north of NYC in the Hudson Valley. He leads the dynamic community, Journey to You, where he coaches his members on how they can live a life more aligned to the rhythm of nature and tap into their best health and best selves. He also founded the online yoga community, Journey to the Peak, where he leads monthly online yoga immersions themed towards a peak pose and/or yoga philosophy.

There is nothing more human than storytelling. In this bonus Voice & Ai episode, Anne is joined by award-winning voice actor Emily Lawrence, Co-Founder of The Professional Audiobook Narrators' Association. They discuss the financial vs. social implications of Ai voices, creating a community for audiobook narrators, and why human-ness is an essential part of storytelling… Transcript >> It's time to take your business to the next level, the BOSS level! These are the premiere Business Owner Strategies and Successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a BOSS, a VO BOSS! Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza. Anne: Hey everyone. Welcome to the VO BOSS podcast for another episode of the AI and voice series. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza, and today I'm excited to bring special guest Emily Lawrence to the show. Emily is an award-winning actor and writer that's narrated more than 425 audiobooks for publishers such as McMillan, Harper Collins, Penguin, Random House, Simon and Schuster, and many more. She's incredibly proud to be the co-founder and chair of the newly formed Professional Audiobook Narrators Association, or PANA, as everybody has come to know it. Her greatest loves are storytelling and reading of course. So narrating audiobooks is a dream come true for her. And her other passions include traveling, LARPing, aerial surf, fostering kittens, and chocolate. So I have a lot to talk to you about because I love cats. We know that. I have three of them. And so I just love the fact that you foster kittens. Emily: I do. Anne: And thank you so much for joining me today. It's a pleasure to have you here. Emily: Well, thank you for having me. Anne: Yes. Emily: Happy to be here. Anne: So in addition to the kitties, um, I need to ask you for a more complete description. I have never heard of this, but that might not be a surprise. LARPing. Emily: A-ha. Anne: For those BOSSes in the audience that may not be familiar with that, what is that? Emily: Uh, so LARPing stands for live action role play, and it's the nerdiest thing you've never heard of. Anne: I kinda love that. Emily: Um, so basically it's like -- people tend to be more familiar with Dungeons and Dragons, so it's basically like that, which is a kind of like you're role-playing out a video game kind of, only in Dungeons and Dragons, you sit around a table, and you talk about everything you're doing and you like roll dice to simulate fighting and whatever. And in LARPing, you actually role-play everything. So it's like a bunch of nerds in a park with like foam weapons. Anne: I love it. Emily: Fighting each other. Anne: I love it. That's great. Well, look, hey, the nerdier, the better as far as I'm concerned. Emily: Yeah, no, I love it. Anne: That's fantastic. So again, it's great to get to know the you behind the association that has been newly formed. How old is PANA now? Emily: Uh, well we opened to members, I think it was October 21st or -- Anne: Wow. Emily: -- thereabouts. Anne: Fantastic. So tell me, you know, I'm very excited to hear about this because I think it's probably about time, right, in the audiobook world, that there is an association that is vested in the interests of the community. Talk to me about that. Emily: Yeah. Well, I mean, there have been other organizations such as the Audio Publishers Association, which really represents publishers. Anne: Right. Emily: But narrators and other people in the industry can be members. And then obviously there's SAG-AFTRA which represents narrators as a labor union, but SAG-AFTRA also represents everybody else. Anne: Sure. Emily: So there was no organization that really was dedicated to narrators specifically. And I think you're right. It was about time and long overdue. Anne: So, I know that there's a lot involved in creating an organization. Tell me a little bit about that story and how did that begin? I mean, what was -- were there issues that were coming up in the audiobook world that you were saying, you know what, we need an organization to really take care of our community? Emily: Yeah. There have been talks for many years of -- among narrators of feeling unrepresented in various places and in various ways. And then obviously with the rising danger, I guess, or whatever of AI, I certainly felt like, okay, somebody has to do something. And so earlier this year, there were a lot of conversations in Narrator, Facebook, and other groups just kind of like that made me feel like, okay, we need to organize. We need to come together. And so I did that. Anne: And have a voice. I love that. Well, hey, it's one thing to talk, right, to sit around in groups and talk. I have so much respect for the fact that you pulled something together. I mean, there's a lot of work involved in that. Emily: Yeah. It was definitely a lot of work. I am very grateful to have my co-founder Emily Ellet with me through the whole process. And so we kind of started talking like about what this would be and how the community needs it. And then we just kind of did it. Anne: Well, I -- Emily: Here we are. Anne: You know, I love it. I was looking at your website, which for those BOSSes out there that want to check them out, it is pronarrators.org. I love your statement on who we are. I just think that your mission statement is providing opportunities for raising awareness of the narrator within public consciousness. And you have so many wonderful things that represent that this organization is going to be doing for narrators. Tell me a little bit about the initiatives for those things. Emily: Sure. Well, we're certainly very ambitious. We have a lot of really big plans, mostly around three things really. One is education, education both of narrators in order to raise narration standards throughout the industry, but also education of the public, and education in the industry about narrator needs and the fact that we exist because -- Anne: Sure. Emily: -- a lot of people listen to audiobooks and don't give a second thought to the performer who's bringing that story to life for them. And that's obviously important to us that, especially when you're talking about having humans versus robot narrators, you know, for people to recognize that we're human to begin with is probably really important there. So education in general is a big focus for us. Uh, we also have a focus on advocacy, which is kind of our umbrella term for all of the things that we want to do to help our industry thrive with human narrators as part of the mix, and the changes that we would like to see in order to help make that happen. And then the last one would be just community, fostering a community. As I kind of pointed out before, there was no organization that really represented narrators specifically, and only -- and we have a really wonderful, giving community. I mean, honestly, the narrator community is some of the most wonderful, friendly, open, supportive people I've ever met. You know, for a bunch of people who are essentially competitors, we're all so supportive of each other. We all help each other out all the time. And it felt like it would be really wonderful to have an organization that sort of formally recognizes, celebrates, expands, and strengthens that. Anne: So what sort of -- do you have events planned for things that you've -- meetings coming up, events, community outreach, what sorts of things do you have planned for the future? Emily: So we've got lots of plans. Um, everything's just in the beginning stages. We're a member-driven organization. So we operate entirely on volunteer labor. And so our committees have only just started. I mean, they all had their first meeting last month. And so everything is in its infancy. We're just getting started, but we've got big plans for example, community events to get together both in person and online and sort of, you know, build friendships, but also network and things like that. We have plans for an award ceremony that is going to be community-driven and peer-reviewed. So kind of like the Audies, which is our current Oscars essentially meets like the SAG Award. So it will be like a peer-reviewed award show, but that has different sort of categories than typical award shows that really focus in on celebrating our community in a different way, which I think I'm really excited about. Anne: Plans on collaborating or is it a possibility to do any type of collaborative work with the union? Emily: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. We've reached out to both the APA and SAG-AFTRA announcing our existence -- Anne: Right. Emily: -- and saying that we would really like to work with them to further our mutual goals, and both of them have responded very positively -- Anne: Excellent. Emily: -- and very supportive. And so we really do look forward to working with existing organizations to move everyone forward. Anne: So in terms of membership, so if I wanted to be a member, are there requirements, are there -- do you vet your members? What's involved if I wanted to become a member? Emily: Sure. Anne: Because I personally don't do audiobooks and don't hold that against me. I -- just not in my genre, but I know so many people that are just so passionate about the craft of audiobooks and narrating. So if I wanted to be a member, could I, or what is the process? Emily: So members are -- you're eligible for membership if you have recorded at least one audiobook -- Anne: Okay. Emily: -- that is available on some sort of commercial platform. Anne: Okay. Emily: So it's a very low, you know, if you've narrated one book, you can join. There's dues that have to pay, but then you're a voting member. Anne: Okay, great. Emily: If you do not qualify for a membership, we also are creating sponsorship tiers. So we'll have sponsorship tiers -- Anne: Okay. Emily: -- for -- Anne: Nice. Emily: -- other people in the industry like directors, proofers, editors, et cetera. And those are not ready yet, but once they are, there'll be sort of different ways to support the industry and get benefits and like access to events and things like that for doing stuff. Anne: Got it. Are you an official nonprofit organization? Emily: Okay. So we are operating as a nonprofit. We cannot apply for our nonprofit status until we file our first tax return. Anne: Got it. Emily: So -- Anne: Got -- well, I know that it's an involved thing, which is one of the reasons why -- I've, I've served on the boards of many nonprofits. So I know how involved it can be, which is again, why I have a lot of respect for you taking the initiative to put this together for the community. There's so much work involved in nonprofit, and I know how important volunteers and volunteer efforts go. It's so hard when everybody is busy to take the time and be able to help out in an organization like this. And I really look forward to the success of PANA because I know a lot of organizations that start off with the best of hopes. And then it turns into something where it is an awful lot of work and maybe more work than people anticipate. And so I know how it can be hard to progress. Emily: Well, it's definitely more work than I anticipated. Anne: Yup. Emily: I'm committed. So I'm there. And I know my co-founder Emily Ellet is also very committed, and we have a wonderful board. We've put together a board of some of the most respected -- Anne: Oh yes. Emily: -- people in our industry, and they are all very committed also. Everyone has expressed a sort of surprised at how much work it really is. Anne: Right, yeah. Emily: But, um, you know, everybody has affirmed to me multiple times, as recently as yesterday, that like, you know, we're in this and we're going to make this work. Anne: Well, I think having a voice for the audiobook industry is so important, especially with things that develop within our own industry. I mean, not just in audiobooks, but in the voiceover industry as a whole, we are facing changes, and I've known this because I've done my AI and voice series for at least 30 episodes now. So there are things that are, you know, impending and coming into this industry that we as professionals need to understand, and I don't know, evolve or work with or not, or form an educated strategy in order to co-exist, let's say, with them. So I will talk about the AI elephant in the room, which is AI. And what are your thoughts? I know that it's, it's scary for a lot of us that this technology is coming. And so what is your position on behalf of PANA in regards to let's say the evolution of AI and AI narrators? Emily: Well, we are a pro-narrator organization, pro-human narrator. Anne: Sure. Emily: And so we are dedicated to supporting human narrators however we can. We have a lot of ideas about how to address this, but I think the board has expressed our first priority to be education, because I think that a lot of narrators don't really understand all of the possible risks right now. I think it's wonderful that you're doing this, you know, you're, series to educate people. Um, but I think that we have a task ahead of us just to make sure that people fully understand -- Anne: yeah. Emily: -- what everything is. Like -- Anne: Sure. Emily: -- for example, a lot of people don't understand the difference between creating an artificial voice, like a clone of someone, and machine learning, which I don't know if you've covered in your series, but that's a really big thing that people need to be aware of. Anne: Yeah. Emily: So we have a lot of ideas about how to address that first and foremost, but also I think, you know, a lot of people -- just today I was seeing on Facebook, people posting like, oh, I listened to this, and it's actually not that terrible and blah, blah, blah. And so I think that it's important that we stay ahead of the game. You know, we can't let the robots catch up to us. We have to stay better. But also I think that, I mean, for me personally, this is not like PANA's official position or anything, but me personally, I think that a lot of the conversation is revolving around like dollars and cents. You know, publishers and whoever are going to do what makes the most economic sense to them. And if it's cheaper, consumers will follow suit. And there's just, it's kind of all about money and jobs and the things that general AI conversations are about. Anne: Yeah. Emily: But I think that with our field, it's not only about our jobs, it's also about the art of storytelling. Anne: Sure. Emily: Something that -- Anne: Agreed. Emily: -- I mean verbal storytelling is as old as language. It's like, we've been doing it as humans for forever. And that's, I mean, to me, that's what's at stake here. Like, yes, I would like to have a job. I would like to be able to do what I love to do for the rest of my life. But I'm equally as worried about, you know, the power of literature and stories and what it means to have, you know, just from like a moral, ethical standpoint to have robots sharing the human experience that they literally can't understand because they're an algorithm. And so I think that that is something that needs to be more part of the conversation for everyone, because what we do is an art. Anne: Sure, absolutely. Emily: And even if a robot is possible, it can never actually express anything human. And I think that that's important to me. Anne: Right. I agree with you. And I think that the consuming public has a lot to say, obviously, right? We are a market-driven kind of industry. What the consumer wants, right, or is it marketable to consumers or is it not? I mean, do consumers want to be able to listen to an audiobook and have a human? Like, is it meaningful to have a human or maybe for certain types of audiobooks, does it matter if it's a human or not? There's so many questions about that. Is there any type of book that you feel might be okay with something that's not human? Emily: Um, no, personally I don't because -- Anne: Well, and that makes complete sense. Emily: I mean, sure. I mean, obviously I have a certain point of view, but I think, you know, a lot of people are saying, oh, well, it's more suited for non-fiction. I think that that's kind of insulting, like -- Anne: Yeah, yeah. Emily: -- yes non-fiction does not involve character voices and things like that. Anne: Right. Emily: So from that perspective, it's easier for a robot to do, but I don't know, I've narrated nonfiction too. It's every bit as human. I think that authors would generally be insulted to hear that like, nonfiction is less human than fiction. I mean, I think it's all part of the human experience. Anne: Sure. Emily: It's all part of something that human beings have spent hours or months or years putting together. And they deserve a human voice to express that. Anne: Well, and you're talking to, you know, my specialty corporate narration and e-learning, so I understand that completely. I mean, to me, I mean, I want there to be a human teacher behind the mic. Emily: Sure. Anne: I want there to be, you know, I'm a company, I want there to be a human that's expressing my mission statement or my objective. And again, it comes to people responding and saying, well, you know, it's what the market wants. Or I guess for me, if I'm just one little person, me, I'm not going to necessarily stop the progression of technology. And so in terms of how I need to, I guess, evolve or work with technology that's, that may be encroaching on, let's say genres that I, you know, specialize in, I have to try to think of it in terms of, okay. So are there certain types that might be okay? A lot of times, you know, it's like, why do consumers go to outlets like the -- Fiverr, right, to get their voiceover? Because they don't have a value necessarily, or they don't -- Emily: Sure. Anne: -- or they have a certain value associated with that job. So could this not be the future lower end of -- Emily: Yeah. Lower budget production -- Anne: -- consumer -- yeah, lower budget. Emily: I mean, look, there are already people who are driven by money, you know -- Anne: Yup, yup. Emily: -- want the cheapest product, and they're hiring brand new narrators on indie platforms -- Anne: Yup. Emily: -- for like a quarter of the standard rate -- Anne: Right. Emily: -- or less, you know? Like those people already exist. Will those people start doing robots instead? Anne: Yeah. Emily: Maybe. Anne: Yeah. Emily: You know, who can stop that? Anne: Yeah, exactly. Emily: But I think yes, that is a concern because the more artificially narrated audiobooks that are put in the market, the more consumers get used to it, the harder it is -- Anne: Yeah. Emily: -- to argue our position. Anne: Exactly. Yeah. Emily: It's all concerning. I do agree that there's a certain element that I don't know how much control we have, but I also think that there will always be an element of high budget productions -- Anne: Yes. Emily: -- that will always have a human narrator. Anne: Oh, I completely agree with you. I mean, I don't think that there's ever going to be -- and I'm a tech girl. I worked in technology for 20 years. I do believe that there's always, there's always going to be a place for the human still in voiceover. And I think that narrators that have been for years, you know, telling stories and audiobooks, I mean, that is a level of acting that cannot be reached right now by any type of AI voice. Emily: Oh no. Anne: And I don't know that the public wants -- Emily: No. Anne: -- to be, necessarily feel like they've been duped either. Emily: Sure. Anne: So if they're listening to an audiobook, and they think it might be a human, so I think it's all speculation right now trying to figure out how -- like how long will it take? How far will it go and how human will it sound? And I guess my argument has always been well, humans are developing it. So I think you will always have those people that want to take it to the point where, oh my gosh, is this a deepfake? They'll always try to get there. But I like to think that technology is good inherently, and that because humans are developing technology, it will develop to a point that will help humans and not necessarily take them down or, you know, erase an industry. So I do believe that there will always be a space for a human actor in voiceover. I just don't know how far the AI will go in five to ten years, let's say,. Emily: Sure. But I will say that -- okay. So the way that these algorithms work, right, is that they find the middle ground, right? So they'll always be passible. They'll never be award worthy. Right? They're never going to take acting risks. They're never going to be able to, I mean, unless they have an engineer sit there and like tweak them for every moment, at which case, like just have a voice actor do it. Anne: Well, yeah. Sometimes there is a lot of tweaking involved, that's for sure. Emily: Yeah. So it's like, they'll just, they'll never be able to cry. You know, they'll never really be able to make a listener cry or feel that connected because they're not connected. You know, they're an algorithm. So they'll make the baseline choice, the easy, safe choice, because that's, you know, when you're talking about machine learning or it's studying thousands and thousands and thousands of performances, no two narrators are the same. We wouldn't make the same choices on the same book. So they're going to pick the baseline, which I think means that it will never be as good, no matter what, inherently it'll never be as good as the best narrators. So that's why we need to make all narrators, or at least narrators who want to make a living doing this, the best that they can be, because I don't think machines can ever really, truly catch up with anything that is off the cusp and beautiful and you know, like human, and they'll never be that. Anne: What if -- now here's my what if, because I do know of technology called speech-to speech where it can mimic. So what about an actor who, you know, has great acting skills, and they can act a baseline model, right? And then other voices can be applied on top of that. I mean, it's scary. I've heard it. Emily: Basically have a human narrate the book, but then put someone else's voice on their performance? Anne: Yeah, that is a mimic. So that would make it sound pretty much human, but with somebody else's voice or maybe with a different language. Emily: Well, I mean, if you're doing that, at least that actor is getting paid to do it -- Anne: Right. Emily: -- because they'd have to custom record that book. Anne: Exactly. Emily: Um, so that's, uh, a less scary proposition to me. Anne: Yeah, yeah. Emily: But um, yeah, I mean, I guess that's a possibility. I think the -- what we're more concerned about or most concerned about anyway, is machine learning, which will completely replace humans entirely. So like right now, most of the AI voices are licensed, where it's basically like they have somebody sit in a studio for a few days, and then from there they extrapolate whatever texts they want to be able to put on that person's habits. But machine learning would be like, they can listen to the thousand most popular in audiobooks and narrators of all time and sort of create an algorithm based out of that. Anne: Yes. Emily: And they'll never have to license. They'll never have to pay a single human for that. I think that's the biggest fear is completely taking us out of the equation. I think when it comes to licensing your voice or what you just mentioned, where it's like you record the book and then they put some celebrity's voice on it or something, I mean, personally, I am against those things. But I can see why some people might feel like there's more wiggle room in those. Again, that is not my personal opinion. I want to stop all of this, nip this on the bud. But if we're at a point where it's like, that's all that's left to us, at least there are still humans involved. Anne: Yeah. Well, and I think, again, if we're thinking about how we can evolve with it, if, if that becomes part of it, and I do know that that technology exists. I don't know at this point -- you've got people, you've got other companies that are not voiceover that are creating this technology. So how can we work with those companies or do we choose not to work with those companies right, in order to -- Emily: Sure. Anne: -- stay ahead, right? Is that a possibility? Emily: Um, okay. My personal feeling is I don't support anyone doing that because, and I have more to say, but like, because I feel like that's just kind of giving in. It's, you know, you get a sum of money, which is enough for a few years, and you're basically giving up your whole career in trade, and the careers of all of your colleagues, because how many of those, how many people's voices are they really going to need to license? So ultimately, and I understand that everyone's situation is different and, you know, I shouldn't judge, but ultimately it's a very self-serving decision to do that. And so I personally, and this is my personal opinion, don't feel like I can support those things. However, if someone's going to do it, I think there's a lot of important ways to protect yourself and to protect others in the industry. So I know that our union is working on licensing agreements that would be union. As far as I know, every one of these that I've heard of or seen advertisements for or whatever is non-union. And there's a reason for that. It's because they're taking advantage of people who are vulnerable. Anne: Sure. Emily: And they're taking advantage of people who need the money and who think, oh my gosh, a year's salary for a few days in the booth? Of course, I'm going to do that. Not realizing or not thinking through the consequences. You know, there's a reason that they don't want these contracts to be union because the union would want to, for example, limit how many times that person's voice can be used. Can they make a hundred audiobooks from that person's voice versus a thousand or a million from the same person's voice? You know, they're going to try to put limits on it to make it more equitable and spread it out. And these companies don't want to do that. There was no advantage to them for doing that. And then there's other things like, well, I've talked a bunch about machine learning, which if people don't know, I really highly recommend looking into it. But if you license your voice, and there's no provision in your contract which says that they can't use that for machine learning, they can take that voice and not only use it for clone or whatever, but they can use it to create a totally synthetic voice that they'll never have to pay anyone a dime for. You know, there's a lot of risks, and that's part of why we want to do an educational series is if you're going to do this, which I personally strongly recommend and hope that you won't, but if you will, please at least be smart about it. You know, there are companies involved like, you know, Google and whatever that have really deep pockets, and they can offer the kind of money that a lot of people would have a really hard time turning down. But you also have to remember that there's a lot more at stake here than your wallet or even your career. Um, so we just, if you're going to do it, you have to be smart about it and you have to read those contracts with a fine tooth comb. Anne: So I totally, totally understand all of that. Absolutely. What about the possibility of, as an organization, having a voice and going to these companies and saying -- I want to say it's like in the video gaming industry, when musicians would create music for video games, fighting for their creative licensing rights. What about that sort of thing? Like, and I understand, I mean, Google and you know that a lot of the big companies have a lot of voices already, not even voice actors, right? Just voices -- Emily: Right, yeah. Anne: -- that they're using to learn, right. They're using to put into machine learning and learn and test and create other voices. If as an organization, you could be a strong voice in saying, hey, you know what, anybody's voice that's used really you should be asking permission. There should be compensation. There should be -- Emily: Right. Anne: -- you know -- Emily: We should be getting royalties. Anne: Right, exactly. Emily: You know, like with any contract, you should have a limited period of time -- Anne: Exactly. Emily: -- where you can -- Anne: Exactly. Emily: You can't license in perpetuity, you should get six months or whatever, you know, like, I totally agree. That's part of why, if these contracts are going to happen, they should be union. Anne: Yeah. Emily: And that's why they don't -- they don't want to give us that, they don't. Um, they just want to give us a sum of money that is like an absolute fraction of what we would deserve for doing that kind of work. Anne: I have spoken with some companies who say that they are not those companies. You know, they say that they are for -- Emily: Well, of course they say -- Anne: Well, okay. But that's the thing though, is that, do you assume that all companies are not ethical? You know what I mean, in this game? Emily: I think honestly, I think any company doing this nonunion and not offering the protections and the compensation that any actor doing this deserves it, I don't think that's ethical. This is my personal opinion. I'm not speaking for PANA. Anne: Oh, no, no. Emily: I don't think it's ethical to offer a desperate actor a year salary and have their voice in perpetuity to use -- Anne: I agree. Emily: -- for whatever you want. You know? Anne: I agree with that. And I totally agree with that. And I think that that is absolutely where voice actors need to, you know, they need to be aware of these things that, you know, these companies that are for TTS. For me, that's a big red flag. And if you have a contract or you have a company that wants to pay you for, you know, 3000 lines of whatever, I absolutely believe that you should have a lawyer on that. Um, I say I would not take the job. However, if you go to these AI companies, I'm going to say independently and, you know, and try to work with them, or if there's an organization that can be on a board -- there is an organization right now that is working towards policies and legal contracts that will be in protection of the voice acting community. So I feel like there could be power in that as well. Emily: Sure. Anne: And especially from the audiobook narrators industry as well, because you guys are a -- you're a large community, and you have strong voices, and you work closely with the union. And I think that that is a wonderful thing. And I think that if you can get in on the ground floor of those usage policies, which everybody should have, right? And then, you know, ultimately, you know, fight the good fight hopefully so that the companies now understand, because I think in my research, I'm just going to say, there's a lot of AI companies out there that don't understand the voice acting industry. They don't understand like I actually had to say, no, there's usage. There's -- Emily: Right. Anne: -- you know, there's usage here for how long. And we have contracts that, you know, we can't use our voice for this company, because we're already committed to this company. Emily: Sure. Anne: And there's a lot of education, not just for us, but -- Emily: But for them. Anne: -- on their side as well. And I think that if you have a strong community of voices, that might be something to consider. Like you said, education, maybe education for AI companies as well. Emily: Sure. I -- Anne: Yeah. Emily: -- I would certainly be open to that. Anne: Yeah. Emily: And another one that we haven't mentioned, but that is definitely a concern, at least for me, would be having some sort of limitations on the content that they -- Anne: Yes, absolutely. Emily: -- could use voices for. Anne: Yup, yup. Emily: Like for example, you know, I'm, I'm Jewish. Anne: Yup. Emily: I would be horrified if my voice was used to narrate Nazi propaganda. Anne: Yup. Emily: You know, like that's just -- so I think any, any contract that is like in perpetuity with no limitations is unethical to me -- Anne: Yup. Emily: -- because that's just not how it should work. Anne: Oh yeah. Emily: Am I -- Anne: I agree. Emily: Am I open to working with AI companies to create a more equitable compensation system? Personally I think that that's SAG-AFTRA's job. If I ever hear of an AI company actually having union agreements with SAG-AFTRA, I would feel more kindly towards that AI company. I have yet to hear of that. I would potentially be open to that kind of effort, but honestly, I feel like that's putting the cart before the horse. I don't think we should give up the fight yet. I think we have enough good arguments and resources on our side to not necessarily have to get to that point yet. Anne: Okay. Well, I think that you've definitely got some strong arguments there, and I, I have also been in the forums and I hear what people say, and I understand. I myself have done so much research, probably a little bit more with the companies maybe than others, which is the only reason I bring up the point that there are companies who say that they are ethical and say that they will, you know, your license or your voice belongs to you. It's licensed to you. We will not use it in our machine learning, right? Only with your permission and only if you are compensated fairly, so. Emily: I mean, that's good. Good on those companies. Anne: Yeah. Well, I'm hoping that more companies will, with things, you know, with the unfortunate, but actually now fortunate episode that happened to -- maybe not fortunate. I don't know if I would call it that, but that happened with Bev Standing, right, with her suit against TikTok and the fact that it got settled, it does set a precedent. And so it's unfortunate sometimes that bad things have to happen in order for, right, resulting policies and standards and laws to come into play. You know, the whole thing with the Anthony Bourdain movie, right? Why resurrecting a voice without the permission? I think that there are bad things that happen. However, good things can come out of it afterwards in order to build laws. And I think that that's kind of where we might be in this crazy world of AI. And it seems like AI has just sprung up in the last couple of years like crazy. Emily: Sure. Anne: So I do believe after my research, for me, I think it comes to educating the companies, the AI companies about us and about what we need and about what our rights should be as actors. And I, I'm hoping that my involvement in this podcast is going to also have a voice that can help affect that. And so that they will see that we do need to license our voice. We do need to be fairly compensated. And, you know, I can only hope that my little part in it has something to do with maybe getting things the way that would be fair and equitable to us. Emily: Sure. I mean, I hope that, I hope that your efforts are successful. I do think that, I would like to think that these companies are just unaware or something. Anne: Yeah, yeah. Emily: And I'm sure some of them are, but I also think that some of them are very clever. Anne: Yeah, of course. Emily: And I know there are, for example, I can think of certain companies in the audiobook world who say, well, we won't -- they are clever in the way that they deceive people. You know, they'll say, well, we're not using our data to clone your voice, but they won't say that they're not using the data for machine learning or other things, you know? Like, and I think that, because I think that if we could get companies to do union contracts, that would certainly order it, you know, equivalent. That would certainly be a step forward. But I also think that educating voice actors to understand all of this stuff -- because it is complicated -- Anne: Sure. Emily: - and it's not necessarily natural to a lot of people. I think that's important too, because like right now there are companies where we're -- actors and publishers are literally giving data to and not really recognizing how it could be used. Anne: Agreed, agreed. Emily: And so that's a problem. Anne: I think we always have though, you know what I mean? I'm going to say long before this AI craziness, I think also, you know, there have been devices that have been listening to us and capturing our voices for a long time now. Emily: Sure. Anne: And so it's, I think it's good that we all are educated on it. And I just wanna give a shout-out to the organization, which I'm a part of, and anybody, if you're interested in joining them, it's called the Open Voice Network, which is based on creating standards for anything voice. And there are some companies who create AI voices that are in this organization, but it's all for the good of the voiceover world as well, to make sure that we are fairly compensated and hopefully, you know, we have a set of standards that can work for everyone. So that's openvoicenetwork.org. Maybe that's something that, you know, uh, BOSSes out there, you want to take a look at. I love, love, love what you're doing with PANA. I mean, thank you really. It's, I know how hard it is to bring an organization up and get these things going and moving and being productive. So congratulations to you guys. I think it's an amazing thing you're doing for the audiobook community, and I think it's wonderful what you're doing. Emily: Thank you. Anne: Yeah, yeah. Emily: Appreciate that. Anne: So tell us how people can find out more about your organization and you? Emily: Sure. Uh, pronarrators.org is our website. We are @pronarrators on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, and I'm Emily Lawrence. And you can find me at emilylawrence.com. Anne: Fantastic. Thank you so much, Emily, for spending time with us today. BOSSes, go check out pronarrators.org. Thanks again so much for joining us. I'm going to give a great big shout-out to our sponsor ipDTL. You too can connect and network like a BOSS. Find out more ipdtl.com, and we'll see you guys next week. Thanks so much. Bye! Emily: Bye. >> Join us next week for another edition of VO BOSS with your host Anne Ganguzza. And take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at voboss.com and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies, and new ways to rock your business like a BOSS. Redistribution with permission. Coast to coast connectivity via ipDTL.

Emily Heck, Owner and Founder, Evergreen Strategic Communications (Indianapolis, IN)   Emily Heck, Owner and Founder at Evergreen Strategic Communications, started her agency in the fall of 2019. With no job in sight and no career plans, she started meeting with people, chatting over coffee, and trying to figure out her next chapter. Emily picked up some freelance marketing projects from a former co-worker and networked more intensely. Her business, helping nonprofits and small businesses organize their marketing, establish processes and systems, and more efficiently engage their audiences, grew.  Although in-person networking dropped off during the pandemic, Emily is now finding contacts she did not see during the “isolation time” of Covid eager to meet and “catch up” and more interested in re-connecting face to face. Potential clients are responding to her cold-call invitations to explore partnership opportunities a lot more quickly and with a lot less requisite “relationship building” than before the pandemic. In this interview, Emily talks about the importance of LinkedIn, “the place for silent scrollers,” for building connections. She says people may scroll through your feeds and read them, but do so with no likes, shares, or comments. Think nothing is happening? Emily says she often gets comments when she meets with people six months later, “I've really liked your content.” It‘s important to “keep posting.” Emily says small business owners and nonprofits have the same marketing struggles and are “behind” the big companies on lead generation emails, getting conversions on emails and social media, and on figuring out how to “pump that up.” “Getting there” requires guiding clients to build marketing model proficiency and effectiveness and scaling larger company processes down to something that works to help “small” grow.  When Emily first started working with clients, she spent a lot of time figuring out their processes, the location of their social media account login information, and establishing what they were trying to achieve through their marketing. Client websites, often a “mess,” may fail to “tell their story well.” “You can't really be effective in your marketing if you don't have a good base of organization,” Emily explains. So, she cleans up client websites and SEO first, as a base to “push everyone back to” from emails and social media efforts.” Email has changed a lot. Today, Emily says, “You've got to have some personality in your emails.” She recommends “changing the sender name from the organization name to a person's name” to improve open rates. Emily can be contacted on her agency's website at: evergreenstrategic.org, or on LinkedIn as Emily Hack in Indianapolis. Transcript Follows: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by Emily Heck, Owner and Founder at Evergreen Strategic Communications based in Indianapolis, Indiana. Welcome to the podcast, Emily. EMILY: Thank you very much. I'm so excited to be here. ROB: Good to have you here and talk some Indiana connections here. Why don't you start off by telling us about Evergreen, and what is your specialty? EMILY: Evergreen started in the fall of 2019. I started my own business right before the pandemic; I'm not sure if that's smart or adventurous or whatever word you want to fill in, but it is our origin story. We focus on nonprofits and small businesses, which may seem like two very different clients or types of clients, but they have the same marketing struggles. We help nonprofits and small businesses get their marketing organized, get processes in place, systems in place, and then work to help start engaging their audiences more efficiently. ROB: Got it. Is that organization the common struggle of where they're starting from? EMILY: Oh yeah. That is 90% of what I see. It's interesting; when I started my business, you're so excited, there's so much energy, and it's like, “I'm going to do social media for small business” or “I'm going to do email and marketing for small business,” and I found I was spending a lot of time figuring out their processes, figuring out where the login information was for their social media accounts. I spent a great deal of time doing that because you can't really be effective in your marketing if you don't have a good base of organization. ROB: I've certainly seen that. They may have worked with somebody; that person disappeared into the wilderness or just wasn't very good or whatever, and they were the only person that knew the logins. Do you end up starting from scratch? Are you trying to figure out how to recover those logins sometimes? Even that part, what are you scrapping together? EMILY: A lot of times I try to scrap it together, as you said, and find those logins. Just recently, last summer, I went through an appeal process with Facebook to get access to a client's business suite. So I'll go that route if I need to. A lot of times it's just an email to an old coworker or something like that, trying to find those logins, but sometimes you have to get out the heavy-hitter techniques and tactics to get access to stuff. ROB: I'm sure, Emily, sometimes you start with a client and they want to do one specific thing; sometimes they want to do everything. How do you help them come to the conclusion of how to do what is the right thing, what is the right thing to do first, and what's the right thing to do next? EMILY: This is a tough conversation that I have quite a bit. I do have a lot of clients that come to me and say, “We want an email newsletter” or “We want a blog started.” It's more about “Okay, but what are you trying to achieve with this?” I take a step back; let's have that conversation, let's talk about what you're trying to engage with your audience. And a lot of times the business owner or the nonprofit executive director is right. They know their business and their organization better than I do at that point in time. So, the project usually evolves from what they originally thought. Maybe they were thinking a traditional-style email newsletter, and I start to throw out some ideas – because email's changed a lot. Even I would say just in the past two or three years, how you're communicating on email has changed so much, and they may not be up-to-date on those new strategies and tactics. That's probably the second most common conversation I'm having behind “Where are your logins and what are your processes?” [laughs] ROB: How would you characterize some of that transition on the email side? Because there's certainly this historic idea of “Let's get a good template, let's curate some content, let me dump something in there that I think makes sense, and maybe I'm going to try to close some business too.” How does that evolve into what works in 2022? EMILY: What I'm experiencing with a lot of my clients and a lot of the emails I'm sending out is you've got to have some personality in your emails. Gone are the days of just throwing together some content, a blog preview or something like that. You've got to have some personality. I have several newsletters that I'm making come from a specific person within the organization – just as simple as changing the sender name from the organization name to a person's name has helped open rates. It seems so simple, but when you're flying through, trying to get that monthly email out, it's easy to forget. I'm always talking to my clients about “Let's add some personality in this. What are things that you can really connect with your audiences through on your email?” People don't want to see this endless scroll of boring content. [laughs] ROB: Boring content, company names. When I think about getting a bunch of stuff in Gmail across a bunch of different accounts – and I have the tabs; I don't know how many people have the different tabs set up for the updates and the transactions. I don't remember what all the things are. But it's almost like when you get to the tab where the newsletters tend to sit, when you get over to that updates tab, there's a certain curiosity to a person, a human, versus a company there. It's almost intriguing on its own versus organization name and “Here's my receipt from this other thing.” EMILY: Oh yeah, it's a total marketing trick when you really think about it. We're tricking you into opening it. [laughs] Which you could argue is marketing in general. But yeah, you are intrigued by it. I want to take it a step further that it's not a trick of “This is the same old newsletter that we've been sending you for the past five years, just we put a different sender name on it.” Let's also take the content and make it more appealing for the reader so it isn't an endless scroll. ROB: That certainly makes plenty of sense there. Emily, you walked us through part of the journey. You mentioned in the tail end of 2019, you started the firm. But what led up to that? What led you to take that particular plunge to say it was time to start your own business, and what led you into that? EMILY: I was working for an organization, and I'd only been working there for about two years, so I wasn't looking to leave when I departed in fall of '19. But I got into a very toxic situation that was not good for my mental health, physical health. I was deteriorating as a professional because of it. I left without a job lined up. I just went in and resigned one day because I knew this wasn't the future that I wanted. I reached out to a colleague who had actually left a few months prior to myself and said, “Hey, do you have any projects?” I knew she was freelancing. And she did, and the rest is history. I started with a couple projects and then picked up a couple clients and really started to network within my communities. The snowball just kept getting bigger as it started rolling. An interesting ride. There's a huge conversation right now on a societal level about the Great Resignation, and I feel like I was a couple years ahead of that. So, I totally identify with those individuals that are departing their jobs; that's what I did two years ago. ROB: Sure. Even then, it's an interesting shift, because you mentioned networking. In late 2019, you had one form of networking for a few months, and then that changed. What did networking look like? Was there a pause in networking in early 2020, a regearing, or just a dramatic shift in what that needed to look like? EMILY: Oh yeah. It's funny; probably about a month ago, I had coffee with the person that I had coffee with in March of 2020. He was the last person that I had coffee with right before everything shut down. It was kind of crazy – this was in December of 2021. We had gone two years without seeing each other. When I quit my job and I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do, I was setting up coffee appointments and networking with people. It was interesting. It was a little bit of a slower process because you go and just chit-chat and have coffee, whatever. And now I'm experiencing where I'm emailing people, I'm reaching out to them, total cold calling, or cold emailing if you will, and I'm getting responses back quicker. So, I think there's definitely been this shift in networking for sure. ROB: Is that for connecting in person now, or is that connecting digitally? Is the coffee meeting back, in your view? How is it spinning? EMILY: I'm picking up more coffee dates. I'm reaching out to people. Indiana just went through a little bit of a surge – a pretty significant surge – so everything's been virtual lately. But yeah, some people want to do virtual coffee chats, some people want to do in-person. I've actually experienced more of just emailing someone or sending a LinkedIn message and saying, “Hey, this is what I offer. I think there could be a partnership here,” and they want to chat – which would never happen before. You had to work on building that relationship. So, it's definitely shifted. ROB: Yeah, there seems to be, kind of like your newsletters, a human connection desire that's going on. It's been a discipline that we started since the beginning of the year. Every week, I'm contacting five people I haven't seen in a while and saying, “Let's do coffee, let's do lunch, let's do whatever.” The hit rate is tremendous because all of the meetings and recurring events we used to go to, none of the organizations feel confident having them. I was kind of a chicken – not chicken. My level of caution was I met people for outside lunch during COVID. Until I got my shot and my booster, I was an outside lunch, outside coffee – I was that person. Now I'll meet anybody anywhere. Some people won't. I respect what anybody wants to choose to do, because it's a hard time to know what to do. But the hit rate on in-person meetings has really been amazing to me. EMILY: Yeah. Do you find people are just wanting to chit-chat and catch up? Or is it more business-related? Because a lot of mine have been catching up because I haven't seen these people for two-plus years. ROB: That's right. I think those people probably might've seen on – the other secret weapon to me is LinkedIn. It's a real secret if we're talking about it on the podcast, right? [laughs] EMILY: Right. [laughs] ROB: But, basically, every once in a while, saying something about what we're doing. I'll see people in person – I saw people at football games in the fall and they're like, “Oh, I've been following everything you've been doing for the past two years.” I'm like, we haven't talked. I posted on LinkedIn and you never ‘liked' it. I don't say this to them, but they never engaged with it at all. But they've been reading my biography through LinkedIn. The people that I meet, most of the time it's chit-chatty, but I will also say that it tends to echo. Somebody I had lunch with a month ago last week says, “Hey, here's this person you really should talk to.” So it comes back around in that very open-handed, low expectation kind of way. That's what I'm seeing, I think. EMILY: Yeah, that's what I've experienced. It's funny that you bring up LinkedIn because just recently I came across – it may've been on Instagram or something that said, “LinkedIn is the place for silent scrollers.” You will have so many people who will scroll right past your stuff, read it, but not engage with it. They're not liking it, they're not sharing it or commenting or whatever. But then you will hear six months later, “Oh, I've really liked your content lately.” The purpose was to keep posting, even if you're not getting engagement. So, it's funny that you bring that up too, because that's the second time I've heard that recently. ROB: I don't have the discipline on LinkedIn that I do on my in-person meetings, so I wish I could tell you I found something worthwhile to publish every week, but I have to work on my personal content calendar there. EMILY: Yeah, it is definitely tough. ROB: Emily, as you've looked at how you've built things so far over the past couple years, what are some lessons that you have learned? If you could rewind two years, what would you tell yourself? EMILY: I'd probably tell myself to slow down. This is really hard – whether you're going out on your own in marketing or whatever your field is, your first thing is “I have to start figuring out how to make money. I've got to get money in the door. I've got to get clients. I've got to get work.” I wish I would've told myself to slow down a little bit because that would come – and set things up the right way. I'm in Year 2 of business, and I'm going back and having to re-set up some structures within my business that I probably should've been doing 18 months ago. That's been the biggest thing for me. It's hard. I started a business, and however many months later, a pandemic hit – and at the same time, I was also pregnant with my first child, so I went on maternity leave during that first year of business. I really wish I would've slowed down and not been in such a hurry. Even now, a couple years in, I'm like, okay, slow down. If I get a “no” from a client proposal or whatever, it's not the end of the world. Slow down. Be really purposeful. Be really mindful in what you're doing. ROB: I can't imagine trying to plan parental leave into that early moment of a business. How did you think about doing right by your clients but also giving yourself that time to enjoy a season of life that is unique and needs to be embraced? EMILY: I mentioned earlier my colleague that was also a freelancer. She and I work together a lot. I always tell people who are going out on their own, find a partner. You don't have to go into business together, but find someone to partner with on client projects, because business ownership is a lonely world, and it's good when you have someone you can collaborate with. So, I had someone that was picking up some of the work I was doing. The other thing was it was a weird time. My daughter was born in July of 2020. In 2022, July 2020 still seems like early COVID days. I was actually itching to get back to work because I was tired of sitting in the house. [laughs] It'll be interesting, as our family grows, what my approach to leave is next time, because I'm actually already thinking about it. How can I put structures in place now that I can have a full leave next time? But yeah, it was a weird year. Baby, new business, pandemic. I don't tell anyone, “Use this as an example of how to start a business.” [laughs] ROB: No, it rarely turns out that way, especially on this podcast. Many, many accidental entrepreneurs in different ways. As you think about the clients you work with, the small businesses, the nonprofits, we've talked a little bit about email and how that is changing; when people have to make the choice of what to activate first, what are some of the other things you see them needing to activate first that might not be what they expected in terms of how they need to be marketing? EMILY: Website is a really big thing. A lot of times people are thinking social media, email, website in that order, but I like to focus on the website first because that's your homebase. That's where you can push everyone back to from your emails, from your social media. We need to get that cleaned up and really telling your story well. Some people, their website's a mess because – kind of like I was a couple years ago – you're just trying to throw something together so that you can get out there and get your name out there. So, it's about going back and really looking at it. The other reason that I really want to look at websites is for SEO purposes. I think SEO was really big there in the early 2010s or so, and everyone was talking about SEO. Then it died off a little bit and no one was talking about it, and it seems to be a real buzzy word right now, about how to get your organic content situated correctly so that you can be ranking high on Google and you're providing good content. That's what I tell my small business owners especially: making sure your content is optimized appropriately and written appropriately is free. You're not having to create paid ads for it. That's probably the other thing. Social media is actually the last thing I look at. ROB: And then organic and paid social, those are two different conversations as well, right? EMILY: Oh yeah. With these clients especially, organic is where we've got to start, and then we work up to paid. It's so hard. Every social media channel is so full, so it takes time, but we can get there. ROB: Some people would also, I think, feel the same way about content they put on their website. How do you help someone think about putting out content that is actually meaningfully different and doesn't feel like it's the same as anyone else? If there's a context of maybe a specific small business client that helps tell the story, maybe that's a lens we can look through here. EMILY: I have a client here in Indianapolis that is a small plumbing company. They're very unique in that they've been around for 100 years, they're family-owned. When we're creating content for them, first of all, plumbing content is not necessarily always the most interesting thing in your newsfeed, and it doesn't change. Pipes freezing – you have the same five tips about how to avoid pipes freezing. For them, it's “Let's just get the content out there.” I know that every other plumbing company in town is putting something out right now in the winter about pipes freezing or preparing your home for winter or something like that, but we need to get our content out there. We need to be a part of the conversation. And it makes their current customers feel good. They feel really good about it and engage with it because it's like, “Oh, my guy, the guy that I recommend for plumbing services, is out there. I'm not always hearing about Competitor A and what they're saying.” It's a delicate walk. Sometimes, as the marketing consultant, I feel like I'm doing the same content that everyone else is doing, but in a lot of these small business cases, you've just got to get your name out there and in the mix. ROB: Right. It almost seems like for them – you kind of alluded to it – it's about the relationship they already had with the client. It's about the work they already did. Hopefully, they did their homework and got the client's email address while they were out doing some plumbing work, and then that seasonal tip of how to not freeze your pipes is a little bit of caring, almost. It's maybe not original, but you're showing up, and it's a good reason to be in the inbox. Nobody's super mad about “I'm reminded for the third time about how to not have my pipes freeze,” because that's a legit problem that is expensive. EMILY: Right. It's also going back to being organized. We've got that data organized so that we can reach whatever customer we need to so when there's a big winter storm barreling down on Indianapolis, we can get that email out, “Hey, here's things to think about with this winter storm.” It's a welcome addition to their inbox because it's timely and it's for them. To your point, that's exactly right. ROB: Emily, when we're talking about somebody's website content, when we're talking about having them talk about what they're doing in a way that speaks to their customer, a lot of times they've probably already tried. They already tried to write their website content, and they just couldn't find the right thing to say and the right story. How do you help someone communicate what they might not know how to communicate, but they almost feel it more than they know how to write it? EMILY: It's funny; I was having this conversation with a copywriter yesterday, and we were both talking about how we have struggled to write for our own websites. Which is why I'm hiring her to write some new pages for me, because I am stuck. Obviously, I'm a consultant, so I'm always going to say, “Hire a consultant,” but I think that shows the value of a consultant, to have someone come in with an outside perspective and really be able to put your story down on paper and make sense of it. I love the clients when I'm their target audience, a 30-something young mother or whatever, because I can bring in that perspective of “That wouldn't resonate with me as your audience member” or “Yes, that would resonate with me.” Like I said, I'm always going to be on Team Consultant because I am a consultant. But I think it's important to know that even marketing professionals struggle with it. We struggle with telling our own story and have to get outside help. So, I wouldn't expect a small business or a nonprofit to be any different. ROB: I'm glad it's not just me, because we looked at our website content and in a moment of desperation, I said, “I need to invest in our future, and I'm going to invest in having someone else do this.” They went out and talked to a few of our clients, and they told things back to us that sounded true but I could never have given the words. So I will advocate for Team Consultant here as well. I went through a StoryBrand process in our case, which was also interesting. I don't know if I would've done that – I don't know. I just know that hearing something back truthful felt a lot better than trying to make up words myself. EMILY: Yeah, it's a good level set for you. It can provide more perspectives and it gives you a good level set, and not only is it someone else translating your story – do we have time to do that? I mean, we're so busy as business owners. If one more thing is off our plate, go for it. ROB: Right, and it's a good reason to think a lot about profitability, around margins, because that creates the ability to invest into the future, the ability to have some reserves to hire people. There's a lot of moving parts there. When you look forward, when you're looking at what's next for Evergreen, when you're looking at what's next for marketing for your clients, what's coming up that you're excited about? Where is this going? EMILY: Evergreen, I am hoping to still grow and provide more support to nonprofits and small businesses – which I realize is a non-answer answer. But 2022 is going to be really the first year that hopefully nothing crazy is happening. I mean, first year of business was pandemic and baby; second year of business was still pandemic and it just seemed like crazy, crazy stuff going on. So 2022 is really going to be about finding level ground and finding a solid footing within the business. It's been exciting here; even since the beginning of the year, things are happening and things are coming together. I'm doing some awesome projects with some pretty cool clients, so that's really exciting. As far as clients, what I'm seeing and what I'm talking to them a lot about is trying to get more proficient and effective in our current marketing models. I'm talking a lot with clients – now, keep in mind these are small businesses and nonprofits, so they're a couple of years behind – we're talking about lead generation emails and how to get conversions on emails. We're talking about how to do that on social media and really start to pump that up. Like I said, these are small nonprofits and small businesses, but they are starting – I think in the big organizations, a lot of marketing ideas and processes start there, and then nonprofits and small businesses are maybe a little bit behind and start to figure it out. I'm really excited because I'm seeing that stuff start to bubble up and happen. A lot of my job right now is trying to figure out how to bring it down to a smaller size for them. It's easy when you have a 10- or 12-person marketing department to do a lot of lead generation and conversions and things like that, but we've got to figure out how to bring this down to a smaller scale. ROB: It definitely makes sense. The clients that you're talking about don't always have that margin for the experimental budget that some of the other brands will have, so being able to distill something that's actually going to work and deliver, or have a good chance of it – it's great that people have you thinking about that for them. Emily, when people want to find you and Evergreen, where should they go to find and connect with you? EMILY: My website is evergreenstrategic.org, where you can learn a little bit about my agency. And I'm a big LinkedIn-er, so find me on LinkedIn, Emily Hack in Indianapolis, Indiana, and connect. I'd love to chat on message about marketing or anything else going on in the world. So yeah, I can be found there. ROB: That's great. Emily, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Thank you for sharing your own journey and expertise. Very grateful for it, and good to meet you. EMILY: Thank you. I had a great time. ROB: All right, be well. Thank you. Bye. Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

00:54 - Emily's Superpower: Being a Good Teacher * Greater Than Code Episode 261: Celebrating Computer Science Education with Dave Bock (https://www.greaterthancode.com/celebrating-computer-science-education) * CyberPatriot (https://www.uscyberpatriot.org/) 06:24 - Online College Courses vs In-Person Learning / Emily's Community College Path * Network Engineering (https://www.fieldengineer.com/blogs/what-is-network-engineer-definition) * Virginia Tech (https://vt.edu/) * Guaranteed Transfer Programs (https://blog.collegevine.com/an-introduction-to-guaranteed-transfer-programs/) * Loudoun Codes (http://loudouncodes.org/) * Emily Haggard: My Path to Virginia Tech (http://loudouncodes.org/2020/09/23/path_to_va_tech.html) 11:58 - Computer Science Curriculums * Technical Depth * The Missing Semester of Your CS Education (https://missing.csail.mit.edu/) 19:28 - Being A Good Mentor / Mentor, Student Relationships * Using Intuition * Putting Yourself in Others' Mindsets * Diversity and Focusing On Commonalities * Addressing Gatekeeping in Tech * Celebrating Accomplishments * Bragging Loudly * Grace Hopper Conference (https://ghc.anitab.org/) * Cultural Dynamics Spread 38:24 - Dungeons & Dragons (https://dnd.wizards.com/) * Characters as an Extensions of Players Reflections: Dave: College is what you make of it, not where you went. Arty: Teaching people better who don't have a lot of experience yet. Mandy: “Empowered women, empower women.” Empowered men also empower women. Emily: Your mentor should have different skills from you and you should seek them out for that reason. This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Transcript: MANDY: Hey, everybody! Welcome to Episode 265 of Greater Than Code. My name is Mandy Moore and I'm here with our guest panelist, Dave Bock. DAVE: Hi, I'm David Bock and I am here with our usual co-host, Arty Starr. ARTY: Thank you, Dave. And I'm here today with our guest, Emily Haggard. Emily is graduating from Virginia Tech with a Bachelor's in Computer Science this past December so, congratulations. She has a wide variety of experience in technology from web development to kernel programming, and even network engineering and cybersecurity. She is an active member of her community, having founded a cybersecurity club for middle schoolers. In her free time, she enjoys playing Dungeons and Dragons and writing novels. Welcome to the show, Emily. EMILY: Thank you. ARTY: So our first question we always ask is what is your superpower and how did you acquire it? EMILY: So I spent some time thinking about this and I would say that my superpower is that I'm a good teacher and what that means is that the people who come to me with questions wanting to learn something number one, my goal is to help them understand and number two, I think it's very important to make sure that whatever gap we have in our experience doesn't matter and that they don't feel that. So that they could be my 6-year-old brother and I'm trying to teach him algebra, or something and he doesn't feel like he is the 6-year-old trying to learn algebra. DAVE: I'll echo that sentiment about being a good teacher actually on two fronts, Emily. First of all, I am teaching your brother now in high school and just the other day, he credited you towards giving him a lot of background knowledge about the course and the curriculum before we ever started the class. So he seconds that you're a good teacher. And then listeners might remember, I was on a few weeks ago talking about my nonprofit and Emily was there at the beginning of me starting to volunteer in high schools. In fact, the way I met Emily, it was the fall of 2014. The first time I was volunteering at Loudoun Valley High School and one morning prior to class, there was going to be a meeting of a cybersecurity club. There were a bunch to the students milling about and there was this sophomore girl sitting in front of a computer, looking at a PowerPoint presentation of networking IP addresses, how the /24 of an IP address resolves and just all that kind of detail. Like very low-level detail about networking stuff and I was like, “Oh, that's interesting.” I wouldn't have expected a sophomore girl to be so interested in the low-level type of details of IP. And then the club started and she got up and started giving that presentation. That was not a slide deck she was reading; it was a slide deck she was creating. EMILY: Thank you. I actually remember that. [laughs] ARTY: So how did you acquire that superpower? EMILY: I think it was out of necessity. So going back to the story that David mentioned in high school, there was a cybersecurity competition called CyberPatriot that I competed in with friends and one year, all of a sudden, they just introduced network engineering to the competition. We had to configure and troubleshoot a simulated network and no one knew how to do that. So I took it upon myself to just figure it out so that my team could be competitive and win, but then part of the way that I learn actually is being able to teach something like that's how I grasp. I know that I've understood something and I'm ready to move on to the next topic is like, if I could teach this thing. So actually, I started out building all of that as a way to kind of condense my notes and condense my knowledge so that it'd stick in my head for the competition and I just realized it's already here, I should share this. So that's how I started there. Teaching network engineering to high schoolers that don't have any background knowledge is really hard. It forced me to put it in terms that would make sense and take away the really technical aspects of it and I think that built the teaching skill. DAVE: That relates to the club you started at the middle school for a CyberPatriot. How did that start? EMILY: That was initially a desire to have a capstone project and get out of high school a few weeks early. But I was sitting there with my friend and thinking about, “Okay, well, we need to do something that actually helps people. What should we do?” Like some people are going out and they're painting murals in schools, or gardening. It was like, well, we don't really like being outside and we're not really artistic. [chuckles] But what we do have is a lot of technical knowledge from all this work with CyberPatriot and we know that CyberPatriot has a middle school competition. So we actually approached the middle school. We had a sit down with, I think the dean at our local middle school. We talked about what CyberPatriot was and what we wanted to do with the students, which was have them bust over to the high school so we could teach them as an afterschool program. I guess we convinced him and so, a couple months later they're busing students over for us to teach. DAVE: Wow. And did they ever participate in competitions as middle schoolers? EMILY: Yes, they did. DAVE: Very cool. EMILY: Yeah. DAVE: Can you go into what those competitions are like? I don't think most of the audience even knows that exists. EMILY: Yeah, sure. So CyberPatriot, it's a cybersecurity competition for predominantly high schoolers that's run by the Air Force and you have a couple rounds throughout the year, I think it's like five, or so, and at each round you have 6 hours and you're given some virtual machines, which you have to secure and remove viruses from and things, and you get points for doing all of that. They added on network simulation, which was with some Cisco proprietary software, which would simulate your routers, your firewalls, and everything. So you'd have to configure and troubleshoot that as well and you would get points for the same thing. It builds a lot of comradery with all of us having to sit there for 6 hours after school and like, we're getting tired. It's a Friday night, everyone's a little bit loopy and all we've eaten is pizza for 6 hours. [laughs] DAVE: Well, that's a good jumpstart to your career, I think. [laughs] EMILY: Yes, for sure. MANDY: So while in college, I'm guessing that – well, I'm assuming that you've been pretty impacted by COVID and doing in-person learning versus online learning. How's that been for you? EMILY: I've actually found it pushes me to challenge the status quo. Online college classes, for the most part, the lectures aren't that helpful. They're not that great. So I had to pick up a lot of skills, like learning to teach myself, reading books, and figuring out ways to discern if I needed to research something further, if I really understood it yet, or not. That's a really hard question to ask actually is if you don't have the knowledge, how do you know that you don't have that knowledge? That's something I kind of had – it's a skill that you have to work on. So that is something I developed over the time when we were online and I've actually also done – I worked time for a year after high school and I took mostly online classes at the community college. Those skills started there, too and then I just built on them when I came to Virginia Tech and we had COVID happen. DAVE: Actually, I'd like to ask about that community college time. I know you had an interesting path into Virginia Tech, one that I'm really interested in for my own kids as well. Can you talk about that? EMILY: Yeah. So I, out of high school, always thought I'm going to – I'm a first-generation student. My parents did not go to college. They went to the military and grandparents before them. So I had always had it in my head that I am going to go and get that 4-year degree. That's what I want for myself. At the end of high school, I applied to Virginia Tech. I had a dream school. I wanted to go to Georgia Tech. They rejected me. Oh, well, that dream shot. I need to find something new. So I applied to Virginia Tech thinking it was going to be a safe bet. It's an in-state school, I was a very good student; they would never reject me and so, I applied for the engineering program and I was rejected. They did admit me for the neuroscience program, but it wasn't going to be what I wanted and I was realizing that I did not like either chemistry, or biology, so that would never work. And then at the same time, because of my work with CyberPatriot, I was able to get an internship in network engineering at a college not too far from where I lived. After I graduated high school, they offered me a job as a network engineer, which I took because my team was fantastic, I really liked my manager, and I was comfortable there. I took this job and I said, “Okay, I'm going to keep working on the college thing because it's what I always wanted for myself.” So I just signed up for community college and that was pretty tough working a full-time and doing community college until 11 o'clock at night and getting up the next day and doing it all over again. And from there, I decided that Virginia Tech was going to be the best option for me, just from a very logical perspective. I kind of thought Virginia Tech was a bit cult-y. I was never really gung-ho about going, but it made the most sense being an in-state school that's very well-known. I worked through community college and I applied to Virginia Tech again after 1 year at community college and they rejected me again. so I was like, “Oh no, now what do I do I?” And I realized I needed to make use of the guaranteed transfer program. One of the really cool things in Virginia at least is that a lot of the state schools have agreements with the community college, where if you get an associates with a specific GPA, you can transfer into that program and the university and your transfer's guaranteed, they can't reject you. So I was like, “Aha, they can't get rid of me this time.” Yeah, I did it and it's kind of a messy process. I actually went into that in a blog post on David has a nonprofit called Loudoun Codes. I wrote a blog post for his website and detailed that entire – being a transfer student is hard because there's a lot of credits that may not get transferred over because Virginia Tech is a little bit – all 4-year colleges are a little bit elitist in their attitude towards community college and they didn't take some of the credits that I had, which put me behind quite far, even though I had that knowledge, they said I didn't. So that added on some extra time and some extra summer semesters while I was at Tech. ARTY: Yeah. I did something similar with doing community college and then what you're talking about with the whole elitist attitude with the transfer and having a whole bunch of your credits not transferring and I'm definitely familiar with that whole experience. DAVE: Yeah. EMILY: And even now that I think about it, I remember community college, too. It's built for one specific type of student, which is great. I think they're really good at helping people who just weren't present, or weren't able to do the work and make the progress in high school. They're really good at helping those types of students. But as someone who did a whole bunch of AP classes, had a crazy GPA, they just didn't really know how to handle me. They said, “Okay, you've tested out of pretty much all of our math classes, but you are still lacking some credits.” So I had to take multi-variable calculus in community college in order to get credit to replace the fact that I tested out of pre-cal and which was kind of silly, but in the long run, it was great because I hear multi-variable calculus at Tech is pretty hard. But definitely, there's a lot of bureaucratic nonsense about college. Education is important. It's great. I've learned a lot of things, but there's still all these old ways of thinking and people are just not ready for change in college a lot of the time. The people who make decisions that is. DAVE: Well, I'd like to ask a little bit about the computer science curriculum that you've had and the angle I'm asking from when I worked at LivingSocial, I worked with one of the first group of people that had graduated from our bootcamp program and had transferred from other careers, spent 12 weeks learning software engineering skills, and then were integrated with a group of software engineers at LivingSocial. We would occasionally get into conversations about, well, if I learned to be a software engineer in 12 weeks, what do you learn in 4 years of college? So we started to do these internal brown bags that were kind of the Discovery Channel version of computer science. A lot of that material I've since recycled into the presentations I do at high school. But for your typical person who might have sidelined into this career from a different perspective, what's been your curriculum like? EMILY: I really like the parts of the curriculum that had technical depth because coming into it at my level, that's what I was lacking in certain areas. I had built the foundation really strong, but the details of it, I didn't have. The classes that Virginia Tech, like the notorious systems class and a cybersecurity class I have taken this semester, that have gone in detail with technology and pushed what I understood, those were my most valuable classes. There was a lot of it that I would've been happy without [laughs] because I'm not sure it will apply so much to my life going forward. I'm a very practical person. Engineer mindset; I don't want to worry about things that can actually be applied to the real world so much. So for me this semester, actually, it's been really challenging because I've taken a data structures and algorithms class where we're talking about NP complete versus NP hard, and what it would mean if we could solve an NP complete problem in polynomial time. It's really hard to care. It's really hard to see how that [laughs] helps. It's interesting from a pure math perspective, but coming into it as someone who was already in the adult world and very grounded, it feels like bloat. DAVE: Yeah. That stuff is interesting if you're are designing databases, but most of us are just using databases and that – [overtalk] EMILY: Right. DAVE: Stuff is all kind of baked in. EMILY: Yeah. DAVE: For the average person on a technical career path, we're far more interested in the business problems than the math problems. ARTY: I'm curious, too. There's also lots of stuff that seems like it's missing in college curriculum from just really fundamental things that you need to know as a software engineer. So did you have things like source control and continuous integration? I think back to my own college experience and I didn't learn about source control until I got out of college. [laughs] And why is that? Why is that? It seems so backwards because there's these fundamental things that we need to learn and within 4 years, can we not somehow get that in the curriculum? I'm wondering what your experience has been like. EMILY: So Virginia Tech, I think the CS department head is actually really good at being reflective because he requires every senior to take a seminar class as they exit. It's a one credit class; it's mostly just feedback for the school and I think it's really cool because he asks all of us to make a presentation, just record ourselves talking over some slides about our experience and the things we would change. That really impressed me that this guy who gets to make so many decisions is listening to the people who are just kind of peons of the system and what I said was that there are certain classes that they give background knowledge. Like there's one in particular where it's essentially the closest crossover we have with the electrical engineering department and it's really painful, as someone who works with software, to try and put myself in a hardware mindset working with AND gates, OR gates, and all that, and trying to deal with these simulated chips. It's awful and then it never comes back. We never talk about again in the curriculum and it's a prerequisite for the systems class, which has nothing at all to do with that, really. This segues into another thing. I've had an internship while I've been at Virginia Tech that's a web consultant role, or a development consultant role with a company called Acceleration. They run just a small office in Blacksburg and they have a really cool business model. They take students at Virginia Tech and at Radford, a neighboring school, and they have us work with clients on real software development projects. They pair us with mentors who have 5, 10 years of experiences, software consultants, and we get to learn all those things that school doesn't teach us. So that's actually how I learned Git, Scrum, and all that stuff that isn't taught in college even now and I went back to the CS department head and I said, “Replace that class with the class that teaches us Git, Scrum, Kanban, and even just a brief overview of Docker, AWS, and the concepts so that people have a foundation when they try to go to work and they're trying to read all this documentation, or they're asked to build a container image and they have no idea what it's talking about, or what it's for.” Yeah, going back to the original question, no, I didn't learn version control in college, but the weird thing is that I was expected to know it in my classes without ever being taught it because, especially in the upper level like 3,004 level, or 1,000 level classes, they have you work on group projects where Git is essential and some of them, especially the capstone project, are long-term projects and you really need to use Scrum, or use some sort of methodology rather than just the how you would treat a two-week project. Actually, it's interesting because David was my sponsor on my capstone project in college and he really helped my team with the whole project planning, sprint planning, and just understanding how Scrum and all that works and what it's for. DAVE: Yeah. I just shared a link that is a series of videos from MIT called The Missing Semester of Your Computer Science Education that talks about Git, version control and command line, using the back shell, stuff about using a database, how to use a debugger; just all that kind of stuff is stuff that you're expected to know, but never formally taught. ARTY: What about unit testing? EMILY: Okay. So that's an interesting exception to the rule, but I don't think they really carried it through, through my entire experience at Tech. So in the earlier classes, we were actually forced to write unit tests that was part of our assignments and they would look to see that we had – I think we had to have a 100% testing coverage, or very close to it. So that was good, but then it kind of dropped away as we went to the upper-level classes and you just had to be a good programmer and you had to know to test small chunks of your code because we'd have these massive projects and there would be a testing framework to see if the entire thing worked, but there was no unit testing, really. Whereas, at work in my internship, unit tests are paramount, like [laughs], we put a huge emphasis on that. ARTY: So earlier Emily, you had had mentioned teaching people that had no experience at all and the challenge of trying to be able to help and support people and learning to understand regardless of what their gap was in existing experience. So what are some of the ideas, principles, things that you've learned on how to do that effectively? EMILY: That's a really tough question because I've worked on building intuition rather than a set of rules. But I think a few of the major things probably are thinking about it long enough beforehand, because there's always a lot of background context that they need. Usually, you don't present a solution before you've presented the problem and so, it's important to spend time thinking about that and especially how you're going to order concepts. I've noticed, too with some of the best teachers I've had in college is they were very careful with the order in which they introduced topics to build the necessary context and that's something that's really important with complete beginners. The thing is sometimes you have to build that context very quickly, which the best trick I have for that is just to create an analogy that has nothing to do with technology at all, create it out of a shared experience that you have, or something that they've probably experienced. Like a lot of times analogies for IP addressing use the mailing service, houses on a street and things like that, things that are common to our experience. I guess, maybe that's the foundation of it is you're trying to figure out what you have in common with this person that can take them from where they are to where you are currently and that requires a lot of social skills, intuition, and practice, so. DAVE: That's a really good observation because one of the things I find teaching high school, and this has been a skill I've had to learn, is being able to put my mindset in the point of view of the student that I need to go to where they are and use a good metaphor analogy to bring them up a step. That's a real challenge to be able to strip away all the knowledge I have and be like, “Oh, this must be the understanding of the problem they have” and try to figure out how to walk them forward. EMILY: Yeah. DAVE: That's a valuable skill. EMILY: I think that's really rewarding, though because when I see in their eyes that they've understood it, or I watch them solve the problem, then I know that I did it well and that's really rewarding. It's like, okay, cool. I got them to where I wanted them to be. ARTY: Reminds me. I was helping out mentoring college students for a while and I hadn't really been involved with college for a really long time. I was working with folks that knew very, very little and it was just astounding to me one, just realizing how much I actually knew. That's easy to take for granted. But also, just that if you can dial back and be patient, it's really rewarding I found to just be able to help people, to see that little light go on where they start connecting the dots and they're able to make something appear on the screen for the first time. That experience of “I made that! I made that happen.” I feel like that's one of the most exciting things about software and in programming is that experience of being able to create and make something come to life in that way. Just mentoring as an experience is something, I think is valuable in a lot of ways beyond just the immediate being able to help someone things, like it's a cool experience being a mentor as well. EMILY: And I think it's really important, too as a mentor to have good mentors yourself. I was really lucky to have David just show up in my high school one day [laughs] and I've been really lucky consistently with the mentors in my life. In my internship that I mentioned, I worked with fantastic engineers who are really good teachers. It's difficult to figure out how to good teacher without having first had good teachers yourself and regardless of the level of experience I have, I think I will always want to have that mentor relationship so that I can keep learning. One of the things, too is a lot of my mentors are quite different from mine. Like I am a very quiet introvert person. I would not say I'm very charismatic. I would say David is the opposite of all those things. So wanting to build those skills myself, it's good to have a role model who has them. DAVE: Well, thank you for that compliment. EMILY: Yeah. MANDY: That's really interesting that you said to find mentor that's the opposite of yourself. I literally just heard the same thing said by a different person last week that was like, “Yeah, you should totally find someone who you want to be, or emulate,” and I thought that was really good advice. EMILY: I agree with that completely. There's a lot of conversation around diversity in computer science and that's definitely a problem. Women do not have the representation they should, like I've always gone through classes and been 1 of 3 women in the class. [chuckles] But I think one of the ways in which we can approach this, besides just increasing the enrollment number, is focusing on commonalities—kind of what I mentioned before— from the perspective of mentors who are different than their students. Maybe a male mentor trying to mentor a female student. Focusing on your commonalities rather than naturally gravitating towards people who are like you; trying to find commonalities with people who are different from you. I think that's important. From the student perspective, it's less about finding commonalities more about, like you said, finding the things you want to emulate. Looking at other groups of people and figuring out what they're good at and what things you would like to take from them. [laughs] So. DAVE: Yeah, that's been an interesting challenge I've noticed in the school system is that in the elementary school years, boys and girls are equally competent and interested in this material. By the time they get to high school, we have that 70/30 split of males versus females. In the middle school, the numbers are all over place, but in the formal classes, it seems to be at 70/30 split by 7th grade and I can't really find any single root cause that causes that. Unfortunately, I think I saw some stuff this week with Computer Science Education Week where students as young as first grade are working with small robots in small groups and there always seems to be the extrovert boy that is like, “It's a robot. I'm going to be the one that plays with it,” and he gatekeeps access to girls who are like, “It's my turn.” It's really discouraging to see that behavior ingrained at such a young age. Any attempt I try to address it at the high school level – well, not any attempt, but I feel like a lot of times I can come off as the creepy old guy trying to encourage high school age girls to be more interested in computer science. It's a hard place for me to be. EMILY: Yeah. I don't think you're the creepy old guy. [laughter] I think this is a larger topic in society right now is it's ingrained in women to be meek and to not be as confident, and that's really hard to overcome. That sounds terrible. I don't think people consciously do that all the time. I don't think men are consciously trying to speak over women all the time, but it it's definitely happened to me all over the place—it's happened at work, it's happened in interviews. I think getting over that is definitely really tough, but some of the things that have helped me are to see and celebrate women's accomplishments. Like every time I hear about Grace Hopper, it makes me so happy. I know one time in high school, David took a few other female students and I to a celebration of women's accomplishments and the whole thing, there were male allies there, but the topic of the night was women bragging loudly about the things that they've accomplished. Because that's not something that's encouraged for us to do, but it's something that it builds our confidence and also changes how other people see us. Because the thing is, it's easy to brag and it's saddening that people will just implicitly believe that the more you say you did. So the more frequently you brag about how smart you are, the more inclined people are to believe it because we're pretty suggestible as humans. When women don't do that, that subtly over time changes the perspective of us. We have to, very intently – I can't think of a word I'm trying to say, but be very intentional about bragging about ourselves regardless of how uncomfortable it is, regardless of whether we think we deserve it, or not. MANDY: I also think it's really important for women to also amplify other women, like empowered women empower women. So when we step up and say, “Look at this thing Emily did, isn't that cool?” EMILY: Yeah. MANDY: That's something that we should be doing to highlight and amplify others' accomplishments. EMILY: For sure. I've been to the Grace Hopper conference virtually because it was during COVID times, but that was a huge component of it was there would be these networking circles where women just talk about the amazing things that they've done and you just meet all these strangers who have done really cool things. It goes in both directions, like you said, you get to raise them up and also be encouraged yourself and have something to look forward to. ARTY: It sounds like just being exposed to that culture was a powerful experience for you. EMILY: For sure. ARTY: I was thinking about our conversation earlier about role models and finding someone to look up to that you're like, “You're a really cool person. I admire you.” Having strong women as role models makes it much easier for us to operate a certain way when we interact with other people, and stay solid within ourself and confident within ourself and not cave in. When all the examples around us of women are backing off, caving in, and just being submissive in the way that they interact with the world, those are the sort of patterns we pick up and learn. Likewise, the mixed gender conversations and things that happen. We pick up on those play of dynamics, the things that we see, and if we have strong role models, then it helps us shift those other conversations. So if we have exp more experience with these things, like the Grace Hopper conference and being able to go into these other that have a culture built around strong women and supporting being a strong woman, then you can take some of those things back with you in these other environments and then also be a role model for others. Because people see you being strong and standing up for yourself, being confident and they might have the same reaction to you of like, “Wow, I really admire her. She's really cool.” And then they start to emulate those things too. So these cultural dynamics, they spread and it's this subconscious spreading thing that happens. But maybe if we can get more experiences in these positive environments, we can iteratively take some of those things back with us and influence our other environments that, that maybe aren't so healthy. EMILY: Yeah. I agree. And I think also, it's important to be honest and open about where you started because it's easy, if you're a really confident woman walking into the room, for people to think you've always been that way. I think it's important to tell the stories about when you weren't, because that's how other people are going to connect with you and see a path forward for themselves. Definitely. I'll start by telling a story. I think it's just a million small experiences. I was a strong student in high school. I was very good at math. We had study halls where we'd sit in the auditorium and we'd all be doing homework, and students would often go to the guy in my math class who knew less than I did and ask for help. I would just sit there and listen to him poorly help the other students and mostly just brag about himself, and just be quiet and think about how angry it made me, but not really be able to speak up, or say anything. I'm very different now. Because of the exposure that I've had, I am much more quick to shut that down and to give a different perspective when someone's acting that way. MANDY: But how cool would it have been if that guy would've been like, “Don't ask me, ask Emily”? DAVE: That's a really important point because I hear women talk about this problem all the time and I don't think the solution is a 100% in the women's hands. I think that it's men in the room. My own personal experience, most of my career has been spent in government contracting space and, in that space, the percentage of women to men is much higher. It's still not great, but I think there's a better attempt at inclusion during recruiting. I think that there's a lot of just forces in that environment that are more amenable to that as a career path for women. And then when I started consultancy with my two business partners, Kim and Karen, that was an unheard-of thing that I had two women business partners and at the time we started it, I didn't think it was that big of a deal at all. But then we were suddenly in the commercial space and people thought it was some scam I was running to be a minority owned company and my partner was my wife, or I'd go into a meeting and somebody thought I brought a secretary and I was like, “No, she's an engineer and she's good, if not better than me.” It opened my eyes to the assumptions that people make about what the consulting rates even should be for men versus women and it's in that environment I learned that I had to speak up. I had to represent to be a solution to that problem. I think you can get in an argument with other guys where they aren't even convinced there's a problem to solve. They'll start talking about, “Oh, well, women just aren't as interested in this career path.” It's like, I've known plenty that are and end up leaving. EMILY: I think definitely having support from both sides has been really important because it is typically men in places of authority and to have them be encouraging and not necessarily forcing you into the spotlight, but definitely trying to raise you up and encourage you to speak out means a lot. ARTY: Yeah. I found most of the teams I've been on, I was the only woman on the team, or one of two maybe and early on, when nobody knows you, people make a lot of assumptions about things. The typical thing I've seen happen is when you've got a woman programmer is often, the bit is flipped pretty early on of that oh, she doesn't know what she's doing and stuff, we don't need to listen to what she says kind of thing and then it becomes those initial conversations and how things are framed, tend to affect a lot of how the relationships on the team are moving forward. One of the things that I learn as just an adaptive thing is I was really smart. So what I do, the first thing on the team I'd find out what the hardest problem was, that none of the guys could solve and figure it out, and then I would go after that one. My first thing on the team, I would go and tackle the hardest thing. I found that once you kick the ass of the biggest baddy on the yard, respect. [laughter] So I ended up not having problems moving forward and that the guys would be more submissive toward me, even as opposed to the other way around. But it's like you come into a culture that is dominated by certain ways of thinking in this masculine hierarchy, alpha male thing going on and if that's the dominant culture, you have to learn to play that game and stake yourself in that game. Generally speaking, in this engineering world, intelligence is fairly respected. So I've at least found that that's been a way for me to operate and be able to reset that playing field anyway. MID-ROLL: This episode is supported by Compiler, an original podcast from Red Hat discussing tech topics big, small, and strange. Compiler unravels industry topics, trends, and the things you've always wanted to know about tech, through interviews with the people who know it best. On their show, you will hear a chorus of perspectives from the diverse communities behind the code. Compiler brings together a curious team of Red Hatters to tackle big questions in tech like, what is technical debt? What are tech hiring managers actually looking for? And do you have to know how to code to get started in open source? I checked out the “Should Managers Code?” episode of Compiler, and I thought it was interesting how the hosts spoke with Red Hatters who are vocal about what role, if any, that managers should have in code bases—and why they often fight to keep their hands on keys for as long as they can. Listen to Compiler on Apple Podcasts, or anywhere you listen to podcasts. We'll also include a link in the show notes. Our thanks to Compiler for their support. ARTY: Well, speaking of games, Arty, one of the things that Emily mentions in her bio is playing Dungeons and Dragons and this is an area where as well as I know Emily from her high school years, this is not something I know much about Emily at all. So I'd like to talk about that. Play, or DM, Emily? EMILY: Both. But I really enjoy DMing because it's all about creating problems to solve, in my opinion, like you throw out a bunch of story threads. The way I approach things is I try actually, unlike a lot of DMs, I do not do a lot of world building for places my players haven't been. I pretty much, there are bright light at the center of the world and anything the light doesn't touch doesn't exist. I haven't written it and I don't really look at it that often. So I'm constantly throwing out story threads to try and see what they latch onto and I'll dive into their character backstory to see what they are more predisposed to be interested in. It's like writing a weekly web comic. You don't have necessarily a set beginning and end and you don't really know where you're going to end up in between, but you end up with all these cool threads and you can tie them together in new and interesting ways. Just seeing the connections between those and being able to change what you want something to be on the fly is really cool and just very stimulating mentally for me. So it's like a puzzle exercise the whole time and it is also an interesting social exercise because you're trying to balance the needs of each person. I feel like D&D allows you to know people on a really deep level, because a lot of times, our characters are just – that we're playing. I guess, I didn't really explain what D&D is; I just made an assumption that people would know. It's a tabletop role playing game where you make a character. You're usually heroic and you're going about on this adventure trying to help people solve problems and these characters tend to be just naturally an extension of ourselves. So you get to see all the things that subconsciously the person doesn't real about themselves, but that show up in their character. I think that's really cool. DAVE: So do you have a weekly game, or how often do you play? EMILY: I try to run a weekly game. College often gets in the way. [laughs] DAVE: How many players? EMILY: It ranges from 3 to 4, sometimes 5. It's really cool because it's also, most of them are people that I met during the pandemic. So we've played predominantly online and this is the way we've gotten to know each other. We've become really close in the year, or so since we started playing together through the game that I DM and through the game that one other person in the group DMs and it's cool. It's definitely a way to kind of transcend the boundaries of Zoom and of video calls in general. DAVE: Hmm. ARTY: How did you end up getting into that? EMILY: It was just a friend group in high school. Someone said, “Hey, I would like to run a Dungeon and Dragons game. Do you want to play?” And I said, “Oh, what's that?” I've always loved books and reading so it was kind of a natural progression to go from reading a story to making a story collaboratively with other people. So that just immediately, I had a connection with it and I loved the game and that's been a huge part of my hobbies and my outside of tech life ever since. DAVE: Yeah. I played D&D as a kid in the late 70s, early 80s, but my mom took all my stuff away from me when that Tom Hanks movie came out that started the whole Satan panic thing. So I didn't play for a long time until my own kids were interested after getting hooked on Magic. Seeing my own kids interested in D&D, the story building, the writing, the math that they had to do, like I don't know why any parent wouldn't encourage their kids to play this game. It's just phenomenal. The collaborative, creative, sharing, math; it's got everything. EMILY: Yeah. I'm an introverted person so it takes a lot to make me feel motivated to be in a group with other people consistently, but D&D does that and it does it in a way that's not, I guess, prohibitive to people who are naturally shy. Because you're pretending to be someone else and you're not necessarily having to totally be yourself and you're able to explore the world through a lens that you find comfortable. DAVE: That's really cool. EMILY: I guess, also, it kind of goes back to our conversation about teaching. Being a DM, a lot of my players are people who have not played before, or very, very new. Like, maybe they've read a lot about it, maybe they've watched them [43:18] shows, but they maybe haven't necessarily played. D&D does require a lot of math and there's a lot of optimization, like you can get very into the weeds with your character sheet trying to make the most efficient battle machine, whatever and that's not really always approachable. Especially when I started introducing my younger siblings to D&D, I used versions, D&D like games that were similar, but not quite D&D. Like less math, a very similar amplified character sheets so you're looking at fewer numbers, or fewer calculations involved just to kind of get the essence, because there's a few core concepts in D&D. You have six statistics about your character that they change a little bit between different types of role-playing games, but they're pretty universal, I think for the most part. It's constitution, strength, dexterity, wisdom, intelligence, and charisma. Once you kind of nail those concepts down and once a person understands what those skills are supposed to mean, that really opens the gates to understanding a lot more about the core mechanics of D&D outside of the spell casting stuff and all the other math that's involved. I think just simplifying the game down to that makes them fall in love with the narrative and collaborative aspect of the game, and then be more motivated to figure out the math, if they weren't already predisposed to that. DAVE: So if somebody were interested in picking up a game trying to figure it out, where would they start? EMILY: It really to depends on the age group. If you're going to play with high school students, I would definitely say if none of you have played before, then pick up a player's handbook, maybe a dungeon master's guide if you're going to DM, you've never DM before because it gives a lot of tips for just dealing with the problems that arise in a collaborative storytelling game. And then probably just a prewritten module so you don't have to worry about building your own story, because these modules are stories that are written by professional game developers and you can take pieces of them and iterate it on yourself so you don't have to start with nothing. But if you are going for a much younger audience, I can't remember off the top of my head what it was, but it's essentially an animal adventure game. It's very much D&D without using the word D&D because I think it's a different company, it's copyrighted, and whatnot. But you have these little cute dog characters and they're trying to defeat an evil animal overlord who wants to ruin the town festival. It's very family friendly, like there's no death like there is in regular D&D and it's just a chance to engage with the character creation aspect of it. MANDY: That's really cool. So we're about heading towards our time, but I really appreciate you coming on the show, Emily and I wanted to just ask you, if you could give any advice to young girls looking to get into tech, or software engineering, what advice would you give them? EMILY: I think don't be afraid to walk off the path. A lot of my life has been kind of bucking the prewritten path that a lot of people are told is the best one because it didn't work for me, or whatever reason, and I think it's important just to not be afraid of that and to be courageous in making your own path. MANDY: That's great advice. So should we head into reflections, everyone? Who wants to start us off? DAVE: I'll start with one. I mentioned that when asked Emily about her path into college, that I was interested in a similar path for my own kids. I had a really strange college path that I started out a music major, ended up a computer science major, and had a non-traditional path. I've always believed that college is what you make of it, not where you went. Where you went might help you get your first job, but from then on, it's networking, it's personality, it's how well you did the job. Talking to Emily about her path, just reinforces that to me and helps me plot a path for what I might have my own children do. I have triplet boys that are in 9th grade. So we're starting to think about that path and not only would a path through Virginia Community College save us a fortune, [laughs] it would also be a guaranteed admission into Virginia Tech, or one of the Virginia schools so it's definitely something worth to consider. So I appreciate that knowledge, Emily. ARTY: I've been thinking a lot about how we can better teach people that don't have a lot of experience yet. We've got so much stuff going on in this field of software engineering and it's really easy to not realize how far that this plateau of knowledge that we live in and work with every day to do our jobs, and how important it is to bring up new folks that are trying to learn. One of the things you said, Emily was about teaching is being able to find those shared things where we've got a common understanding about something—you used metaphor of male delivery to talk about IP addresses, for example. But to be thinking in those ways of how do we find something shared and be able to get more involved with mentoring, reaching back, and helping support people to learn because software is super cool. It really is! We can build amazing, amazing things. It'd be awesome if more of us were able to get involved and have that experience and having good mentors, having good role models, all of those things make a big difference. MANDY: I just love the conversation that we had about men and women in technology and for me, I love to reiterate the fact that empowered women empower women and I even want to take that a step further by saying especially right now in our field, empowered men also empower women. So I think that that's something that really needs to be said and heard and not perceived as like Dave said oh, he felt like the creepy guy encouraging girls, or women to get involved in tech. I think it's cool. Dave has personally, he's mentored me. He's gotten me more interested. I used to do assistant work and now I'm learning programming and it's because I've been encouraged to do so by a lot of different men in the industry that I've been lucky to know. DAVE: Well, thank you, Mandy. You certainly have a who's who of mentors. MANDY: I am very, very lucky to know the people I know. DAVE: I'm quite honored to even be named on that list of people you know. [laughter] EMILY: I think the thought I keep coming back to is one that I've mentioned, but didn't really crystallize in my head until this morning when I was preparing for this recording is, I listened to David's interview and I thought about like, “Oh wow, he did really well on the podcast, all these things that I wish I did.” It really crystallized the idea that your mentor should be different from you and should have skills you don't, and you should seek them out for that reason. Mentors tend to be the people that I run into and I haven't really thought about it that way before, but that gives me a different perspective to go out and intentionally seek out those people. That definitely gives some food for thought for me. [laughs] MANDY: I love intentionally seeking out people who are different from myself in general, just to learn and get perspectives that I might have never even thought of before. But with that, I guess we will wrap up. Emily, it's been so nice having you on the show. Congratulations and best of luck on your exams. I know being – [overtalk] DAVE: I can't believe you took the time to do this with your exams coming up. MANDY: I know! EMILY: I'm procrastinating as hard as I can. [laughter] MANDY: But it's been so nice to have you on the show. Dave, thank you for coming and being a guest panelist and Arty, it's always wonderful to host with you. So I just wish everybody a happy new year and we'll see you next week! Special Guests: Dave Bock and Emily Haggard.

Emily Bahna a Managing Director at thoughtbot who leads the Lift Off team, where they focus on really leaning into the core of the company. The team works with new founders to launch new products or they work with existing companies that want to build out a new service or open up a new area to generate revenue for their business. But, the thing that ties Lift Off together, is that they start at ground zero to build upon an idea and actually build the first version product to get it out live into the marketplace. Follow Emily on Twitter (https://twitter.com/emilybahna) or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/ebahna/). thoughtbot's Lift Off team (https://thoughtbot.com/lift-off) Follow thoughtbot on Twitter (https://twitter.com/thoughtbot) or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/150727/) Become a Sponsor (https://thoughtbot.com/sponsorship) of Giant Robots! Transcript: CHAD: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Chad Pytel. And with me today is Emily Bahna, Managing Director of thoughtbot's Lift Off team. Emily, thanks for joining me. EMILY: Thank you. CHAD: So at this point, we've talked with a few of the different managing directors at thoughtbot about their teams. And Lift Off is one of the largest teams that we have. And so what is it that Lift Off actually does? EMILY: Lift Off is focused in on really leaning into the core of thoughtbot. We work with new founders launching new products or work with existing companies that want to build out a new service or open up a new area to generate revenue for their business. But I think the thing that ties Lift Off together is that we are starting at ground zero building upon an idea and actually building the first version product and getting it out into the marketplace. CHAD: And oftentimes, those are pretty significant endeavors. The last episode that came out was with Dawn at Ignite who is more on the validation, early stage, getting things that are fairly straightforward into market as quickly as possible usually in a matter of months. But Lift Off the endeavors are usually quite a bit more significant than that, right? EMILY: Yeah. I would say that the difference between validation...we're beyond the stage of validation. We're working with clients who are ready to build a foundation. They really need to put in the infrastructure that's going to take their product and get it ready to scale into the future. So they really need to make that investment into the longer-term strategy. They need to know what's realistic to build first. But they also have to keep an eye on the long road ahead of building something that can be something that can set out to grow down the road as well. CHAD: I guess another way of putting it is that Ignite often works with brand new teams, brand new companies creating something for the first time. And Lift Off typically works with existing companies who have existing significant revenue who want to do something new, either a new business or a new product, or maybe they have an existing web product and they're going into mobile for the first time. That's another way of putting it, right? EMILY: It could be. I think that when people are ready to move into the Lift Off space, it's about having the investment, the right kind of funding to move in that direction. Sometimes we do work with new founders that have a significant amount of funding, but a lot of times it is folks that are at the enterprise level that are building a new service line. They've got validation and market research already done. And they're building out a completely new line of business that they need to explore and set a new foundation in place. CHAD: Do you have some examples of clients that have been projects of Lift Off? EMILY: Yeah. We've been doing a lot of really interesting work in the health tech space, a lot of interest in improving patient experience. So we worked with a company called Relias in terms of moving them into a new service line that they'd never been in before, really focusing on improving patient care for therapists, physical therapy therapists. We've also worked with an organization called Groups Recover Together, building out a mobile application for an organization that helps people recover from substance abuse. And we also are working with an organization called Airrosti. That is also an organization that helps in the physical therapy space, so improving patient exercises or rehabilitation through an improved mobile experience, virtual experience to improve overall patient outcomes. CHAD: I think it's not a coincidence that a lot of the projects that we work on in Lift Off are in the health tech space because that combination of...like you were saying, a lot of what Lift Off does is really build products that are complex and that are going to scale and have a certain scale fairly quickly and need to really think about more of a platform that's going to be iterated upon into the future. And once you get into a highly regulated industry like health or finance or something, there are so many factors at play, especially if you're an existing business going into that. There's lots to consider. The projects are more complex. And so having a team of people that are focused on working in that kind of environment and know the challenges of doing that and an integrated design and development team who's comfortable operating in that space, I think that that's why it's not a coincidence. EMILY: Yeah. I think there's also a lot of great energy in that space right now to move it to the next level. And to be honest, the pandemic really accelerated the need for improvements in patient engagement and allowing therapists or physicians to be able to care for patients in a virtual setting. It also is true not just in health tech, but as you mentioned, we've been actively working with a lot of FinTech companies as well, building out mobile experiences for companies that are helping people get out of debt or working in even some of these new areas like cryptocurrency and things that are changing pretty rapidly in the marketplace and being able to respond to that. But kind of working in a really complex environment some particular industries that have specific compliance security needs in order to be able to serve their customers in a safe way. So working through a lot of those challenges is what's really important and having a team that can navigate through those levels of complexity. CHAD: I've talked with the other managing directors about the benefits of our new focus teams and how working on a similar project allows the team members to focus. The other aspect of it is there are parts of what we did under the studio model. And it may have been like there'd be one Lift Off project within...I think we should mention that you used to be the Managing Director of the Durham Studio. And it was a relatively small team working with local clients. And so you may only have one of these kinds of clients a year or maybe even less. And so building up an expertise but also meeting the needs of those particular clients there wasn't enough work there, for example, to hire someone with a specific skill set or knowledge if it's only going to be few and far between. And that's been true in Lift Off because we used to, at thoughtbot, not really have product managers. Everyone was designers and developers. And that was because only a subset of our projects really needed a product manager at the table. For the most part, a lot of those smaller projects or the boost-style projects are just developers or designers working directly with a stakeholder. And so, within Lift Off, we've built a product management practice because of that specialized need within these kinds of projects, right? EMILY: Yeah, I think just like you said, the ability to really focus in on the first version product is looking at ways that we could improve our process there and provide more support that's really needed for these kinds of engagements. So what we have seen with the more complex MVPs is a lot of these clients need reliability. They need to know that what they're building is the...They need to have more support in terms of the management of that, having someone who's dedicated to being able to straddle between the business objectives and working with the team navigating some of these more complex compliance issues, security issues, and keeping that on track. Also, we've been leaning into improving our practices around defining what first version product is. We've been using design sprints to really help align both business owners and the team to determine what are the biggest risk factors? How do we define what we're actually going to build and start building that roadmap? And we've been leaning into those best practices and actually improving upon it. And so we've looked at that and built out a discovery sprint that is not just a week-long but really extends that out to about three weeks to give us more time to do more user research, dive a little deeper through the design sprint exercises, but then bring in engineering, bringing an interdisciplinary team to look at the problem from both a product management point of view, a design point of view, and a development point of view to really determine the first version product roadmap and give more clarity to our clients and a clearer sense of what we can accomplish in the first. CHAD: I can speak to this firsthand because I was advising and working on a project that started before we reorganized into teams and effectively playing that role. But as the project went on, not that we did a terrible job, but it became overwhelming for me with my other responsibilities and spending a couple of days a week. A couple of days a week is sufficient on a smaller project, but on a much larger project, it's essentially a full-time job to do all of that work. [chuckles] And I just didn't have enough time to be able to do that, let alone then provide a real active management of the roadmap six-plus months out. So a very lightweight process with not a lot of definition works when that period is then over in 6 to 12 weeks, and you have something [chuckles] in the market. When you're trying to plan and trying to coordinate work and trying to give clarity around a product and everything that's six-plus months out, it's a whole nother ball game. And it requires a whole nother level of effort, and the clients want that. And so being able to give it to them not only makes them more successful and more confident and feeling like they have that reliability, but it also then puts our team in a better supported set up for success and that kind of thing because they have what they need, and the client has what they need. And everyone's able to really come together and collaborate on building and launching a great product. EMILY: Yeah. I think we're always looking at ways that we can improve our process, and as we are taking on more of the complex projects recognizing the need for this role. What's really exciting is the interest in the product management role. It's been an opportunity for our team members. We've had two senior developers who've wanted to move into that role. And it's been an amazing transformation of with them, similar to you, having that background, the hands-on background of understanding what it means to be a developer on a project but then being able to transition to a different role on the project and get more involved on the business side of things. But that's been extraordinarily successful in making that transition and providing the support that the team needs in order to be successful. So in some ways, it's like we were trying to do that job without really defining it. But now that it's been defined, just recognizing the value that that role plays on these types of projects and seeing the opportunity to even improve it. CHAD: I wanted to tell you all about something I've been working on quietly for the past year or so, and that's AgencyU. AgencyU is a membership-based program where I work one on one with a small group of agency founders and leaders toward their business goals. We do one on one coaching sessions and also monthly group meetings. We start with goal setting, advice, and problem-solving based on my experiences over the last 18 years of running thoughtbot. As we progress as a group, we all get to know each other more. And many of the AgencyU members are now working on client projects together and even referring work to each other. Whether you're struggling to grow an agency, taking it to the next level and having growing pains, or a solo founder who just needs someone to talk to, in my 18 years of leading and growing thoughtbot, I've seen and learned from a lot of different situations, and I'd be happy to work with you. Learn more and sign up today at thoughtbot.com/agencyu. That's A-G-E-N-C-Y, the letter U. So we have a bunch of positions open in Lift Off. But product management is one of those positions that we're looking for people, right? EMILY: Yeah. We are actually opening up a position for Director of Product Management because the role is so critical to the work that we're doing, just like...I feel like we're extending our design and development model but then adding this third tier of product management, which is just as important in terms of the team that works best for these types of projects. It's having that interdisciplinary core of product management, design, and development working together for new products. A lot of it is really having that high-level oversight, the business strategy integrated in with the folks that can specialize in the development and the design piece. Having to look at the problem from those three different points of view just provides a level of reliability for clients that they just can't get with a single point of view. CHAD: What is the size of the product management team now? EMILY: Right now? Let's see. I think we've got about five. We have four or five active product managers right now. CHAD: So tell us more about the ideal Director of Product Management. What do you think that they would be? Able to lead a team that size while also evolving our product management process and doing product management themselves? EMILY: Yeah. I think I'm bringing in somebody who can help us improve our product management process specifically for first version products and really looking at it, and really shaping it, and pulling in the best practices, and really shaping it for the clients that we have I think is one thing I'm looking for the director to do. I'm also looking at the director to upskill our team. Like I said, there are a lot of folks like developers and designers that are actually interested in moving into that role and building up a potential career pathway for folks that may want to move into that area and to ensure that they are successful with that. And then growing the team, we are hoping to be able to...I think we've got five active projects right now, so being able to grow our projects and to grow the team so that we can support those kinds of projects on an ongoing basis. So really extending that out and then working collaboratively with our design and development directors to look at how we can collectively put together best practices around first version products. CHAD: Awesome. Well, what's on your radar now? What's next for Lift Off besides hiring a Director of Product Management? EMILY: [laughs] That's definitely number one. I think what is up next is really focusing in on teamwork. How do we work collectively as a team? Are there ways to improve our process to better serve our clients? We've done a lot of things in the past year. Like I'd mentioned before, we've improved our design sprints and extended them to become discovery sprints. Those are just names, but it's really the beginning stages of kicking off a project more successfully. Looking at ways that we can improve our customer experience and being able to serve clients in a better way, improving our product management across the board for all our projects, looking at ways that throughout the first version product for our clients what other ways can we better support our clients? Either through go-to-market strategies or helping them recruit permanent team members onto their team. But I think what's next for Lift Off is really examining how we service clients and looking at ways that we can actually make it even better. CHAD: Cool. Well, I want to change gears a little bit and ask you about you. EMILY: [laughs] CHAD: So your background, I think it's important to say is as a designer, right? EMILY: Yeah, that's one of my backgrounds. [laughter] CHAD: Okay, you have a varied background. But what were you doing when you joined thoughtbot and moved into the Managing Director role? And how has that evolved over time? EMILY: I think it's really interesting. You're always leaning into something. And as you look back at your past, even if it doesn't seem to make sense, you're always gravitating to something that is your North Star. Before I joined thoughtbot, I actually ran my own agency, which was called UX-Shop. And it was a team of one; it was me. As I was building up that agency, I recognized that I couldn't do it all. The types of projects that I wanted to work on were more complex. And so, when I started UX-Shop, I would be pulling in talent to create the type of team that would make that project more successful. It was hard to continually do that in a way where I had to recruit talent [laughs] and secure projects as well without having them as permanent employees. When I joined thoughtbot, it was an opportunity where I had access to amazing talent. And I could really focus in on building that, first off doing it in the Raleigh, Durham office where we went from a team of four to I think we grew the team to about nine. And starting to really grow that office to transitioning to this new model where we went from a team of nine to...I don't know the exact number, but I think it's like 25, 28. We're heading toward the 30 mark. So it's a significantly larger team with the ability to really focus in on the kind of projects that I actually really love, which is new product design and development but going after those more complex projects. And I think when I start looking back at my own career, I'm just starting to see patterns of the same focus but the opportunity to dive into it in a bigger way, in a more challenging way, and starting to tackle that. So thoughtbot's really given me the opportunity to take that ambition and actually apply it with the opportunity to have the talented team to be able to execute on those types of projects. CHAD: How has going from a team of one to a team of four to a team of nine to a team of pushing 30...are there things that you've needed to evolve in your own skillset or experiences? EMILY: Yeah. I think certainly building leadership skills, understanding how to work through a lot of challenges on what makes a team work really well together, making sure that we've got the guidelines and structures in place. There are a lot of things that I've grown just having the opportunity to work through some of those challenges. But also, in some ways, growing into a larger team has made some things a little easier. But it was nice having that progression from a smaller team to a larger team. I don't know if I would have been as successful with growing to a team of 30 right off the bat without being able to work in that smaller space, kind of learn my lessons, and then build upon those and grow that unit, get better at what I was doing. The reason why Lift Off is really starting to thrive is understanding that that foundation is built upon a lot of trial and error and just learning how to navigate and improve my own personal leadership skills. CHAD: Are there any particular resources that you called upon in order to do that? EMILY: So certainly reaching out to folks who are in similar positions. There's a strong community here where I live in Durham, talking to a lot of founders or folks in the leadership space who are growing teams. I've had some coaching with executive coaching that's helped quite a bit, especially when I've been in situations that I just wanted to make sure that I was handling them in the right way. And then, of course, having access to the folks at thoughtbot like you, Chad, and people that I can talk to and get advice on how to navigate tricky situations have all been contributing to my education and making me a better leader in this space. CHAD: Would you recommend coaching to other people? EMILY: I would. I think it's a real opportunity for you to...there's a lot of things that you don't really know that you don't know. And there's a lot of ways of approaching things in a different way on how you communicate. That is the difference between really getting through and solving a problem versus having a situation arise and escalate and become problematic. And it's a little bit of understanding how to frame things in a thoughtful way. It's also an opportunity to understand that sometimes you just need to have some space to think before responding and understanding how to navigate complexity, especially in today's world where leadership there's so much going on, transitioning to remote. There are different things that are pulling at us in different aspects and just really understanding the human element of your teams. So having someone who you can talk to in a way that you can share those ideas and get a different perspective, I think, is really helpful. CHAD: Yeah. Well, if folks want to get in touch with you or Lift Off, what's the best places for them to do that? EMILY: Well, there's always my email, emily@thoughtbot.com. I think just reaching out to me directly is the best place. I'm always happy to talk about Lift Off or have an intro coffee call with folks that are interested in what we do. So that's the best way to get in touch with me. CHAD: Excellent. You can subscribe to the show and find notes for this episode at giantrobots.fm. If you have any questions or comments, email us at hosts@giantrobots.fm. You can find me on Twitter @cpytel. This podcast is brought to you by thoughtbot and produced and edited by Mandy Moore. Thanks for listening and see you next time. Special Guest: Emily Bahna.

Emily: All right. You want to walk over with me, you can. This is a fun, creepy corner that people are very afraid of. So we're standing in the boiler, the old boiler room of MoMA PS1 right now in front of the large boiler that was set down here in 1902. That was then gold leafed by Saul Melman back in 2010 as part of our greater New York show. Bobby: And you have this massive furnace... Emily: It's the original boiler of the room. And then it was like abandoned and not used anymore. Bobby: Oh, so this is a Relic. It's very old. It's still very beautiful. Emily: It's fun. Because it's one of the only pieces you could also like totally interact with. So like you're allowed to open all the doors. I always touch the parts that are just old and grimy and not covered in gold leaf, just because gross. Bobby: And if you keep on looking at it, you obviously see that it's about halfway covered in gold leafing. And this is the work of Saul Melman. You can see gold a lot in Catholic artwork around deities and it's always associated with life. So with this piece, he wanted to bring the boiler back to life. So he used gold leafing to cover the surface and he also worked as a surgeon in the emergency room. So they think that "Central Governor" got his name because of that relation. "Central Governor" means the heart. Emily: He named the peace "Central Governor" after this kind of idea that the boiler was the heart of the building. Bobby: So, well by reinvigorating the heart you can kind of bring back to life, this museum. And that's what I think he was trying to do in some way. Emily: The gross fun details of this piece is that he didn't use any sort of like traditional glue or water based kind of like adhesive. Bobby: All the gold leaving was applied with his bodily fluids. That includes sweat, blood and urine. Emily: He used blood, sweat and tears, like literally. Bobby: I would say that this is definitely one of the visitor favorites. Emily: If you walk over to the piece and you look at the center where you see some lights, you'll notice these test tubes filled with a white liquid. Bobby: There's two vials. I don't don't know what they were used for, but Saul Melman has repurposed them and inserted his semen in it. Emily: People have gasped. People just will like give you blank stares. People just will kind of explode in laughter. Bobby: Yes that sounds weird, but there's this association with life. Emily: I think it kind of kicks them off into a good point of understanding how many strange things are here. Bobby: So, many people might think it's funny, but to me it kind of makes sense. It's outlandish, but once I look at the artwork as a whole, I feel like I understand it and appreciate it.

Emily Berman is a mom and audio-maker based in Washington DC. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: ZAK: Do you ever gossip about somebody over text and then you realize to your horror you sent the text to the person you're talking shit about!? Of course you have, you're human. And if you haven't, good on ya. But if you have like the rest of us, you might appreciate this advice. EMILY: DO NOT TALK SHIT ABOUT PEOPLE IN WRITING. Don't do it in text. Don't do it in an e-mail. Don't write it on a piece of paper. Don't write it down. And this works on a lot of different levels. You can go very deep with this. Like, biblically deep. First of all, its saves you from being caught in a very embarrassing situation. It pauses you for a second. If you just like, have this rule that you're not gonna write things down. If you're not gonna say anything bad about someone else...you pause. You're not gonna text it. You have to call the person to say it. You have to call whoever you want to talk to. Are you gonna make the call just to say that thing? So, it gives you a second to reflect. And if you call, ok, you call and you say it and then maybe notice how you feel after that. Like, was it worth it to call to say that? Like sometimes maybe but generally speaking it feels pretty bad to say...you might start to notice. I've started to notice that it feels pretty bad to say negative things about people. EMILY: And, this is not my idea. This is one of the most important laws in the Torah, which is the laws surrounding Lashon Hora which means evil speech or evil tongue is what is means exactly. And it's really one of the worse things you can do in the Torah because it is so destructive. Things you say about other people can be destructive to them in their lives in so many ways. EMILY: It's an on-going practice. Everyday you're going to be confronted with this situation of like, you have the thought of something you feel about someone else. Something you need to get off your chest. And then you have your choice of like, what are you gonna do? Are you gonna quickly express those thoughts to someone else? Are you going to keep it to yourself? And like, you're gonna practice over and over not writing it down. Not making the call to express the feeling and then eventually, I don't know if I can say I think the thoughts less, but I feel like it's becoming a smaller and smaller part of my personality and my goal is to be a person who does not say negative things about other people. ZAK: When you're suppressing the urge to write shit or talk shit, what do you do then with that feeling of like, man, this person just was being an asshole and I want some catharsis from it? EMILY: Ok, so like, sometimes I don't do it perfectly. Like, sometimes I do pick up the phone and call the person I want to talk to about it and vent for a second. But, it's like I'm getting quicker and being more empathetic to the person I would have said something negative about. Little by little it doesn't feel as much like suppression, although at the beginning when I first learned about this, it did feel like I was suppressing things and I felt stifled. I just want to say what I think. I just want to say...I just want say how I feel and that's important because I feel it. But it actually becomes a spiritual practice of empathy. Cause it feels terrible to think that other people are out there saying bad things about me. And if we're all just doing that, that's such a heavy reality to be living in. So, I guess I am trying to do my part to change the reality...change the way we all communicate with another and just, I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna say something bad about you, Zak. Laughter.

This conversation covers: Mirage's role as an API mocking library, the value that it offers for developers, and who can benefit from using it. How Mirage empowers front end developers to create production-ready UIs as quickly as possible. How Mirage evolved into an API mocking library  How Mirage differs from JSON Server  Sam's relationship to Mirage, and how it fits in with his business. Sam also talks about open source business models, and whether Mirage could work as a SaaS offering. One interesting use case for Mirage, which involves demoing software and driving sales. Links Mirage Sam's teaching site Follow Sam on Twitter Subscribe to Sam's YouTube Channel TranscriptEmily: Hi everyone. I'm Emily Omier, your host, and my day job is helping companies position themselves in the cloud-native ecosystem so that their product's value is obvious to end-users. I started this podcast because organizations embark on the cloud naive journey for business reasons, but in general, the industry doesn't talk about them. Instead, we talk a lot about technical reasons. I'm hoping that with this podcast, we focus more on the business goals and business motivations that lead organizations to adopt cloud-native and Kubernetes. I hope you'll join me.Emily: Welcome to the Business of Cloud Native. My name is Emily, I'm your host, and today I'm chatting with Sam Selikoff. Thank you so much for joining us, Sam.Sam: Thanks for having me.Emily: Yeah. So, today, we're going to do something a little bit different, and we're going to talk about positioning for open source projects. A lot of people talk about positioning for companies, which is also really important. And they don't always think about how positioning is important for open source. Open source maintainers often don't like to talk about marketing because you're not selling anything. But you are asking people to give you their time which, at least for some people, is actually more valuable than their money. And that means you have to make a compelling case for why it's worth it to contribute to your project, and also why they should use it, why they should care about it? So, anyway, we're going to talk with Sam, about Mirage. But first, I should let you introduce yourself. Sam, thank you so much for joining me, and can you introduce yourself a little bit?Sam: Sure. My name is Sam Selikoff. These days, I spend most of my time teaching people how to code in the form of videos on my YouTube channel, and my website, embermap.com. Most of it is front end web development focused. So, we focus on JavaScript. I have a business partner who also works with me. And then we also do custom app development, you know, some consulting throughout the year.Emily: Cool. And then tell me a little bit about Mirage.Sam: Yeah, so Mirage is the biggest open source project I've been a part of since falling into web development, I'd say about eight years ago, I got into open source pretty early on in programming, kind of what made me fall in love with web development and JavaScript. So, I was starting to help out and just get involved with existing projects and things that I was using. Eventually, I made my way to TED Talks, the conference company where I was a front end developer, and that's actually where I met my business partner, Ryan. And we were using Ember.js, which is a JavaScript framework, and we had lots of different apps at TED that were helping with various parts of publishing talks, and running conferences, and all that stuff. And we were seeing some common setup code that we were using across all these apps to help us test them, and that's where Mirage came from. There was another project called Pretender, which helped you mock out servers so that you could test your front end against different server states. And we first wrapped that with something called Pretenderify, and then it grew in complexity. So, I was working on it on my learning Wednesdays, renamed it to Mirage, and then I've been working on it basically ever since. And then, the other big step, I guess, in the history is that originally was an Ember only project, and then last year, we worked on generalizing it so that it can be used by React developers, React Native developers, Vue developers, so now it's just a general-purpose JavaScript API mocking library.Emily: So, we would say that the position is an API mocking library. And—does that sound right?Sam: Yeah. If I had to say what it is, I would say it's a mocking library that helps front end developers mock out backend API's so that they can develop and test the user interfaces without having to rely on back end services.Emily: Why does that matter?Sam: It matters because back end services can be very complicated, there can be multiple back end services that need to run in order to support a UI, and if you're a front end developer, and you just want to make a change and see what the shopping cart looks like when it's empty. What does the shopping cart look like when there's one item? What does it look like when there's 100 items, and we have to have multiple pages? All three of those states correspond to different data in some back end service, usually in a database. And so, for a front end developer, or anyone working on the user interface, really, it can be time-consuming and complex to put that actual server in that state that they need to help them develop the UI. That can involve anything from running, like, a Rails server on their computer to getting other API's that other teams manage into the state they need to develop the UI. So, Mirage lets them mock that out and basically have a fake server that they control and they can put into any state they need. So, it's like a simplified version of back end services that the front end developer can control to help them develop and test the UI.Emily: And when you first started Mirage, did you think of it as an API mocking library?Sam: Not exactly. We used it mostly because of testing. So, in a test, it's usually a best practice to not have your test rely on an actual network. You want to be able to run your test suite of your user interface anywhere, let's say on an airplane or something like that. So, if your user interface relies on live back end services, that's usually where you would bring in a mocking library. And then you would say, okay, when the user visits amazon.com/cart, normally, it would go try to fetch the items in your cart from a real server, but in the test, we're going to say, “Oh, when my app does that, let's just respond with zero items. And then in this next test, when my app does that, let's respond with three items.” So, that's the motivation originally, is in a testing environment, giving the UI developer control over that. And then what happened was that it was so useful, we started using it in development as well, just to help during normal times, just because it was faster than working with the real back end services.Emily: Do you think there are any other projects that do something similar?Sam: Yeah, for sure. I think the most popular one is called JSON Server, which is a popular open source library that lets a front end developer put some data in a file, and then you point JSON Server to it, and then it just gives you an instant mock server you can use to help develop your app.Emily: So, what's the difference between Mirage and JSON Server?Sam: The difference is that JSON Server is made—it's really optimized for giving you a development—kind of a fake server as fast as possible, but it comes with a certain format that it gives you the data in. So, what ends up happening is that it can help you get feedback and build your UI faster, but eventually, you're going to need to point your app at a real API server, whatever you planning on using in production. And so the way JSON Server works might not correspond—in fact, often doesn't correspond with your actual API. So, Mirage fills that gap because Mirage is designed to be able to faithfully reproduce any production API; there's ways to customize how the data comes back so that it matches so that as you're developing your actual user interface against Mirage, you can have confidence that it'll work once you switch over to production.Emily: Is Mirage slower than other options?Sam: Not performance-wise because they're all JavaScript code that runs in the browser, but JSON Server is really optimized for just getting started as fast as possible because it comes with all of those pre-baked conventions about how the data is going to be moving back and forth. So, with Mirage—it can be faster, it depends—but with Mirage, you need to learn a little bit more in order to understand how to faithfully reproduce your production API. But I think it's faster because in the long run, if you're writing code against a mock server that doesn't match the interface of your production API, then you're just going to be having to change that application code that you're writing.Emily: How much do you talk to other people in the Mirage community, and talk about how they're actually using it?Sam: I felt more in touch with the users when it was an Ember project only because Ember is a more niche-type community. Whereas now, there's folks using it in React and Vue, like I was saying, and Angular. And so, we get issues almost every day on the project. It's not like a mega-popular project, but it does have enough people using it that people will ask questions, or open an issue almost every single day. And so I try to stay in touch with the users through that, basically. And then when I went to conferences—you know, before 2020—I would love to talk with people about it, or people would just bring it up. That's kind of how a lot of people know me on the internet. So, I would say that I do it in kind of a passive way. I haven't actively gone out to talk to them, partly because it's an open source project so it doesn't contribute to our revenue. We have some ideas for how that might happen one day, but as of right now, we can't justify doing proper product development on it in the sense of spending time doing customer interviews and stuff because it's a free project right now.Emily: That is my next question, which is, how does it fit in with your business in the larger sense? You know, how you put food on the table? And what are your goals for the project?Sam: A good question. I mean, it's really aligned with our overall mission of, of everything that we do because me and my business partner, Ryan, we really want to just help people get better at UI development, we want it to be easier, we want to help empower more people to do it because we think it's powerful tool in the world, and it's just too hard right now; there's so many things that are hard about it. So, that goes back to our consulting and our teaching; mainly our teaching. That's our main mission. And then Mirage is really—the purpose of Mirage is to enable front end developers to do more kind of with less, so they don't have to run a Docker container or get an SQL database up just to change some CSS for a given server state. So, it fits into that mission. I've been doing open source long enough to know the pattern, and it happens over and over again, where people work on something, it gets popular enough that they start opening issues, and it becomes a maintenance burden for the maintainers, and then they try to stay up late closing issues, they get burned out, and then the project kind of rots. So, that's something that happens a lot in open source. And so, over the last five years or so of working on Mirage, I've been more involved, or sometimes step back if I need to spend more time on other things, but I'm really interested in making it sustainable, and I know some people in the open source community who have made their projects sustainable financially, other with a pro plan, or support plan, or different related services. So, if we could snap our fingers, that would be what would happen, and that's what we're working on now.Emily: Which one of those open source business models do you think is most appropriate?Sam: At this point, we basically are trying to not guess that answer because we think the way to find out which one it is, is to get a critical mass of users and listen to what they're saying. So, on our podcast, we interviewed Mike Perham from Sidekick, who runs Sidekiq and Sidekiq Pro in the Rails community for about 10 years, and he makes really good money. Sidekiq Pro came about because the enterprise customers of Sidekiq were asking for more robust job servers and all this kind of stuff, so there was a natural path for him to making a pro version that he could sell to enterprise clients. And so that's worked out really well for him, and the rest of the community gets to use the base version for free. And I love that because I do love this zero-cost to entry to open source. And then my other friend, Adam Wathan who works on Tailwind, he's made money to help Tailwind be sustainable through education and courses, and then more recently, a project called Tailwind UI, which is pre-built UI components with Tailwind. And that, again, came about from people asking for that after he was working on Tailwind. So, I think the best way to do it is to get that critical mass of users to the point where you know what they're asking for, you hear over and over again, and then it makes sense to go forward with that.Emily: There's also a third option, which is a cloud service, and I'm just curious—like a complete SaaS offering—have you ever considered that?Sam: Absolutely. There's a really cool opportunity there for Mirage because your Mirage server usually lives alongside your front end code so that when every individual front end developer pulls the project down, starts working on it locally, they're running their own Mirage server. But some of the things that people have done organically with Mirage is, create a certain configuration of a server state—let's say for a demo—so let's say they create a shopping cart, or let's say they're working on a financial piece of software, and they need to show what it looks like with three clients and four contracts, and here are the products that we sold and how much money they are. People will make up a Mirage scenario with that specific set of data that their salespeople take and use on sales calls. And that way, again, the user interface looks fully realistic, it's a fully working UI that is talking to Mirage, but now you don't have to worry about the actual back end servers going down or anything like that. And so, we've had this thought of a hosted Mirage, basically like a Mirage cloud, where even non-technical people could tweak the data there, and then again, they don't have to get involved with ops people or anything like that. And that could be really powerful. So, there's a ton of ideas there. I think our hesitation with our company, Embermap, it's worked to some extent, but it's not grown to the point where it can sustain us, and so that's partly because of the market issue, Ember being a little smaller. So, we're nervous to jump into any particular solution before we feel there's a proven market need for it. And so that's why, even though we have a lot of these fun ideas that I think could really work out, we first want to wait until we get that critical mass, the audience size that we'd feel comfortable could sustain a business.Emily: How many people is that? What is the audience size?Sam: That's a tough question. Let's say Mirage cloud was the goal. I think instead of waiting to a certain point, and then trying to build Mirage cloud, we would do a few things in the interim that would be little experiments and lower risk. So, I think the first thing would be, let's say, a Mirage course. And if we can sell a course on Mirage—or even we make a free Mirage course—that gets enough attention, that would tell us that there is enough of a need there, that the positioning resonates, that people are seeing it's a valuable thing, and that would tell us, okay, let's try the next thing. So, we've been trying to do that. I make some YouTube videos over this last year, and I've been tweeting more about it and the work we've been doing, and so all of those are little experiments that I'm trying to pay attention to what resonates. Again, we have users who really love Mirage, and it's changed their workflow, but it's not at the point where I feel like it's a slam dunk and it makes sense to go on the next phase. So, I think there's been some frictions with Mirage, as we've brought it out to the wider JavaScript community. So, we have some things we want to tweak, and then ship a 1.0, and then I think maybe a 10 video course, would be a good next step, and just see the response to that, and basically take it from there.Emily: Yeah. It's always interesting to think like, how will that you have reached the critical mass?Sam: Yeah, I mean—Emily: Hard. Sam: It's really hard. And there's other strategies. I mean, a lot of businesses just have an idea and go try it out. There's this book I read, called Nail It and Scale It, and they talked about finding a problem. And we've have had some users of Mirage who use it at big, bigger companies, and it's really a big part of their workflow. And we've thought about, “Hey, what if we were to build something for them that we could generalize?” They actually have a need for something like a Mirage cloud because every time they develop a feature, they have to sit down with their product people, and their front end developer will basically run through all these different Mirage scenarios to show them how the feature works in every case, and they would love to be able to just send a link to a hosted version where they could do that. So, we've thought about building that kind of thing. But again, it's just a big risk. And then the market risk is there. So, what I've seen, I feel like, working in the past few years with a small circle of small business people and open source that I hang out with is this audience-first approach. So, it's like, if you're delivering a lot of value in the form of open source, and education, and talks, and you build an audience that believes what you have to say, and likes your opinion on things, likes your point of view, and again, resonates with the value of your work, then it becomes more and more obvious. You have a lot of people giving you feedback, you start seeing the same thing over and over. And that's just what we do with developing Mirage itself. We know a lot of what we work on next is driven by the same issues that come up, the same problems that come up in the issues, over and over again. So, I think it is hard to know, but it's one of those lukewarm things. And basically, right now, it feels too early. You know?Emily: And do you feel like, when you say to somebody, let's say, somebody who isn't involved with Mirage at the moment, maybe you're at a developer meetup or something, and you say, “I created Mirage. It's an API mocking library.” Do you have an aha moment? Are they like, “Oh, yeah. I know what that is. I know why you would use that.”Sam: Mm-hm. Sometimes yes, and sometimes no. There is a form of position I feel like, sometimes, really resonates well with people, which is like, “Don't get blocked by your back end developers.” So, if you're a front end developer, and the API is not ready, you can still build your app, including all the dynamic parts of it which would normally require a real server to be running. So, you're the front end developer, and you're trying to wire up the interface, and what happens when you click save on a cart, and it saves it in the back end, and then you show a success message. But your API is not ready, and you're working with another team that's working on the API, so you're kind of frustrated because you're stuck and you feel like you can't do anything, well, that's where Mirage can come in because you don't have to wait on them at all. You can just build it out yourself with Mirage. It's much simpler because it abstracts away all the complexity of a real server enough that you can actually build your UI against this kind of faithful reproduction of the back end. So, people really like that. And then people really like the testing use cases as well. They get confused about the best way to test user interfaces in this new distributed world we're living in where you're maybe working on a React app, and the back end is a separate API that's also serving up iPhone clients and things like that. So, there's really multiple apps involved with running a website like amazon.com. So, the question is, how do you test the front end? And Mirage is a great answer for that as well. And that's where it originally came from, so.Emily: Yeah. I can definitely see the positioning is sort of like a way for front end developers to decrease their dependence on their back end colleagues.Sam: Yeah, exactly. It's hard because there's a lot that it helps you with. And the people who use Mirage the most and have used it the most, it's really transformed their workflow because it lets the front end developer just move so much faster. So, it's really just, like, the fastest way to build a front end. That's really what the whole point of—every change we make to the library, every decision that went into it, it's how to empower a front end developer to build a production-ready user interface as fast as possible. And that includes accounting for all these different server states that are usually a pain in the butt to get.Emily: I'm just taking notes. I mean, that that actually sounded really powerful. Like, “Mirage lets front end developers work as fast as possible,” basically. It's fairly high level, but ultimately, that is a pretty compelling value statement.Sam: Yeah. And I believe it to be true, too. And I mean, that's how—I mean, I've been working on apps recently, and I still use Mirage because it's just faster than using a real server because it's right there in your code. It's right alongside your front end code, so you don't have to switch over to another process running, or open up a browser and see it; it's all right there. If you want to switch from being an admin to being a user, it's like you just uncomment a line alongside the code that you're already writing. So, I truly believe it is the best way to build a user interface. I think the positioning question is interesting because that is high-level. Sometimes developers in open source, they just want to know what it is, so there are some people who would see, “Just tell me what it is.” “It's an API mocking library.” “Okay, got it.” And that's what they want to know. “And what makes it different from other API mocking libraries?” Okay, we can talk about that. But then there's other people I think, who could stand to benefit from it, and if they saw, “Mirage is an API mocking library,” they're going to be like, “I don't really need that.” But then they go back to their job, and they have to work on their app, and they find themselves spinning up a Docker container, going to auth0 to sign in just so they can run their app in an authenticated state, and it's like, Mirage would actually be perfect for this. You could just mock all that stuff out in Mirage once, all your front end developers could use it. And now anytime you want to just work on your app in an auth state, it's just right there in Mirage, you don't have to deal with any of the complexities of the production services.Emily: Yeah. I mean, I also like the idea of sort of the fastest way to build a front end app.Sam: Yeah.Emily: Or to build a UI. The fastest way to build a UI.Sam: Yeah. That is, that's nice. I mean, it's interesting. It's a pretty interesting thing to say, and it's pretty compelling, and it's like, if you can back it up, that's a pretty strong claim.Emily: Yeah. And I mean, one of the things that I also talk to clients about—so I work with all technical founders, usually, and we're often really focused on features, all the cool features, but—you don't have to ignore the features, but you sort of use them to prove that the thing that you're talking about, that the value you say you provide is not BS. But you still want to connect the dots. Like you were saying, sometimes even the most technical person is like, “Oh, a mocking library. But I don't need that.” They're not going to necessarily connect the dots that, like, “Oh, that's going to make my workflow way simpler.” Sam: Right.Emily: Does everybody know what a mocking library is? Like, everybody who needs one?Sam: Mm, depends. If you're a front end developer. I mean, these days, people are becoming more and more specialized, so there's some front end developers who don't even deal with the data fetching side of an app at all. They're working on a part of the app that already has the data, and they're just working on maybe styling, layout, things like that, but they're never writing code or refactoring code that actually interacts with the server. And then even if you are doing that, you might not be writing tests. So, a lot of people just do the lowest friction thing, which is, just point their local UI at whatever server they can. Maybe their company has a staging server or maybe they run one locally in development and they just build it like that. But again, that's the lowest friction, but it's slow because now you're running a Rails server. If you want to change the data, you have to know how to do it in Rails, and you have to run different commands. And then it comes to testing, it's really hard, too. So, I think most people would know, if you were to say, “Yeah, it mocks out the API.” Most people would know that. But people might have different conceptions of what that means. So, there are some approaches to mocking—or stubbing, or faking, there's some technical difference between those terms, but for the purpose of this conversation, it's just faking out that functionality—there's some people who would hear that and say, “Oh, okay, I get it. A function that my code calls when it normally goes to the server, I'm going to replace it with a different function that returns this fake data.” But Mirage works differently because it operates at the boundary of the app. So, when you mock your API with Mirage, you don't have to change anything about your application because it intercepts the network request before it goes to the server. So, that's another big benefit of Mirage, that Mirage has over other solutions for mocking out network functionality is that your application code stays exactly the same. And that's an important point because the whole goal with Mirage is to be the fastest way to build a production-ready user interface. And by production-ready, I mean an interface that can be plugged into your production API and you'll have confidence that it works. So, that boundary thing is another important point of Mirage. So, that would maybe be the one thing that people could mean different things when they say ‘mocking.' But by and large, I would say most front end developers would understand if you said ‘API mocking,' what they mean.Emily: And do you think they generally are also able to figure out what that's used for, why they should care?Sam: Yeah, that's the thing is that that's where I think the real opportunity is because I think, if you were to say ‘API mocking,' people are going to immediately go to testing because that's the kind of environment where you would want to mock the API so you have control over it. But people who haven't used Mirage or something like Mirage, don't realize how powerful it can be, to mock it just during your normal development flow. So, again, once people use it and get it, they use Mirage for everything; it's just part of their workflow. I just start up my UI, I'm running Mirage in a specific scenario, and if I need to see the UI in a different state, I just changed my Mirage scenario, or put some new data in there, or empty out the database there. And so it totally affects your whole workflow because now you're just disconnected from the back end services. So, I think a lot of people aren't doing that. They are just stuck—you know, they're just used to the hassle of getting these three services up and running just so that they can run their UI, and it's a pain in the butt. I mean, I was just talking to someone on another podcast, and he was saying it's the same thing. And it's really hard when they onboard new people because they have to get them set up with all these auth keys just so they can run the front end, even though they don't really care about the auth setup, they just want to start working on this page. So, again, the companies that have used Mirage and adopted it don't have any of those problems because the Mirage server is right there with the user interface, and they don't have to worry about it. So, I think that is a big gap that we could probably do a lot better job of closing with information on the homepage, or examples, or something like that.Emily: So, Mirage also helps new hires get up to speed a lot faster, or get productive, I should say?Sam: So, yeah. If you were hired by Facebook, and you're a front end developer, and your first task is to update the way the colors look on the home feed, to get that running on your computer so you can make changes and see how it looks in the code, at many companies—probably most companies—it's going to involve a lot of moving pieces because you have this React app on the front end, but it has to fetch data from somewhere so you can see how it works. Maybe they have a server that is just used for development that the person can point to. But again, if you have this shared hosted server, you only get what's on there; maybe you don't have an easy way to change what data it gives you. So, usually, front end developers need to see a dynamic user interface in all these different states. But if you're using a shared server, you don't get all those different states. But it's easier to set up because it's already set up. So, the alternative is to say, “All right, Sam, you're new here. Let's get you set up so that you can run a copy of Facebook locally.” So, that usually involves a ton of steps. I mean, I've seen that take, like, a week just to get all the pieces that are required to run the back end up so that you can actually power your front end. So, yeah, companies definitely, definitely have a problem with this. They have a problem with shared staging servers, I've talked to tons of people over the years who hate their staging servers, the back end teams, the ops teams hate them because everyone's always trying to change it for the salespeople to go take demo calls or for people to test. And so basically a shared server like that is just a nightmare because it's basically another production server to maintain that your internal team is trying to use and people want it to do different things. So, that's why Mirage is nice because it's just local to the code, and every front end developer can just tweak it in exactly the way they need for what they're doing at that time. So, I think that's a big opportunity as well.Emily: One of the most interesting things, I think, about this conversation is that you've touched on this idea of salespeople doing demos, and I really like that because it's so different. It's such a different use case.Sam: Yeah. We had a thought about that, actually because we were talking to a handful of companies—did interviews with them, actually, a couple years ago—and we're like, this could be a cool product. And it's like, just the easiest way to show off your software. And again, we've even done consulting for companies that have had basically another server, just for the purposes of a demo. And again, it's just a pain in the butt because it's another production server to manage, you have to reset the database after each call you do, and with Mirage is not like that; it just restarts with the app. It's just heavier, it's a real server to manage, where again if you just need to show off the UI, you can do it with Mirage. So, we thought about doing that. It's an interesting use case, for sure.Emily: I think it's a really good illustration of how you can take the same technology, and reposition it, basically, to do something totally different, have a totally different set of value proposition. The people who would be actually benefiting from its use would be totally different. I mean, you have salespeople versus front end developers.Sam: Yep. We've thought about that. What would that look like to market to those people? And maybe one way you could do it would be, you know, the salespeople get frustrated because they want to just change the numbers in this part of the app on the spreadsheet summary because they know it's going to help them communicate the value to the people that they're talking to, but now they have to go and ask some back end developer or someone on the ops team, “Hey, can you change this database column so that my demo works better?” What if they had a Mirage-powered demo and they could tweak the Mirage data, maybe in some interface themselves, without having to involve anybody. And that's pretty compelling because Mirage, again, is designed to work with any API. So, no matter what your tech stack is on the back end, Mirage works for the front end team. And so now the back end team can do all their stuff, they can be switching from Rails to Elixir, they can be switching to Go or microservice architecture, and they have all this stuff going on, so they're the only ones who really know how to actually get this number from 100 to 200 in the system. Like, it's complicated. And so that's, again, a benefit of just having Mirage because, on the sales calls, the people are just wanting to show what it looks like when the data is a certain way. So, yeah, that was definitely a use case that we didn't anticipate at all.Emily: Yeah. And even you could have five salespeople trying to do calls at the same time and—Sam: Exactly.Emily: Wanting to have different data reflected, and I'm sure that's just like—Sam: A nightmare. I mean, people have told us just, it's the worst. Basically, the shared staging server is a—yeah, it's a huge problem for a lot of teams.Emily: It's so interesting. Well, anyway, taking us back from the rabbit hole, although it—I mean, it really is interesting, and just fascinating how you could change this to be something that's targeted at that totally different market.Sam: Right.Emily: To wrap up. I mean, I was thinking about how you're saying that the fastest way to build a production-ready UI, that possibly is the most powerful thing I think you've said.Sam: Yeah. We actually—I think that's how we had it when we first did the redesign of the site. And it was like, I don't know if that stuck in the sense of, what does production-ready mean? “Oh, I'm already writing production-ready code.” But then it's like, you have to—like you said, connect the dots and explain how you're not writing production-ready code unless the way you're mocking your API is matching your production API, so we kind of switched it to what it says now, which is, “Build complete front end features, even if your API doesn't exist.” Which basically came from the mouth of someone who was using it, and when they had their aha moment that was what they were saying. I've been thinking if we get to the 1.0 launch, I think I would want to go back to something like that because I do think it's compelling. So, “It's the fastest way to develop a UI, test it, and then share a working demo of it,” because that's is really the motivation for the library. So, yeah, it might be interesting to think about doubling down on that as the unique value proposition.Emily: Yeah. I'm curious what your immediate plans are.Sam: So, we've been working on this REPL playground area of the site where people can learn Mirage and see examples, and we can share them and stuff. So, that will hopefully—you'll see a lot of that kind of thing in the JavaScript community. If you go to Svelte, which is another front end framework, you can create little sandboxes and play around with Svelte and learn it. So, it's a really good way to learn things and just see how it works quickly right in the browser without having to install anything. So, we're about wrapping that up. And then I think it'll just be a matter of carving out the time to go through some of the issues and bugs that people have found, and getting it to a point where we feel good about slapping a 1.0 on it. At which point, we can take a look at all the feature requests and all the issues that people have run into and figure out okay, where do we want to focus our time? Again, considering, like, is there a story here where we can make it sustainable, and hopefully, dedicate more of our time to it? Because that's really, again, I think it's the biggest impact work I've done in my career so far, but it's just, sustainability in open source is tough. So, it's a matter of not jumping too early on any particular idea for how to sustain it and monetize it: if it's a pro version, if it's a support plan, people have asked for all these things, but not maybe in the strongest numbers that would make me feel comfortable diving in on that. But I do believe that it can work because I believe it's a really good idea and I know a lot of companies have gotten a lot of value from it. So, that's what our short term plan is.Emily: Well, fabulous. Thanks so much for talking about Mirage. This has been really interesting.Sam: Yeah, thanks a lot for having me, and I appreciate your input. It was fun to revisit the positioning stuff. It's been a while, so it's always good to be thinking about that.Emily: All right. I have one last question for you, which is what is an engineering tool you can't live without?Sam: These days, it's got to be Tailwind. It's a styling framework. And it's just really excellent. So, I would not want to work on a site without it because it would just be painful. So, [laugh] I love Tailwind. Yeah, it's a really good library.Emily: All right, cool. Well, thank you so much. And—oh, what—the very last thing it should be, how can listeners find you, follow you, keep up with you?Sam: Yeah, best place is Twitter, at @samselikoff. And I'm also making YouTube videos more and more these days: youtube.com/samselikoff. So, those would be the places to go.Emily: Right. Excellent.Emily: Thanks for listening. I hope you've learned just a little bit more about The Business of Cloud Native. If you'd like to connect with me or learn more about my positioning services, look me up on LinkedIn: I'm Emily Omier—that's O-M-I-E-R—or visit my website which is emilyomier.com. Thank you, and until next time.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

This conversation covers: How Bloomberg is demystifying bond trading and pricing, and bringing transparency to financial markets through their various digital offerings. Andrey's role as CTO of compute architecture at Bloomberg, where he oversees research implementation of new compute related technologies to support kind of our business and engineering objectives. Why factors like speed and reliability are integral to Bloomberg's operations, and how they impact Bloomberg's operations . Andrey also talks about how they impact his approach to technology, and why they use cloud-native technology. How Andrey and his team use containers to scale and ensure reliability. Why portability is important to Bloomberg's applications. Bloomberg's journey to cloud-native.  Some of the open-source services that Andrey and his team are using at Bloomberg. Unexpected challenges that Andrey has encountered at Bloomberg. Primary business value that Bloomberg has experienced from their cloud-native transition. Links Bloomberg Bloomberg GitHub Follow Andrey on Twitter Connect with Andrey on LinkedIn TranscriptEmily: Hi everyone. I'm Emily Omier, your host, and my day job is helping companies position themselves in the cloud-native ecosystem so that their product's value is obvious to end-users. I started this podcast because organizations embark on the cloud naive journey for business reasons, but in general, the industry doesn't talk about them. Instead, we talk a lot about technical reasons. I'm hoping that with this podcast, we focus more on the business goals and business motivations that lead organizations to adopt cloud-native and Kubernetes. I hope you'll join me.Emily: Welcome to The Business of Cloud Native, I'm your host Emily Omier. And today I'm chatting with Andrey Rybka from Bloomberg, thank you so much for joining us, Andrey.Andrey: Thank you for your invitation.Emily: Course. So, first of all, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and about Bloomberg?Andrey: Sure. So, I lead the secure computer architecture team, as the name suggests, in the CTO office. And our mission is to help with research implementation of new compute-related technologies to support our business and engineering objectives. But more specifically, we work on ways to faster provision, manage, and elastically scale compute infrastructure, as well as support rapid application development and delivery. And we also work on developing and articulating company's compute strategic direction, which includes the compute storage middleware, and application technologists, and we also help us product owners for the specific offerings that we have in-house. And as far as Bloomberg, so Bloomberg was founded in 1981 and it's got very large presence: about 325,000 Bloomberg subscribers in about 170 countries, about 20,000 employees, and more news reporters than The New York Times, Washington Post, and Chicago Tribune combined. And we have about 6000 plus software engineers, so pretty large team of very talented people, and we have quite a lot of data scientists and some specialized technologists. And some impressive, I guess, points is we run one of the largest private networks in the world, and we move about a hundred and twenty billion pieces of data from financial markets each day, with a peak of more than 10 million messages a second. We generate about 2 million news stories—and they're published every day—and then news content, we consuming from about 125,000 sources. And the platform allows and supports about 1 million messages, chats handled every day. So, it's very large and high-performance kind of deployment.Emily: And can you tell me just a little bit more about the types of applications that Bloomberg is working on or that Bloomberg offers? Maybe not everybody is familiar with why people subscribe to Bloomberg, what the main value is. And I'm also curious how the different applications fit into that.Andrey: The core product is Bloomberg Terminal, which is Software as a Service offering that is delivering diverse array of information of news and analytics to facilitate financial decision-making. And Bloomberg has been doing a lot of things that make financial markets quite a bit more transparent. The original platform helped to demystify a lot of bond trading and pricing. So, the Bloomberg Terminal is the core product, but there's a lot of products that are focused on the trading solutions, there is enterprise data distribution for market data and such, and there is a lot of verticals such as Bloomberg Media: that's bloomberg.com, TV, and radio, and news articles that are consumer-facing. But also there is Bloomberg Law, which is offering for the attorneys, and there is other verticals like New Energy Finance, which helps with all the green energy and information that helps a lot to do with helping with climate change. And then there's Bloomberg Government, which is focused on, specifically, research around government-specific data feeds. And so in general, you've got finance, government, law, and new energy as the key solutions.Emily: And how important is speed?Andrey: It is extremely important because, well, first of all, obviously, for traders, although we're not in high-frequency game, we definitely want to deliver the news as fast as possible. We want to deliver actionable financial information as fast as possible, so definitely it is a major factor, but also not the only factor because there's other considerations like reliability and quality of service as well.Emily: And then how does this translate to your approach to new technology in general? And then also, why did you think cloud-native might be a good technology to look into and to adopt?Andrey: So, I guess if we define cloud-native, a little because I think there's different definitions; many people think of containers immediately. But I think that we need to think of outside of not just, I guess, containers, but I guess the container orchestration and scaling elastically, up and down. And those, I guess, primitives. So, when we originally started on our cloud-native journey, we had this problem of we were treating our machines as pets if you know the paradigm of pets versus cattle where pet is something that you care for, and there's, like, literally the name for it, you take it to the vet if it gets sick. And when you use think of herd of cattle, there's many of them, and you can replace, and you have quite a lot of understanding of scalability with the herd versus pets. So, we started moving towards that direction because we wanted to have more uniform infrastructure, more heterogeneous. And we started with VMs. So, we didn't necessarily jump to containers. And then we started thinking like, “Is VMs the right abstraction?” And for some workloads it is, but then in some cases, we started thinking, “Well, maybe we need something more lightweight.” So, that's how we started looking at containers because you could provision them faster, and they could start off faster, and developers seem to be gravitating towards containers quite a bit because it's very easy to bootstrap your local dev environment with containers. And when you ship a container to the higher environment, it actually works. Used to be a problem where you developed on your local machine and you'd ship your code to production or higher environment, and it doesn't work because some dependency get missed. And that's where containers came about, to help with that problem.Emily: And then how does that fit in with your core business needs?Andrey: So, one of the big things is obviously, we need to ship products faster—and that's probably common to a lot of businesses—but we also want to ensure that we have highest availability possible, and that's where the containers help us to scale out our workloads and ensure that there's some resurrection happens with things like Kubernetes when something dies. And we also wanted to maximize our machine utilization. So, we have very large data centers and edge deployments—which I guess could be referenced as a private cloud—so we want to maximize utilization in our data centers. So, that's where virtualization and containers help quite a bit. But also, we wanted to make sure our workloads are portable across all the environments, from private cloud to the public cloud, or the edge. And that's where containerized technologies could help quite a bit. Because not only you can have, let's say Kubernetes clusters on-prem on the edge, but also, now all the three major cloud providers support a managed Kubernetes offering. And in this case, you have basically highly portable deployments across all the clouds, private and public.Emily: And why was that important?Andrey: Basically, we wanted to have, more or less, very generic way to deploy something, an application, right? And if you think of containers, that's pretty much, like I say, Docker is pretty standard these days. And developers, we were challenged with different package formats. So, if you do any application Ruby and Rails, or Java and Python, there is a native packages that you can use to package your application, distribute it, but it's not as uniformly support it outside of Bloomberg or even across various deployment platforms. But containers do get you that abstraction layer that helps you to basically build once and deploy many different targets in very uniform way. So, whether we do it on-premises, or to the edge, or to the public cloud, we can effectively use the same packaging mechanism. But not only for deployment, which is the one problem, but also for post-deployment. So, if we need to self-heal the workload. So, all those primitives are built there in the, I guess, Kubernetes fabric.Emily: But why is being portable important? What does it give you? What advantage? I mean, I understand that's one of the advantages of containers. But why specifically for Bloomberg, why do you care? I mean, are you moving applications around between public cloud providers, and—Andrey: So, we're definitely adopting public cloud quite a bit, but I guess what I was trying to hint is we have to support the private cloud deployments as our primary, I guess, delivery mechanism. But the edge deployments, when we actually deploy something closer to the customers, to your point about being faster, to deliver things faster to our customers, we have to deliver things to the edge, which is what I'm describing as something that is close to the customer. And then as far as the public clouds, we started moving a lot of workloads to public cloud, and that definitely required some rethinking of how do we want to adopt public cloud. But whether it's private or public, our main goal, I think, here is to make it easier for developers to package and deploy things and effectively, run faster, or deploy things faster, but also do it in more reliable way, right? Because it used to be that we could deploy things to a particular target of machines, and we could do it relatively reliably, but there was no auto-healing, necessarily, in place there. So, resilience and reliability wasn't quite as good as what we get with Kubernetes. And what I mentioned before, machine utilization, or actually ability to elastically scale workloads, and—within vertical and horizontal—vertical, we generally knew how to do that. Although I think with containers and VMs, you can do it much better to higher degree, but also horizontally, obviously, this was pretty challenging to do before Kubernetes came about. You had to bootstrap, even your bunch of VMs and different availability zones, figure out how you're going to deploy to them, and it just wasn't quite there as far as automation and ease of use.Emily: Let's change gears just a little bit to talk about a little bit of your journey to cloud-native. You mentioned that you started with VMs, and then you moved to containers. What time frame are we talking about? In addition to containers, what technologies do you use?Andrey: So, yeah, I guess we started about eight years ago or so, with OpenStack as a primary virtualization platform, and if you look at github.com/bloomberg, you will see that we actually open-sourced our OpenStack distribution, so anyone can look and see if, potentially, they can benefit from that. And so OpenStack provided the VMs, basic storage, and some basic Infrastructure as a Service concepts. But then we also started getting into object storage, so there was a lot of investment made into S3 compatible storage, similar to how it AWS's S3 object storage, or it's based on the [00:14:21 Sapth] open-source framework. So, that was our foundational blocks. And then, very shortly thereafter, we started looking at Kubernetes to build a general-purpose Platform as a Service. Because effectively developers generally don't really want to manage virtual machines, they want to just write applications and deploy them to the—somewhere, right, but they don't really care that much about the where I use Red Hat, or Ubuntu or the don't really care to configure proxies or anything like that. So, we started rolling out general-purpose Platform as a Service based on Kubernetes. So, that was with initial alpha release of Kubernetes; we already started adopting it. And then thereafter, we also started looking into how we can leverage Kubernetes for data science platform. Well, now we have a world-class data science platform that allows data scientists to train and run inference on the various large clusters of compute with GPUs. Then we quickly realized that on-prem, if we're building this on-prem, we need to have similar constructs to what you normally find in public cloud providers. So, as AWS add Identity Access Management, we started introducing that on-prem as well. But more importantly, we needed something that would be a discovery layer as a service, or if I'm looking for service, I need to go somewhere to look it up. And DNS was not necessarily the right construct, although it's certainly very important. So, we started looking into leveraging Consul as a primary discovery as a service. And that actually paid quite a lot of dividends and it's helped us quite a bit. We also looked into Databases as a Service because everything that I described so far was really good for stateless workloads, to a greater degree with Kubernetes, I think you can get really good at running stateless workloads, but for something's stateful, I think you needed something, basically, that will not run necessarily with Kubernetes. So, that's where we started looking at offering more Database as a Service, which Bloomberg has been doing this quite a bit before that. We open-sourced our core relational database called Comdb2. But we also wanted to offer that for MySQL, for Postgres, and some other database flavors. So, I think we have a pretty decent offering right now, which offers variety of Databases as a Service, and I would argue that you can provision some of those databases faster than you can do it on AWS.Emily: It sounds like—and correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like you've ended up building a lot of things in-house. I mean, you used Kubernetes, but you've also done a lot of in-house custom work.Andrey: Right. So, custom, but with the principle of using open-source. Everything that I described actually has an open-source framework behind it. And this open first principle is something that now this is becoming more normal. Before we build something in-house, we looked at open-source frameworks, and we look at which open-source community we can leverage that has a lot of contributors, but also, can we contribute back, right? So, we contribute back to a lot of open-source projects, like for example, Solr. So, we offer search as a service based on the Solr open-source framework. But also, we have Redis caching as a service, queuing as a service based on RabbitMQ. Kafka as a service, so distributed event streaming as a service. So, quite a few open-source frameworks. We're always thought of, “Can we start with something that's open-source, participate in the community, and contribute back?”Emily: And tell me a little bit about what has gone really well? And also what has been possibly unexpectedly challenging, or even expectedly, but it's always even more interesting to hear what was surprising.Andrey: I think, generally open-source first, as a strategy worked out pretty well. I think we have, I've listed only some of the services that we have in-house, but we certainly have quite a bit more. And the benefits, I think, I don't even know how to quantify it, but it certainly enabled us to go fast and deliver business value as soon as possible versus waiting for years before we build our alternative technology. And I think developer happiness also improved quite a bit because we started investing heavily into our developer experience and as a major effort. And this everything as a service makes it extremely easy for developers to deliver new products. So, all of the investment we've made so far paid huge dividends. Challenges: I think that as with anything, starting with open-source projects, you certainly have bugs and things like that. So, in this case, we preferred to partner with a company that effectively has inside knowledge into the open-source project so we can have at least for a couple of years, somebody who can help us guide us and potentially, we—by actually invest in actual money into the project, we get it to the point where it's mature enough and actually meets a certain quality criteria. And some of the projects we invested heavily in which many people don't know, probably, but we—like Chromium Project. So, many people use Chrome, but Bloomberg has been sponsoring Chromium and WebKit open-source development quite a bit. JavaScript, V8 Engine, even the newer technologies like WebAssembly we're heavily invested in sponsoring that. But again, one thing that it's very clear, it's not just we're going to be the consumers of the open-source, but we're going to be contributors back with either our developers helping on the projects, or we need to invest to help this actual open-source project we're leveraging to be successful, and not just by saying, like, Bloomberg consumes it, but actually investing back. So, that's one of the things that was a big lesson learned. But currently, I think we have a really good enough system in place where we always adopt open-source projects in a very conscious and serious way with investment going back into the open-source community.Emily: You mentioned being able to deliver business value sooner. What do you think are the primary two or three business values that you get from this cloud-native transition?Andrey: So, ability to go faster. That's one thing that's very clear. Ability to elastically scale workloads, and ability to achieve uniformity of deployments across various environments: private, edge, public, so we are able to deliver now products to our customers as they transition to the public cloud, for example, much faster because we're have a lot of standardized and a lot of technologists that helped us with adoption. And including Kubernetes is one of them, but not only Kubernetes. We also use Terraform, extensively, some other multi-cloud frameworks.And then also delivering things more reliably. That's I think, one of the things that is not always recognized, but I think reliability is a huge differentiator, and some of it has to do with how we deliver things to the customer with some resiliency and redundancy. So, we run very large private content delivery network as a service, and it's also based on open-source technologies. And the reliability is one of the main things that I would say we get from a lot of this technologies because if we do it on our own, yes, it would be generally Bloomberg working on this problem and solving it, but you get a, actually, a worldwide number of experts from different companies who're contributing back to this technologies, and I see this as a, obviously, a huge benefit because it's not just Bloomberg working on solving some distributed system framework, but it's actually people worldwide working on this.Emily: And would you say there's anything in moving to cloud-native that you would do differently?Andrey: I think what I see as the big challenge, especially with Kubernetes, is adoption of stateful workloads because I still think it's not quite there yet. Generally, the way we're thinking right now is we leverage Kubernetes for our stateless workloads, but some stateful workloads require some cloud-native storage primitives to be there, and this is where I think it's still not quite mature. You can certainly leverage various vendors for that, but I really would like to see better support for stateful workloads in the open-source world. And definitely still looking for a project to partner with to deliver better stateful workloads on Kubernetes. And I think, to a various degree, the public cloud providers, so hyperscalers are getting pretty good at this, but that is still private to them. So, whether it's Google, Amazon, or Azure, they deliver the statefulness to varying degree of reliability. But I would like this to be something that you can leverage on private clouds or anywhere else, and having it somewhere, well-supported through an open-source community would be, I think, hugely beneficial to quite a few people. So, Kubernetes, I think, is the right compute fabric for the future, but it still doesn't support some of the workload types that I would like to be there.Emily: Are any other continuing challenges that you're working on, or problems that you haven't quite solved yet, either that you feel like you haven't solved, maybe internally that might be specific to you, or that you just feel like the community hasn't quite figured out yet?Andrey: So, this whole idea of multi-cloud deployments, we leverage quite a few technologies from Terraform, to Vault, to Consul, to some other frameworks that help with some of it, but the day two alerting, monitoring, and troubleshooting with multi-cloud deployments is still not quite there. So, yes, you can solve it for one particular cloud provider, but as soon as you go to two, I think there's quite a few challenges that left unaddressed from just, like, single pane of glass—the view of all of your workloads, right. And that's definitely something that I would like to address: reliability, alerting across all the cloud providers, security across all the cloud providers. So, that's one of the challenges that I'm still working on—or, actually, quite a few people are working on at Bloomberg. As I said, we have 6000 plus talented engineers who are working on this.Emily: Excellent. Anything else that you'd like to add?Andrey: You know, I'm very excited about the future. I think this is almost like a compute renaissance. And it's really exciting to see all of these things that are happening, and I'm really excited about the future, I guess.Emily: Fabulous. Just a couple more questions. First of all, is there a tool that you feel like you couldn't do your job without?Andrey: Right. Yes, VI editor or [laugh] [00:27:42 unintelligible]? No. So, I think obviously, Docker has done quite a bit for the containerization. And I know, we're looking at alternatives to Docker at this point, but I do give Docker quite a bit of a credit because right now, local development environment, we bootstrap with Docker, we ship it as a deployment mechanism all over the place. So, I would say Docker, Kubernetes, and the two primary ones, but I don't necessarily want to pick favorites. [laugh]. I really like a lot of HashiCorp tools, you know Terraform, Consul, Vault, fantastic tools; a really good community. I really like Jenkins. We run Jenkins, the service; really good. Kafka has been extremely reliable and scalability-wise, Kafka is just amazing. Cache in Redis is really one of my favorite cache tools.There's probably a lot to mention. I've mentioned. [00:28:43 unintelligible] databases, Postgres is one of my favorite databases, or in so many varieties and different types of workload. But we also gain quite a lot from Hadoop and HBase. But one of my favorite NoSQL databases is Cassandra, an extremely reliable, and the replication across, I guess, low-quality bandwidth and of environment has been really awesome. So, I guess I'm not answering with just one but many tools, but I really like all of those tools.Emily: Excellent. Okay, well, just the last question is, where could listeners connect with you or follow you?Andrey: I am on Twitter as @andrey_rybka. I'm happy to get any direct messages. We are hiring. We're always hiring A lot of great opportunities. As I said, we're open-source first company these days, and we definitely have a lot of exciting new projects. I haven't mentioned even probably 90 probably of other exciting projects that we have. We also have github.com/bloomberg, so you're welcome to browse and look at some of the cool open-source projects that we have as well.Emily: Excellent. Cool. Well, thank you so much for joining me.Andrey: Thank you very much.Emily: Thanks for listening. I hope you've learned just a little bit more about The Business of Cloud Native. If you'd like to connect with me or learn more about my positioning services, look me up on LinkedIn: I'm Emily Omier—that's O-M-I-E-R—or visit my website which is emilyomier.com. Thank you, and until next time.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

This conversation covers: The value that Forter provides, and the types of companies that they work with. Iftah also explains what makes Forter so unique.  The underlying technology that Forter is using, and how they quickly process hundreds of complex backend workflows. Iftah also talks about some of the tools that they are using, including AWS and Apache Storm. How Forter approaches the cloud, and how it's helping them concentrate on the business of detecting fraud. In addition, talks about the types of cloud services that Forter is using. Forter's ability to scale — including how they responded to increased customer demand during COVID-19. Forter's biggest technical challenge that they are currently working through. Iftah's thoughts on the security- speed tradeoff. Links: Forter Forter on Twitter Connect with Iftah on LinkedIn Iftah's email: iftah@forter.com Transcript:Emily: Hi everyone. I'm Emily Omier, your host, and my day job is helping companies position themselves in the cloud-native ecosystem so that their product's value is obvious to end-users. I started this podcast because organizations embark on the cloud naive journey for business reasons, but in general, the industry doesn't talk about them. Instead, we talk a lot about technical reasons. I'm hoping that with this podcast, we focus more on the business goals and business motivations that lead organizations to adopt cloud-native and Kubernetes. I hope you'll join me.Emily: Welcome to The Business of Cloud Native. I'm Emily Omier, your host, and today I'm chatting with Iftah Gideoni. Iftah is the CTO at Forter. Iftah, first of all, thank you so much for joining me.Iftah: Very glad to be here.Emily: So, I wanted to have you start by introducing yourself and what you do, and then also what Forter does.Iftah: Hi, I'm Iftah. I'm a physicist of education, and in the last 20 years, a CTO of several companies, mostly [00:01:11 unintelligible] governmental companies, and companies that I founded. In the last six and a half years, I'm with Forter. And what Forter started to do from 2014 is to provide what was, at the time, very bold vision of fully automated, fully cloud-based decisions about whether to allow or decline e-commerce transactions. Now, from that time we actually implemented and executed that, we decide very many more than 3 million transactions every day, today, all in real-time without a human in the loop. And we expanded into being a fully-fledged trust engine that gives decisions not only about transactions, but about many other points of interaction with the consumer, for example, in their login time, and in other points where trust decision is needed.Emily: So, just because I think it might be interesting to listeners, give me some examples of, like, when somebody might interact with Forter or have some sort of action approved or declined by Forter.Iftah: Right. The prime customers of Forter are the big e-commerce enterprises. Think about the [00:02:42 Sephoras], the Nordstroms, the Home Depots, and this kind of companies. And whenever you press the button of requesting to committing to the purchase and you see this small things rounding on the screen, then it is sent to Forter and Forter within, usually, half a second returns a decision. Now, Forter does not act as an additional data point, or input, or score into some system of the merchant. It actually answer whether to approve or decline the transaction. In very many—and most of the revenue of Forter comes from a covered transaction that, if this transaction was fraud, it's on Forter. Forter will guarantee it. And we were pioneering this model to putting our mouth where our money is.Emily: Tell me just a little bit about why this is so difficult. What makes what Forter does unique?Iftah: What Forter does is unique because it tells the human story, and takes it all the way to the decision itself. For example, it's very easy to approve the fourth transaction of a person that is sitting at home, browsing from home, making the purchase on the same desktop they made at previous times, and sending the shipment to the same home. That's very easy. But we want to be able to approve the traveler, the person that is sending a gift to a third party, or a person that is sending a gift to another state while not browsing from home and not from his common device. We want to be able to approve those transactions that are checking out as guests from a new device and that's the first time this person ever appeared on our radar. And the ability to do that and to take the calculated risks and to look at the behavior, the cyber clues, and still be able to tell that this is indeed a new person and not someone that visited before and is trying now to hide. That's what makes what we do very difficult and complex.Emily: So, tell me a bit about the technology story. What technology do you use to accomplish this, and how does it work? What does your stack look like?Iftah: When I came to—from 2014, I looked at the system and what is actually needed in order to cater to such a complex story? And I thought to myself—and we'll talk about maybe a bit later about how all this is excellently suited for the Cloud, but what I found that throughput and big data is not the problem. First, it's more or less solved, but it is the e-commerce business; it's not Facebook scale throughput. And on the other hand, it's not hardcore real-time, right? We're talking about tens of milliseconds, not the microseconds domain. What is extreme about what we do is the complexity of the flow. We have hundreds of processes that are needed to be ran within that half a second in order to test, and check, and infer, and decide on many aspects of this transaction and of this person. So, first, we started from Amazon Web Services, and we started with, actually, Apache Storm. And why we decided that because we wanted to have something that enables first, a lot of parallelism—doing many things in parallel—with smart joins, that is with processes that takes information from other processes that executed in parallel, and can decide whether what they have so far from these processes is enough. Because we are very high availability, we didn't lose more than 10 seconds straight in the last four years. We are very high availability, but a lot of our sub-processes are not. So, you need such a machine that will be able to infer about whether the information at hand is good enough and to move forward and still give, after half a second, the answer. We also wanted to have within this high availability system, we wanted to have the domain experts, the analysts, and the fraud researchers, we wanted to give them a very direct access to the code and each insight that they get, in close to real-time, maybe in 10 or 15 minutes from the time that they understood that there is a new wave of attacks or a new fraudster in action in a particular store or across stores. We wanted all these insights to be manifested in the system within 10 or 15 minutes without these people needing any engineering in order to do that. So, we created incubators within these Apache Storm processes that enable them to write, in Python, their wisdom into the system without being technologists or engineers. So, this was the basic. Then we went on to see how we do the best similarity in the world. That is the understanding of whether we already saw a person, even if this person exhibits a new persona and is trying to hide. That is, they didn't give us the same phone number or email, it's not the same cookie, or the same IP, or the same credit card, and they don't use the same account, and we still want to know that this is the same person. This is a big part of what makes us efficient in exterminated fraud rings and enabling us to increase the cost of doing business for the sophisticated fraudsters. These are the prime building blocks and the last very important building block is the way we represent the world. Usually and traditionally, world was represented by the transaction. The transaction was the building block. But we represent the world as people. We know more than 700 million people and of their interactions and their browsing, in many stores. These 700 million people include most of the people that interact online in the US. And the same is for the IPs, and the addresses, and the devices in the US. The US is where our coverage is best. And all what we do revolves around the person because we believe that the person is what is actually persisting in the world with persistence reputation. That is a person is a legitimate person, they will stay legitimate. Usually, they won't flip on us. And if they are fraudsters, they will stay fraudsters. Not the same for IPs, for addresses, and for all other entities, you can think of. I hope this, it answered to a degree what you are asking about.Emily: Yeah. And I'm going to go into some more questions, but it's it's really interesting that what you're combining is both this sophisticated technology as well as sort of an understanding of—almost like a law enforcement understanding of how fraud works. Or how—like, a anthropological investigation of how fraud rings work.Iftah: Yes. And we found that there is a lot of—and I think our main asset is the ability to combine what analysts understand about the spoofing of the device, and how you detect that it's not really a mobile phone, it's an emulator on a desktop? And how can you tell that someone is trying to mess with an application that you protect? And what are the ways in which you can approve a transaction that looks very fishy to begin with, but it has some hints of legitimacy. How we combine this with a very robust, high availability and very secure machine because it needs to be secure. We touch a lot of personal, identifiable information in our regular course of business, and we need the system to be ultra-secure while it is on the Cloud. And our booklet, actually, of 101, how to secure your startup [00:12:45 unintelligible] usage on the Cloud was actually trending number one on GitHub for months in 2017 when we issued it. [laughs].Emily: That's excellent. Well, let me ask some more technology-specific questions. One is, just—you sort of alluded to this, but how is the Cloud important—and in fact, I believe you said critical to your business? Would Forter even be possible without the Cloud?Iftah: Forter would be possible with an on-prem cloud, right, because when we say Cloud, it could be Amazon, or Azure, or GCP, but it also could be in a cloud that we built somewhere. This would be possible. We didn't go there, and most of e-commerce companies would not go there, and we'll dive into this in a minute why it's not wise to go there. But Forter is heavily relying on knowledge of the people, regardless of which merchant they visited. So, if we see a person in the Forter, it could be their first time Nordstrom sees them, but we already know them, and we can project the reputation of the person from previous interactions with other customers of ours. We don't share any customer data, of course, with any of our customers, but we can share parts of reputation, especially for people where this is the first time they visited a particular merchant. Now, this is a prime reason why it cannot be on-prem of the customer. And several customer—and I will not mention name, but huge conglomerates of carmakers, actually, asked us to be on their Cloud. And we refused and we let go of the business because that's not how we do, and the best value for them would be to share the data. And so far, all the customers that we have so far actually agreed to share the usage of reputation with all the rest of the network of customers that we have. This is something that they cannot do in-house, and this is something, per your question, that cannot be done if we are not in the Cloud, but on their premises farm.Emily: And so are you operating in all public clouds, or do you have your main technology running in one?Iftah: We have our technology running in a few regions of AWS. And we are now deploying a few regions in Azure, too.Emily: And so it doesn't matter if your customer, which public cloud. So, if you have a customer that uses GCP, doesn't matter, right?Iftah: It doesn't matter. And most of them are [00:16:01 naturally] aware where we are. Bear in mind that we are serving companies—I mentioned the names—which are inherently not technology companies. And it doesn't matter where they sit; we are a full SaaS company for them. They send us the request, the transaction, and we give them a decision within this half a second, and that's the core of the business. Doesn't matter for them. As [00:16:36 unintelligible] to say earlier, the concept of the public cloud and using other people's cloud infrastructure, be it GCP, or Azure, or AWS or others, is very suited for the e-commerce because of these two prime characteristics of the e-commerce: first, you don't need it to be very hard real-time, you're talking about tens of milliseconds, and giving answers in hundreds of milliseconds, ultimately; and second, unlike the Twitters, and the WhatsApps, and the Facebooks, and the Googles, the e-commerce is not big data in the sense that every transaction of e-commerce is, on average, a very high monetization. So, the ultra cost of using public cloud is definitely worth it for the e-commerce entity, comparing to creating your own farm. It is good for their flexibility and it's good for the focus and attention on their core business, where if you run your own farm, you are into a lot of domains of expertise which are far away from selling whatever you sell.Emily: And tell me, also, a bit about, sort of, your own technology. Things like how you manage scalability. How important is it for Forter's bottom line, the ability to have a scalable system?Iftah: We are running from 2014—from day one, actually, from 2013, we have to be scaled out. We can't scale up. We don't have anything that is done by a single computer. All the transactions are on what are called brains that are a scaled out on both redundancy and scalability. All our data stores are scaled out. All the data stores that are storing the transactions, and the logging, and the entities that we talked about are scaled out and they are replicated, and the transactions that are dealing with our hundreds of thousands of browsing events that we receive and analyze every second, of course, they are scaled out. So, from day one, from 2014, everything that we do is scaled out. In the first two months, it was for redundancy in different availability zones of different regions, but from then on, it's all scaled out. And I will be very happy to dive into the particulars of the technologies, but what is important in the context of this podcast, I believe, is that doing it on the Cloud using the cloud infrastructure is actually enabling us to concentrate on the business of detecting fraud and business of these massive topologies of hundreds of processes that are both in Java and Kotlin and Python, and have very complex acyclic graphs connecting them. And we just do it in parallel on very many servers that we can scale up and out as we wish. And this is something that helped us focus our core business: understanding fraud.Emily: Going back, actually, to this idea of scalability, I know over the past six, eight months because of COVID, e-commerce has gone through the roof. And I'm assuming, in fact, I read that Forter's business has also been going through the roof. How have you managed scaling?Iftah: Yes. Forter business went through the roof with their several verticals: with food deliveries, of course; and we the big department stores, which COVID accelerated their digital transformation; it did dive with the travel business, of course, right? Few things happen to our customers, and for Forter, scaling was natural. If we have 20 minutes warning scaling is a natural to us, and here we had about 10 days of warning. Easy, right? For our customers, it was a bit different. First, a lot of them came to us, actually had to eliminate all their manual processes. And Forter was there for them. Now, what Forter did for them beyond eliminating any manual fraud-related tasks and loads was to reduce substantially the hike in the customer success load. Because Forter is able to be more accurate and to decline less legitimate customers, you don't have that many calls to the customer success centers. And these are two bottlenecks for our big merchants: the customer success, and fraud and fulfillment. And the fulfillment, that is being able to capture the money and to send the goods is also streamlined by the fact that it's all done in real time. These are the direct effect, but there are additional phenomenon that happened. One of them is that suddenly, in COVID, a lot of customers that didn't usually do things online started to buy online. And we saw that the amount—or the percentage of new buyers, in many of our customers, suddenly jumped. And when you have new buyers, you need a very sophisticated system to be able to allow them in, to approve their transaction, and to allow them to build their reputation; so this happened. The spikes in throughput happened; every day in the last four months is like a Good Friday and Cyber Monday combined for us. And that's good. We didn't lose any availability, and with the current technology, it wasn't that problem from the scalability aspects. And indeed, have we been on private, or our on-prem, this would be much harder.Emily: And now tell me a little bit more about the technology required. We talked a little bit about it not being exactly a throughput problem, but you do have hundreds of processes that you have to run in, you know, several seconds, what technology do you need to leverage in order to make that happen?Iftah: Everything that we run is on flash disks; we don't have rotating disks anymore. We do run low CPU and low memory on all—low memory usage and low percentage of CPU on every [00:24:30 unintelligible] that we run, to accommodate and reduce a spike pickups. We do use the Apache Storm for our base; it is the base of our topology of these processes that we talked about, and hundreds of them in each topology. And we have several topologies for both the transaction time and what we call the visit time, the browsing time. And we run—we are a big customer of Elasticsearch, we run Elastic from the very early days, and we use them for sophisticated queries in their own annoying language. [laughs]. And we have one of the largest clusters. We have about 15 clusters of Elasticsearch that serve our entities that we talked about, our mapping of people to these entities, our logging, and our real-time matching between the current transaction and all the hundreds of millions of people we already know that acted online previously. These are the core technologies in our stack, and on top of that, we use several other technologies: Spark and our wrappers over Spark for the MapReduce work of our machine learning processes, and we use Kafka for persistent distribution of our data among regions, and among availability zones.Emily: What would you say is your biggest technical challenge? And by this, I mean, like, something that you're perhaps still working on, you don't feel like you've totally figured it out yet.Iftah: I think we are very advanced in our matching, the similarity problem. That is something that we think is a pillar of our superiority in this field, but it's a never-ending story. The ability to detect relevant anomalies in the behavior of the crowd is something that we work very hard on, and we expect a lot from these technologies because they have the potential to help us mitigate threats which are new to us; zero-hour threats of modus operandi, of MOs that we did not encounter earlier. These are the main issues. One issue that is mundane and prosaic is the cost of transaction. We do a lot of processing and we start, in our scale, to feel the heat of the cost of serving all these transactions. Nothing that will take us out of the Cloud, but it's something that we need to work hard on. Last, but definitely not least, is security. We think we turned our emphasis on security to our unfair advantage in this field, but still, hardening your systems and thinking about the possible attack vectors on your systems and on your merchant's system is something that I lose sleep at night over, and it is something that we can never say that we are done with.Emily: What do you think about the security-speed trade-off? Do you think it's real? Or do you think you can move just as fast and be secure?Iftah: We can move with negligible sacrifices for the security. Again, if you are talking about real-time systems where the microseconds count, then it's a different story. But for us, having everything encrypted both at rest and at motion is something that does not need to come at the expense of security. What is very interesting in this trade-offs of security and speed is the trade off, not of the real-time speed and the processing speed, but of the engineering development speed. And here, the magic is in the automation, every security aspect, and with your ability to mask all these security aspects from your engineers, and giving them the right APIs so they can develop the application itself. Which is developed to our domain in the same speed, while still being totally secured without them needing to take care of the plumbing. And that's something that we invested a lot in, and it's a never-ending game. I think we're good at it, but never good enough.Emily: And do you rely primarily on the Cloud service providers? So, on AWS's native services, or do you tend to find additional out-of-the-box services, or build your own? Do you have, sort of, a philosophy on that?Iftah: You know, philosophy is one thing, and then what you're doing practice sometimes need to be traded off with reality. But we are currently running on both AWS and starting to run on Azure, so we are making our processes agnostic to the particular cloud that we run on. It is interesting to do when you come to security configuration because you need to create abstraction layers over the particular security mechanisms in AWS and Azure, which are quite different. And that's where we are now. So, we are moving to be totally agnostic. So far, we did use occasionally, not—we weren't a heavy users of AWS services, but we did use a analytic databases; we did use Kinesis, but we moved now to Kafka, and so on. And we did use very cloud-specific queues, but we're moving out of this now.Emily: Why do you think it's important to be cloud-agnostic?Iftah: Because we run on two different clouds. We run on two clouds because of the very high availability requirement that we have. First, we need to be totally available to our merchants. Second, we need not only to be totally available to merchants, we also need to be very, very accurate, always. So, it's not that I can degrade gracefully and say, “Okay, I always answer approve in certain occasions,” because the fraudsters will very quickly understand that. So, we need to be with full brain capacity, always on. And if we are not, we started within tens of minutes or a hour or two, to be very susceptible to great losses. So, that's the reason we need to be with multiple regions, and we need to be with both clouds. It does take a heavy penalty, and we do think about how to reduce the penalty of working with two clouds, but that's what we currently do.Emily: Can you tell me how much your technology stack has changed since 2014?Iftah: We did change a lot in the representation of the world, and this was big. We did move into a Elastic from more traditional NoSQL and SQL [00:33:20 unintelligible] BMS. And we move now, again, to new high throughput databases for our browsing events, the ones that do get hundreds of thousands of events per second. And we do move slowly [00:33:40 unintelligible] many more items or small stack items like queues, and data distribution channels that are no longer serving us well as we scale out, and as we move to being cloud-agnostic. For example, we move now our analytics database from AWS's Redshift to a cloud-agnostic database.Emily: Excellent. I'm going to wrap up pretty soon; this has been really interesting. But a couple, sort of, last questions I wanted to ask. One is, can you describe what a day looks like for you? What does the day for the CTO of a Forter, of a cloud-based SaaS fraud prevention company—what do you actually do?Iftah: First, I am looking at what may endanger our business in the next year and in the next three years. The reason why we are [00:34:42 unintelligible], we call this process internally, the ‘what can kill us?' process. Is mainly because we are in a good shape, and when you're in a good shape you need to look at the threats and how to protect the business from them, and what new business you need to do. Then I'm looking at the health of our precision teams. And our precision teams are both the data science team, the cyber R&D teams, the fraud researchers teams, and the engineering teams that are supporting them. All these are—we need to see that we maintain our superiority. We so far never lost a QC or a bakeoff on any performance issues, and it's a tall order to keep it that way. So, this is the second task that keeps me up. And the last is to see that, indeed we have all what we need in order to enable the spear of development and for the new products. Companies in their seventh year, as we are, are in an inflection point between the startup and the enterprise, and that's where you need to make sure that we stay agile. We stay agile, it depends on the agility of the organization. How can you scale? Or do you rely on several heroes? And the agility of the development itself that relies, to a great degree, on the tech debt kept low enough.Emily: Fabulous. And what is a tool or platform that you think is sort of essential to functioning?Iftah: I think that we built a very robust, extensive monitoring and alerting infrastructure, and this monitoring and alerting infrastructure enables us to understand quickly whether something has happened in the world. And I must say that most of the time that something is happening in the world, it's not something that we need to do something about manually, but sometimes it's something that the merchants need to do. We discovered, for example, that one of our online travel agencies customers started to issue flight tickets for one percent of their price; for three and four bucks instead of four hundred bucks. And we detected it not by looking at the prices, but by seeing spikes of purchases from this OTA in Malaysia and Vietnam, and we were able to tell this to our merchant, to the customer, and the whole thing was rectified about 14 minutes from the time it started. So, our alerting and monitoring systems, which is both on the application level, on the business level on them, and on the other end, on the machine levels, this is very, very important, and pays for itself handsomely.Emily: I think I've read accounts in the newspaper of travel agents, or airlines having that type of mistake.Iftah: Yes.Emily: It tends to get some publicity. Last question is, how can listeners connect with you or follow you?Iftah: Well, iftah@forter.com. Look us up in forter.com, and we will be very happy to talk to you.Emily: Excellent. Thank you so much, Iftah, this was really fascinating.Iftah: Thank you very much for having me.Emily: Thanks for listening. I hope you've learned just a little bit more about The Business of Cloud Native. If you'd like to connect with me or learn more about my positioning services, look me up on LinkedIn: I'm Emily Omier—that's O-M-I-E-R—or visit my website which is emilyomier.com. Thank you, and until next time.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

The conversation covers:  The main function of an OSPO, and why Comcast has one. How Nithya approaches non-technical stakeholders about open-source.  Where the OSPO typically sits in the organizational hierarchy. The risk of ignoring open-source, or ignoring the way that open-source is consumed in an organization. Why every enterprise today is using open-source in some way or another. The relationship between cloud-native and open-source. Some of the major misconceptions about the role of open-source in major companies.  Common mistakes that companies make when setting up OSPOs. Why Nithya and her team rely heavily on the TODO Group in the Linux Foundation. Links: Comcast: https://www.xfinity.com/  Linux Foundation: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/  TODO Group and The New Stack survey: https://thenewstack.io/survey-open-source-programs-are-a-best-practice-among-large-companies/  Trixter GitHub: https://github.com/tricksterproxy/trickster  Kuberhealthy GitHub: https://github.com/Comcast/kuberhealthy  Comcast GitHub: https://comcast.github.io/ Nithya Ruff Twitter: https://twitter.com/nithyaruff  TranscriptEmily: Hi everyone. I'm Emily Omier, your host, and my day job is helping companies position themselves in the cloud-native ecosystem so that their product's value is obvious to end-users. I started this podcast because organizations embark on the cloud naive journey for business reasons, but in general, the industry doesn't talk about them. Instead, we talk a lot about technical reasons. I'm hoping that with this podcast, we focus more on the business goals and business motivations that lead organizations to adopt cloud-native and Kubernetes. I hope you'll join me.Emily: Welcome to The Business of Cloud Native, my name is Emily Omier, and today I'm chatting with Nithya Ruff, and she's joining us from the open source program office at Comcast. Nethya, thank you so much for joining us.Nithya: Oh, it's such a pleasure to be here, Emily. Thank you for inviting me.Emily: I want to start with having you introduce yourself, you run an open source program office. And if you could talk a little bit about what that is, and what you do every day.Nithya: So, just to introduce myself, I started working in open-source back in 1998, when open-source was still kind of new to companies and organizations. And from that point on, I've been working to build bridges between companies using open-source and communities where open-source is created. At Comcast, I have the pleasure of running our open source program office for the company, and I also sit on the board of the Linux Foundation and recently was elected chair. So, it gives me a chance to both look at the community side through the LF and through corporate use of open-source at Comcast.So, you also ask what does an OSPO do? What is an OSPO, and why does Comcast have one? So, an open source program office is a fairly new construct, and it started about 10, 11 years ago, when companies were doing so much open-source that they really couldn't keep track of all of the different areas of open-source usage, contribution, collaboration across their companies. And they felt that they wanted to have a little more coordination, if you will, across all of their developers in terms of policy for use, the process for contribution, and some guidelines around how to comply with open-source licenses and, on a more strategic note, to educate both executives as well as the company in terms of open-source and opportunities from a business engagement and a strategy perspective. So, you find that a lot of large companies typically have open source program offices. And we, frankly, have been using open-source for a very long time as a company, almost since the turn of the century, around 2005. And we started contributing and our number of developers started growing, and we didn't realize that we needed a center of excellence, which is what an open source program office is, where people can come to ask for help on legal matters—meaning compliance and license matters—ask for help in engaging with open-source communities, and generally come for all things open-source; be kind of a concierge service for all things open-source.Emily: And how long has Comcast had an OSPO?Nithya: I came on board in 2017 to start the OSPO, but as I mentioned before, we've done open-source organically throughout the company for many, many more years before I came on board. My coming on board just, kind of, formalized, if you will, the face of open-source work for the company to the outside world.Emily: You know, when we think about open-source in the enterprise, what sort of business opportunities and risks do you have to balance?Nithya: That's a great question. There are lots and lots of great business value and opportunity that companies get from open-source. And the more engaged you are with open-source, the more business value you'll get. So, if you're just consuming open-source, then clearly it reduces the cost of your development, it helps you get to market faster, you're using tried and tested projects that other companies have used and hundreds of developers around the world have used. So, you get a chance to really cut cost and go to market faster. But as you become more sophisticated in collaborating with other companies and contributing open-source back, you start realizing the benefit of, say leveraging a lot of other developers in maintaining code that you've contributed. You may start off at contributing a project, and you are often the only one bearing the burden of that project, and very soon, as it becomes useful to more and more people, you're sharing the burden with others, and you benefit from hundreds of new use cases coming into the code, hundreds of new features and functions coming in which you could never have thought of as a small team yourself. I believe that the quality of code improves when you're going to open-source something, it helps with recruitment and thought leadership because now candidates can actually see the kind of work that you do and the quality of work that you produce, and before that, they would just know that you were in this space, or telecom, or other areas, but they could not see the type of work that you did. And so, to me, from a business value, there's a tremendous amount of business value that companies get. On the risk side is the fact that you need to use it correctly, meaning you need to understand the license; you need to understand how you're combining your code with the proprietary code in your company; you need to understand if the code is coming from a good community, meaning a healthy community that is here to stay, and that has a good cadence of releases and is vibrant from an activity perspective; you need to also understand that you need to be engaged with the open-source community and understand where that particular project is going and to be able to sit at the table to influence or contribute to the positive direction of that project, and sustainability of that project. So, if you just consume and don't engage, or don't understand the license implications or contribute, I think you're not getting all of the value and you risk being considered a poor citizen in the community. And frankly, if people don't collaborate with you or cooperate with you, sending a patch upstream may take months to be accepted, as opposed to someone who's part of the community, who's accepted, who's seen as a good citizen. So, I think you've got to invest correctly through either an open source program office or a really intentional and thoughtful program to engage with the community in order to really mitigate risk, but also get the full benefit of working with open-source.Emily: And what do you find you have to educate the non-engineering stakeholders about, so the business leadership when you're talking about open-source?Nithya: That's also a very important function of an OSPO in my mind, is really making sure you have executive sponsorship and business buy-in for why open-source is a key part of the innovation process in the company. Because as you correctly said, there is a level of investment one needs to make, whether it is in an OSPO or in the compliance function, or for engineers to take the time to upstream their patches or to engage with communities. It all takes investment of time and money. And business needs to buy into why this is a benefit for the company, why this is a benefit for the business. And very often, I find that leadership gets it. In fact, some of my best sponsors and champions are executives. Our CTO, Matt Zelesko, completely gets why open-source is important for the business innovation, competitive advantage. And so, also my boss Jon Moore gets it. And I found that in a previous company where I was starting an open source program office, I had to work a little harder because it was a hardware company and they did not understand how working in open-source would fit into the engineering priorities. And so we had to, kind of, share more about how it allowed us to optimize software for our hardware, how it allowed us to influence certain key dependencies that we had in our product process, and that customers were asking for more open-source based software on our product. So, yes, building the business case is extremely important, and having sponsors at the business is extremely important. The other key constituent is legal, and working with your legal team hand-in-hand, and understanding their role in assessing risk and sharing risk with you, and your role as a business saying, “Is this an acceptable risk that I want to take on? And how do I work with this risk, but still get the benefits?” is as important. We have a great legal team here, and they work very closely with us, so we act as the first line of questions for our developers. And should they have any questions about, “Should I use this license? Or should I combine this license with this?” we then try to give them as many answers as we can, and then we escalate it to legal to bring them into the discussion as well. So, we act as a liaison between us and legal. So, to your point, it is important for the business to understand. And the OSPO does a great job in many of my companies that I've worked with to educate and keep business informed of what's happening on the open-source side.Emily: You mentioned working with developers; what is the OSPO's relationship with the actual developers on the team?Nithya: So, we don't have many developers on our team. In my OSPO, I have one developer who helps us with the automation and functioning of the open source program office tools and processes. Most of us are program managers, and community managers, and developer relations managers. The developers are our customer. So, I think of the developers in Comcast as our customer, and that we are advocates for them. And their need to use open-source in a frictionless way in their development process as our objective. So, we've worked very, very hard to make sure that the information they need, the processes they need are well oiled, and that they can focus on their core priority, which is getting products to market to really help our customers. And they don't need to become experts at compliance, they don't need to become experts at any of the functions that we do. We see them as our customer, so we act as advocates.Emily: Where exactly in the organizational hierarchy, or structure is the OSPO? Is it part of the engineering team?Nithya: Yes. I think that is the best place for an OSPO reside because you really are living with the engineering organization, and you're understanding their pain points, and you're understanding the struggles that they have, and what they need to accomplish, and their deadlines, et cetera. So, we live in the product and technology organization, under our CTO, who's also part of the engineering organization. So, I find that the best OSPOs typically reside in engineering or the CTO office, there are some that reside in legal or marketing. And whenever you decide, it tends to flavor the focus of your work. For us, the focus of our work is how can we help our developers be the best developers and use the best open-source components and techniques to get their work done?Emily: And what do you see is the risk that organizations take if they ignore open-source, they don't have this, sort of, conscientious investment in either an OSPO or some other way to manage the way open-source is consumed?Nithya: This is how I would put it. Everything that you see in technology development today, a lot of the software that we consume, whether it's from vendors, or through the Cloud—public cloud, private cloud—is made up of open-source software. There's a ton—I would say, almost 50, 60 percent of infrastructure software, especially data center, cloud, et cetera, is often open-source software. So, if you don't know the dependencies you have, if you don't know the stack that you're using and what components you have, you're working blindly. And you don't know if one of those stack's components is going to go away or going to change direction. So, you really need to be cognizant of knowing what you're using, and what your dependencies are and making sure that you're working with those open-source communities to stay on top of your dependencies. You're also missing out on really collaborating with other companies to solve common problems, solve them more effectively, more collaboratively. It's a competitive advantage, frankly, and if you don't intentionally implement some sort of an OSPO, or at least someone is tagged with directing OSPO type of work in the company, you're missing out on getting the best benefits of open-source.Emily: Do you think there are any enterprises that don't use open-source?Nithya: No. I believe that every single enterprise, knowingly or unknowingly, have some amount of open-source in their product, or in their tools, or in their infrastructure somewhere.Emily: And what percentage of enterprises have—this is obviously just going to be your best guess, but what percentage of enterprises have an OSPO?Nithya: I think it's a small percentage. New Stack and the TODO Group do a very, very good survey. I would refer us to that survey. And that gives you a sense of how many companies have an OSPO. I believe it's something like 45, 50 percent have OSPOs, and then another 10, 15 percent, say we intend to start one in the next two to three years. And then there's another, I don't know 30 percent that say, I have no intention of starting one. And the reason may be because they have a group of volunteers or part-time people across their organization who are fulfilling those functions between their legal team, and a couple of expert developers, and their communications team, they may think that they have solved the problem, so they don't need to have a specialized function to do this.Emily: I wanted to ask a little bit about the relationship between cloud-native and open-source. What do you see as that relationship?Nithya: If you ask anyone—and this is my opinion as well—that cloud-native technologies are very open-source-based. Look at Kubernetes, or Prometheus, or any of the technologies under the CNCF umbrella, or under any of the cloud-native areas, you find that most of them have their roots, or are created in the open-source way of development. So, it is an integral part of participation in cloud-native is knowing how to collaborate in an open-source way. So, it makes a lot of sense that CNCF is under the Linux Foundation, and it operates like an open-source project with governance, and technical body, and contributors. So, for us as well, being a cloud company—or a company that uses Cloud to host our infrastructure, and also a user of public cloud, we think that knowledge of open-source and how to work with open-source helps us work more effectively with the cloud ecosystem. And we have contributed components like Trickster, which is a Prometheus dashboard acceleration component. We've also contributed something called Kuberhealthy, which allows you to really orchestrate across Kubernetes clusters to open-source because we know that that's the way to function, and influence, and if you will, kind of take advantage of the ecosystems in the cloud-native technology stack. So, cloud-native is all built on open-source. So, that's the relationship in my mind.Emily: Yeah. I mean, I think actually, the Linux Foundation defines cloud-native as built on open-source software. I forget the exact words.Nithya: Yep. I think so, too.Emily: What do you think are some misconceptions out there, particularly among the enterprise users, about open-source and about the role of open-source in a major company?Nithya: There are a number of misconceptions. And we talked and touched upon a few before, but I think it's worth repeating it because you need to confront these misconceptions and start engaging with open-source if you want to compete with the other companies in your industry, who all are becoming digital companies and are digitally transformed. And they need to work with open-source as part of their digital framework. So, one of the misconceptions is that vendor-supplied software or products don't have any open-source in them. In fact, a lot of vendor-supplied software, maybe even from Microsoft has some open-source in them. Even from Apple, for example. If you look at the disclosure notices, you'll see that all of them consume open-source. So, whether you like it or not, there is open-source and you need to understand and manage it. The second is not knowing what your engineers are downloading and using, and hence what you're dependent upon as a company, and whether those components are healthy, and whether those communities are doing the right thing. You need to understand what you're using. It's like a chef: you need to know your components, and the quality of the food that you create will depend upon the components you use. You'll also need to understand licenses and watch needed to comply with those licenses, and need to put process in place to comply with those licenses. You also need to give back; it's not enough to just consume and not contribute back things like bug fixes, patches, and changes you make because you end up carrying all of that load with you as technical debt if you don't upstream it. And, frankly, you also consume, so you should give back as well. It's not sufficient to just take but not give. The last one is that open-source is free. And so, many people are attracted to open-source because they think, “Ah. I don't have to pay any license fees. I can just get it, I can run it anywhere I want, and I can change it,” et cetera. But the fact of the matter is if you want to use it correctly, you do need to invest in a team that knows how to support itself, knows how to work with the community to get patches or make change happen, you need to build that knowledge in the house, and you do need to have some cost of ownership associated with using open-source. So, these are some of the major misconceptions that I see in companies that are not engaging with open-source.Emily: And what do you see as, in your experience, some of the mistakes that companies can make, even when they're in the process of setting up an OSPO? What have you learned—maybe what mistakes have you made that you wish you could go back in time and undo—and what advice would you give to somebody who was thinking about setting up an OSPO?Nithya: Couple of mistakes that come to mind is releasing a piece of code that's not been well thought through, or properly documented, or with the correct license. And you find that you get a lot of criticism for poor quality code, or poorly released projects. You end up not having anyone wanting to work with the project or contributing to the project, so the very intent of getting it out there so that others could use and collaborate with you is lost. And then sometimes companies have also made announcements saying that they want to release a particular piece of software, and they backtrack and they change their mind and they say, “No, we're not going to release it anymore.” And that looks really poor in the community because there are people who are depending upon it or wanting it, and it can affect the reputation of a company. There was one more thing which I was going to say is, is really not being a good player. For instance, keeping a lot of the conversations inside the company, in terms of governing a project or roadmap for a project, and not being transparent and sharing the direction of the project or where it's going with the community. For an open-source project, is really bad. It can affect how you're perceived and how you're trusted or not trusted in the community. So, it's important to understand the norms of open-source, which is transparency, collaboration, contribute small pieces often, versus dumping a big piece of code or surprising the community. So, all of these things are important to consider. And, frankly, an OSPO, helps you really understand how community behaves: we often do a lot of education on how to work with community inside the company, and we also represent the company's interests in communities and foundations and say, “This is where we are going. This is where we need your help.” And the more transparent you are, the better you can work with community. So, those are some areas where I've seen companies go wrong.Emily: And when a developer who works at Comcast contributes to a project is he or she contributing as an individual or as part of the company? And how is that, sort of, almost, tension navigated?Nithya: Most companies have a policy that any work that you do during your workday or on work equipment, is company property, right? And so it's copyrighted as Comcast, and most of our developers will contribute things under their Comcast email id. And that's fairly normal in the industry. And there are times when developers want to do work on their own time for their own pet projects, and they can do it under their personal emails and their personal equipment. So, that's where the industry draws the line. Of course, there are some companies that are very loose about this type of demarcation, and some companies are incredibly tight depending upon the industry they're in, regulated versus high tech. But we are very encouraging of our developers to contribute code, whether on their own time or during company time, and we make the process extremely easy. We have a very lightweight process where they submit a request to contribute, and the OSPO shepherds that contribution through legal, through security, through other technical reviewers, and all in the interest of making sure we provide guardrails for the developer so that he or she does it successfully and looks good when they make the contribution. So, 95 percent of the time, we approve requests for contributions. So, very, very rarely do we say, “This is not approved,” because we think it's the right thing to do to give back and to share some of the work that we do with others, just like we get the benefit of using others' work.Emily: Is there anything else that you want to add about what OSPOs do, what they bring to the business, the relationship between cloud-native and open-source, anything that I haven't thought to ask that I should have?Nithya: The OSPO, if you will, is a horizontal function that cuts across the entire enterprise development and helps coordinate and direct the intelligent and judicious use of open-source. So, that's why it touches all of the software development tools, apps, vendor-supplied software, public clouds, internal clouds, et cetera. Wherever open-source is used, which is everywhere, we touch it. And we also serve as the external face of the company to the open-source community so that the open-source community has one place that they can come to for questions, or to give feedback on something they're doing, or to ask a license question, or to ask for sponsorship or support for a conference or a foundation. So, it really makes open-source navigation very, very effective for the community, as well as for inside the company. So, I'm a huge, huge fan of OSPO. I also love running an OSPO, and the kind of people that are typically in an OSPO. They tend to be very versatile, very general, they can pivot from legal to development matters to marketing and communications to really assisting a developer navigate something challenging. So, they're very versatile and terrific type of people. They also tend to have very high EQ and tend to make sure that they have a service mentality when they take care of questions that come in. So, I would say an OSPO is a great role for someone who wants to help and wants to know the breadth of software development.Emily: It sounds like you're making a recruitment pitch.Nithya: Uh, yeah. I don't have any openings right now, but I'm always encouraging and mentoring other OSPOs. I do at least one or two consultations with other OSPOs because we enjoy what we do as an OSPO and we want to help other OSPOs be successful.Emily: I mean, is it hard to find people to work in OSPOs?Nithya: It's kind of hard, in the sense that there are not too many people who do this work. So, I know, practically, I know all of the OSPO leadership and people who do this line of work in the industry. And it takes—some who come from a developer background. They have grown up as a developer using open-source and know the pains that they faced inside their company using open-source and not having certain processes or certain support or tools, and they go out to change the world in that way. I came from a different direction. I came from strategy and product management, and I came with the notion of, “How do I connect the dots better across the organization? How do I make sure that people know what to do and how to build relationships?” So, I came from that perspective. Frankly, I think it's something that innately people have, which is the ability to absorb a lot of different types of knowledge and connect the dots and work to change things. You don't have to be born in open-source to be a good OSPO person. You just need to have a desire to help developers.Emily: Was there any tools—it doesn't, obviously, have to be a software development tool, but any tools that you could not do your work without?Nithya: More than tools, I would say the organization that we rely on very heavily is the TODO Group in the Linux Foundation because it is a group of other OSPO people. And so it's been a great exchange of ideas and support, and tips, and best practices. The couple of tools that we use very, very heavily, and the love using, clearly, is something like GitHub or GitLab which helps you coordinate and collaborate on software development and documentation, et cetera. The other tool we use a lot to build community inside the company is things like Slack, or Slack equivalents because it helps you create communities of interest. So, when we are doing something around CNCF, we have a CNCF channel. We have a very, very large open-source channel that people come in and ask questions, and the whole community gets involved in helping them. So, I would say those are two really good tools that I like, and we use a lot in our function. And the TODO Group I think is a fabulous organization.Emily: And where should listeners go to learn more and/or to follow or connect with you?Nithya: There are two places I would say. comcast.github.io is where we publish all of our open-source projects, and you can see the statement we make about open-source. We also feature job openings at Comcast as well as our Innovation Fund, which is a grant-based fund request, so people can make a request for us to contribute money towards their project, or to research. And I'm on Twitter at @nithyaruff.Emily: Well, thank you so much, Nithya. This has been really fabulous.Nithya: Thanks, Emily. And thank you for helping me share my enthusiasm for what an open-source office is, and why everybody needs one.Emily: Thanks for listening. I hope you've learned just a little bit more about The Business of Cloud Native. If you'd like to connect with me or learn more about my positioning services, look me up on LinkedIn: I'm Emily Omier—that's O-M-I-E-R—or visit my website which is emilyomier.com. Thank you, and until next time.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

She wanted to run away after a very traumatic event.  Listening to Fast Car Emily dreamed of leaving it all but didn't because she was mature enough to know as one of the oldest kids in her family, she needed to stay to help with her siblings.  Unfortunately, she revisited those same feelings later in life after a boating accident.  But she fought to recover as a wife and mom and has since turned it into a beautiful music therapy journey with her violin and other's successful recovery stories!  She has overcome the odds with the power of music! This song means something very different for she and I!  We all hear the same music but get a different experience from it. Emily Champagne IG: @EmilyWild1 3:25 Lindsey Stirling IG: @lindseystirling  4:43 Emily shares her experience as a sexual abuse survivor 16:11 Emily shares her experience as a boat accident survivor Gonna stalk me on social?  Let me help you... @virtuallyyoupodcastva (FB & IG) ...heck, join me in my FB group https://www.facebook.com/groups/1884183095057195 **Full Transcript Intro I have a question. What is your favorite song, and how do you connect with it? Is it when you fell in love, or through something really difficult? I'm your host Tiffany Mason. now join me as I interview others, and we take a walk down memory lane with them. Let's get lost in why that music matters to them. Turn up your radio and let's explore memories with a beat. Tiffany Hello podcast land! Thank you for joining me again. Today I have with me Emily Champagne, and she is going to share a song with us. Emily, would you like to share with my audience what the song is that you chose? Emily Sure. So it is Fast Car by Tracy Chapman. Tiffany Okay. And I looked it up that came out in 1988, which is why... I was born in 79. So, that's why I feel like I've listened to the song forever. When you told me that this was your song. I got so excited! I listened to it three times. I sang the lyrics at the top of my lungs. And seriously I'm gonna have the best day ever just from listening to the song and having it in my head. It's just a blast from the past I haven't listened to in a really long time, but I'll tell you what every time it comes on anywhere I am, "I'm like oh my god I love this song." Emily Yeah, that's how I feel especially...it's one of my favorite road trip songs because everyone just starts wailing and you know jamming out so I definitely have the same reaction to it. Tiffany Absolutely. Do you want to tell me you know how you connect to this song, if there's any memories, or any stories that kind of go with this? Emily Yeah. So I was born in '89. So this song was not something I listened to because I knew of it as a kid. It's because of my mother. I think it's so funny because as we get older, it's all the music that when we were younger, we didn't like it but now that, you know I'm an adult, I find myself listening to the same artists that my mother listened to. And, you know, enjoying all that music so as a kid it was just a song that I loved. And I played the violin competitively, and I sing, so it became a song that I decided I was going to do at a competition one year. And you know my obsession with it grew at the time, there wasn't really a meaning for me it was just I love the lyrics I love the melody but with no purpose, if that makes sense. Tiffany That does make that makes me want to look up like a YouTube video or something of someone just doing violin of that because I bet it's really good. Emily Yeah, it's actually something I do. I have an electric violin so something I really enjoy doing is taking either even classical songs but I do it with hip hop too and I just kind of convert the music into something that can be played on the violin. Tiffany Do you ever record it? Emily I don't. I never...I was always as an adult I became more bashful if that even makes sense. So, I stopped playing for a long time. And then I got pregnant with my daughter who's now four, and my whole family was like you need to start playing you know for the baby and you know music is so good for them and so, so I did. And now I'm pregnant again so I actually dusted off my violin a few weeks ago and took it to get the strings changed and a few things so I could start playing again. Tiffany Ah, that's so awesome. I always sang to my babies. But I think that that's awesome. I think music, in general, is so amazing. I would love if you recorded it and sent it to me. Emily Yeah, I could do that. Tiffany I would be so impressed. Yeah. And I'll tell you what, Emily, I do not normally like music without words, but I will take a violin every day of the week. Emily That... you know I, I myself don't really enjoy that much music without words, even though I play the violin. But I found an artist named Lindsey Stirling, a while ago. And she just plays the violin. And she just jams and it's it's incredible and she plays. She started out doing covers of, you know, different like top charts songs and stuff like that and that's kind of really where my interest piqued and doing the same thing. So I'll send you her information when we're done because she's actually really awesome and her music is just, it's like I clean to it, I relaxed to it you know, it's, it's awesome! Tiffany Yeah Yeah, super awesome! We were at a restaurant or something and it was all instrumental and I really do...I think if I know the words to the song well enough, I do enjoy just the instrumental piece of it. So, I don't remember where we were and I was telling. It's that, I don't know if you know that new song, Savage Love, I think it's by Jason Derulo. Okay. And so we were listening and I'm like, "Oh it's Savage Love and Hanna was like "No it's not." I'm like, "Yeah, listen," and then I started putting the words to the music and she was like, "Oh my gosh." So I appreciate when it's just the instrumental piece if I know the words, well enough. Emily Yeah, I can understand that I never was really much too classical for that reason. Again, being someone who also sings I like to be able to sing and harmonize and do stuff like that. But the song, I mean, really changed for me when I was 17. I am a sexual abuse survivor. Tiffany Oh Gosh I'm sorry! Emily ...or assault. At the time, it was a very typical story classic story of, you know, it happens very, very often, especially with teenage girls. But it was someone I knew a friend. I wasn't where I was supposed to be, you know, accord... you know, from what I told my parents. And so I dealt with it on my own for a really long time before I actually kind of, you know, cried out for help and needed to deal with it. So, during that time, I remember so vividly like there was just one night I was laying in my room. And I was just you know having a breakdown or laying there crying. And I had my um, well it was, it was an iPod, like mp3 player back then. But in my ears, and the song came on. And I was about to skip it because I just, you know, I just I wasn't in the mood to listen to it and I didn't. And as I listened to the lyrics on like, "Oh my god," it just hit me so differently. It resonated so differently. And you know the song, I think everybody can always kind of have their own interpretation of a song or music which is another thing I love about music. You know, so in the song there's lyrics about her father being an alcoholic and her having to kind of, she had to quit school so that she could take care of her father. And the mother, you know, ended up leaving because she couldn't, you know, deal with that situation and she thought she deserved better so she kind of left the child with the Father. And so for some people, they're going to resonate with that message because they live that life. I didn't that's not my story but the song really is about change, wanting change, but kind of being stuck because of, you know, your family or for for someone that you love. And wanting to make a decision that you've really feel strongly about that's going to benefit you. But not making and kind of going back and forth because you're like well if I make it, you know I'm gonna leave you know this person behind or this person is going to be upset. And in her song, she goes back and forth about leaving and starting over but then goes back to her father needing to be taken care of. Tiffany Right! Emily And that message for me was really powerful because you know we go through things in life we all deal with different traumas. And we don't know how to process them right because inherently we're not programmed to deal with trauma, especially if you don't have any outside resources or someone helping you you kind of just process the best that you can. And I had so many nights where I just laid in my bed and I just wanted to pack up my stuff and go and start over. You know I wasn't on track to go away to college. I have a lot of siblings and my family did not have a lot of money. So I knew that I had to stay and go to college, and I had to put myself through college because we were a middle class family so you know I didn't really have any extra help. And I felt very stuck and I often wanted so badly to just run, but realized I couldn't because of my situation or my circumstances. And I had to face what I was dealing with. Tiffany Yeah, it makes me think of, you know, there's the saying, "Be nice to everyone, you never know what someone is going through." Emily Yeah. Tiffany And just,Yeah, you just never I mean your, your fellow classmen didn't know what you were going through, you know your family didn't know what you're going through. So sometimes even those closest to us still don't know what we're going through. Emily Most of the time they don't. You know I feel like, especially now that I'm a mother, I understand it differently as far as wanting to protect the ones closest to you. Because you feel like you're burdening them almost, you know? So sometimes we just suffer in silence and it is true, you can put a mask on. I mean I've mastered it at this point. And, you know, looking okay and on the outside it seems like things are okay but inside you're not. Tiffany Yeah, yeah, I know all about that. I think what I got, what I really picked up from the song was they were gonna run away and make everything better. And I think it was just so sweet how he's like, You know I love just being in your car, your arms around my shoulders, it felt so nice. We're gonna go you know take on the world. Emily Right. Tiffany We're gonna leave the burbs, we're going to go to the city. We're going to get jobs. And I think for them. It didn't mean that they had to be super successful. Emily Nope. Tiffany For them, it meant they just had to get there and be living there. And that was the dream. That was enough for them because they were kind of stuck in this other life that they didn't really want to be in. So really all they were looking for was just to go to the city and live there. And I think that's kind of nice that it's not like you know we're gonna conquer everything. But it's kind of like... I am a hopeless romantic where I think you can live on love and my husband constantly reminds me."No Tiffany you need money to live." [Laughter] So, that's why I always loved it because I always thought that they were gonna you know just run away live on love and, you know, live in some crappy little apartment but make the best of it. And, you know, have fun little dates that they were used to that they knew how to get by on the cheap or whatever. Emily Yeah and see that's, that's the beauty of music that it can hit you in such a different way. You know, two people can be sitting right next to each other with headphones and listening to the same exact song. And then we could say all right like let's talk about it. And both have two totally different takeaways from it, or maybe for you it cues that that warm fuzzy feeling of just being kind of like young and in love and wanting to like explore and change. Whereas for me, it was more of a you have to fight. You know, you have to fight. and sometimes running away isn't the answer and although it's it's dreamy, and you know what you envision for yourself and where you want to go. It's just not always the answer. And for me it kind of snapped me out of the...I want to say, I don't want to say the sadness, but the anger part of what I was feeling. And reminded me like I had to fight because I couldn't just get in the car and go away. I had responsibilities as being, you know, my brother's the oldest but he's substantially older so he wasn't in the house anymore. And I, I felt obligated to make sure that I could be there so that I could help with my sisters and I could help my mother and...So I decided, you know, what am I going to do? I'm going to stay angry, and be resentful? "Or, I'm gonna make the best of my situation and kind of just flip it into something different. And really, like that song, really just like I listened to that song, over and over and over. And I envisioned myself in somebody's car just driving and, you know, like, top down, looking at the stars not thinking about anything and just heading somewhere to just start over. Tiffany Yeah, I think, probably just reviewing this song was the first time I really paid attention to the ending of it. So they escape and then he ends up drinking too much, and she doesn't know if she wants to stay and be a part of it. Emily Right, so it talks about cycles. Tiffany Yeah. Emily For me Tiffany No, Yeah, for me too. Emily Again I, you know, all of us grow up very differently. And I didn't grow up in an ideal situation. And as I was coming into my own, I appreciated the things I had but I think as adults we can always identify things that we can do better. And part of that, you know, the end of the song is she realizes that she's living the cyclic life where she's literally now reliving her childhood. Tiffany Yep. Emily And she sees a lot of her mother in herself in the song. You know, leaving because the man is drinking. That's another huge part of life right like human beings inherently, we are creatures of habit. And, you know, we have options in life and we can kind of re-live what we what we know to be normal. Or we can say "Hey, that's not really that ideal," or "I don't really want to, you know, start a family and raise children the same. So I'm going to take the good stuff and keep it but the bad stuff I'm going to take, you know, take and put it somewhere else." And I know me personally and many other mothers I know we've all had those moments where we're repeating a behavior that we didn't like. Tiffany Oh Yeah. Emily So in, you know, in that moment in the song she's having that that moment that aha moment where she's like, Oh my god, I'm literally re-living the life that I wanted to run away from. Tiffany Do you think too, I know they're not real people, of course, they're people in a song. But do you think that she also had that realization that she understands why her mom went away now? You know cuz she was probably resentful that she had to quit school, take care of her dad, and now maybe she's thinking, "Hmm, I get it." Emily Yeah. Tiffany "I get why you left." Emily Right, I mean, if it were me? Yeah, I think that those moments come to us all the time because like anything like can you ever understand why the person made a decision if you weren't in this situation? Tiffany Right. You can try to empathize but until you've done it. Yeah. Emily You know, I became a mother and I found myself being much more empathetic and forgiving toward my mother for things that she did that I just was not happy about or things that I just was like, "How do you do that?" And now I'm a mom and I'm like "Wow, this is really hard. This is not, at all, a cakewalk. It's the hardest but most rewarding job in the world." But now I find myself sympathizing and empathizing because my god like how do we make the right decisions? If this really happens in real life and she, she woke up and she was like, "Oh, I get it, Mom like I get it I get why you left because now I'm leaving, for the same reason." Tiffany Yep. Yep. Completely agreed. I know that when we originally spoke you had said that you do... do you do music therapy or just kind of a song that's been therapeutic for you can you go into that a little bit then? Emily Yeah, sure! Um, So, 2018 so I didn't do music therapy before 2018. While I was still in New York, I did volunteer with a program which sadly no longer exists. It kind of diminished in I want to say my sophomore year of college. But it was a program for women or young ladies, I should say, and it was a group of other sexual assault and abuse victims. And we would actually go into high schools. and we would have assemblies but with, you know, female population. And just talk about it and you know talk about the warning signs and talk about the feelings afterwards and talk about the importance of asking for help. And, kind of, you know, share our stories with them so that they know they're not the only ones. And that this does happen, way, way, way too often, you know. And especially when it's with a person that you know yeah so I did that for a long time. Music therapy started 2018, I was involved in a near fatal boating accident, a drunk boater ran me over I was ejected off a boat that I was on. And he ran me over and he was on a pontoon boat. So I got like sucked under the boat and caught between the pontoon. Tiffany Nooooooo... Emily Yeah, but I'm still alive. Um, I somehow managed to like... I curled in a ball, I kicked off the bottom, because I didn't want my... like I just saw my head going toward the propeller and this obviously all happened within split seconds. Tiffany Oh my goodness. Emily The propeller ended up running over my right leg. So, and they left me in the water. So... Tiffany What? You, you said you jumped off a boat. So you had other people on kind of on your side that were watching all thing too. Emily Yes Tiffany Please tell me your mother was not on that boat. Emily No, no, it was actually a work event, crazy. It was a work event. I was in corporate sales at the time and we had won a boat day because of our sales for that quarter. So it was my whole team from work on the boat that I was on. Um, but yeah they were obviously they were all there. So, the harbor master actually got to me, the Fort Myers Beach harbor master, who I still talk to regularly, because he truly is a major reason that I'm still alive. And he pulled me out of the water drove me over to the Coast Guard Station right across Fort Myers Beach. And thankfully they perform successful CPR and revived me before the ambulance got there. So I was in the hospital for a month I was in the ICU for two weeks. Tiffany Oh my goodness. Unknown 17:53 Yeah, it was it was it was wild. It was awful and wild. And I fell right back into that trauma victim recovery mode again. This time I just had different tools to do it because I had already started trauma therapy for what I had already been through. And found myself listening to Fast Car again, all the time. When I was, when hospital bed, I found myself feeling like I wanted to run away again because of course there was like, there was an investigation, it was you know a whole thing. So every day I had, I had, you know, investigators coming to talk to me. I had lawyers coming to talk to me. And in the first weeks of something like that you don't really want to talk to anybody... Tiffany Right, that's what I was just thinking. Like, Oh my gosh, all you want to do is recover and heal and kind of have a pity party but then these people keep coming in. It's like right after you have the baby and they keep pushing on your stomach. You're like, "Oh my gosh. Just leave me alone I'm trying to heal." It's the same thing Yes, you don't want to keep reliving it, it's a it's a nightmare. Can we please not keep talking about the details? Emily Yep and and but the thing is is that very common traumas, is that as time progresses, we forget details. And it's our brains way of protecting us. So, although it's trauma, it's more traumatizing, it's just it's a necessary evil I guess you can say. So, um, yeah so again I found myself listening to that same song on repeat over and over again. And I came out of the hospital. I was in a wheelchair for about six months. I needed more surgeries after that, and about six months ago, my therapist who I, she took me on as a patient while I was in the hospital. And I'm still with her now. Um, she runs a mentor program at The Memorial. Um, so in our area Lee Memorial is the closest trauma hospital. The next closest are up in Tampa, which is about two hours from us or down in Miami. So she talked to me about being a trauma mentor. And this is a program they've had for a really long time but they had nobody like me nobody. You know they had mentors for people that had strokes. They had mentors for people that got spinal injuries. Nobody like me who was young, a mother, and just like more of a general trauma. So I went through two months of training, so that I would be allowed to actually go up into the ICU and start working with patients at that level. Tiffany Cool. Emily And that's where the music therapy started my very first patient she got into an accident, actually a boating accident with very similar injuries. However, her injuries were higher on her body and her right arm was affected. And at the time they weren't sure about her mobility and she played the guitar. Tiffany Oh Gosh! Emily So, we had her mom came in brought her guitar. And we worked and we worked and, you know, she would get really frustrated. And at some point we brought up me playing the violin so she just asked me if I would bring my violin one day and play for her. And she's like, "I feel like it would just be soothing." And I was like, "Okay." So the next day that I went in, I brought it. You know, I went in and it kind of just stemmed from there. And people find solace in music you know. And I and I learned that. It was actually funny because her and I were having this conversation about CDs. So, you remember burning CDs? Tiffany Yes Emily And like I used to write the title to like every...you know I used to write like the whole playlist on the CD. And we were laughing hysterical cuz I was like, you know, like three years ago during a move I found a bunch of my CD books from high school. And I'm reading the see the CDs and I'm like, "Dude, you can totally tell what I was going through when I made these CDs like, Oh, this one I had just gotten broken up with and Oh this one I just fell in love and Oh this one I was never gonna date any boy ever again in my life like." It's so funny and, you know, we find commonalities in things especially when we're suffering. And going through a trauma, and being young she was young, like I was she also had a toddler. And having those uncertainties of your mobility and, you know, that was the hardest thing for me. I was like wait hold on a second like I'm not going to walk? Like, What do you mean? I have a toddler, how am I going to run around and play with my daughter? And, you know, how am I gonna be the fun mom at the playground and you know? So thankfully I, I did beat the odds! Tiffany WooHoo! Emily I have a little trouble walking and I need some devices to help me but I do walk. And yeah so that's how the therapy started. And I have now worked with 10 patients... over the last like eight or nine months Tiffany That has got to be so good for your soul. Emily It is. it actually put a lot of purpose to what happened to me. Tiffany Sure Emily You know we go through really bad things and everybody's like, "Well, it happened for a reason." And in those moments that's kind of like the last thing you want to hear. Tiffany Oh, seriously. Emily You know like, I'm laying up in a hospital bed with like, no way to walk and getting blood transfusions and, you know, whatever, just in an ICU attach all these different cables and things and people coming in every hour and poking you and taking blood. And, you know, my mom said it to me first and I remember looking at her like "Seriously, you know like, what meaning am I gonna put to this?" Or, you know, "Let's just be grateful you're alive." And in those moments you feel selfish because I wasn't. Like in those in those first couple of days I wasn't, I was not grateful I was like, just really, like. I was just angry. And then you heal, right? And it's... healing from a trauma is very similar to the grief process. So first you're sad and you're angry, then you're kind of in acceptance mode. And you have to go through all of those motions. And it's just, it's crazy. So finally, I finally, finally, finally found purpose to what happened to me. And you know I've very been very blessed and been very... Yeah, I think Blessed is probably the best word. I've just been very blessed to have helped these people. And now I have friendships with some of them some of them get better and go their own way and that's okay too. Tiffany Yeah. Emily But, it allowed me to say okay well I was put on this earth for a reason. And you know what happened really sucked! But here I am now and I'm making a difference in other people's lives. and it doesn't make what happened to me as painful it removed the anger and the, the sadness almost from it, if that makes sense. Tiffany Yep. Yep. I interviewed a lady before you about music therapy. And in my mind, I feel like it's probably similar to like pet therapy, you know what, like when they bring the dogs in for the people? Emily Oh absolutely! Tiffany Yeah, yeah I just probably think it's close to the same thing. But I am seriously so surprised by this conversation. I know you and I had kind of had a different relationship in the past. And so it's kind of interesting just to learn more about you and you know where you come from, and what makes Emily, Emily. So I will have all of your contact information in the show notes, as well as that Lindsey Stirling if anybody else wants to check her out. And is there anything else you wanted to add Emily? Emily No, this, this was awesome and I definitely appreciate it and I love talking about music. Tiffany Yeah. Awesome. Well thanks so much and I thank you for being a loyal listener as well. Emily Yeah, absolutely. I enjoy it. I look forward to it every week. Tiffany I'm glad that I'm making some form of a difference with my love for music to then Emily You most definitely are. Outro Well that was a great walk down memory lane. I hope you enjoyed my guest's memories and experiences with the song or songs they chose. To connect with my guest's, I mean I know you are just going to stalk their social media, but check out the show notes as always for details. Please leave a 5 star review. And I'd love if you left a memory of your own that was sparked. Can't wait to dive into my next guest's memories with a beat. Hit subscribe now, you don't wanna miss the next episode.  

The conversation covers:  Why Kevin helped launch Single Music, where he currently provides SRE and architect duties. Single Music's technical evolution from Docker Swarm to Kubernetes, and the key reasons that drove Kevin and his team to make the leap. What's changed at Single Music since migrating to Kubernetes, and how Kubernetes is opening new doors for the company — increasing stability, and making life easier for developers. How Kubernetes allows Single Music to grow and pivot when needed, and introduce new features and products without spending a large amount of time on backend configurations.  How the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted music sales. Single Music's new plugin system, which empowers their users to create their own middleware. Kevin's current project, which is a series of how-to manuals and guides for users of Kubernetes. Some common misconceptions about Kubernetes. Links Single Music Traefik Labs Twitter: https://twitter.com/notsureifkevin?lang=en Connect with Kevin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/notsureifkevin Emily: Hi everyone. I'm Emily Omier, your host, and my day job is helping companies position themselves in the cloud-native ecosystem so that their product's value is obvious to end-users. I started this podcast because organizations embark on the cloud naive journey for business reasons, but in general, the industry doesn't talk about them. Instead, we talk a lot about technical reasons. I'm hoping that with this podcast, we focus more on the business goals and business motivations that lead organizations to adopt cloud-native and Kubernetes. I hope you'll join me.Emily: Welcome to The Business of Cloud Native. I'm Emily Omier, your host, and today I am chatting with Kevin Crawley. And Kevin actually has two jobs that we're going to talk about. Kevin, can you sort of introduce yourself and what your two roles are?Kevin: First, thank you for inviting me on to the show Emily. I appreciate the opportunity to talk a little bit about both my roles because I certainly enjoy doing both jobs. I don't necessarily enjoy the amount of work it gives me, but it also allows me to explore the technical aspects of cloud-native, as well as the business and marketing aspects of it. So, as you mentioned, my name is Kevin Crawley. I work at a company called Containous. They are the company who created Traefik, the cloud-native load balancer. We've also created a couple other projects, and I'll talk a little bit about those later. For Containous, I'm a developer advocate. I work both with the marketing team and the engineering team. But also I moonlight as a co-founder and a co-owner of Single Music. And there, I fulfill mostly SRE type duties and also architect duties where a lot of times people will ask me feedback, and I'll happily share my opinion. And Single Music is actually based out of Nashville, Tennessee, where I live, and I started that with a couple friends here.Emily: Tell me actually a little bit more about why you started Single Music. And what do you do exactly?Kevin: Yeah, absolutely. So, the company started out of really an idea that labels and artists—and these are musicians if you didn't pick up on the name Single Music—we saw an opportunity for those labels and artists to sell their merchandise through a platform called Shopify to have advanced tools around selling music alongside that merchandise. And at the time, which was in 2016, there weren't any tools really to allow independent artists and smaller labels to upload their music to the web and sell it in a way in which could be reported to the Billboard charts, as well as for them to keep their profits. At the time, there was really only Apple Music, or iTunes. And iTunes keeps a significant portion of an artist's revenue, as well as they don't release those funds right away; it takes months for artists to get that money. And we saw an opportunity to make that turnaround time immediate so that the artists would get that revenue almost instantaneously. And also we saw an opportunity to be more affordable as well. So, initially, we offered that Shopify integration—and they call those applications—and that would allow those store owners to distribute that music digitally and have those sales reported in Nielsen SoundScan, and that drives the Billboard Top 100. Now since then, we've expanded quite considerably since the launch. We now report on sales for physical merchandise as well. Things like cassette tapes, and vinyl, so records. And you'd be surprised at how many people actually still buy cassette tapes. I don't know what they're doing with them, but they still do. And we're also moving into the live streaming business now, with all the COVID stuff going on, and there's been some pretty cool events that we've been a part of since we started doing that, and bands have gotten really elaborate with their live production setups and live streaming. To answer the second part of your question, what I do for them, as I mentioned, I mostly serve as an advisor, which is pretty cool because the CTO and the developers on staff, I think there's four or five developers now working on the team, they manage most of the day-to-day operations of the platform, and we have, like, over 150 Kubernetes pods running on an EKS cluster that has roughly, I'd say, 80 cores and 76 gigabytes of RAM. That is around, I'd say about 90 or 100 different services that are running at any given time, and that's across two or three environments, just depending on what we're doing at the time.Emily: Can you tell me a little bit about the sort of technical evolution at Single? Did you start in 2016 on Kubernetes? That's, I suppose, not impossible.Kevin: It's not impossible, and it's something we had considered at the time. But really, in 2016, Kubernetes, I don't even think there wasn't even a managed offering of Kubernetes outside of Google at that time, I believe, and it was still pretty early on in development. If you wanted to run Kubernetes, you were probably going to operate it on-premise, and that just seemed like way too high of a technical burden. At the time, it was just myself and the CTO, the lead developer on the project, and also the marketing or business person who was also part of the company. And at that time, it was just deemed—it was definitely going to solve the problems that we were anticipating having, which was scaling and building that microservice application environment, but at the time, it was impractical for myself to manage Kubernetes on top of managing all the stuff that Taylor, the CTO, had to build to actually make this product a reality. So, initially, we launched on Docker Swarm in my garage, on a Dell R815, which was like a, I think was 64 cores and 256 gigs of RAM, which was, like, overkill, but it was also, I think it cost me, like, $600. I bought it off of Craigslist from somebody here in the area. But it served really well as a server for us to grow into, and it was, for the most part, other than electricity and the internet connection into my house, it was free. And that was really appealing to us because we really didn't have any money. This was truly a grassroots effort that we were just—we believed in the business and we thought we could quickly ramp up to move into the Cloud. So, that's exactly what happened though. Like, we started making money—also, this was never my full-time job. I started traveling a lot for my other developer relations role. I worked at Instana before Containous. Eventually, the whole GarageOps thing just wasn't stable for the business anymore. I remember one time, I think I was in Scotland or somewhere, and it was, like, two o'clock in the morning at home here in Nashville, and the power went out. And I have a battery backup, but the power went out long enough to where the server shut down, and then it wouldn't start back up. And I literally had to call my wife at two o'clock in the morning and walk her through getting that server back up and running. And at that point in time, we had revenue, we had money coming in and I told Taylor and Tommy that, “Hey, we're moving this to AWS when I get back.” So, at that point, we moved into AWS. We just kind of transplanted the virtual machines that were running Docker Swarm into AWS. And that worked for a while, but up until earlier this year, it became really apparent that we needed to switch the platform to something that was going to serve us over the next five years.Emily: First of all, is ‘GarageOps' a technical term?Kevin: I mean, I just made it up.Emily: I love it.Kevin: I mean, it was just one of those things where we thought it was a really good idea at the time, and it worked pretty well because, in reality, everything that we did, up into that point was all webhook-based, it was really technically simple. But anything that required a lot of bandwidth like the music itself, it went directly into AWS into their S3 buckets, and it was served from there as well. So, there wasn't really any of this huge bandwidth constraint that we had to think about, that ran in our application itself. It was just a matter of really lightweight JSON REST API calls that you could serve from a residential internet connection if you understand how to set all that stuff up. And at the time, I mean, we were using Traefik, which version 1.0 at the time, and it worked really well for getting all this set up and getting it all working, and we leveraged that heavily. And at that time in 2016, there wasn't any competitor to Traefik. You would use HAProxy or you use NGINX, and both of those required a lot of hand-holding, and a lot of configuration, and it was all manual, and it was a nightmare. And one of the cool things about Docker Swarm and Traefik is that once I had all the tooling set up, it all sort of just ran itself. And the developers, I don't know around 2017 or '18, we had hired another developer on the staff. And realistically, if they wanted to define a new service, they didn't have to talk to me at all. All they did was create a new repo in GitHub, change some configuration files in the tooling we had built—or that I had built—and then they would push their code to GitLab, and all the automation would just take over and deploy their new service, and it would become exposed on the internet, if it was that type of a service, it was an API. And it would all get routed automatically. And it was really, really nice for me because I really was just there in case of the power went out in my garage, essentially.Emily: You said that up until earlier this year, this was more or less working, and then earlier this year, you really decided it wasn't working anymore. What exactly wasn't working?Kevin: There were a few different things that led us to switching, and the main one was it seemed like that every six to twelve months, the database backend on the Swarm cluster would fall over. For whatever reason, it would just—services would stop deploying, the whole cluster would seemingly lock up. It would still work, but you just couldn't deploy or change anything, and there was really no way to fix it because of how complicated and how I want to say how complex the actual databases and the data that's been stored in it because it's mostly just stateful records of all the changes that you've made to the cluster up until that point. And there was no real easy way to fix that other than just completely tearing everything down and building it up from scratch. And with all the security certificates, and the configuration that was required for that to work, it would literally take me anywhere between five to ten hours to tear everything apart, tear everything down, set up the worker nodes again, and get everything reestablished so that we could deploy services again, and the system was accepting webhooks from Shopify, and that was just way too long. Earlier this year, actually we crossed into, I want to say in January, we had over 1400 merchants in Shopify sending us thousands of orders every day, and it just wasn't acceptable for us to have that length of downtime 15, 20, 35 minutes, that's fine but several hours just wasn't going to work.Our reputation up until that point had been fairly solid. That issue or incident hadn't happened in the past eight months, but we were noticing some performance issues in the cluster, and in some cases where we were having to redeploy services two, three times for those services to apply, and that was sort of like a leading indicator that something was going to go wrong pretty soon. And it was just a situation where it was like, “Well, if we're going to have to go offline anyways, let's just do the migration.” And it just so happened that in April, I was laid off from my job at Instana and I was fortunate enough to be able to find a new job in, like, a week, but I knew that I wanted to complete this migration, so I went ahead and decided to put off starting the new job for a month. And that gave me the means, and the opportunity and the motive to actually complete this migration. There were some other factors that played into this as well, and that included the fact that in order to get Swarm stood up in 2016, I had to build a lot of bespoke tooling for the developers and for our CI/CD system to manage these services in the staging and production environment, handling things like promotion and also handling things like understanding what versions of the services are running in the cluster at any given time, and these are all tools that are widely available today in Kubernetes. Things like K9s, or Lens, or Helm, Kustomize, Skaffold, these are all tools that I essentially had to build myself in 2016 just to support a microservice environment, and it didn't make sense for us to continue maintaining that tooling and having to deal with some of their limitations because I didn't have time to keep that tooling fresh and keep it up-to-date and competitive with what's in the landscape today, which are the tools that I just described. So, it just made so much sense to get rid of all that stuff and replace it with the tools that are available today by the community and has infinitely more resources poured into them than I was ever able to provide, or I will ever be able to provide even as a single person working on a project. The one that was sort of lingering in the background was the fact that we have here recently started doing album releases, and artists are coming to us where they will sell hundreds of thousands of albums within a very short period of time, within several hours, and we were reaching the constraints of some of our database and our backend systems to where we needed to scale those horizontally. We had, kind of, reached the vertical limits of some of them, and we knew that Kubernetes was going to give us these capabilities through the modern operator pattern, and through just the stateful tooling that has matured in Kubernetes that wasn't even there in 2016, and wasn't something that we could consider, but we can now because the ecosystem has matured so much.Emily: So, yeah, it sounds like basically you were running up against some technical problems that were on the verge of becoming major business problems: the risk of downtime, and the performance issues, and then it also sounds like some of the technical architecture was limiting the types of products, the types of services that you could have. Does that sound about right?Kevin: Yeah, that's a pretty good summary of it. I think that one of the other things that we had to consider too was that the Single ecosystem, like the Single Music line of products has become so wide and so vast—I think we're coming up on five or six different product lines now—and developers need an 8 core laptop with 32 gigs of RAM just to stand up our stack because we're starting to use things like Kafka and Postgres to do analytics on all this stuff, and we're probably going to get to the point within the next 18 months to where we can't even stand up the full Single Music stack on a local machine. We're going to have to leverage Kubernetes in the Cloud for developers to even build additional products into the platform. And that's just not possible with Swarm, but it is with Kubernetes.Emily: Tell me a little bit about what has changed since making the migration to Kubernetes. And I'm actually also curious, the timeframe when this happened is really interesting, and you talked a little bit about offering these streaming services for musicians. I mean, it's an interesting time to be in the music industry. Interesting, probably in both the exciting sense and also negative sense. But how have things changed? And how has Kubernetes made things possible that maybe wouldn't have been possible otherwise?Kevin: I think right now, we're still on the precipice, or on the leading edge of really realizing the capabilities that Kubernetes has unlocked for the business. I think right now, I mean, the main benefit of it has been just a overwhelming sense of comfort and ease that has been instilled into our business side of the company, our executive side, if you will. The marketing and—of course, the sales and marketing people don't really know that much about the technical challenges that the engineering side has, and what kind of risk we were at when we were using Swarm at the time, but the owner did. There's three co-owners of the company, it's myself, Taylor, and Tommy. And Taylor, of course, is the CTO, and he is very well have the risk because he is deeply invested in the platform and understands how everything works. Now, Tommy, on the other hand, he just cares, “Is it up?” Are customers getting what their orders—are they getting their music delivered? And so, right now it's just there's a lot more confidence in the platform behaving and operating like it should. And that's a big relief for the engineers working on the project because they don't have to worry about whether or not the latest version of their service that they deployed has actually been deployed; or if the next time they deploy, are they going to bring down the entire infrastructure because the Swarm database corrupts, or because the Swarm network doesn't communicate correctly like it missed routes. We had issues where staging versions of our application would answer East-West traffic—like East-West request traffic that is supposed to go in between the services that are running in the cluster—like staging instances would answer requests that were coming from production instances when they weren't supposed to. And it's really hard to troubleshoot those problems, and it's really hard to resolve those. And so right now it's just a matter of stability. The other thing that is enabling us to do is handle the often difficult task of managing database migrations, as well as topic migrations, and, really, one-off type jobs that would happen every once in a while just depending on new products being introduced or new functionality to existing products being introduced. And these would require things like migrations in the data schema. And this used to have to be baked into the application itself, and this was really sometimes kind of tricky to manage when you start talking about applications that have multiple replicas, but with Kubernetes, you can do things like tasks, and jobs, and things that are more suited towards these one-off type activities that you don't have to worry about a bunch of services running into each other and stepping on each other's feet anymore. So, this, again, just gives a lot of comfort and peace of mind to developers who have to work on this stuff. And it also gives me peace of mind because I know ultimately, that this stuff is just going to work as long as they follow the best practices of deploying a Kubernetes manifest and Kubernetes objects, and so I don't have to worry about them breaking things per se, in a way in which they aren't able to troubleshoot, diagnose, and ultimately fix themselves. So, it just creates less maintenance overhead for me because as I mentioned at the beginning of the call, I don't get paid by Single Music, unless of course, they go public or they sell. But I'm not actually a full-time employee. I'm paid by Containous, that's my full-time job, so anything that allows me to have that security and have less maintenance work on my weekends is hugely beneficial to my well being and my peace of mind, as well. Now, the other part of the question you had, as well, is in terms of how are we transitioning, and how are we handling the ever-changing landscape of the business? I think one of the things that Kubernetes lets us do really well is pivot and introduce these new ideas and these new concepts, and these new services to the world. We get to release new features and products all the time because we're not spending a ton of time having to figure out, “Well, how do I spin up a new VM, and how do I configure the load balancer to work, and how do I configure a new schema in the database?” The stuff, it's all there for us already to use, and that's the beauty of the whole cloud-native ecosystem is that all these problems have been solved and packaged in a nice little bundle for us to just scoop up, and that enables our business to innovate and move fast. I mean, we try not to break things, but we do. But for the most part, we are just empowered to deliver value to our customers. And for instance the whole live-streaming thing, we launched that over the course of, maybe, a week. It took us a week to build that product and build that capability, and of course, we've had to invest more time into it as time has gone on because not only do our customers see value in it, we see value in it, and we see value in investing additional engineering and business marketing hours into selling that product. And so again, it's just a matter of what Kubernetes, and the cloud-native ecosystem in general—and this includes Swarm to some extent because we could not have gotten to where we did without Swarm in the beginning, and I want to give it its proper dues because, for the most part, it worked really well, and it served our needs, but it got to the point where we kind of outgrew it, and we wanted to offload the managing of our orchestrator to somebody else. We didn't want to have to manage it anymore. And Kubernetes gave us that.Emily: It sounds like, particularly when we're talking about the live streaming product, that you were able to build something really quickly that not only helped Single's business but then obviously also helped a lot of musicians, I'm assuming at least. So, this was a way to not just help your own business, but also help your customers successfully pivot in a time of fairly large upheaval for their industry.Kevin: Right. And I think one of the cool things that we experienced through the pandemic is that we saw a fairly sharp rise in sales in general in music, and I think it kind of speaks to the human nature. And what I mean by that, is that music is something that comforts people and gives people hope, and also it's an outlet. It's a way for people to, I don't want to say, disconnect because that's not really what I mean, but it gives them a means to experience something outside of themselves. And so it wasn't really that big of a surprise for us to see our numbers increase. And, I mean, the only thing that kind of did surprise—I mean, it's not a surprise now in retrospect, but one of the things that we observed as well, as soon as all the George Floyd protests started happening across the United States, the numbers conversely dropped, and at that point, we realized that there was something more important going on in the world. And we expected that and we were… it was just an interesting observation for us. And right now, I mean, we're still seeing growth, we're still seeing more artists and more bands coming online, trying to find new ways to innovate and to try to sell their music and their artwork, and we love being a part of that, so we're super stoked about it.Emily: That actually might be a good spot for us to wrap up, but I always like to give guests the opportunity to just say anything that they feel like has gone unsaid.Kevin: Well, I mean, one of the things I do want to talk about a little bit is some of the stuff that we're doing at Containous as well. As a developer advocate, I think one of the things that I really enjoy in that aspect is that this gives me an opportunity to work closely with engineers in a way in which—a lot of times, they don't have an opportunity to experience the marketing and the business side of the product, and the fact that I can interact with my community and I can work with our open-source contributors and help the engineers realize the value of that is incredible. A few things that I've done at Containous since I've joined is we are working really hard at improving our documentation and improving the way in which developers and engineers consume the Traefik product. We also are working on a service mesh, which is a really cool way for services to talk to each other. But one of the things that we've recently launched two that I want to touch on is our plugin system, which is a fairly highly requested feature in Traefik. And we launched it with Pilot, which is a new product that allows the users of Traefik to install these plugins that manipulate the request before it gets sent to the service. And that means our end-users are now empowered to create their own middleware, in essence. They're able to create their own plugins. And this allows them really unlimited flexibility in how they use the Traefik load balancer and proxy. The other thing that we're working on, too, is improving support for Kubernetes. One of the surprises that I had when migrating from Traefik version 1 to Traefik 2, when we did the Single migration to Kubernetes, was once I figured out the version two configuration, it was really easy to make that migration, but it was difficult at first to make the translation between the version 1 schema of the configuration into the version 2. So, what we're working on and what I'm working on right now with our technical writer, is a series of how-tos and guides for users of Kubernetes to be empowered in the same way that we are at Single Music to quickly and easily manage and deploy their microservices across their cluster. With that, though, I mean, I do want to talk one more thing, on maybe some misconceptions about cloud-native and Kubernetes.Emily: Oh, yes, go ahead.Kevin: Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things that I hear a lot of is that Kubernetes is really hard; it's complex. And at first, it can seem that way; I don't want to dispute that, and I don't want to dismiss or minify people's experience. But once those basic concepts are out of the way, I think Kubernetes is probably one of the easiest platforms I've ever used in terms of managing the deployment and the lifecycle of applications and web services. And I think probably the biggest challenge is for organizations and for engineers who are trying to adopt Kubernetes is that in some ways, perhaps they're trying to make Kubernetes work for applications and services that weren't designed from the ground up to work in a cloud-native ecosystem. And that was one of the things that we had the advantage of in 2016 was even though we were using Docker Swarm, we still followed something which was called the ‘Twelve-Factor App' principle. And those principles really just laid us out for a course of smooth uninterrupted, turbulence-free flying. And it's been really an amazing journey because of how simple and easy that transition from Docker Swarm into Kubernetes was, but if we had built things the old way, using maybe Packer and AMIs and not really following the microservice route, and hard coding a bunch of database URLs and keys and all kinds of things throughout our application, it would have been a nightmare. So, I want to say to anybody who is looking at adopting Kubernetes, and if it looks extremely daunting and technically challenging, it may be worth stepping back and looking at what you're trying to do with Kubernetes and what you're trying to put into it, and if there needs to be some reconciliation at what you're trying to do with it before you actually go forth and use something like Kubernetes, or containers, or this whole ecosystem for that matter.Emily: Let me go ahead and ask you my last question that I ask everybody which is, do you have a software engineering tool that you cannot live without, that you cannot do your job without? If so, what is it?Kevin: Yeah, I mean, Google's probably… [laughs] seriously, it's one of my most widely used tools as a developer, or as a software engineer, but in terms of, like, it really depends on the context of what I'm working in. If I'm working on Single Music, I would have to say the most widely used tool that I use for that is Datadog Because we have all of our telemetry going to there. And Datadog gives me a very fast and rapid understanding of the entire environment because we have metrics, we have traces, and we have logs all being shipped there. And that helps us really deep dive and understand when there's any type of performance regression, or incident happening in our cluster in real-time.As far as what my critical tooling at Containous is, because I work in Marketing and because I work more in an educational-type atmosphere there, one of the tools that I have started to lean on heavily is something most people probably haven't heard of, and this is for managing the open-source community. It's something called Bitergia. And it's an analytics platform, but it helps me understand the health of the open-source community, and it helps me inform the engineering team of the activity around multiple projects, and who's contributing, and how long is it taking for issues and pull requests to be closed and merged? What's our ratio of pull requests and issues being closed for certain reasons. And these are all interesting business-y analytics that is important for our entire engineering organization to understand because we are an open-source company, and we rely heavily on our community for understanding the health of our business.Emily: And speaking of, how can listeners connect with you?Kevin: There's a couple different ways. One is through just plain old email. And that is kevin.crawley@containous—that's C-O-N-T-A-I-N-O—dot U-S. And also through Twitter as well. And my handle is @notsureifkevin. It's kind of like the Futurama, “Not sure if serious.” I mean, those are the two ways.Emily: All right. Well, thank you so much. This was very, very interesting.Kevin: Well, it was my pleasure. Thank you for taking the time to chat with me, and I look forward to listening to the podcast.Emily: Thanks for listening. I hope you've learned just a little bit more about The Business of Cloud Native. If you'd like to connect with me or learn more about my positioning services, look me up on LinkedIn: I'm Emily Omier, that's O-M-I-E-R, or visit my website which is emilyomier.com. Thank you, and until next time.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

The conversation covers:  An overview of Ravi's role as an evangelist — an often misunderstood, but important technology enabler.  Balancing organizational versus individual needs when making decisions. Some of the core motivations that are driving cloud native migrations today.  Why Ravi believes it in empowering engineers to make business decisions.  Some of the top misconceptions about cloud native. Ravi also provides his own definition of cloud native. How cloud native architectures are forcing developers to “shift left.” Links https://harness.io/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/ravilach Harness community: https://community.harness.io/ Harness Slack: https://harnesscommunity.slack.com/ TranscriptEmily: Hi everyone. I'm Emily Omier, your host, and my day job is helping companies position themselves in the cloud-native ecosystem so that their product's value is obvious to end-users. I started this podcast because organizations embark on the cloud naive journey for business reasons, but in general, the industry doesn't talk about them. Instead, we talk a lot about technical reasons. I'm hoping that with this podcast, we focus more on the business goals and business motivations that lead organizations to adopt cloud-native and Kubernetes. I hope you'll join me.Welcome to The Business of Cloud Native, I am your host Emily Omier. And today I'm chatting with Ravi Lachhman. Ravi, I want to always start out with, first of all, saying thank you—Ravi: Sure, excited to be here.Emily: —and second of all, I like to have you introduce yourself, in your own words. What do you do? Where do you work?Ravi: Yes, sure. I'm an evangelist for Harness. So, what an evangelist does, I focus on the ecosystem, and I always like the joke, I marry people with software because when people think of evangelists, they think of a televangelist. Or at least that's what I told my mother and she believes me still. I focus on the ecosystem Harness plays in. And so, Harness is a continuous delivery as a service company. So, what that means, all of the confidence-building steps that you need to get software into production, such as approvals, test orchestration, Harness, how to do that with lots of convention, and as a service.Emily: So, when you start your day, walk me through what you're actually doing on a typical day?Ravi: a typical day—dude, I wish there was a typical day because we wear so many hats as a start-up here, but kind of a typical day for me and a typical day for my team, I ended up reading a lot. I probably read about two hours a day, at least during the business day. Now, for some people that might not be a lot, but for me, that's a lot. So, I'll usually catch up with a lot of technology news and news in general. They kind of see how certain things are playing out. So, a big fan of The New Stack big fan of InfoQ. I also like reading Hacker News for more emotional reading. The big orange angry site, I call Hacker News. And then really just interacting with the community and teams at large. So, I'm the person I used to make fun of, you know, quote-unquote, “thought leader.” I used to not understand what they do, then I became one that was like, “Oh, boy.” [laughs]. And so just providing guidance for some of our field teams, some of the marketing teams around the cloud-native ecosystem, what I'm seeing, what I'm hearing, my opinion on it. And that's pretty much it. And I get to do fun stuff like this, talking on podcasts, always excited to talk to folks and talk to the public. And then kind of just a mix of, say, making some sort of demos, or writing scaffolding code, just exploring new technologies. I'm pretty fortunate in my day to day activities.Emily: And tell me a little bit more about marrying people with software. Are you the matchmaker? Are you the priest, what role?Ravi: I can play all parts of the marrying lifecycle. Sometimes I'm the groom, sometimes I'm the priest. But I'm really helping folks make technical decisions. So, it's go a joke because I get the opportunity to take a look at a wide swath of technology. And so just helping folks make technical decisions. Oh, is this new technology hot? Does this technology make sense? Does this project fatality? What do you think? I just play, kind of, masters of ceremony on folks who are making technology decisions.Emily: What are some common decisions that you help people with, and common questions that they have?Ravi: Lot of times it comes around common questions about technology. It's always finding rationale. Why are you leveraging a certain piece of technology? The ‘why' question is always important. Let's say that you're a forward-thinking engineer or a forward-thinking technology leader. They also read a lot, and so if they come across, let's say a new hot technology, or if they're on Twitter, seeing, yeah, this particular project's getting a lot of retweets, or they go in GitHub and see oh, this project has little stars, or forks. What does that mean? So, part of my role when talking to people is actually to kind of help slow that roll down, saying, “Hey, what's the business rationale behind you making a change? Why do you actually want to go about leveraging a certain, let's say, technology?” I'm just taking more of a generic approach, saying, “Hey, what's the shiny penny today might not be the shiny penny tomorrow.” And also just providing some sort of guidance like, “Hey, let's take a look at project vitality. Let's take a look at some other metrics that projects have, like defect close ratio—you know, how often it's updates happening, what's your security posture?” And so just walking through a more, I would say the non-fun tasks or non-functional tasks, and also looking about how to operationalize something like, “Hey, given you want to make sure you're maintaining innovation, and making sure that you're maintaining business controls, what are some best operational practices?” You know, want to go for gold, or don't boil the ocean, it's helping people make decisive decisions.Emily: What do you see as sort of the common threads that connect to the conversations that you have?Ravi: Yeah, so I think a lot of the common threads are usually like people say, “Oh, we have to have it. We're going to fall behind if you don't use XYZ technology.” And when you really start getting to talking to them, it's like, let's try to line up some sort of technical debt or business problem that you have, and how about are you going to solve these particular technical challenges? It's something that, of the space I play into, which is ironic, it's the double-edged sword, I call it ‘chasing conference tech.' So, sometimes people see a really hot project, if my team implements this, I can go speak at a conference about a certain piece of technology. And it's like, eh, is that a really rational reason? Maybe. It kind of goes into taking the conversation slightly somewhere else. One of the biggest challenges I think, let's say if you're kind of climbing the engineering ranks—and this is something that I had to do as I went from a junior to a staff to a principal engineer in my roles—with that it's always having some sort of portfolio. So, if you speak at a conference, you have a portfolio, people can Google your name, funny pictures of you are not the only things that come up, but some sort of technical knowledge, and sometimes that's what people are chasing. So, it's really trying to have to balance that emotional decision with what's best for the firm, what's best for you, and just what's best for the team.Emily: That's actually a really interesting question is sometimes what's best for the individual engineer is not what's best for the organization. And when I say individual engineer, maybe it's not one individual, but five, or the team. How do you sort of help piece together and help people understand here's the business reason, that's organization-wide, but here's my personal motivation, and how do I reconcile these, and is there a way even to get both?Ravi: There actually is a way to get both. I call it the 75/25 percent rule. And let's take all the experience away from the engineers, to start with a blank slate. It has to do with the organization. An organization needs to set up engineers to be successful in being innovative. And so if we take the timeline or the scale all the way back to hiring, so when I like to hire folks, I always like to look at—my ratio is a little bit different than 75/25. I'm more of a 50/50. You bring 50 percent of the skills, and you'll learn 50 percent of the skills, versus more conservative organizations would say, “You know what? You have 75 percent of the skills, if you can learn 25 percent of the skills, this job would be interesting to you.” Versus if you have to learn 80 percent, it's going to be frustrating for the individual. And so having that kind of leeway to make decisions, and also knowing that technical change can take a lot of time, I think, as an engineer, as an engineer—as talking software engineering professions as a whole, how do you build your value? So, your value is usually calculated in two parts. It's calculated in your business domain experience and your technical skills. And so when you go project to project—and this is what might be more of, hey, if you're facing too big of a climb, you'll usually change roles. Nobody is in their position for a decade. Gone are the days that you're a lifetime engineer on one project or one product. It's kind of a given that you'll change around that because you're building your repertoire in two places: you're building domain experience, and you're building technical experience. And so knowing when to pick your battles, as cliche as that sounds, oh, you know what, this particular technology, this shiny penny came out. I seen a lot of it when Kubernetes came out, like, “Oh, we have to have it.” But—or even a lot of the cloud-native and container-based and all the ‘et cetera accessories' as I call it, as those projects get steam surrounding it. It's, “We have to have it.” It's like, eh. It's good for resume building, but there's your things to do on your own also to learn it. I think we live in a day of open source. And so as an engineer, if I want to learn a new skill, I don't necessarily have to wait for my organization to implement it. I could go and play, something like Katacoda, I can go do things on my own, I can learn and then say, “You know what, this is a good fit. I can make a bigger play to help implement it in the organization than just me wanting to learn it.” Because a lot of the learning is free these days, which I think it's amazing. I know that was a long-winded answer. But I think you can kind of quench the thirst of knowledge with playing it on your own, and that if it makes sense, you can make a much better case to the business or to technology leadership to make change.Emily: And what do you think the core business motivations are for most of the organizations that you end up talking to?Ravi: Yeah, [unintelligible] core motivation to leveraging cloud-native technology, it really depends on organization to organization. I'm pretty fortunate that I get to span, I think, a wide swath of organization—so from startups to pretty established enterprises—I kind of talk about the pretty established enterprises. A lot of the business justification, it might not be a technical justification, but there's a pseudo technical business reason, a lot of times, though, I when I talk to folks, they're big concern is portability. And so, like, hey, if you take a look at the dollar and cents rationale behind certain things, the big play there is portability. So, if you're leveraging—we can get into the definition of what cloud-native resources are, but a big draw to that is being portable—and so, hopefully, you're not tied down to a single provider, or single purveyor, and you have the ability to move. Now, that also ties into agility. Supposedly, if you're able to use ubiquitous hardware or semi-ubiquitous software, you were able to move a little bit faster. But again, what I usually see is folk's main concern is portability. And then also with that is [unintelligible] up against scale. And so as—looking at ways of reducing resources, if you could use generics, you're able to shop around a little bit better, either internally or externally, and help provide scale for a softer or lesser cost.Emily: And how frequently do you think the engineers that you talked to are aware of those core business motivations?Ravi: Hmm, it really depends on—I'm always giving you the ‘depends' answer because talking to a wide swath of folks—where I see there's more emotion involved in a good way if there's closer alignment to the business—which is something hard to do. I think it is slowly eroding and chipping away. I've definitely seen this during my career. It's the old stodgy business first technology argument, right. Like, modern teams, they're very well [unintelligible] together. So, it's not a us versus them or cat versus dog argument, “Oh, why do these engineers want to take their sweet time?” versus, “Why does the business want us to act so fast?” So, having the engineers empowered to make decisions, and have them looked at instead of being a cost center, as the center of innovation is fairly key. And so having that type of rationale, like, hey, allowing the engineers to give input into feature development, even requirement development is something I've seen changed throughout my career. It used to be a very special thing to do requirements building, versus most of the projects that I've worked on now—as an engineer, we're very, very well attuned to the requirements with the business.Emily: Do you think there's anything that gets lost in translation?Ravi: Oh, absolutely. As people, we're emotional. And so if we're all sum total of our experiences—so let's say if someone asked, Emily, you and I a question, we would probably have four different answers for that person, just because maybe we have differences in opinions, differences of sum totals of experience. And I might say, “Hey, try this or this,” and then you might say, “Try that or that.” So, it really depends. Being lost in translation is always—it's been a fundamental problem in requirements gathering and it's continued to be a fundamental problem. I think just taking that question a step further, is how you go about combating that? I think having very shortened feedback cycles are very important. So, if you have to make any sort of adjustments, gone are the days I think when I started my career, waterfall was becoming unpopular, but the first project or two I was on was very waterfall-ish just because of the size of the project we worked on, we had to agree on lots of things; we were building something for six months. Versus, if you look at today, modern development methodologies like Agile, or Scaled Agile, a lot of the feedback happens pretty regularly, which can be exhausting, but decisions are made all the time.Emily: Do you think in addition to mistranslations, do you think there are any misconceptions? And I'm talking about sort of on both sides of this equation, you know, business leaders or business motivations, and then also technologists, and let's refocus back to talk about cloud-native in particular. What sort of misconceptions do you think are sort of floating out there about cloud-native and what it means?Ravi: Yeah, so what cloud-native means—it means something different to everybody. So, you listen to your podcasts for a couple episodes, if you asked any one of the guests the question, we all would give you a different answer. So, in my definition of cloud-native—and then I'll get back to what some of the misconceptions are—I have a very basic definition: cloud-native means two pillars. It means your architecture, or your platform needs to be ephemeral, and it needs to be [indibited]. So, it needs to be able to be short-lived, and be consistent, which are two things that are at odds with each other. But if you kind of talk to folks that, hey, they might be a little more slighted towards the business, they have this idea that cloud-native will solve all your problems. So, it reminds me a lot of big data back in the day. “Oh, if you have a Hadoop cluster, it will solve all of our logistics and shipping problems.” No. That's the technology. If you have Kubernetes, it will solve all of our problems. No. That's the technology. It's just a conduit of helping you make changes. And so just making sure that understand that hey, cloud-native doesn't mean that you get the checkmark that, “Oh, you know what? We're stable. We're robust. We can scale by using all cloud-native technologies,” because cloud-native technologies are actually quite complicated. If you're introducing a lot of complexity to your architecture, does it make sense? Does that make sense? Does it give you the value you're looking for? Because at the end of the day, and this is kind of something, the older I get, the more I believe it, is that your customers don't care how you did something; they care what the result is. So, if your web application's up, they don't care if you're running a simple LAMP stack, they just care that the application is up, versus using the latest Kubernetes stack, but using some sort of cloud-native NoSQL database, and we're using [Istio], and we're using, pick your flavor du jour of cloud-native technology, your end customer actually doesn't care how you did it. They care what happened.Emily: We can talk about misconceptions that other people have, but is there anything that continues to surprise you?Ravi: Yeah, I think the biggest misconception is that there's very limited choice. And so I'll play devil's advocate, I think the CNCF, the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, there's lots of projects, I've seen the CNCF, they have something called the CNCF Landscape, and I seen it grow from 200 cards, it was 1200 cards at KubeCon, I guess, end of last year in San Diego, and it's hovering around 1500 cards. So, these cards means there's projects or vendors that play in this space. Having that much choice—this is usually surprising to people because they—if you're thinking of cloud-native, it's like saying Kleenex today, and you think of Kubernetes or other auxiliary product or project that surrounds that. And a lot of misconception would be it's helping solve for complexity. It's the quintessential computer science argument. All you do in computer science is move complexity around like an abacus. We move it left to right. We're just shifting it around, and so by leveraging certain technologies there's a lot of complication, a lot of burden that's brought in. For example, if you want to leverage, let's say, a service Istio, Istio will not solve all your networking problems. In fact, it's going to introduce a whole set of problems. And I could talk about my biggest outage, and one of the things I see with cloud-native is a lot of skills are getting shifted left because you're codifying areas that were not codified before. But that's something I would love to talk about.Emily: Tell me about your biggest outage that sounds interesting.Ravi: Yeah, I didn't know how it would manifest itself. It's ways, I think, until, like, years later that I didn't have the aha moment. I used to think it was me, it probably still is me, but—so the year was 2013, and I was working for a client, and we were—it's actually a large news site—and so we were in the midst of modernizing their application, or their streaming application. And so I was one of the first applications to actually go to AWS. And so my background is in Java, so I have a Java software engineer or J2ED or JEE engineer, and having to start working more in infrastructure was kind of a new thing, so I was very fortunate up until 2013-ish up until this point that I didn't really touch the infrastructure. I was immune to that. And now being more, kind of becoming a more senior engineer was in charge of the infrastructure for the application—which is kind of odd—but what ended up happening that—this is going to be kind of funny—since I was one of the first teams to go to AWS, the networking team wouldn't touch the configurations. So, when we were testing things, and [unintelligible] environments, we had our VPC CIDR rules—so the traffic rules—wide open. And then as we were going into production, there were rules that we had to limit traffic due to a CIDR so up until 2013, I thought a C-I-D-R like a CIDR was something you drink. I was like, “What? Like apple cider?” So, this shows you how much I know. So, basically, I had to configure the VPC or Virtual Private Cloud networking rules. Finally, when we deployed the application, unknowing to myself, CIDR calculation is a significant digit calculation. So, the larger the number you divide by, the more IPs you let in. And so instead of dividing by 16, I divided by 8. I was like, “Oh, you'll have a bigger number if you divide by a smaller number.” I end up cutting off half the traffic of the internet when we deployed to production. So, that was a very not smooth way of doing something. But how did this manifest itself? So, the experts, who would have been the networking team, refused to look at my configuration because it was a public cloud. “Nope, you don't have a slot in our data center, we look at it.” And poor me, as a JEE or J2EE engineer, I had very little experience networking. Now, if you fast forward to what this means today, a lot of the cloud-native stack, are again, slicing and dicing these CNCF cards, a lot of this, you're exposing different, let's say verticals or dimensions to engineers that they haven't really seen before. A lot of its networking related a lot of it can be storage related. And so, as a software engineer, these are verticals that I'd never had to deal with before. Now, it's kind of ironic that in 2020, hey, yes, you will be dealing with certain configurations because, hey, it's code. So, it's shifting the burden left towards the developer that, “Oh, you know what, you know networking—” or, “You do need to know your app, so here's some Istio rules that you need to include in your packaging of your application.” Which folks might scratch your head. So, yeah, again, it's like shifting complexity away from folks that have traditional expertise towards the developer. Now, times are changing. I seen a lot of this in years gone by, “Oh, no. These are pieces of code. We don't want to touch it.” Being more traditional or legacy operations team, versus today, everybody—it's kind of the merging of the two worlds. The going joke is all developers are becoming infrastructure engineers, and infrastructure engineers are becoming software engineers. So, it's the perfect blend of two worlds coming together.Emily: That's interesting. And I now think I understand what you mean by skills shifting left. Developers have to know more, and more, and more. But I'm also curious, there's also people who talk about how Kubernetes, one of its failures is that it forces this shift left of skills and that the ideal world is that developers don't need to interact with it at all. That's just a platform team. What do you think about that?Ravi: These are awesome questions. These are things I'm very passionate about. I definitely seen the evolution. So, I've been pretty fortunate that I was jumping on the application infrastructure shift around 2014, 2015, so right when Kubernetes was coming of age. So, most of my background was in distributed systems. So, I'm making very large distributed Java applications. And so when Kubernetes came out, the teams that I worked on, the applications that were deployed to Kubernetes were actually owned by the app dev team. The infrastructure team wouldn't even touch the Kubernetes cluster. It was like, “Oh, this is a development tool. This is not a platform tool.” The platform teams that I were interacting with 2015, 2016, as Kubernetes became more popular than ever, they were the legacy—well, hate to say legacy because it's kind of my background too—they were the remaining middleware engineers. We maintained a web server cluster, we maintained the message broker cluster, we maintained XYZ distributed Java infrastructure cluster. And so when looking at a tool like Kubernetes, or even there were different platforming services, so the paths I've leveraged early, or mid-2010s was Red Hat OpenShift, before and after the Kubernetes migration inside of OpenShift. And so looking at a different—how teams are set up, it used to be, “Oh, this is an app dev item. This is what houses your application.” Versus today, because the workloads are so critical that are going on to say platforms such as Kubernetes, it was that you really need that system engineering bubble of expertise. You really need those platform engineers to understand how to best scale, how to best purvey, and maintain a platform like Kubernetes. Also, one of the odd things are—going back to your point, Emily, like, hey, why things were tossed over either to the development team or going back to a developing software engineer myself, do we care what the end system is?So, it used to be, I'll talk about Java-land here for a minute, give you kind of long-winded answer of back in Java land, we really used to care about the target system, not necessarily for an application that have one node, but if we had to develop a clustered application. So, we have more than one node talking to each other, or a stateful application, we really had start developing to a specific target system. Okay, I know how JBoss WildFly clusters or I know how IBM WebSphere or WebLogic clusters. And so when we're designing our applications, we had to make sure that we play well into those clustering mechanisms. With Kubernetes, since it's generic, you don't necessarily have to play into those clustering mechanisms because there's a basic understanding. But that's been the biggest Achilles heel in Kubernetes. It wasn't designed for those type of workloads, stateful workloads that don't like dying very often. That's kind of been the push or pull. It's just a tool, there's a lot of generic, so you can assume that the target platform will handle a certain way. And you're slowly start backing off the case that you're building to a specific target platform. But as Kubernetes has evolved, especially with the operator framework, you actually are starting to build to Kubernetes in 2018, 2019, 2020.Emily: It actually brought up a question for me that, at risk of sounding naive myself, I feel like I never meet anybody who introduces themselves as a platform engineer. I meet all these developers, everyone's a developer evangelist, for example, or their background is as a developer, I feel like maybe once or twice, someone has introduced themselves as, “I'm a platform engineer,” or, “I'm an operations specialist.” I mean, is that just me? Is that a real thing?Ravi: They're very real jobs. I think… it's like saying DevOps engineer, it means something else to who you talk to you. So, I'll harp on, like ‘platform engineer.' so kind of like, the evolution of the platform engineer, if you would have talked to me in 2013, 2014, “Hey, I'm a platform engineer,” I would think that you're a software engineer focused on platform tools. Like, “Hey, I focus on authentication, authorization.” You're building—let's say we had a dozen people on this call and we're working for Acme Incorporated, there's modules that transcend every one of our teams. Let's say logging, or let's say login, or let's say, some sort of look and feel. So, the platform engineer or the platform engineering development focused platform engineering team would make common reusable modules throughout. Now, with the great rise of platforms as a service, like PCF, and OpenShift, and DCOS, they became kind of like a shift. The middleware engineers that were maintaining the message broker clusters, maintaining your web application server clusters, they're kind of shifting towards one of those platforms. Even today, Kubernetes, pick your provider du jour of Kubernetes. And so those are where the platform engineers are today. “Hey, I'm a platform engineer. I focus on OpenShift and Kubernetes.” Usually, they're very vertically focused on one or more specific platforms. And operations folks can ride very big gamut. Usually, if you put, “operations” in quotes, usually they're systems or infrastructure engineers that are very focused on the infrastructure where the platform's run.Emily: I'm obviously a words person, and it just seems like there's this vocabulary issue where everybody knows what a developer is, and so it's easy to say, “Oh, I'm a developer.” But then everything else that's related to engineering, there's not quite as much specificity, precisely because you said everybody has a slightly different understanding. It's kind of interesting.Ravi: Yeah, it's like, I think as a engineer, we're not one for titles. So, I think a engineer is a engineer. I think if you asked most engineers, it's like, “Yeah, I'm a engineer.” It's so funny, a good example of that is Tim Berners-Lee, the person who created WWW, the World Wide Web. If you looked at his LinkedIn, he just says he's a web developer. And he invented WWW. So, usually engineering-level folks, you're not—at least for myself—is not one for title.Emily: The example that you gave regarding the biggest outage of your career was basically a skills problem. Do you think that there's still a skills or knowledge issue in the cloud-native world?Ravi: Oh, absolutely. We work for incentivization. You know, my mortgage is with PNC, and they require a payment every month, unfortunately. So, I do work for an employer. Incentivization is key. So, kind of resume chasing, conference chasing there's been some of that in the cloud-native world, but what ends up happening more often than not is that we're continuously shifting left. A talk I like to give is called, “The Engineering Burden is on the Rise.” And taking a look at what, let's say, a software engineer was required to do in 2010 versus what a software engineer is required to do today in 2020. And there's a lot more burden in infrastructure that, as a software engineer you didn't have to deal with. Now, this has to do with two things, or actually one particular movement. There's a movie company, or a video company in Los Gatos, California, and there's a book company in South Lake Union in Seattle. And so these two particular companies given the rise of what's called a full lifecycle developer. Basically, if you run it, or if you operate—you operate what you run, or if you write it, you run it. So, that means that if you write a piece of code, you're in charge of the operations. You have support, you're in charge of the SLAs, SLOs, SLIs. You're ultimately responsible if a customer has a problem. And can you imagine the number of people, the amount of skill set that requires? There's this concept of a T-shaped skill that you have to have experience in so many different platforms, that it becomes a very big burden. As an engineer, I don't envy anybody entering a team that's leveraging a lot of cloud-native technology because most likely a lot of that onus will fall on the software engineer to create the deployable, to create how you build it, to fly [unintelligible] in your CI stack, write the configuration that builds it, write the configuration deploys it, write the networking rules, write how you test it, write the login interceptors. So, there's a lot going on.Emily: Is there anything else that you want to add about your experience with cloud-native that I haven't really thought to ask, yet?Ravi: It's not all doom and gloom. I'm very positive on cloud-native technologies. I think it's a great equalizer. You're kind of going back—this might be a more intrinsic, like a 30-second answer here. If you taking back that I wanted to learn certain skills in 2010, I basically had to be working for a firm. So, 2010, I was working for IBM. So, there's certain distributed Java problems I wanted to solve. I basically had to be working for a firm because the software licensing costs were so expensive, and that technology wasn't very democratized. Looking at cloud-native technology today, there's a big, big push for open source, which open source is R&D methodology. That's what open source is, it helps alleviate some sort of acquisition—but not necessarily adoption—problems. And you can learn a lot. Hey, you could pick up any project and just try to learn, try to run it. Pick up these particular distributed system skills that were very guarded, I would say, a decade ago, it's being opened up to the masses. And so there's a lot to drink from, but you can drink as much as you want from the CNCF or the cloud-native garden hose.Emily: Do you have a software engineering tool that you cannot live without?Ravi: Recently, because I deal in a lot of YAML, I need a YAML linter. So, YAML is a space-separated language. As a human, I can't tell you what spaces are. Like, you know, if you have three spaces, and the next line you have four spaces. So, I use a YAML linter. It puts periods for me, so I can count them because it's been multiple times that my demo is not syntactically correct because I missed a space and I can't see it on my screen.Emily: And how can listeners connect with you?Ravi: Oh, yeah. You can hit me up on Twitter @ravilach, R-A-V-I-L-A-C-H. Or come visit us at Harness at www.harness.io. I run the Harness community, so community.harness.io. We have a Slack channel and a Discourse, and always excited to interact with people.Emily: Thanks for listening. I hope you've learned just a little bit more about the business of cloud-native. If you'd like to connect with me or learn more about my positioning services, look me up on LinkedIn: I'm Emily Omier, that's O-M-I-E-R, or visit my website which is emilyomier.com. Thank you, and until next time.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

Some of the highlights include:  Why Vodafone moved to a cloud native architecture. As Tom explains, the company was struggling to manage operations across more than 20 markets. They also needed to improve the customer experience, and foster customer loyalty.  Why their business and engineering teams were both in favor of cloud native. The benefits of deploying daily operational activities around a single cloud native platform.   An overview of where Vodavone currently is in their overall cloud native journey. Tom also explains how cloud native conversations have changed inside of the company throughout their journey, as various business units have caught on to the benefits of the cloud. Vodafaone's transition from outsourcing roughly 97 percent of their operations, to bringing 95 percent in house. Tom explains how this has improved efficiency and expedited time to market. The challenge that Vodafone faced in trying to apply legacy network security solutions to distributed and dynamic systems.  Tom's thoughts on why Vodafone's cloud native transition and modernization efforts have been crucial to their success over the last five years.  Links: Vodafone Group: https://www.vodafone.com/ Connect with Tom on LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/tom-kivlin-5b469321 The Business of Cloud Native: http://thebusinessofcloudnative.com  Tom's Twitter: https://twitter.com/tomkivlin CNCF GitHub: https://github.com/cncf CNCF Slack: https://slack.cncf.io/ Kubernetes Slack: http://slack.kubernetes.io/ TranscriptAnnouncer: Welcome to The Business of Cloud Native podcast, where we explore how end users talk and think about the transition to Kubernetes and cloud-native architectures.Emily: Welcome to The Business of Cloud Native. I'm Emily Omier, your host, and today I am chatting with Tom Kivlin. Tom, thank you so much for joining us.Tom: You're welcome. No problem.Emily: Let's just start out with having you introduce yourself. What do you do? Where do you work, and what do you actually do during your workday?Tom: Sure. So, I'm a principal cloud orchestration architect at Vodafone Group. I work in the UK. And my day job consists of providing guidance and strategy and architectural blueprints for cloud-native platforms within Vodafone. So, that's around providing guidance to the software domains that are looking to adopt cloud-native architectures and methodologies and also to the more traditional infrastructure domains to try and help them provide their services in a more cloud-native manner to those modern teams.Emily: And what does that mean when you go into the office—or your home office, go into your dining room where your laptop is, I don't know—what do you actually do? What does an average day look like?Tom: It can vary. So, depending on the activity at the time, it could be anything from preparing a global policy that needs to go through the senior technology leadership team, to preparing some extremely detailed requirements for selection process or creating some infrastructures code, or the code artifacts for the deployment of cloud-native services, whether that's in our lab, or to help our services teams within Vodafone.Emily: Tell me a little bit more about what pain made Vodafone think about moving to cloud-native and Kubernetes.Tom: Primarily, it was the challenge of having 25 different markets, or 23 now. We launched a digital strategy to—so back in 2015, we launched a five-year strategy, which we wanted to massively increase the rollout of 4G, of converged network offerings, of improved customer experience. And we found that the traditional way of managing software was not supportive enough in our ambition. And so, having to choose cloud-native technologies, things like Kubernetes, but also the modern operating models, that was the driver: it was to improve our customer experience, and our customer-affecting KPIs, really.Emily: And when you say it wasn't supportive enough, what do you mean specifically?Tom: So, things like time to market, for example. So, if we wanted to offer a new service—so one of the things that 4G started the drive towards was a more granulated service offering to consumers, and so lots of different things could be offered. And if it took you six months to think of an idea and then have to go through—or even longer than six months to get to the point where that could be offered to customers, even if it was just a very minor feature within an existing product, then that's not going to engender customer loyalty. And so, things like the cloud-native mindset, where there's a much closer link between the engineering teams and the customer, there are much shorter periods of time between ideas coming in from the customers and then being delivered back to the customers as product features, that sort of time to market was really enabled by cloud-native technologies and mindsets.Emily: And how does having two dozen, more or less, different markets, how does that play into the decision A) to move to cloud-native in general, and managing the IT infrastructure?Tom: So, one of the things that's really driven it is trying to simplify and reuse artifacts. So, if you've got 23 markets all doing a different thing, then there's obviously a lot of duplication happening across the group, whereas if everyone's using the same technology in the same platforms—take Kubernetes as the example—everyone can write their software for that platform. Everyone can write their operational ecosystem around that platform. So, the deployment artifacts, the pipelines, the day two operational activities, they can all be based around that single cloud-native platform. And so, that enables a huge amount of efficiency from the operational side. And that in turn allows those engineering teams to focus on things that are adding value to the business and the customer instead of having to focus on fairly low-level tasks that are just keeping the lights on, if you like.Emily: What's different for each one of those markets?Tom: So, it might be something like language, it might be something as simple as that. It may be that the offerings are slightly tweaked. So, rather than, I don't know, as an example, rather than Spotify being included as a kind of add on, it might be some other service that's more relevant to that market. It may be that there are particular regulatory requirements that are specific to a market that needs to be considered within the product design and the engineering of it. And so, having a cloud-native response allows sharing and reuse of artifacts where we can, but still allows for that customization where it's required.Emily: Where would you say Vodafone is in the cloud-native journey? Do you feel like you've, mission accomplished?Tom: So, mission accomplished, as in the first step, yeah. So, we set out a goal in 2015, to get a certain number of our applications to the Cloud, and that's largely been reached, I think, especially with our customer channels, so that the kind of points of interaction with the customer, the huge number of those are cloud-native today. And things like automated customer interaction with chatbots, and the like, that's all added to the cloud-nativeness of the interaction. As part of our next iteration, we'll be looking for more cloud-native software and cloud-native platforms, and that will start extending into the network systems themselves, as well as the more digital and easily modernizable layers, if you like.Emily: What sort of business value do you feel like you're looking for as you move to the next step?Tom: So, primarily, it's going to be driven by customer satisfaction and customer affecting KPIs, like I said before. That's always what's driven the business metrics anyway. So, things like being able to support the demand of the customer. So, whether that's the new 5G services, for increased bandwidth. So, obviously, if our network systems themselves are cloud-native, then taking advantage of the auto-scaling, and the auto-healing, and the autonomic nature, then the customer experience, and the customer satisfaction will increase. Improving time to market, so again, part of 5G is that the whole notion of creating more differentiating services, and so if we can do that through the cloud-native mindset with product owners being much more closely engaged with customers, then that improves our product offerings. And we can optimize our network profitability by using cloud-native features like modern big data analytics, and even AI and automation to improve the operations of the network. At the end of the day, the business value is improved customer satisfaction, which improves our financial performance, obviously.Emily: And when you started out in 2015, who was pushing for moving to cloud-native? Was this the business saying, “Hey, how do we improve customer satisfaction?” Was it engineering saying, “Hey, here's an idea for something that could help us move faster?” Who was behind that?Tom: That's a good question. I think it's probably an element of both. It was the opposite of the push me, pull you, I guess. So, there was engineering pushing on an open door, I suppose you could say. So, Cloud was a bit of a buzzword around that time anyway, but I think it's fair to say the concepts of improved time to market, improved stability, the potential for improved security, improved automation, and repeatability, they were all relatively easy sells to product teams who want to be able to sell products to customers. And once you're able to explain what problems those concepts solve, I think it became a bit of a, like I say, pushing on an open door.Emily: Can you tell me a little bit about the process of explaining what problems these things solve? Was there anything that was getting lost in translation?Tom: Yeah. I think the biggest thing that I can recall—obviously, it's a company-wide thing. I'm never going to be aware of everything that happens—certainly, it's critical to try and understand what the target operating model is before trying to say, “Here's the technology solution to it.” So, I think some of the lessons that were learnt in the early stages were, rather than trying to say, “Here's the technology answer to a modern way of working that hasn't been agreed or adopted or even understood yet,” let's do that part first, so people understand how they need to work in this modern kind of culture. And then the technology answers then make a bit more sense to people because they're able to say, “Okay, I understand the problems that's solving now because I'm now working in that way of working.” So, that's probably the biggest learning point I would take from the previous five years.Emily: Do you feel like the conversation, how did it evolve from the first conversations over the course of the past five years, and then what's it like now?Tom: It's very different now. The concept of Cloud and cloud-native has become a given and very well understood across the business, even outside of technology. So, we talked to other business units, and they're quite comfortable in understanding the benefits of Cloud. And it's now about when they mature into cloud-native, and when they mature operating models, rather than if. And it's now talking and giving guidance about how to do it, rather than trying to sell the concept itself. So, it just feels like you're at that next stage of not having to sell the idea anymore, and more into the detail of how to implement that idea.Emily: What would you say were some of the biggest surprises? And let's start with thinking about some of the biggest surprises, not necessarily technically but organizationally, in how engineering was talking with the business, how people were working together. Was there anything about this journey that was unexpected?Tom: Not particularly. I think the biggest change that happened, which was possibly unexpected when we started, was the level of insourcing that we have undertaken to support the cloud-native operating models, the time to market, and the modern engineering teams. So, we used to be around 97 percent outsourced or something like that, in terms of building software that wasn't just vendor supplied. And for all that software now, we're more like 95 percent in-house. And so, that's quite a big change, and I think that probably surprised people that A) we needed to do it, and B) that we have done it, and relatively successfully got pretty wide-scale digital engineering functions across many markets now.Emily: And why do you think that matters?Tom: Because it gives us control of the roadmap, it gives us control of that time to market cadence, and it allows us to use the data that our teams understand and know about, and to share that with other markets. So, as I say, even though an engineering team might be in the UK, they can share what they've done, they can share the artifacts, they can share the data that's driven decisions and software activity with other markets within Vodafone. And that just improves that efficiency, again.Emily: Do you think insourcing also improves customer satisfaction KPIs?Tom: Certainly we've seen that. So, whether that's a correlation or causation is kind of for someone with more access to more data than I've got. But certainly, we've seen an increase in online sales, and our digital marketing is more data-driven. And that has happened in correlation with the in-sourcing of software engineering skillset, yeah.Emily: Do you have any specific examples that come to mind in, maybe you are able to react in a way that wouldn't have been possible if you'd been using the old system?Tom: I'm not aware of any specific examples, unfortunately.Emily: Was there anything about the move to Kubernetes, to cloud-native, that you expected to be difficult, and wasn't. So, that was easier than you expected?Tom: That's a good question. I suspect the provision of multiple clusters. Kubernetes is difficult. It's a complex system, hence why there are so many cluster management vendor offerings available. And I think we chose a couple of partners early on in the journey to help us with that, and I think that really helped, and it made Kubernetes a little less scary for the software teams who were using it. So certainly, I've heard feedback—this is anecdotal, rather than anything that's evidence-driven—actually, just being able to create clusters and deploy into them was easier than people had thought when they were learning about Kubernetes through the quick start tutorials and the like.Emily: Was there anything that sticks out as being far more difficult than expected? The more unpleasant surprises?Tom: I wouldn't necessarily call them unpleasant, but obviously there's going to be a transition period—which we're in—between the traditional data-center-centric networking and network security policies and concepts, and those that work with Cloud and cloud-native platforms like Kubernetes. And there have definitely been challenges in trying to apply the legacy approach to network security with a distributed and dynamic system like Kubernetes, where you can't give everything a static IP address or even have separate subnets within a cluster for segregation, for example. It has to be done in a different way. You can still apply the same controls, they just have to be done in a different way. So, I think that's one of a few challenges that we found that we've had to work through with different vendors, with engineering teams, and with our internal teams to try and update our guidance on how to apply those controls.Emily: And to what extent have there been organizational challenges, and how have you gotten over those?Tom: That's a tricky one to answer, really. I think it all comes down to the balance between understanding and buying into a strategy, but then applying that to application lifecycle and investment lifecycles. So, I think this is probably true for any company: just because a strategy says this is the thing to do, you got a roadmap for your portfolio of applications and services that you need to balance a limited budget. And so, that's been the biggest challenge, is to try and identify how much of each budget at various levels can be spent on strategic activity, and then for which services, and trying to keep that balance, and bearing in mind that there are lots of different things pulling on that same pot of money.Emily: And what have you learned about managing that?Tom: I think primarily that there needs to be a holistic view of strategic projects. It's quite difficult to put the onus on a local budget, to spend the money to do something strategic when the benefits are probably—and the business case is probably seen more widely than the individual budget area. But I think it differs between situations, and between markets, and what's happening. I think the primary thing is to understand the costs of the strategy upfront, and try and work those costs into whatever needs doing over the period.Emily: A slightly different question, which is, is there anything you feel like in the cloud-native journey that you're still working on solving, that you haven't really figured out yet?Tom: I'm not sure whether we haven't figured this out yet, but one of the things we're putting a lot of effort in at the moment, is the use of advanced data and analytics platforms to try and drive even more network automation, and network planning efficiencies. So, I think it was last year at Google Next, we announced a partnership with Google to make use of their data services. And there's a few projects ongoing within Vodafone to try and drive the amount of knowledge and useful information we can gather from the vast quantities of data we have about our services and the customers that use them because the more we can use that data, the more we can respond to customer need in a timely manner, whether that's reactively in terms of operational response or whether that's proactively in seeing trends that we can then meet a need that may be unsaid yet.Emily: And if you were to talk to another engineering leader who was trying to push through the open door as you were saying, what advice would you give them?Tom: The biggest bit of advice is to understand the current way of working for whichever area you're—is on the other side of the door, and understand their pain points because it's not always the same answer. So, generalizing, it may be that one area is more than happy to have a centralized global platform offering, whether that's within our data centers, or public cloud, or both. Another area, just the way it's managed, may require a more distributed model, where the services are offered on a more market specific level. And so, I think that that's the main thing, is to understand the specifics of that area that you're talking to because it will affect how you want to architect and onwardly deploy and manage that technology.Emily: It would affect not just how you want to architect the technology, but also how you want to communicate what your plan is, right?Tom: Absolutely. Yeah. So, in the first of the examples I gave, where an area might be happy with a centralized service, that probably means they're already using one. The way you would communicate that would be via that existing channel, if you like. Whereas on the flip side, that kind of channel may not exist, and therefore running the project or projects and communicating with stakeholders would be much more distributed.Emily: At Vodafone was there ever any challenge selling it, not just over to the business side, but also selling internally inside engineering teams? Or was everyone pretty gung ho to do this?Tom: No, there's always challenges. I think again, it goes back to understanding the pain points of an area and understanding why things are the kind of as they are today, which I guess is general for things outside of technology and outside of Vodafone generally is. If you understand the position of the person you're debating with, then you're more likely to reach a common understanding than if you go into it with your own point of view and being unwilling to listen. So, I think that's the main thing is just being willing to listen, to understand pain points, and to be able to react to those within a strategy. You'd hope that it's flexible enough to be able to meet a wide range of needs without needing to necessarily change the overall vision.Emily: How important do you think this cloud-native transition has been for Vodafone?Tom: I think it's been crucial. I think we couldn't have done what we've done in the last five years without it. So, there's a video that our group CTO has posted on LinkedIn recently which highlighted a few things around improved mobile KPIs, we've got 4G in 21 markets, we've got the largest 5G in Europe, and all of those improvements from time to market I've already mentioned, we simply couldn't have done that without a modernization program to move to cloud-native across a number of our systems. So, yes, that's partly a technology thing, but also, it is such a cultural thing, and having that modern way of working where you have your modern engineering teams who are closer to the customer, but they're also—the different mindset of a modern engineering company where you're not afraid to try new things, and if you fail, you learn from them. And I think that's all part of what I would class as cloud-native, and that has been, like I say, it's been crucial for us to be able to get where we have been.Emily: It's interesting to think cloud-native means if you fail, you learn from it. That's a fairly basic concept, and yet true. I can see how that is, sort of, part of being cloud-native.Tom: Yeah, it's one of those things is quite a basic thing, but I think in traditional ways of working, the focus on the availability of systems and the performance of systems can blind everyone to the possibilities outside of that particular area of focus. And it puts pressure on people at all levels to try and minimize periods of downtime or periods of low performance. And over time, people become less and less willing to be able to try new things, through fear of failing because just the way people work it's difficult to learn from those failings because it affects customers. And so, what cloud-native technologies enable because of the way things are orchestrated—things are dynamic, things are repeatable—it's very easy to try new things, and not affect all customers. Now, obviously, good software engineering practices help as well. But I think the cloud-native technologies and the ways of working really do support the whole “learn by failing” premise.Emily: Do you think it would have been possible to get the customer satisfaction KPIs that you did, without moving to cloud-native, in any other way?Tom: I think the only way you could have done is by a huge investment in people and the traditional technologies. It would have been a much more expensive and slower journey, in my opinion.Emily: Anything else that you want to add about your experience moving to cloud-native?Tom: No, I don't think so. I think one of the things—like I said before, the increase in automation, the increase in the modern technologies is just really helped with those customer affecting KPIs, and that has to be the drive for why you're doing it.Emily: All right, just a couple more questions, then. What is your can't-live-without engineering tool?Tom: Oh, that's a good question. Probably Python. I think so many people use it either as a cross-platform scripting tool to be able to automate things and get on the first step towards cloud-native, or it's such a key part of many cloud-native tools like things like Ansible and other tools, and it's used hugely within our data analytics domain to try and drive the usefulness of the data. So, yeah, that's probably the one I'd choose.Emily: And then this actually is the last question which is, how can listeners follow you or connect with you?Tom: So, I'm on Twitter at @tomkivlin. I'm also on LinkedIn. So, I'm Tom Kivlin, working for Vodafone Group. I am a member of the telecom user group within the CNCF. So, you can find them on GitHub and also in the… I think it's the CNCF or the Kubernetes Slack. And yeah, happy to share experiences and keep learning.Emily: Well, thank you so much. Again, this is Tom Kivlin, and we'll go ahead and wrap it up there. Thank you so much, Tom.Announcer: Thank you for listening to The Business of Cloud Native podcast. Keep up with the latest on the podcast at thebusinessofcloudnative.com and subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or wherever fine podcasts are distributed. We'll see you next time.This has been HumblePod production. Stay humble.

The Business Data Revolution With Emily Ridley Josh: G’day everyone out there in podcast land. I've got Emily from Emerge Advisory and she's going to be talking today about the data revolution and is your business ready. And it's probably one of the more interesting times that we've been living for anyone that's alive, in the amount of things that have changed, with pandemics, and businesses closing down or accelerating and going all over the place. So I guess, Emily, tell me a bit about what you can do to make sure that your business is ready? Learn more about business data revolution at dorksdelivered.com Emily: Hi, Josh. So it's really all about using the tools that available already and using them to your best advantage. So having the right tech and having the right app stack is absolutely crucial. So it's about finding out how you want to do your business. And there will then be a system or a process or an ease to make that digital and bring it to a wider audience, and using remote circumstances that we've all, you know, enjoyed recently and making that happen, but making that work for you so that you're getting the best out of your business and your best business is going to your clients. Josh: Yeah, that makes sense. So like, I guess, I know myself when we started out in business, we're using QuickBooks, and I'm not going to say that any products better than another, it was an application that I wasn't comfortable using. And I'm in the IT field. I wasn't comfortable using SSL. There's too many bells and whistles and things that I can click in here that are going to do something that they shouldn't. And a lot of the time you have this stuff with it using for years and years and years. And now we're not using QuickBooks, we’re on Zero. But we used to suffer for years and years and you might not be using it properly or to the best of your ability. And I know that a couple of packages that were introduced to would be now 18 months ago, two years ago, Receipt Bank, I thought is an amazing way of speeding up your process for any of your bookkeeping stuff that people should be using if they're not aware of it, and then obviously making sure that you've set up their appropriate rules and reporting so that you have that information coming out of Zero, if that is the product you're using, or whatever the product you’re using. Tell people a bit about Receipt Bank and other tools that you know that might be useful for them to consider if they're not to make sure that they are embracing the data revolution as they should? Emily: Yeah, sure. So Receipt Bank, Hooked Up, Easy Bills. They're all very similar applications. It's a matter of finding the right user interface for you. Zero now owns hooked up. So it's now free in most business subscription. So it's that minute in itself is an amazing way of wanting to adopt a service. And basically what that does is it just takes all the legwork out of doing data entry, particularly for you spend money transactions or your accounts payable. You take a photo or you forward on an email. It goes into the system, the software I use is OCR, it actually reads that receipt. So it understands the day the tax implications, the vendors, and it will then on the first instance, it will ask you where to code that in your chart of accounts integrated with your accounting software. But it's machine learning, and it constantly wants to follow what you do and how you spend your money. So it will learn it. Caltex, for example, is always fuel and it will learn that. Telstra is always telephone and it will learn that. Aegon is always energy bills. And so as you take the photo, that seamless data entry then goes all the way through into your accounting software. You pay your bill. Now if your bank account and if you use an accounting software, my own Zero, QBL now, that's got live data bank feeds, it will just find a match that transaction. So your actual input into our case in that transaction where it needs to go is as in depth as taking a photograph and then pricing okay, at the other end of the software, it's quick, it's efficient, it's easy, and it gives you more time to spend on your business rather than in your business doing all the stuff that, you know, traders hate to do bookkeeping, that's essentially what this is. Josh: It’s digitising their shoebox of receipts that they given at the end of the month. I'm pretty pedantic with the way that I still do stuff. But I'd imagine that you have these half failure receipts in their car inside on their hot dashboard, and they're all stuffed, and it's easy just to jump onto it and take a photo of it. Emily: It really is, as you put in the keys in the ignition of your vehicle, snap that photo and it's as quick as that. And then you can throw that receipt either in gold box or even better, you can throw it in the bin and completely accept digital copies that don't fade and they don't get coffee spilt all over them and they don't get lost. Yeah, it's a really efficient way of having all year, and all your accounts in order, particularly at this time of year when people are getting everything together for the end of tax time. Josh: I completely agree and everyone should be jumping onto that. Emily: Actually, it's free if there's software's built in. There's some amazing services out there. And like I said managing your accounts payable is just one but there's also for managing job management. Again, for traders there's Tradify and service may, which will do your task management, your staff management, your time sheets, and your invoicing all in one place as well. So it means at the end of the day, all your jobs are done, and they're in your accounting software, you don't have to finish your day of work, and then come back and sit down and do your bookkeeping. You can actually sit there in the garden with a beer or watch the footy when it's back on TV. Josh: Perfect. Having that time to yourself should be time yourself and a lot of business owners when they jump in there, they think oh, I'll have to work 40 hours a week I could do this bit I'm going to be earning more money, and then then they realise that they have all list of administration stuff that is zero dollar tasks, they're sitting there doing an entering stuff and it just takes them a hell of a lot more time than what it would have otherwise. So these little hints and tips definitely helped. We've got a lot of clients using another product called sim Pro, which is a fantastic product, not that I'm plugging their brand, but I noticed that when you're going through the different ones, I was like, oh, that's one that we that we use quite a bit. With the data Revolution, the way that data moves between systems has changed a lot over the years. And I've noticed more and more now as people are using Zero, I can set it up so that that invoice automatically sends to Zero when they send it to my email so that way, it can be transcribed without even have to go through services such as hub dock. If you've got somebody sends you an invoice doesn't integrate with Zero directly, you can pretty much do anything with hub dock, even if it's a multi page invoice and whatnot. Is that right? Emily: That is correct. Yeah. So and it's a filing system. So unlike receipt bank, where the invoices come in, they're dealt with and then they go to archives which then becomes its own digital shoe box really, inside of a hub dock, every Telstra invoice will go to the Telstra folder, every origin invoice will go to the origin folder. Both systems have what they call a fetch service now. So if you have an online account for origins, Telstra, and some of the really big suppliers that you use on a regular basis, it will actually go and get those invoices and statements for you. So you don't need to upload them at all. Josh: I'm learning stuff everyone guys, that's awesome. I'm going to be making sure to set that up. Because sometimes, it's just … the time that you spend is taking it from one system to another and it can be quite frustrating. How does that work if your suppliers overseas or you've got a non-GST items, or what would be a good for instance, just a software subscription service for a company server in America, is that something you just set the rule up once? And they have to go through email or is the fetch service purely Australian Base. So how does that work? Emily: So the fetch service was actually started in Canada, hub dock was originally a Canadian company. And so there are a huge number of global enterprises on the firm that range from European base, to Asian base, to Australasian and yeah, and the Americas as well. So it's incredible the amount of scope that you do have, certainly all the big hitters that you'd expect around there the global entities because one it's machine learning and two, actually the OCR, they actually reads the receipt, it picks up whether or not it's GST, or whether it's nil value GST, so if you're in Australia and you've got an invoice that's got VAT on it or New Zealand GST, it will pick that up and bring that in as a nil balance, because it understands the difference between what's required in Australia and essentially what's not a GST code. Josh: That's cool. One of the tricky ones that I always know I end up doing manually is when I get the car. They have to break down this the stamp duties and offices instead of the CTP elements and everything else, does it deal okay with that sort of stuff? Emily: See, if you set the roll up once so that your department of Main Roads comes in and you want to separate that one line item into two line items. So you've got your GST component, your GST free component so that it adds up the amount payable. Once you set that at once then yeah, it will read it at rego but it is difficult for in the first instance because there's always two numbers on it. It's asking you do you want to be six months or 12 months? So generally, it would still flag up and say what exactly what do you want me to do with this but it will try and preempt that as much as possible. So essentially, you're just an answer it whether or not you want to split. So we will split the invoice into two components but because you've set the rules to do that, but it will ask you which figure is the final closing figure, which one's going to match your bank statement, essentially. Josh: Cool. Well, we're talking about integrations. Obviously, that's what we've been touching on a lot. And like the eight year has a whole bunch of different rules and regulations and bits and pieces. And they have built a few really cool integrations with Zero that has been helping out with a lot of like the job keeper stuff with some of their calculators just help make everyone's life a little bit easier. What have you seen that they've been doing lately that have really been helping with some of their integrations to the way that the systems work? Emily: With the ATO? [Yeah] As much of about the ATO on a regular basis. The ATO has done some amazing things, the unimaginable things. And in the last three months, it's system software programs that just did not exist and weren't on anybody's workflow to exist at any time. And now they’re here. So the job keeper lodgement process is about as simple as it can be in order to be effective. Today’s the first of June so we're now able to lodge our may declarations. I've already done 19 today, so I've sent them out, I've got them back signed using electronic signatures. And I've just digitally entered that into the ATO portal. So it's all launched and confirmed. Now my clients can expect to receive their payments in about four or five working days from there. That in itself is a long, long way from where we were just even seven weeks ago when we were trying to work out what the legislation around job keeper was. So the fact that they're they're taken on board advice from accounting software providers such as Zero and it also from you know, the taken advice as well from industry. So I know Matthew Addison, who is the director for the Institute Certified Bookkeepers, for example, the ICB had an awful lot of say, and an awful lot of to kind of relay messages from what it's like to be the end user trying to manage these workflows, trying to manage this legislation, trying to get this data from our clients to the ATO as quickly as possible to get this money move in and be where it needs to be. So yeah, what we considered was a luxury 12 or 13 weeks ago is now going to be, I feel, part of our everyday new normal. This just allows for a huge amount of new data, new business calculations, new information. Every business owner in Australia, I think this becomes the beginning of a new revolution. And like I said, for the new normal, and I think at some point, every business and every industry is going to benefit from it. I think the opposite here are amazing. What we can do in a tiny amount of space and how much data we've got available tools to do that. Josh: You hit the nail on the head there when you're pushed into a spot that you have no other place to go but forward. They've definitely done wonders with the time that they've had. And I think it’s shown a lot of people how they can work remotely and how they can achieve big things. Like I'd love to say that all businesses always keep their books up to date. But I think you would know better than me that that's a big fallacy. Emily: Yeah, it's not realistic at all. But it can be so much easier than some businesses allow themselves to believe. It can be so much by bringing in automation, by bringing in systems and services that help rather than hinder. By taking away a lot of data entry or duplication. A lot of businesses can be more up to date than they realise, and a lot faster. And they can use that information in ways they've never been able to use it before. I think it gives a huge amount of opportunity for now for businesses to explore things that they never thought that they wanted or needed, but what they're going to see is essential in a very short amount of time. Things like budgeting and cash flow forecasting and data management and making those decisions with that it's all possible without too much disruption to your day to day work in life. Josh: I think ultimately the big thing that's going to have changed with this is businesses that might have been getting everything in just by the deadline are now being rewarded. To make sure that as you pointed out on the on the first of each month, while job keeper is available, everything is ready to go reconciled and on point so that they're making better business decisions and with enough repetition over time, that should become conditioned to be ongoing past when the job keeper disappears, hopefully. Is that what you think's going to happen? Or do you think people will start to slip off afterwards? Emily: No, I don't think people will start to slip. I think because having this information in this real time data in this world today is knowledge, and I think knowledge is power, and it gives you the power to manage your business in a in a whole new light and a whole new way. I think that compliance is a sidestep, it's something that is going to be available to you to do much quicker. But for me, using that information to your advantage, not necessarily the ATO advantages you know it's data that's it's your business, it's your livelihood, it's your growth and your development. And you can absolutely do some amazing things if you have that knowledge and you have that power. Josh: We're going to make the right decisions and you're able to see how much am I buying of something? What am I doing with something? How efficient is the team? How efficient is my buying power and make better decisions? Is it a good idea to maybe set up an account I know myself? One of the things that have come to light for us over the last few months, we've had an account with two major IT suppliers in Australia, and I was looking through only because we changed bookkeepers and I was looking through, and I went, we've got a lot of transactions here, that's from the same company. And so we've made the decision to set up accounts with a few different companies. And that will now mean that there's less bookkeeping, less backwards and forwards, faster response times for our customers. But it's only after really having that data to be able to see that and be able to make that decision that will ultimately give a better customer experience for our customers because they're not waiting for credit cards to clear the audit things instead of the way out straight away. And it means less reconciliation, so better experience for bookcases and easier for us to sort of rummage through everything. So it can't be anything bad happening from this change. And it's just about everyone getting ready to do it. For a lot of people in through the state of depression, we've got businesses that we work with, they're at 450% at the moment versus when they went into COVID. Emily: That's an amazing story and quite an extreme perspective. But I do believe that though, I think that from a bookkeeper and accountant perspective, I'd, again, never been busy and never done so many hours on the phones with the ATO, catch up legislation, do the data entry that's needed for all the new compliance around shopkeeper and cash flow and boost and other stimulus packages. But, it's, yeah, so it certainly has given a rise to like a new normal. And what you were saying though about the data that you've got access to so with the date to the transactions that you've been able to see you can actually see there in real time what you're spending with those suppliers, which gives you, you know, power to negotiate terms. It can, you know, a five cent save and goes directly into your back pocket on your bottom line for your profits and that money is much better off in your pocket than in your supplier’s pocket. So it's huge what you can do with a tiny little bit of information and how far that can take you. It's an amazing concept that I hope to be able to offer to an awful lot of customers moving forward, to sit down with them and say, this is the data you have, and these are the opportunities that you have with that- Josh: It’s data in, data out as they say, you can't make a decision if you don't have good data going in. And you do an amazing job at making sure that people are having the best quality data going into they can make the best decisions with their budgeting, forecasting and making sure that they're doing the voodoo that they do well and are able to continue doing that and as you said. I can see some trends, one of the ones that my partner saw was, she has a hair makeup business, was if she was to purchase all the items that she purchased over 12 months, just the core items that she's purchasing quite regularly in one bulk amount and they're all things that don't have a shelf life, she would have been able to have a 15% advantage. I said well that sounds like a good idea. As long as they're not things that are going to sit on the shelf for 10 years, you're never going to use them but without data, you won’t be able to see that, you wouldn't be able to make that decision. So where do you think the data revolution is going? Where do you think businesses are going? We've always had these huge changes over the last three months, and there's going to be more changes. What are the things that businesses should have in place that already exist? And where do you think it's going? It’s the doozy question. Emily: It is, isn't it? I don't know, to be honest, I don't know where this is going. I don't know the end of this is, I cannot know what the end of the internet is, and I don't know, you know what the end of the universe is. I know that the opportunity is immense. And I think that there is a huge amount of opportunity for development, for growth, for profit increase for every industry out there based on the back of this. I think that the digital revolution is absolutely going to change permanently, the way that we work and the way that we interact, but what's going to be more important than any of this is then that human interaction at the end of it. We're going to want to talk and know the people that we're dealing with, rather than just having an ether of mindless data and send out things like you know, like your accountant will send you out your financial statements at the end of the year, which is just pages and pages of numbers. But without having a conversation about what that means and what you can do with that information, it's kind of lost its purpose. So, where do I think this is going, I think this is going to bring those closer together by making us work further apart. I honestly do believe that. But I also think that Australia is going to be a big player in the global economy on the back of this. I think that we've got more power than we realise. We don't really have the internet speeds that we need, but we're getting there slowly. And I just think that we've got more voice that we believe that we have, I think we just need to be a bit more confident, a bit louder about who we are and what we can do with the data that we have. I think we've got some amazing tech out there that might just be a little bit lost because we consider a small Big Island and a small fish in a big world. Josh: I think what you said there encapsulates it perfectly where automation does not mean not personalised, don't keep it robotic, keep the bits automated that you don't like doing and then the bits that you do like doing and making sure that you have that face to face time, you're able to use the data then see what people's numbers are doing. One of the things that we noticed in our business, so we do set price IT for everything and give unlimited support, and guaranteed uptime from that IT support each month. What we noticed when we started putting these in place was customers weren't having things break. So this was sort of what are we paying you for. And so you need to make sure that you're you had that relationship and you were still going and seeing them and you're making decisions with them on where the future of their business was going, and it let you have those better conversations because there wasn't fires that you're putting out. And that has definitely had the people that we're working with we've built better relationships with because they're also not look looking at the clock going, oh, man, you've got a pointing on my clock, anyone who's listening. He didn't, they're not worried about how much they're paying you per hour because they're able to sort of see the value that you're adding to them, and you're actually sitting down and listening. And so definitely, don't keep it robotic, just wish you've automated it, make sure you keep it personalised and keep that relationship because that's ultimately all we’re in business for is to work with people we like working with. Emily: Absolutely. And it's that makes a good business a great business. And also the same way we charge up front fixed fees on everything. We don't have an hourly rate for anything at all. We're very open and honest about what we charge and we base our charges on outcomes. So what is it that the client gets out of it is how we manage our pricing around that. Josh: That’s definitely a really good model. We're nearly at the end of the podcast here. Is there anything else that you'd like to cover off on? Emily: I don't think so. Just recapping what we've said, it's just a really good time as we're, you know, moving through the COVID process, I guess as to as to what the outcome of that is actually going to be and what the new normal, essentially it's going to like at the end of this, I think it's just a really good opportunity to look at systems of businesses or processes and look at the changes that you've already had to endure over the last seven to 12 weeks and see where that can take you in the future, which I think is a really exciting opportunity to do that. Josh: I think we're all walking in this game together and, and looking forward to see we get on the end. If anyone is looking for someone that's going to be able to give them some more advice, definitely reach out to Emily at Emerge Advisory. She's going to help you out and go through any of the details. Make sure you've got that data to make those decisions. If you have enjoyed this episode, jump across to iTunes, leave us some love. Give us some feedback, give us a review and stay healthy and stay good.

Some of the highlights of the show include:  The difference between cloud computing and cloud native. Why operations teams often struggle to keep up with development teams, and the problems that this creates for businesses. How Dave works with operations teams and trains them how to approach cloud native so they can keep up with developers, instead of being a drag on the organization.  Dave's philosophy on introducing processes, and why he prefers to use as few as possible for as long as possible and implement them only when problems arise.  Why executives should strive to keep developers happy, productive, and empowered.  Why operations teams need to stop thinking about themselves as people who merely complete ticket requests, and start viewing themselves as key enablers who help the organization move faster.  Viewing wait time as waste.  The importance of aligning operations and development teams, and having them work towards the same goal. This also requires using the same reporting structure.  Links: Company site: https://www.mangoteque.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dmangot/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/DaveMangot CIO Author page: https://www.cio.com/author/Dave-Mangot/ TranscriptAnnouncer: Welcome to The Business of Cloud Native podcast, where we explore how end users talk and think about the transition to Kubernetes and cloud-native architectures.Emily: Welcome to The Business of Cloud Native. I'm your host, Emily Omier, and today I am chatting with Dave Mangot. And Dave is a consultant who works with companies on improving their web operations. He has experience working with a variety of companies making the transition to cloud-native and in various stages of their cloud computing journey. So, Dave, my first question is, can you go into detail about, sort of, the nitty-gritty of what you do?Dave: Sure. I've spent my whole technical professional career mostly in Silicon Valley, after moving out to California from Maryland. And really, I got early into web operations working in Unix systems administration as a sysadmin, and then we all changed the names of all those things over the years from sysadmin to Technical Infrastructure Engineer, and then Site Reliability Engineer, and all the other fun stuff. But I've been involved in the DevOps movement, kind of, since the beginning, and I've been involved in cloud computing, kind of, since the beginning. And so I'm lucky enough in my day job to be able to work with companies on their, like you said, transitions into Cloud, but really I'm helping companies, at least for their cloud stuff, think about what does cloud computing even mean? What does it mean to operate in a cloud computing manner? It's one thing to say, “We're going to move all of our stuff from the data center into Cloud,” but most people you'll hear talk about lift and shift; does that really the best way? And obviously, it's not. I think most of the studies will prove that and things like the State of DevOps report, and those other things, but really love working with companies on, like, what is so unique about the Cloud, and what advantages does that give, and how do we think about these problems in order to be able to take the best advantage that we can?Emily: Dive into a little bit more. What is the difference between cloud computing and cloud-native? And where does some confusion sometimes seep in there?Dave: I think cloud-native is just really talking about the fact that something was designed specifically for running in a cloud computing environment. To me, I don't really get hung up on those differences because, ultimately, I don't think they matter all that much. You can take memcached, which was designed to run in the data center, and you can buy that as a service on AWS. So, does that mean because it wasn't designed for the Cloud from the beginning, that it's not going to work? No, you're buying that as a service from AWS. I think cloud-native is really referring to these tools that were designed with that as a first-class citizen. And there's times where that really matters. I remember, we did an analysis of the configuration management tools years back, and what would work best on AWS and things like that, and it was pretty obvious that some of those tools were not designed for the Cloud. They were not cloud-native. They really had this distinct feel that their cloud capabilities were bolted on much later, and it was clunky, and it was hard to work with, whereas some of the other tools, really felt like that was a very natural fit, like that was the way that they had been created. But ultimately, I think the differences aren't all that great, it just, really, matters how you're going to take advantage of those tools.Emily: And with the companies that you work with, what is the problem or problems that they are usually facing that lead them to hire you?Dave: Generally the question, or the statement, I guess, that I get from the CIOs and CTOs, and CEOs is, “My production web operations team can't keep up with my development teams.” And there's a lot of reasons why those kinds of things can happen, but with the dawn of all these cloud-native type things, which is pretty cool, like containers, and all this other stuff, and CI/CD is a big popular thing now, and all kinds of other stuff. What happens, tends to be is the developers are really able to take advantage of these things, and consume them, and use them because look at AWS. AWS is API, API, API. Make an API call for this, make an API call for that. And for developers, they're really comfortable in that environment. Making an API call is kind of a no brainer. And then a lot of the operations teams are struggling because that's not normal for them. Maybe they were used to clicking around in a VMware console, and now that's not a thing because everything's API, API, API. And so what happens is the development teams start to rocket ahead of the operations teams, and the operations teams are running around struggling to keep up because they're kind of in a brand new world that the developers are dragging them into, and they have to figure out how they're going to swim in that world. And so I tend to work with operations teams to help them get to a point where they're way more comfortable, and they're thinking about the problems differently, and they're really enabling development to go as quickly as development wants to go. Which, you know, that's going to be pretty fast, especially when you're working with cloud-native stuff. But I mean, kind of to the point earlier, we built—at one of the companies I worked at years ago—what I would say, like, a cloud environment in a data center, where everything was API first, and you didn't have to run around, and click in consoles, and try to find information, and manually specify things, and stuff like that; it just worked. Just like if you make a call for VM in AWS, an EC2 instance. And so, really, it's much more about the way that we look at the problems, then it is about where this thing happens to be located because obviously cloud-native is going to be Azure, it's going to be GCP, it's going to be all those things. There's not one way to do it specifically.Emily: What's the business pain that happens if the operations team can't keep up with the developers? What happens? Why is that bad?Dave: That's a great question. It really comes down to this idea of an impedance mismatch. If the operations teams can't keep up with the development teams, then the operations teams become a drag on the business. There's so much—if you read the state of DevOps reports that are put out by DORA research and—I guess, Google now, now that they bought it—but they show that these organizations that are able to go quickly: the organizations that are able to do deploys-on-demand, the organizations that are able to remediate outages faster, all those things play into your business's success. So, the businesses that can do that have higher market capitalization, they have happier employees, they have all kinds of fantastic business outcomes that come from those abilities, and so you don't want your operations team to be a drag on your organization because that speed of business, that ability to do things a lot more easily, let's even call it like a lot more cloud-native if you want, that has real market effects. That has real business performance impacts. And so, if you look at the DevOps way of looking at this—like I said, I've been pretty involved in the DevOps movement—really the DevOps is about all the different parts of the organization working together in concert to be able to make the organization a success. And the first way of DevOps, you're talking about systems thinking, you're looking at the overall flow of work through the system, and you want to optimize that because the faster we can get work flowing through the system, the faster we can deliver new features to our customers, bug fixes to our customers, all the things that our customers want, all the things that our customers love. And so if you're going to optimize flow of work through the system, you definitely don't want work slowing down inside the operations part of the system. That's bad for the business, and that's bad for your business outcomes.Emily: And how do you think companies realize that this is a problem? I mean, is it obvious or not?Dave: I think it's one of those things like I always talk to people about process right? When do we want to introduce process? a lot of startups are like, “We need more process here, we need more process there.” And my advice to everybody is always, use as little process as possible for as long as possible, and when you need that process, it will make itself known. The pain will be so obvious that you'll be like, “Okay, we can't do this anymore this way. We've run this all the way to the end, and now we have to change things, and now we have to introduce process here.” And I think that it becomes pretty obvious to certainly the companies that I work with. At one point where they're like, “This isn't working, I'm getting my development leadership coming to be saying ‘I'm waiting for this, I'm waiting for that. I'm waiting for this. I'm waiting for that. I don't have permission to do this. We're being blocked here.'” all the things that you don't want to be hearing from your development leaders because what they're expressing is their pain of being inhibited; their pain of being slowed down. And I think it's just, like, with the process thing, I think at some point, the pain becomes obvious enough that people say, “We have to do something.” I remember talking to one company, and I was like, “Well, what do you want out of this engagement? What's your end goal?” And they said, “We'd like it for our developers to show up every day and be really happy with the environment that they're working in.” And so, you can hear it there, right? Their developers are not happy. People are coming from other companies, and they're going to this company—and I certainly won't name who they are—but they're going to this company, and they're saying, “Hey, when I worked at this other place, I didn't have all this. I didn't have all these things stopping me. I didn't have all these things inhibiting me.” And so that's why, what I said in the beginning, it's things that I'm hearing from CEOs, and CTOs, and people in those positions because at some point that stuff is just bubbling up and bubbling up, and the amount of frustration just really makes itself known.Emily: Why do you think COOs care how happy their developers are?Dave: Well, I mean, there's tons of studies that show the happier your developers are, the more productive they are. I mean, look at the Google rework stuff about psychological safety. Google discovered after hiring a professional psychology researcher to determine who were their highest performing teams, their highest performing teams weren't the teams that had the most talented engineers; it wasn't the people who went to MIT; their highest performing teams weren't the ones who had the best boss, or the coolest scrum master, or anything like that. Their highest performing teams were the teams that had the most psychological safety. People who were able to operate in an environment where they felt free to talk about the things that maybe weren't going well, things that could be improved, crazy ideas they had to make improvements, stuff like that. And I don't think that you can be on a team that's unhappy and feel like there's a lot of psychological safety there. And so, I think those things are highly correlated to one another. So, I mean, obviously, the environment that's necessary for psychological safety goes far beyond whether or not my Kubernetes cluster is automatically deploying my Docker containers; that's certainly not the case. But I think it's important to recognize that if developers are in an environment where they feel empowered, and they're not being inhibited, and they can really focus on their work, and improving things, and making things better, that they're going to produce better work, and that's going to be better for companies and certainly their business outcomes.Emily: And bringing it back to cloud-native a little bit. Can you connect for me how a cloud-native type architecture helps bring operation teams up to speed or helps remove these roadblocks?Dave: Yeah. Well, I think it's a little bit of the reverse, right? I think that the successful operations teams are the ones who are enabling these cloud-native ways of looking at the world. I think there used to be this notion of, if you want something from operations, you open up a ticket, and then operations goes and they do the ticket, and then they come back to you and say, “It's done.” And then, this never-ending cycle of sending off something and then waiting, and then sending off something, and waiting. And in cloud-native environments, we don't have that. In cloud-native environments, people are empowered and enabled, to go off and deploy things, and test things, and remediate things, and do dark launching, and have feature flags, and all these other things that, even though we're moving quickly, we can do that safely. And I think that's part of the mind shift that has to happen for these operations teams, is they need to stop thinking about themselves as people who get things done, and they need to start thinking about themselves as people who are enabling the whole organization to go faster, easier, better. I always talked to my SREs—Site Reliability Engineers—who used to work for me, and I'd say, “You have two responsibilities and that's it. And this is, in order, your first responsibility is to keep the site up.” That sounds pretty normal, right? That's what most operations teams feel like they've been tasked with. And I'm like, “Your second responsibility is to keep the developers moving as fast as possible.” And so really, when you start taking that to heart, keeping developers moving as fast as possible, that's not closing tickets as fast as you can. That's not keeping the developer moving as fast as possible, that's enabling developers to have self-service tools, and have things where they want to get something done and it's very painless for them to do that. We used to launch EC2 instances at one of the companies I was working with, where we had gotten it down to a point where you just said what kind of machine you wanted, and then that was it; and you were done. And everything else got taken care of for you: all the DNS, all the security groups, routing, networking, DNS, like, everything was all taken care of, all the software was loaded. There wasn't anything to do but say what you wanted. And we actually were able to turn that tool over to the developers so they could launch all their own stuff. They didn't need us anymore. And I think that's really creating these cloud-native ideas. Certainly, a lot of that stuff is part of the cloud-native tooling, now. This was a few years ago, but really it's enabling the developers to go as fast as possible. We could have said, “Hey, you want a machine? Open up a ticket, and it's so easy for us to spin up a machine.” But we didn't do that. We took it to the next level, and we empowered them, and we allowed them to go quickly. And that's really the sort of mental shift that the operations teams have to make. How do we do that?Emily: I have to say, I have never been a developer, but whenever anyone talks about this process of submitting a ticket and waiting for it to get addressed, it just sounds like hell.Dave: Yeah. Well, if you look at it from a lean manufacturing, Toyota kind of thing, all that wait time is waste. In lean, they call that waste. It's a handoff: there's no work being accomplished during that time, and so it's waste in the system. And so Toyota is always trying to move towards—I can't remember they call. It, I think it was, like, one piece flow, or something like that where basically you want work to be happening at all times in the system, and you certainly don't want things sitting around. And so, developers don't want that either. Developers want to put things out there. They want to see, does this work? Does this not work? And when you enable developers to have that kind of power and have that ability to go really fast, there's all kinds of like things that we can enable for the business that help cost savings, better security, all kinds of stuff far beyond just simple, “Hey, here's more features. Here's more features.”Emily: How easy do you think it is for operations teams to sort of shift to think, like, “Our job is to make things as easy as possible for developers?”Dave: I don't think it's that hard, actually, mostly because if we're starting to look at things from a DevOps mindset, we're understanding that the whole goal is to optimize the entire system; it's not to optimize a single point in the system. And I always advocate that operations teams report up through the same reporting structure as the engineering teams do. The worst thing you can do is silo it off so all the operations teams report to the COO, and all the engineering teams report to the CTO. Like, that's awful because what you want to do is you want to align the outcome so that everybody's working towards the same goal, and now we can start to partner up together in order to be able to achieve those goals. And so, one of my favorite examples of this from, like, enabling the developers to go fast, and doing that in partnership with operations was, I worked at a company, and we had a storage system, and we were storing all this stuff in a database, and we were paying a lot of money to store all this data for our customers. And that's what the customers were paying us for, was to store their data. And so the developers had this idea that they wanted to try this other way of storing the data. And so, we worked with them—the operations teams work with them, “How do you want to do this? What kinds of things do you need? What's going to work best? Is this going to work best? Is that going to work best?” And we had a lot of collaboration, and, “Here's where we're going to launch these new things, and we're going to try them out. And this is how we're going to try them out.”And it wasn't a process that happened overnight: from beginning to end of this project, it probably took, I don't know, a year and a half or something like that, of iterating, and trying, and testing, and making sure it's safe, and all these other stuff. But in the end, we wound up shutting off the old database system and talking to the engineers about what that meant for the business. They said a conservative estimate would be that we saved the company 75 percent on storage costs. That's the conservative estimate. I mean, that's insane, right? 75 percent for their biggest cost. That was the biggest cost of the company, and we knocked it down by 75 percent, at minimum.And so this idea of enabling this cloud approach of going quickly, and taking advantage of all these resources, and moving fast without impediments, that can have some major impact. And it's not operations teams doing that; it's not development teams doing that; it's operations and development teams doing that together in partnership to achieve those pretty awesome business outcomes.Emily: In that particular case, who had the initial push? Who had this initial idea that let's figure out a better way to approach storage?Dave: Well, I mean, we got a challenge from the business. The business said, look at our costs. Look at what we're doing. Are there ways that we can improve this so that we can improve our profitability? And so it was a challenge. And I think the best thing about that is, it wasn't the business telling us how to do it; it wasn't people saying, here's what you should do. The business is saying, “If this is a problem, how do you solve it?” And then they, kind of, got out of our way and said, “Let the engineers do their engineering.” And I think that was kind of fantastic because the results were exactly what they wanted. But the business is going to look at the problems from a business perspective, and I think it's important that as engineers, we look at the problems from a business perspective as well. We're not showing up for work to have fun and play with computers. We're showing up at work to achieve an objective. That's why we get paid. If you want to hobby around with your computers, you can hobby around at home, but we're getting paid at work to achieve the goals of the business. And so, that was the way that they were looking at the problem, and that's the way that we wound up looking at the problem. Which is the correct way?Emily: Do you have any other notable examples that come to mind?Dave: Yeah, I mean, this idea of cloud and being able to go quickly, we had this one problem with that—actually, with that same database engine, which is hilarious, before we wound up replacing it, where we were upgrading the software from one version to another, and we're making a pretty big jump. And so, we spun up the new version of the software; we loaded the data on, and we started seeing how their performance was. And the performance was terrible. I mean, not just, we would have trouble with it; it was unusable. There was no way we could run the business with that level of performance. And we're like, “What happened? [laughs]. What did we do here?” And so, we went and looked in GitHub at the differences between the old version of the software, and the new version of software. And there was, like, 5000 commits that had happened between the old version and the new version. And so all we had to do was find out which of those 5000 commits was the problem. [laughs]. Which, that's a daunting task or whatever. But the operations team got down to it, and we built a bunch of tooling, and we started changing some things and making improvements so that we were able to spin up clusters of this software and run a full test suite to determine whether this problem still existed. And that was something we could do in 20 minutes. And so then we started doing what's called git bisecting, but we started searching in a certain kind of pattern, which I won't get into, for which of these—where was the problem? So, we would look, say in the middle, and then if the problem wasn't there in the middle, then we would look between the middle and the right. If it was there, then we would look between the middle and the left. And we kept doing this bisect, and within two days, we had found the exact commit that had caused the problem. And it was them subtracting, like, a nano from a milli, or something like that. But going back and talking to the CTO afterwards, I said, “You know, if we hadn't built these tools, and we hadn't had this ability to really iterate super quickly in the Cloud, what would you have done?” And he was like, “I have no idea.” He's like, “Maybe we would have spent a couple of days and then given up, maybe we would have just gone in a completely different direction.” But that ability to be able to work so effectively with these cloud tools, and so easily with these cloud tools, enabled us to do something that the business just would just not have had the opportunity to take advantage of at all. And so that was a major win for being able to have operations teams that think about these problems in a completely different way.Emily: It sounds like, in this particular company, the engineering teams and the business leaders were fairly well-aligned, and able to communicate pretty well about what the end goals are. How common do you find that is with your clients?Dave: I don't know. I think it's pretty variable. It depends on the organization. I think that is one of the things that I emphasize when I'm working with my clients is how important that alignment is. I sort of talked about it a little bit earlier, when I said you shouldn't have one group reporting to the CTO and another group reporting to the COO. But also, it's really important for leadership to be communicating this stuff in the proper way. One of the things I loved most about my experience working at Salesforce was, Marc Benioff was the CEO and he would publish what they call V2MOMs, which is like—oh boy, vision, values, metrics, obstacles, and measures, or something. I don't remember what the last thing was. But he would publish his V2MOM, which was basically his objectives for the next time period, whether it was quarterly, or yearly, I don't really remember. But then what would happen was the people that worked for him would look at his V2MOM, and they would write theirs about what they wanted to get accomplished, but showing how what they were doing was in support of what he wanted. And then the people below them would do the same thing. And the people below them would do the same thing. And what you were able to create was this incredible amount of alignment at a 16,000 person company, which is crazy, up and down the ladder so that everybody understands what they're doing, and how it fits into the larger picture, and what they're doing in support of the goals of the business, and the objectives of the business, and that goes all the way down to the most junior engineer. And I think having that kind of alignment is, I mean, it's obviously incredibly powerful. I mean, Salesforce is a rocket ship and has been for a long, long time. And Google does this for their OKRs, and that there was that thing that was popularized by Intel as well; there's a whole bunch of these things. But that alignment is phenomenal if you want to have a lasting, high performing organization.Emily: When you see companies that don't have that alignment, or even just, it seems like the engineering team maybe doesn't entirely understand where the business is going, or even the business doesn't understand what the engineering team is doing, what happens and where is the communication going wrong?Dave: I mean, you see the frustration. You see the fracturing. You see the silos. You see a lot of finger-pointing. I've definitely worked with some clients where the ops team hates the dev team; the dev team hates the ops team. I remember the dev team saying, “Ops doesn't actually want to do any work. They just want to invent stuff for themselves to work on. And that's how they want to spend their day.” And the ops team is saying, “The developers don't even understand anything about what we're doing, and they just want to go o—” you know, there's all these crazy, awful made up stories. And if you've ever read the book Crucial Conversations—they also have a course, or whatever—one of the things they talk about is you need to establish mutual purpose in order to have a difficult conversation. And I think that's really important for what we're talking about in the business: we need to establish mutual purpose, just we talked about with DevOps, there's only one goal. And the other thing that they say in that class, or in that book, is that when we are going to have a conversation with somebody that we are not getting along with, we invent a story that explains why they behave the way that they do, and every time we see something that validates that story, then it's even more evidence that that story is actually correct. The problem is, is it's a story. Like it's not real. It may seem real to us; it may feel real to us. But it's a story. It's something that we made up. And so, that's the kind of outcomes that you get when you have this fracturing, where you don't have this alignment up and down. You have people telling these stories like, “Operations doesn't want to do any real work. They just want to make stuff up for themselves to work on.” Which is, if you're not in that environment, if you're someone like you and me looking from the outside, that's absurd. But I can certainly see how you can make up a story that gets continually validated by what you see because you're looking for evidence that supports your story. That's part of what makes you think that you're right, is that you're always searching for this evidence. And so obviously, those are not going to be high performing organizations. That's why it's so important to get that kind of alignment.Emily: Going back to this idea of sort of moving to cloud-native, what do you think are some of the surprises or misconceptions that come up when teams are moving to more cloud-native approaches?Dave: I feel like my clients generally are not terribly surprised. I think by the time that someone's reaching out to me, they are feeling a lot of pain, and they know that things have to change, and they are looking for what are the ways that things have to change? I don't ever have to go into a client and convince them that they need to do it better. The clients that are coming to me, recognizing that they're having a problem, and so it's really just getting them to stop focusing on what we call an SRE toil, which is popularized by Google, which is—I don't remember the exact definition, but it's basically manual work that's devoid of enduring value, that's repetitive, it's automatable, it's just repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat: we're not making improvements anymore. And so once we start to have this Kaizen mindset, this idea of continual improvement at all times, instead of just trying to keep the business running, that starts to enable all this kinds of stuff. And that's why we talked about building things in sort of a cloud-native manner. We're talking about that ability to go fast. We're talking about that ability to enable things, and part of that is this idea of continual improvement; this idea of always making things better. A lot of this comes out of Agile as well. I always talk to people about their sprint retrospectives, and I say, “It's your opportunity to make your team better. It's your opportunity to make your environment better. It's your opportunity to make your company better.” And I was like, “The worst thing that you could do in Agile is if in January of last year, and in January of this year, your team is just as good as it was.” That's terrible. Your team needs to be much better than it was. And so enabling developers to go quickly and all that other stuff. And putting all those things in place is a big part of that.Emily: Anything else that you want to add about this topic that I didn't think to ask?Dave: I mean, I think embracing these principles is really important. I think that if you look at the companies who are trying to go fast, and don't embrace these principles, these cloud-native ideas, or just even these cloud computing ideas, it basically becomes technical debt that keeps building up, and building up, and building up. And everybody knows accumulating tons of technical debt is not going to help your organization to move faster; it's not going to help you achieve all those great business outcomes that you want to get out of the State of DevOps report. And so I've seen situations where they have not been able to make that transition into this way of looking at the world, and the environment becomes really fragile; it becomes really brittle; it becomes really hard to make changes, and the only way is to make changes is to double down on the technical debt, and accumulate more of it, to the point where eventually they wind up spinning up an entire team whose sole purpose is to try to undo the mess that's been created. And you don't want that. You don't want to allocate a team to start unpacking your technical debt. You'd rather just not accumulate that technical debt as you're going along. And so I think it's really crucial for businesses that want to be successful in the long term that they start to embrace these ideas early. And obviously, if I'm a startup and I want to embrace a lot of these cloud-native things, that's a lot easier than if I'm a well-established company. I, in my consulting practice, I don't really work with startups because they don't tend to have these problems. They don't tend to accumulate a lot of technical debt because they are founded with this idea of going quickly and being able to empower developers and enable people to go quick. To your point earlier, the companies that I'm working with are the ones who are making this transition, where they've been running in the data center, or maybe they built an environment in the Cloud, but it's just not operating the way that they expected, and they're paying ridiculous amounts of money [laughs] to run stuff in AWS, where we thought, “Hey, what's going on? This isn't supposed to be this way.” But startups have the ability to do this much easier because they're unencumbered. And then as they grow, and they start to introduce more process because that stuff is inevitable that we're going to need to do that, that's when these things become even more important that we make sure that we're keeping them in mind and we're doubling down on them, and we're not introducing lean waste into the system and stuff like that, that will ultimately catch up with us.Emily: It's so true. All right, just a couple more questions. What is your favorite engineering tool?Dave: Ah. I mean, I'm supposed to give some kind of DevOps-y, it's not about the tools answer, but this week I think it was, on Twitter, I saw somebody else put up a SmokePing graph. And most people are not going to have heard of SmokePing. I worked at multiple ISPs in my career already, so the networking stuff is important to me. But wow, I love a SmokePing graph. And it's basically just a bunch of pings that are sent to some target, and then they're graphed when they come back, but instead of saying, “I sent one ping, and I came back with 20 milliseconds,” it sends 20, and then it graphs them all at that time point, so you can actually see density. It's basically before everybody came up with the idea of heat maps, this was one of the original heat map tools, and I still run SmokePing in my house just to see the performance of my home network going out to different parts of the internet, and that's definitely my favorite tool.Emily: Where can listeners connect with you? Website?Dave: Yeah, yeah, that's a great question. So, if people are interested in my business, I'm at mangoteque.com, M-A-N-G-O-T-E-Q-U-E. That was a fun name invented by Corey Quinn of The Duckbill Group and I loved it, and so I wound up using it. And they could also find me on LinkedIn obviously, or Twitter at @DaveMangot. M-A-N-G-O-T, and I post a lot on there about things that I've observed. I post a lot on there about DevOps. I post a lot on there about taking a scientific approach to a lot of the things we're doing, not just in terms of the scientific method, but like in terms of cognitive neuroscience, and things like that. And I also write a monthly column for CIO.com.Emily: Well, Dave, thank you so much for joining me.Dave: Thank you for having me, Emily, this was really fun.Announcer: Thank you for listening to The Business of Cloud Native podcast. Keep up with the latest on the podcast at thebusinessofcloudnative.com and subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or wherever fine podcasts are distributed. We'll see you next time.This has been HumblePod production. Stay humble.

Some highlights of the show include The challenges of operating digital commerce at scale, including the need for resource pooling and resiliency — and how this caused Ant Financial to re-think their infrastructure.  Ant Financial's former approach to scaling, which was mostly manual, and highly resource-intensive.  How Kubernetes is expediting cloud development for Ant Financial. Haojie's thoughts on the global engineering skills gap, and China's growing cloud computing market including driving factors and barriers.  Why Ant Financial's migration has largely been a success — and why achieving operational security is now a top priority for the company.   How Ant Financial is managing disconnect between its engineers and business leaders.  The company's ongoing mission to migrate its systems and applications away from legacy architectures. Links LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/haojiehang/ https://www.investopedia.com/tech/worlds-top-10-fintech-companies-baba/ TranscriptAnnouncer: Welcome to The Business of Cloud Native podcast where we explore how end users talk and think about the transition to Kubernetes and cloud-native architectures.Emily: So, I always start the same way. Can you introduce yourself?Haojie: Hey, my name is Haojie Hang. I'm a product manager in the CTO office at Ant Financial. I work on the product and strategy side for, basically, the CTO and the other executive leaders, as well as leading a small product teams within the org to look at the frontier technology in the cloud and other infrastructure businesses.Emily: And can you tell me a little bit more about what Ant Financial does? And then, also, what do you do on a day to day basis? What do you do when you get into the office?Haojie: Yeah, I'll do a quick introduction about the Ant Financial business. It's not just one business or two business, it's a group of businesses that we innovate and we do, mostly in China, but we're also expanding very rapidly all over the world. So, Ant Financial is basically a group of businesses including credit for both consumers and the enterprise, as well as loan businesses, both consumer and enterprise businesses. We say that the parent organization is basically, we call it Alipay, it's the earliest business we do since 2004 when the business was basically born from Taobao, which is our parent company. So, in short, the Ant Financial Business has a lot of presence in the business of payments business, remittance, credit card, loans, securities, and many other businesses like intelligent technology, blockchain, pretty much everything you can imagine in the FinTech and financial services, we're in there.Emily: Tell me a little bit more about the cloud-native journey for Ant Financial. When did it start? Why did it start? What was some of the motivations behind moving to cloud-native?Haojie: Yeah, it's actually quite interesting. I joined Ant Financial in 2008, but actually, the entire company started to look at cloud-native technology quite early, in 2012. So, back then, people were just looking at these technologies around the world, mostly from the US, they look at this open-source community, look at what other companies are doing, how to use the cloud-native technology to help with their business in the peak time, so during event. There's online promotion event we're doing every year, called Double 11—Shuāng shíyī in Chinese. Every year, so we have a large amount of promotional events happening online, trying to help merchants and the customer is trying to sell and buy stuff in our Tmall and Taobao platform in very, very discounted price. So, for that promotion event online, we have to think about the resilience, the resource pooling, oftentimes the visits has to increase multiple times, sometimes over 100 times the increase compared to the normal time. So in that case, we have to think about how we can be very resilient and efficient infrastructure to support that business needs. So, this is a very large topic. And then, back then, there was a lot of focus and study in our cloud computing department. So, we started looking at this technology called Mesos in 2012. And then, we do a lot of experiments around this technology, but from the business perspective, it's still hard to justify the benefits of moving to Mesos completely. So, we have multiple teams doing a lot of research in Mesos, in Kubernetes, sometimes in our own technology stack, but there's not enough proof or enough confidence for us to move completely over to that technology, until the emergence of Docker container, this Docker technology. Then we started to look at our container infrastructure, really do the investigation around this technology, and understand why this is taking over so quickly over the world, from the business perspective, and from the technology perspective. If you look at the community of Docker, the thing does not really happen until 2015. But we are already in the game for about a year or two. So, we're actually quite happy about our original strategy, but it's just in terms of the research. We're actually a little bit behind in terms of moving to this cloud-native architecture. But as you can see, that I had an interview with CNCF. So, we are very happy about the results that we have right now. Pretty much the entire architecture we run within Ant Financial is, basically, on Kubernetes ecosystem. It's not just using the open-source version of it. We're doing a lot of customization around this open-source framework. Yeah, I can talk more about the details.Emily: Yeah. Well, let's back up just a little bit. I'm curious what you were doing to manage this scaling before? And how did that change? And what about the whole process changed? Like, how stressful is it now, compared to before?Haojie: The process was very manual, I would say. We have extremely large team of engineers, and DevOps, security teams. And oftentimes their responsibility are overlap. So, some engineers are doing security work, some engineers are doing basically operational work. I would say, some people really hated it because they have to be on the computer, look at monitor 24/7, making sure transactions succeeded. When the peak time happens, there's nothing wrong with it. Sometimes they have to keep their phone open 24/7, basically to make sure this thing will not fail, right? And then, just many parts of work has to—so in the previous way, the way we do this operation is quite manual. We don't have a mature system or methodology telling us what we should do first, we should do second, and what's what would you do after this. So, basically the collaboration chain was not there. Therefore, when issue happens, our operation team has to respond very quickly. But then, how can we quickly identify the problem, and make it a problem? That's a problem, right? So, we have to make sure every time we respond, we respond in a very effective manner. That's the problem. In the previous process when something unexpected happen, who had to engage with the entire team from product, engineering, operation, security, everybody has to get up and look at the problem together, which was quite inefficient. So, after we moved to this cloud-native architecture—it's not the standard cloud architect, it's, kind of—we have a lot of innovation on top of this, to make sure that's fitting to our tech community, to our businesses. So, we basically did a lot of innovation in the process to make sure after we had this transition, people are clear about the roles, what they should be responding, and then who should be doing what. That's quite important.Emily: And tell me a little bit more about some of the additional layers or some tools that you've built on top of Kubernetes, and how that's helped you be successful.Haojie: Yeah, so I can give you an example. So, when we look at Kubernetes technology in our intelligent technology, or intelligent cloud business units, we're thinking about how can we use Kubernetes for cloud deployment. Okay, so previously we are using Mesos to do that. But we found this technology that lots of people are familiar with this technology. And then, people are not very sure if Mesos is the right path for container management, resource management or cloud deployment. But when we move to the Kubernetes for cloud deployment, people are actually quite happy. We are seeing a decrease in the amount of—to stand up the cloud. And previously, it took us two to three weeks to build an entire cloud. But after we use the Kubernetes technology, we can do that in a week. Oftentimes, if the scale is smaller, we can do that within three days. That's quite important because people are confident about the community; about this technology. And then, from the users perspective, they are also more willing to invest in Kubernetes. Oftentimes, this is the chicken-egg problem, right? When more companies are hiring more this, these terms appears in the market, in the job descriptions, the more people are willing to learn. So, this is actually what we're seeing a very, very good cycle for me, from both a company perspective and the talent perspective. So, that's actually quite good. But the problem for us is, there's still not enough people, or we say, you know, good talents in the market that we can attract. Basically, we're seeing a shortage of great engineering talent in the market, after the cloud-native transition. So, we're still trying to think about how we can educate the internal audience in the technology community to help them quickly pick up this new technology in the cloud, as well as the practice behind the cloud-native architecture.Emily: You know, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about the overall situation in China and that there's also this, sort of, skills gap. It sounds like it's just as present in China as it is in other parts of the world.Haojie: So, I would say in terms of the cloud computing, cloud-native tech community, it's pretty much—we had community forming as early as the rest of the world. But then, in early days, it was just a marketing term by people saying, oh, this is cloud, we want to learn something. But then really, from the business perspective, there's still not enough customer trying to pay for this technology. Oftentimes, the contract size was not large enough to feed engineers. That's what I say. And then, I think the trend of the serious adoption really happens in the past three to four years when a lot of startups coming out in the cloud businesses. There's a company called [QingCloud]. There's a company called [unlcear]. There's many other unicorns in China in the cloud computing space, and I think two of them just went public in the A-listed share recently. So, from that perspective, I would say, the cloud computing business is really maturing rapidly in the past two years. Because we see some unicorns really coming out of this game, besides Alibaba. I think, from that perspective, I will say, it's getting better and better. It's just in terms of the pay behavior, right? How much customers are willing to pay for this technology, pay for the services, pay for the products? I think it will still take some time to mature.Emily: To what extent do you see Chinese companies using cloud-native services and tools from Europe, from the United States, from elsewhere in the world? To what extent is it a segregated market? Like, the rest of the world doesn't use Chinese tools, Chinese companies don't use tools from the rest of the market.Haojie: It's a good question. To me, I'm coming from an engineering background, I believe open-source community is global. It's a global phenomenon. I think the world is connected. And I would never say that people in China, or Chinese companies, or—they only using technology businesses that created in China, this is not right. And often in many cases, there's not enough options, right? So, I think, even though Chinese companies and startups are trying to innovate very aggressively, but I think the world is still connected, they have to build on top of the innovation that's already happened in the rest of the world. So, in that case, I think we're still seeing a lot of collaboration across the globe. China, United States, for sure, Europe, other parts of the world. It's just how aggressive people are in terms of investing in frontier technology. And are they really seeing the benefits of using the frontier technology? There's question of technology innovation versus business innovation, right? Do you see the business value? Can you really see that in the next five years? I would say in China, most of the non-internet sector, they're quite short-sighted. They're still trying to survive, they're trying to make sure they are doing—they can become the top three, top five in their business. So, technology is oftentimes secondary. But for the leaders in that sector, they have to think about that quite early in order to become the top player in their sector. So, I think, the trend is that people are still collaborating academically and engineering side to make sure the right technology gets applied in the right scenario and trying to improve the technology at home.Emily: It's interesting that you mentioned that some Chinese companies might not focus as much on the technology. Do Chinese companies tend to consider moving to cloud-native, important for their business? Or a strategic move?Haojie: From the strategy perspective, yes. Every leader would definitely know about cloud computing, cloud-native architecture, they would definitely think about moving. It's just that internal execution when they think about moving seriously, they have to evaluate, do we have enough talent? How much business value am I getting out of this? Is it really helping? What is my budget? And all those kind of fears, problems. So, that's what backing them up because oftentimes they don't have enough budget. That's what I say in those non-internet sector. Because I've lived and worked in the US for a while. I think in the US, the non-internet sector are quite advanced in terms of the technology adoption, especially in cloud-native. It's quite easy for them to recruit, then build a large engineering team to work on cloud infrastructure software. But it's not the case in China because people are still trying to, especially the leader who can make the decision, they're still thinking about the ROI, the rate of returns, the rate of investments, for building a strong software teams, making sure they have the robust infrastructure running at the bottom level. So, they are still trying to figure out the budget, make sure they are profitable enough to afford that.Emily: Do you feel like Ant Financial got the business benefits out of the transition that it was looking for?Haojie: Yeah, as I mentioned, the entire organization are quite happy about the move because really, they are, kind of, [unintelligible] move in China. So, basically, even the non-engineering teams started to appreciate this, and talk about this technology, and trying to understand it deeper, because they see the entire organization are quite happy, especially from the business protective. As I mentioned, in the Double 11 event we have—last year in 2019, the GMV we had was 260 billion RMB in total, which is 25 percent growth compared to the last year. So, for that large amount of GMV, we supported the entire infrastructure, are building from our cloud infrastructure. It is quite massive. We don't have a infrastructure for that business, we have the infrastructure for the entire group, including Ant Financial and Alibaba. Basically the entire businesses is running in the cloud. We have very, very few siloed data centers and the infrastructure—you know, uh, data centers—basically, we have the entire thing running in single cloud. That's the largest achievement we had I think since 2019, which was one of the strategic goal we had, we achieved last year. And this year, we're putting a lot of emphasis in the secure operation. It has been one of the primary cloud business goal because when bad things happen, people are literally losing money. Imagine one of the transactions failed. It failed the entire country, right? Like, no one else in China or in the other part of the world can make a purchase from Alipay app. This is quite devastating. So, secure operation has been the only thing we focus on this year, I would say. I remember in some meetings, one of the leader mentioned, “If there's only thing we should do this year, it's secure operation.” We're trying to make sure we operate the entire business safely on top of our new cloud-native architecture, with the minimum amount of incidents and failures.Emily: And what do you think have been some of the challenges? What has been more difficult than you imagined in making this transition?Haojie: Yeah, I think for me, the most obvious point is that we still have a large amount of operating team engineers, and support team, and the product, and the entire organization, basically, to making sure the entire thing working seamlessly because I think it's very hard to quantify it. I think the overall efficiency in running the cloud-native architecture, we're still looking at that. Let me try to find a good example.Emily: Let me ask a question. What's gone unexpectedly well? Was there anything that you thought was going to be really challenging that wasn't?Haojie: Oh, I think after moving to the cloud-native architecture, the engineers are quite happy. They're working much, much harder. They're trying to do things much more quickly than we imagined. Basically, they are very aggressive, and very happy to see the leadership teams really buying this technology, and they're invest—want to invest seriously in this technology. They are building not only the engineering team but also the prod team, the entire organization around to cloud-native technology. So, oftentimes in order to persuade business leaders to do something serious in the technology, they have to spend a lot of time trying to evangelize to the leadership team to making sure they understand, oh, this is the right direction. We have to do this right. It takes oftentimes from six months to a year for them to really doing that. So, for that, I think it's quite successful. We see a very—basically I think the entire engineering culture has changed. People are looking at open-source community more aggressively. They think about how we should contribute back to the community. What community events should I support? What conferences should I go to? There's more and more discussion like that happening within the organization. And, I think, larger Ant Financial has become one of the sponsor in the events. We are one of the most active participants in the community, I think, since 2019, along with Alibaba. So, that's the positive side I'm seeing. People really start to form a culture on their own, especially in open-source community. Trying to be more present, trying to take more active position in the discussion, both within company and outside of company. So, that's actually quite the good. We're happy to see engineers are doing their work, and are doing it more aggressively.Emily: Do you feel like there's any sort of disconnect between the engineering teams and business leaders? Or do you feel like they're mostly on the same page?Haojie: Yeah, I would say there are still some gaps between the business leaders and the engineers. So, oftentimes, I would say the engineers are quite updated with what's going on in this community, in some new plugins, in some new components coming out of this Kubernetes ecosystem, but then the business leaders don't have enough time to to pay attention to this. So, it really depends on how confident they are about this technology. And how much more time do you want to put into this personally. I think the business leader will look at the numbers like KPIs, metrics, the number of accidents, the operating efficiencies, things like that, but that's in the business context, all right. The engineer leaders cares more about what kind of new technology we use, what kind of new technology we created on top of this ecosystem, and how many people are happy about using this technology? And how many more can we do from this transition? So, basically, they are disconnect. So, I think the good part in Ant Financial is that for business leaders, most of the business leaders are coming from engineering background, but they have a strong KPI in their work. And then, most of the engineer leaders has to learn business, because, in order to persuade business leaders to invest in this, they have to think from their perspective. I think, in terms of the communication, they're quite up to date. It's just in terms of the execution and the timelines there are some disconnected happen. Yeah.Emily: What would you say that business leaders are looking for that engineering teams might not be thinking about?Haojie: I think one example that I see is a business leader will think about the team building, the talent building, the culture, and the public image that we had in the public, especially in China. Yeah, let me give you an example. If the technology—if the company is not cool enough, from the technology, from engineering perspective, it's very hard to attract the top talent in engineerings from the business leader. Without strong engineering teams, we cannot execute. We cannot innovate. So, that's something they oftentimes think about when they try to invest in technology. But in terms of the execution, after the engineers gets on board, and work in Alibaba, in Ant Financial, that's something engineers have think about. How do they keep the talent? How do they make sure talents are happy? How do we make sure they are satisfied about what they do? So, I would say these two things have to work at the same time. You cannot have a strong image in technology, in frontier technology. But then, after the talent gets on board, they realize, oh, this is just great from outside, but from inside, we are still working on the legacy technology. It's operate very inefficiently internally, and how can we make sure people are dealing this? And I think that's quite important.Emily: Is there anything that you think is preventing you from moving further along in the cloud-native journey? Anything other than lack of human resources?Haojie: I would say that how can we securely move away from the legacy architecture, whether it's built privately or you built it using other vendor's technology? You know, for that kind of transition we're taking very seriously. We still have a large amount of systems and applications running on Oracle, running on, sometimes in MySQL, sometimes in other siloed stack. And we're not 100 percent. We're in one cloud, we're not 100 percent away from Oracle, MySQL or that type of, we consider legacy, architecture. So, the moving will still take some time. And so, how can we make sure the transition is successful? How can we make sure the transition is less painful? Is something we as the leaders and the business executives will think about because how do you how we can set up the right KPI and the right goal for engineers to feel happy about doing this work? I think that's one of the challenges. Oftentimes people, when they are placed into this kind of work, moving from legacy architecture, to new architecture, just very minimum business value we can see from this transition, right? So, we have to have the right—we have to set the enough goal to motivate them to do the work. That's something we have to really think about that in the long term. Because this is not like we do that for six months, a year. It's going to be an effort for the next three to four years. Imagine, Alipay business started in 2004, and it's been already 16 years. So, the transition was to happen over time. It's just, how we can make sure that the transition that it's less painful?Emily: Tell me just a little bit more about some of the custom capabilities that you built on top of Kubernetes.Haojie: We have our own internal monitoring architecture, which is quite advanced, I would say. And this kind of monitoring infrastructure is built for both developers and operators. I think that is something we invest extremely heavily because we cannot find any other alternatives in the market. I'll give you some background about this monitoring infrastructure. So, the entire tech stack was primarily built on Java stack, the thing starting from 2004. And now a lot of cloud-native technology are leveraging Go technology, right? So, the monitoring of Go is quite different from the monitoring of Java. We have different versions of JDK and JRE that we created—one of them was actually recently open-sourced called Dragon Well. You can check out on online, a lot of posts around that. So, we have to make sure the entire stack, from the application, middleware, in the mesh-level, container host, all the way down to compiler has to be monitored quite efficiently. Once anything happened, from the operation side or from the technology side, we have to quickly respond to identify in what layer the error happened. In order for that mitigation to be efficient, we have to make sure we are monitoring every single thing in the stack. As I mentioned, from the application, middleware, host level, all the way down to hardware level, sometimes a failure in hardware will cost the entire failure in our business. It's quite often. So, we have to make sure we are monitoring our own technology in a very good manner. And also imagine monitoring that amount of infrastructure in that massive scale. It's very challenging. I think before 2014, we had a lot of failure in our monitoring infrastructure. This is quite ridiculous, but this is what happened. So, we spent a lot of time to make sure we have the supporting infrastructure ready for that kind of businesses. That's quite important.Emily: Anything else that you'd like to add about either your own experience moving to cloud-native or some observations about how things are going in China in general?Haojie: I think from the strategy perspective, Chinese company or startups from China are doing quite well. It's just the market is quite different. For companies to survive and thrive in the Chinese market, they have to go with the customers, right? So, even though the innovation happens at the same level, the customers are not at the same level from what I see. But overall, I think the trend is quite positive, I think eventually, be it five years, or seven years, or ten years, Chinese companies, Chinese customers will be at the same level as the rest of the world: in the US, in the UK, in Australia, in the rest of the world. I think people are more and more aggressive, and they would like to allocate more and more budget into technology business. They realize the benefits of it, especially in the current outbreak. When people, they cannot go to work, but they still have to do something. The business has to survive. Like, they have to do something in order for the business to survive. So, from the business perspective, how can they build their strong online presence during the outbreak? Is actually quite important. Before the outbreak, I would say, in the retail business, there still some people think about, “Oh, how can we do this in our traditional manner? How can we open as many stores as possible.” They didn't really care about building a store online. From in Taobao or Tmall, [unintelligible] seriously. But during outbreak, people they have to stay at home. They have nowhere to go. But then the business, they still have to pay their employees. So, how can you do that? The only thing is going online. In order to go online, they have to build online infrastructure for their customers, for their employees, for them to work. So, that's quite—honestly, that's one of the trend I'm seeing: that people are paying more and more attention to work remotely, and use software, SAAS software without on-premise deployments. In that case, people, they are able to work wherever they go. Being at home, office, on the road, people are really interested in the benefits of SAAS, of cloud. I think that's something that I'm seeing. I think after this year, definitely the market of SAAS will become better and better because not only the technology is, but the business leaders will understand the value of using Zoom, using Ding Ding, using WeChat, to make sure their employees, they can work anywhere they want.Emily: Well, thank you so much. A couple finishing up questions. First of all, what is an engineering tool that you couldn't do your job without?Haojie: Do you mean, like, just tools for me to do some engineer work?Emily: Yeah. What's your favorite tool, something you just can't imagine working without?Haojie: We have a lot of tools innovated within the company. I don't think I can mention that in this podcast.Emily: Okay. No problem. And then, how can people connect with you if they want to?Haojie: At work, or outside of work?Emily: like on Twitter or on social media.Haojie: Yeah, I had a lot of invitation from LinkedIn, not so much on Twitter because I'm not active on Twitter. But I think people, they get to know me, oftentimes from word of mouth, they got introduced from other friends of mine, they want to understand about the technology adoption in China, especially in the cloud. Yeah, people oftentimes, which me from LinkedIn, that's the primary source.Emily: Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate you taking the time to chat.Haojie: Thank you, Emily.Announcer: Thank you for listening to The Business of Cloud Native podcast. Keep up with the latest on the podcast at thebusinessofcloudnative.com and subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or wherever fine podcasts are distributed. We'll see you next time.This has been HumblePod production. Stay humble.

Miranda: So, are you satisfied with the hearing? Miranda: Então você está satisfeita com audiência? Miss Adams: Very much so. Miss Adams: Muito mesmo. Miranda: As you have seen, there is nothing to worry about. Miranda: Como você viu não há nada para se preocupar. Miss Adams: Indeed... Shall we order now? Miss Adams: Sem dúvida...devemos fazer o pedido agora? Miranda: Sure. Miranda: Certo. Emily: Can I get you something to drink? Emily: Posso pedir (conseguir) alguma coisa para você beber? Miranda: Yes dear. I'would like a glass of red wine. Miranda: Sim querida. Eu gostaria de uma taça de vinho tinto. Miss Adams: I can't make up my mind. What would you recommend? Miss Adams: Eu não consigo me decidir. O que você recomendaria? Emily: May I suggest the house cocktail? Emily: Posso sugerir o coquetel da casa? Miss Adams: What exactly is it? Miss Adams: O que é isto exatamente? Emily: It's a combination of rum, lime juice, sugar, mint and soda water. Emily: É uma combinação de rum, suco de lima, açúcar, hprtelã e soda. Miss Adams: Hmm I. Emily: First you mix the mint and the sugar, and a splash of soda untilI the sugar melts. Emily: Primeiro você mistura hortelã e a soda, e um pouco de soda até o açúcar derreter. Emily: And then you pour the rum and the lime juice into a shaker with some Ice. Emily: Depois você derrama o rum e o suco de lima dentro da coqueteleira com um pouco de gelo. Emily: And then you top it with a splash of soda and you... Emily: E depois você cobre com um pouquinho de soda e você... Miss Adams: It sounds great but I would like something less elaborated. Miss Adams: Isso parece ótimo mas eu gostaria de algo menos elaborado. Emily: I see. May I propose a glass of champagne? Emily: Entendi. Você me permite propor uma taça de champanhe? Miss Adams: That would be fine. Miss Adams: Isso seria ótimo. Miranda: To a sucessful meeting. Miranda: A um encontro de sucesso. Miss Adams: Cheers! Miss Adams: Saúde! Miranda: Would you like another drink? Miranda: Você gostaria de um outro drink? Miss Adams: Oh, no thank you. I already fell a bit dizzy. Miss Adams: Oh, não obrigado. Eu já me sinto um pouco tonta. I'm afraid I'll have to go. I'll have an apointment in half an hours time. Eu receio que eu tenha que ir. Eu tenho um compromisso em meia hora. Miss Adams: May I have the bill please? Miss Adams: Você me permite (ter) a conta por favor? Emily: Sure. It's 15 Pounds. Emily: Certo. são 15 libras. Miranda: Put your wallet away, this is my treat. Miranda: Bote sua carteira de lado esta é a minha vez. Miss Adams: No, you paid for dinner last time. Miss Adams: Não, você pagou o jantar da última vez. Miranda: Hmm thank you then. Miranda: Hmm obrigado então. Miss Adams: Thanks for a most enjoyable evening. Miss Adams: Obrigado por uma noite muito agradável. Miranda: Not at all, it was a pleasure. Miranda: De jeito nenhum foi um prazer. Miss Adams: Goodbye. Miss Adams: Adeus. Miranda: Bye. Miranda: Adeus. Emily: Bye! Emily: Tchau! xxxx We are going to learn about ordering, Nós vamos aprender a respeito de fazer um pedido, recomending something, recomendar alguma coisa, proposing a toast, paying a bill. propor um brinde, pagar uma conta. As you have heard Miranda and Mrs Adams are in the café, como você já ouviu Miranda e senhorita Adams estão em um café, celebrating the results of a hearing. comemorando o resultado de uma audiência. Ms. Adams asks: A srta. Adams pergunta: Shall we order now? Vamos fazer o pedido agora? you can also say Você também pode dizer are you ready to order? or Would you like to order? você está pronta para fazer o pedido? ou você gostaria de pedir? Emily asks them: Can I get you something to drink? or she could say what would you like to drink? Emily pergunta então: posso pedir alguma coisa para você beber? ou ela poderia dizer o que você gostaria de beber? A srta. Adams is undecided: está indecisa e diz: I can't make up my mind. Eu

Emily states: "Hardest part of the job is coming up with solutions. It's one thing to identify what's wrong, it's entirely another thing to give clients an alternative solution that's accessible to start with but also reasonable for them to implement." Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Make sure you have a look at: Their blog: https://www.twilio.com/blog Their channel on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/twilio Diversity event tickets: https://go.twilio.com/margaret/ Thanks to Gatsby for being a sponsor of the show. Gatsby is a modern website framework that builds performance into every website by leveraging the latest web technologies. Create blazing fast, compelling apps and websites without needing to become a performance expert. Make sure you have a look at their site: https://www.gatsbyjs.org Transcript Nic: Welcome to the Accessibility Rules Podcast. This is episode 90. It's going to be a bit different because it's been so hot where I've been that I could not go without turning off the air, ac unit, which means I could not actually record without making airplane noises in the back so I've invited Christopher Schmitt, a colleague of mine and previous guest of the show to be the guest host. So, I'll leave that to them in a moment. I'm Nic Steenhout and I talk with people involved in one way or another with web accessibility. If you're interested in accessibility, hey, this show's for you. To get today's show notes or transcript, head out to https://a11yrules.com. Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Twilio, connect the world with the leading platform for voice, SMS, and video at Twilio.com. I also want to thank Gatsby, a new sponsor of the show. Gatsby is a modern website framework that builds performance into every website by leveraging the latest web technologies. Create blazing fast and compelling websites without needing to become a performance expert. Christopher: Hello, everyone. My name is Christopher Schmitt. I am not Nic but I do welcome you to the Accessibility Rules podcast. Nic can't make it to the podcast this week, he is out traveling where it's so hot he can't actually have great audio. It's my understanding. So he asked me to guest host today. So, I'm really honored to do that. And, with us, today as a guest is Emily Lewis. Hello, Emily. Emily: Hi, Christopher. Christopher: Hey, great. You are also where it's really hot. Emily: It is. I'm in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I think we're going to hit 100 F today. Christopher: Oh, well, nice. Emily: But, I have air conditioning so… Christopher: Yeah, we have air … we have silent running air conditioning, which is… which I am grateful every day as I am living in Austin, Texas now, so… yeah. We are actually celebrating the 28th day of 100 degrees Fahrenheit  in the summer. Emily: Ah, good times. Climate change. Christopher: Yeah, definitely. I think we have a parade a few months ago out here. But, yeah. Let's just get started with you so… Welcome to the podcast, Emily. To get started just tell me one thing most people don't know about you. Emily: I don't know. I'm a pretty transparent person and I've been fairly public within the web community in the past 10 years or so, so I guess if they don't know it about me I don't want them to. So… Christopher: That's Ari. I must admit, we have known each other for a long time, right? Emily: Yeah, yeah. Christopher: Right, I'm just checking in to make sure we are right on that one. We've known each other for a while. Emily: Full disclosure. Christopher: Did you know when we first met? Because I'm terrible with this. Emily: I do. You reached out to me to ask me to do one of your online summits. Christopher:  Oh really? Emily: … and then I happened to be going to South by Southwest later that year and you and Ari took us to BBQ. We didn't know you and it was a long road through backwoods and I was with Jason and he and I were looking at each other like, “I hope these people are safe” Christopher: And it turned out we're not. We …. No, actually, Texas chainsaw massacre was filmed like 45 minutes from where downtown Austin is so… Emily: I believe it. Christopher: So we usually do a … if we have people from out of town we … Ari, my girlfriend and so we should do… we invite people to BBQ. Especially for South by Southwest. So it's not... South by Southwest is not the web geek mecha it used to be, right? Emily: No, not anymore. Christopher: So that's like… I don't know… 80,000 people descend upon Austin whereas when I first started going it was more like 4,000 people going. So, it's a little different. Different scale of economies there. Emily: Yeah Christopher: So...And so yeah, one of the things we do… and, you know, you did a great job at the summit and you just have a great personality on stage. You're so thorough and I just… you know… every time… because, before accessibility, before working with Nic and Knowbility we ran a conference, a web conference company and every time I could, you know, I thought you'd be a good fit. I'd try to get you involved in some way, in some projects like that. So, just because you're very thorough and you have great stage performance. I mean, it's not a performance, I don't know what it is but it's just you have a … going on stage you do a great job. So.. yeah. Emily: Ah, thank you. It doesn't feel that way inside. Christopher: No? Oh no, it definitely does. It's like, I kind of … I tried stand up comedy and just all the little things. I think everyone else is now because every comic ha a podcast now and they talk about the process a lot more than they could, like in the ‘90s and whatever. And so, it's just amazing how much little things they have to do to win over a crowd and all the things they have to think about when you do that too. So, it's kind of refreshing in a way when you think about it. We are just speaking at conferences isn't our … it' normal in our industry but for a lot of other industries it's not normal. Emily: Right Christopher: Because our industry change so much. So, like,  when I was first starting out about it, there was 2 ways you could tell people you know what you're doing. One, you could actually write books about it or you go to conferences about it and then somewhere along the way something called Blogs happened. So that was networking. Right...so enough about me and all. So I'm honored to guest host the podcast with you, actually. Emily: Thank you Christopher: So, yeah. There are many definitions of the definitions on web accessibility. How do you define it? Emily: For me, it's really simple and aligns with my new job with Knowbility. It's equitable access. Making it possible for anybody to access digital information, digital experiences, commerce communities. All of it. Just making it possible. Christopher: So is there a difference between equal access and equitable access? Emily: Well, I think equal access equality is based on the same for everybody and equitable is providing the means for people to have accessibility maybe based on different needs. I think that's accurate. It's not … equitable is not making it the same for everybody, it's about building experiences that different people can use different ways but they can still fundamentally achieve the same goal. Christopher: Okay, sure. Okay. And where does your role fall within the work of web accessibility? Emily: So, right now I've only just recently shifted my career to really, really focus on accessibility so right now I'm doing auditing and assessments of sites and making recommendations for improvements. I'm getting to do a little bit of client support and client training. And, most recently I got to do some usability studies which were just awesome. And, it hasn't shown up too much because I'm still new to the job but advocacy and education that I think that is going to be a big part. So, social media, community engagement, writing, presenting… Christopher: So you're really excited about usability testing that you did. What about it did you like? Emily: I've never had a chance to watch someone interact with a website with speech to text software or eye-tracking software or you know if you've ever done like a ...you're testing screen magnification on our browsers we just resize the text but there's actual screen magnification software that's very different and I got to watch someone use that on their phone which was mind-blowing. So, just seeing first hand how someone is using a site in a different way than I ever have or seen anybody. So, it was eye-opening Christopher: How did you become aware of web accessibility and it's importance? Emily: It really kind of was just a job. One of my first jobs in web development was for a US federal agency. The USDA which is focused on agriculture, and I was a webmaster for one of their conservation sites and the bulk of that job as a webmaster, which tells you how old I am, was keeping the site up to date with 508 standards. So USDA staff would update the site and edit it and do things and I would go behind them to make sure that what they had done met those accessibility standards. It was kind of like an ongoing or rolling audit job. Christopher: Nice Emily: Yeah, so I at the time didn't really have a complete appreciation for the accessibility part of it. Like, I knew it was about accessibility but I didn't have that kind of connection I was just talking about with the user experience. But, I liked … it was a set of rules and I was a new developer trying to figure out how to be a developer so a lot of rules made a lot of sense and made my job easier. So, yeah, but I was attracted to the standards aspect of it before I really understood the accessibility aspect. Christopher: And do you feel like there's a difference between usability and accessibility? Emily: Well, yeah. Something can be technically accessible and not really usable. So, I feel like… my partner Jason - my boyfriend, they don't make a word for people who are in their mid 40's and aren't married but he does usability work for the government but accessibility is a part of it. So, fundamentally things have to meet accessibility and then on top of that, it goes through usability testing. So I guess that accessibility could be viewed as a part of usability. Christopher: Yeah I always have a tough definition there. There's a definition about it that separates usability from accessibility but when I started out it was always tough to separate the two as two distinct items. Because, I felt like if it's not accessible it's not usable, right? You can't have a good user experience if it's not accessible. It was always just like… it still is the barrier of what the difference is between those two. Emily: I honestly feel like our industry is still defining it. I mean, I see it with Jason all the time with his work and he works with the government which are really large projects with lots and lots of people and they're still trying to define this stuff. So, yeah, I think it's ongoing. It's sort of evolving as we understand this stuff. Christopher: Right, and our industry changes so fast, right? Emily: Oh my god yes. Christopher: 5 years ago we were not even talking about tablets. Like, you know. Emily: Yeah, and there's going to be so much more. I mean, as we are seeing now people having these … Echos and … I don't know, I don't have them in my house but these voice-activated devices and, you know, the more that stuff evolves the more our role, our jobs and the aspects of accessibility and usability are going to change too. It's hard to challenge it. Christopher: Yeah, it is. The conventional UIs, I mean with Echos, yeah, That's a bit of trouble, yeah. So, I do have them in my house So, um… Emily: They're watching you. Christopher: Yeah, I call them peeping Toms. That's what I call them. So… but, it is kind of weird but it's basically how much I hate light switches. And so that's why. I just like walking into a room and like, alright, turn it on and then sometimes I get a cold or the flu and you know, your throats sore or whatever and you're like “Man, I wish I had a light switch right now!” Emily: So that would be the thing that most people don't know about you. Your hatred of light switches. But now they do. Christopher: Now they do, yeah. I don't know what they know or don't already. Just, yeah, so...alright. What barriers did you or are you facing in terms of implementing accessibility? And how are you getting over them? Emily: Well, I mean, in my job now that I'm focused on accessibility it's a little different than when I ran an agency and accessibility was just … it really wasn't a priority for my job. So, today I feel like the hardest part of my job is coming up with solutions for some of the sites and interfaces that we work with because it's one thing to identify what's wrong. It's totally a different thing to give them alternatives solutions that's accessible to start with but also pretty reasonable for them to implement and on some level I can't help still being a client. You know, having worked with clients for so long. Like, you still have to support their overall design in business school. Christopher: Right Emily: I think that's incredibly hard. Christopher: Yeah I mean, it's .. it was like, Friday, I left work and I was trying to figure out in the back of my head … we tabulate what we do each day but they're kind of broad strokes. We don't have to do like a timesheet like what we do every hour and so I was trying to figure out where did my afternoon go. And, part of it, I realized on my way home I was like, “Oh yeah, I had to deconstruct this bad code example the client had used and then try to reformulate it into an accessible standards-based solution” and it took forever. Emily: Yup Christopher: Just to do that, right? And, it was a total time sink. Emily: Yup Christopher: Not like… I mean, it was good. It was a good challenge to do it but it still takes a long time to do that if it's not something easy code. It's amazing. And, I said this sarcastically last week. I was just impressed with the ability of the developers to avoid Semantic HTML. Emily: Yeah, I mean… Christopher: Yeah Emily: I was working on that same system with you and it was just, every day it was just an “Oh, that never would have occurred to me to do that.” Christopher: Yeah. Exactly. It was kind of crazy. But, yeah, I think that's also kind of our … like what we do is a benefit too. It's like we actually give alternatives to clients. I guess that's what we … that's kind of neat too. Emily: Yeah and I also like… you know we work with some really, really smart people who have a lot of experience and so, you know, watching what they do. How they make suggestions and solutions, really helps me expand what I might have considered in the first place, as a way to make a problem access… you know, solve it and make it accessible. So, yeah. I feel really lucky we have a lot of people who have so much more experience than I do. Christopher: What is your favorite word? Emily: Well, I don't know if this is like a PG-13 podcast so Nic can … I'll give you two options for Nic to choose from, but Christopher, you know this. Fuck is probably my favorite word. But, for the PG-13 listeners - ice cream. Ice cream makes me so happy. If someone says ice cream I'm instantly looking forward to it. Christopher: Oh man, you are going to enjoy Access-U, which is the conference that Knowbility puts on. It's for practical training purposes in accessibility. Ah, for the last two years they've brought an ice cream truck to the event. So, you will… Hopefully I made you happy and looking forward to May already. Emily: Alright now I'm like - I've got to get some ice cream today. Christopher: So, yeah. So like, I feel bad because Nic asked me this question and I just… I whiffed at it and so I didn't answer the question. And so, now that I have a second chance of sorts. If you don't mind me saying what my word is? Emily: Oh yeah, do it. Christopher: It's moist. Emily: Oh, you like that word? Christopher: Yeah, that's exactly why I like that word. Because everyone hates it. So, I feel like it says what it is in a way. It's like… it's kind of gross. Yeah. Emily: I like it for cake. Anything else just makes me think of humidity and discomfort. Christopher: Yeah, well I grew up in Florida. So I feel… Emily: Yeah, you love that, right? Christopher: Yeah, I just can't wait. Yeah. The move from Florida to Ohio which didn't happen in the end… I was just like, “What the heck. What's going on over here?” Christopher: What was your greatest achievement in terms of web accessibility? Emily: I really don't feel like I've achieved it yet. I mean, I've been doing front-end development, CMS development, project management for digital products for like 23 years or something like that and I've always built with standards of accessibility in mind but it's never… it's never been the focus. I've only just done that shift a few months ago so I haven't had a chance to do anything great. Christopher: I see ...I see some of your issue reports. I think you've done some great issue reports. Emily: You know, I will say that I used to have a podcast myself and it started, I guess about 8 or 9 years ago which was kind of early and we had transcripts right from the beginning. That was really important to me. Christopher: Yeah Emily: I don't know if that's a great achievement but it was a commitment that I felt was important. Christopher: Yeah, just think about how many podcasts there are that don't have transcripts. Emily: I don't understand that. Christopher: Yeah Emily: I really don't understand that. Christopher: Yeah, I felt bad because I don't have transcripts for my own podcasts that I used to run and I just … there was all this content that was just waiting to be discovered and all this content that's not been discovered. I mean, even though they have video of a podcast that they turn into audio and they don't have a transcript for it. Emily: Mmhmm, well I mean, it's an accessibility issue. But, there's business reasons for it. I mean, Google eats that up. Your podcast gets a tonne more exposure. I mean, our podcast was getting high… high up in the Google search results for almost all of our web topics. Because we had lots and lots of keywords. Christopher: Yeah. Emily: And also helps you consume the content in a different way. Like, maybe you can't listen to it and you want to scan the transcript for saline information. It just makes sense. Christopher: Yeah, I think so. Okay, cool. Well, that's awesome. Well, that's a good place for us to wrap up for now. But, thanks for being on the Accessibility Rules podcast. Emily: Thanks for having me. Christopher:  Okay, awesome. Until next time. Nic: Thanks for listening. Quick reminder, the transcript for this and all other shows are available on the show's website at https://a11yrules.com Big shoutout to my sponsors and my patrons. Without your support, I couldn't not continue to do the show. Do visit patreon.com/steenhout if you want to support the accessibility rules podcast. Thank you.

EPISODE 54 Introductions Karla - K-Rae on Ravelry and Karlacrafts on Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest Emily -  EmGemKnits, EmilyTheTechEditor - Instagram, and  Emily Tech Edits Ravelry.   Shout outs QuietRiotGrrrl - Mary from Bloomington Indiana Thisastridpurins - Astrid from Perth Australia Introduce yourself in the Ravelry group or leave us a review on itunes or google play music or send us an email with feedback at mail@relentlessknitting.com We’ve had some great posts in both the KAL threads and a Meet the Knitter segment! Thank you!   What's knitting now Emily -  Red Heart it’s a wrap knit for Edie by Isabell Kramer A joyful thread by silvia mcfadden in sweet fiber merino lace rose gold Stephen West Speckle and Pop! Mystery KAL - out of all of the Sweet Georgia   Karla Fougasse by Bristol Ivy - 2 sleeves, button band modification math and body cast on My cup of tea socks - Robyn Lynn for my Mom Fintry - Knox Mountain Knit Co Harlow by Andrea Mowry Graphic Socks by Melissa Morgan Oakes   Hibernating Woolly Lamb, Aeon Vest by Hillary Smith-Calis, Tulip bag   FO’s - Emily -FLK vanilla socks in turtle purl self striping sock yarn Mistletoe Kisses colour way. AND Apex shawl by Knox Mtn Knit Co in Gauge dye works Knox Fade colourway Tea cup socks in Black Cat Custom BFL base   Karla - Arne and Carlos Christmas Stocking for Locke Forager Scarf - Nicola Hodges Basic Classic Worsted Mittens - Jocelyn Tunney Land of Leaves Hat - Marianne Bjerkman   Design features Emily-  turning a stitch pattern did not work. Karla - No charts ugh otherwise everyone is behaving, oh wait, frogged 3” of fougasse Knit-lit Fleece Navidad - Maggie Stefton CBC - Trigger mitts Radi https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thesundayedition/the-sunday-edition-december-16-2018-1.4928642/newfoundland-knitters-rescue-trigger-mitts-from-extinction-1.4928652 https://www.amazon.ca/Saltwater-Mittens-Newfoundland-Heritage-Designs/dp/1775234584/ref=asc_df_1775234584/?tag=googleshopc0c-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=292939055252&hvpos=1o1&hvnetw=g&hvrand=2484274022866859667&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=20117&hvlocphy=9001523&hvtargid=pla-570754451258&psc=1 Talky Talk Emily - Karla - I have not mailed out prizes, planning for YO, Lesson plan for Sorrento retreat, tech editor course, 2019 aspirations #revelinknit continues, classes at kelowna yarn KAL! Thinking about 2019... #committoknit2018 - I’ll close the thread on my birthday, jan 23. I’m done! I took an extra 3 days #revelinknit2018 - keep up with your selfcare knitting! Spinning Emily -. None, but I’ve got big plans for 2019 Karla - Planned and organized my 2019 goal of spinning a sweater quantity. I have the braid Emily gave me for knitmas lined up first as a get to know you on the wheel. Best laid plans Emily - Finish all the WIPS and socks for my aunt.   Karla - Finish Wips (Fougasse, Aeon vest, harlow hat, graphic and tea socks) cleaned up the closet stash and left the things I really want to knit in the bin, everything else in storage. Shop the stash 2019   Crafternoon/Sew-what Emily -It was christmas, we made cookies. Karla - nuts and bolts   Stash Enhancement Emily- Knitmas, 4 skeins of sweet Georgia sock yarn… An accidental sweater quantity from Beehive.    Karla - Knitmas   Adventures in Mommyhood Emily- Sleep. I just need sleep. Karla- kid   Inquiring minds Tell us about you! Join us on Ravelry or our Facebook page

Dr. Veronica Anderson, Host, Functional Medicine Specialist and Medical Intuitive interviews Emily Filoramo about Erasing Your Fears, Negative Self-Talk and Insecurities. What does it take to erase your fears, negative self-talk and insecurities? Self-Leadership Expert, Trainer and Transformational Executive Coach, Emily Filoramo, mentors leaders and teams to master the inner game of success, leadership and life, utilizing Internal Family Systems evidence-based, proven model of accelerated self-awareness and personal growth. Her combination of challenging life experiences, 27-year pharmaceutical career, holistic nutrition expertise and passion in peak performance psychology, gives her a unique platform to help you soar to greatness from the inside-out. In this episode, Emily will talk about why she left the pharmaceutical industry, negative talk in Asian communities and how you can heal spiritual, emotional and physical issues. She will also talk about improving intimacy and love in relationships, recognizing a blessing in disguise and overcoming tragic experiences. Listen to the end to learn how you can help yourself and determine the root cause of illness and injury.   Dr. Veronica Anderson's Links https://www.linkedin.com/in/drveronicaanderson/ https://www.facebook.com/drveronicaanderson/ https://twitter.com/DrVeronicaEyeMD?lang=en https://www.pinterest.com/drveronicaeyemd/?eq=dr.%20veronica&etslf=14837 https://www.instagram.com/drveronica/?hl=en     Recommended Book: Emily How to permanently erase self-talk: http://amzn.to/2oYGiXk   Discussed: http://selfleadership.org/   Show Notes: 03:30 - Why Emily left the pharmaceutical business 06:45 - Embarking on your spiritual journey 11:45 - Negative self-talk in Asian communities 21:20 - Healing spiritual, emotional and physical issues 22:00 - Intimacy and love in relationships 30:00 - Recognizing a blessing in disguise 36:30 - Overcoming tragic experiences 41:30 - Can you help yourself? 44:30 - The root cause of illness & injury _______________________________ Dr. Veronica Anderson is an MD, Functional Medicine practitioner, Homeopath. and Medical Intuitive. As a national speaker and designer of the Functional Fix and Rejuvenation Journey programs, she helps people who feel like their doctors have failed them. She advocates science-based natural, holistic, and complementary treatments to address the root cause of disease. Dr. Veronica is a highly-sought guest on national television and syndicated radio and hosts her own radio show, Wellness for the REAL World, on FOX Sports 920 AM “the Jersey” on Mondays at 7:00 pm ET.    If you enjoyed this episode, do us a favor and share it! Also, if you haven’t already, please take a minute to leave us a 5-star review on iTunes and claim your bonus here!   Do you want to regain your health? Visit: http://drveronica.com/ Transcription Female VO: Welcome to the Wellness Revolution Podcast, the radio show all about wellness in your mind, body, spirit, personal growth, sex, and relationships. Stay tuned for weekly interviews featuring guests that have achieved physical, mental, and spiritual health in their lives. If you'd like to have access to our entire back catalog visit drveronica.com for instant access. Here's your host, Dr. Veronica. Dr. Veronica: Welcome to another episode of Dr. Veronica's Wellness Revolution. Today we're going to talk about how you talk, how you speak, and how it affects your life. As a wellness coach, I started my life as a doctor but now I coach because it's more effective. I realized people that are going to make or break them and one is how they talk about themselves and what they're doing or going to do.  One of the words I give people, "Here's what you're going to go out and do next week." And they say, "Okay, I'll try." And then I say, "Wait, no. Banish that word, try." When you try to do something it means that you're never going to get there. You're never going to do it. You'll always be trying but you won't be succeeding. No, you're going to do. And so for a lot of times... You guys hear Artemis back in the background. Of course you know. This [Unintelligible 00:01:34]. But you realize that with people you want them to do. And so one of the tasks that I work on with people is them changing their languaging, about themselves, about what they are doing or going to do.  And so my guest here, Emily Filloramo, bemoreextraordinary.com, was in pharmaceutical sales for many years, left, switched gears. Neurolinguistic program, this is what we're talking about. Try and can, the negative self-talk that make it. But you learn this somewhere. And so we're going to talk today because in transforming your health you have to have it up here. Then you have to speak it and everything can change. It's not all about diet, supplements, and exercise.  It's also about getting your mind and your spirit and emotions. So you guys know that that's what I'm going to tell you about because there are millions of people out there telling you what diet to go on, what to eat, and pushing and peddling your product. I want to tell you what the secret sauce is. Today I have with me Emily Filloramo, bemoreextraordinary.com. She also has a book, How to Permanently Erase Negative Self-Talk: So You Can Be Extraordinary. Welcome to Dr. Veronica's Wellness Revolution. Let's start by saying you're in pharmaceutical sales, a beautiful, comfortable job that people aspire to. You get your car, you get the free lunches, you get the wine and dine people, it pays really well. You get the bennies going on. And you know it's so hard to get benefits these days. But some of the best ways to get taken care of is to push drugs, be a drug pusher for a pharmaceutical company. So what made you switch? Emily: I switched because I was laid off after 27 years back in 2011. I was almost ready to retire. Another couple of years I could've gotten a big, fat pension because I had started when I was so young. And so the universe had orchestrated that 2x4 to be hit. And it was pretty painful because I had a kid. He was a freshman in college. I have three years of private college tuition left to pay so it's 180,000. And here I am I don't have my six figure job anymore. Anyhow, I dug in and I got the courage to jump off the cliff into the entrepreneurial journey. And eventually I found my spiritual calling, as a transformational magician and leadership coach. And so I launched as a nutritionist first because that's what I studied at Cornell. Made sense, right? What I found is that I didn't like coaching people how to eat their green beans, drink their green smoothies because they did well when they were with me but afterwards they fell off the wagon. And that's why 95% of dieters keep failing and gain all their weight back because I recognized they were not addressing the real emotional burns that they were carrying, the I'm not worthy, I'm not enough. And so because they didn't believe in themselves that's what was holding them back from actually sustaining the healthy habits. And so even if when you say I try, the patients say I try, they try because there's a part of them that doesn't believe that they actually deserve to be that rocking trim, healthy, and someone that deserves for everybody to turn their head and look at them. And so because it's all the old shame... we all have old shame that we're holding on to that has us believe that we don't deserve to be in the spotlight. Because our deepest fear is our light, not our darkness. And that's what drives people so self-sabotage in health, in career, in relationships, in everything that we do. And so I ended up in the training, linguistics programming but I found that that was not enough to get to real issues. And so low and behold the universe orchestrated me ending up in this training called internal family systems. It's a general physician. We all got evidence based, internal family systems, IFS, developed by Dr. Richard Schwarz, is an evidence based modality of permanent emotional healing. It's the fastest path to becoming aware of who you are. And it's the fastest path to really living as your authentic self and unleashing the most extraordinary version of who you are. Men or women you've always dreamed of becoming.  And just unleashing to the next level and whatever it is that you want to do with your life, getting spirit-led center and finding your true calling. And living life with joy on the journey to really leaving your legacy. And so that is power. Dr. Veronica: One thing that I'm noticing is a lot of us who have been in, let's say traditional, beautiful, successful careers are now moving out of those stable places to be able to go on and help people on the spiritual journey. Why do you think that is? What do you think is going on here? Emily: Especially with success driven people who lived life as they were supposed to. You do great in school. Yeah, I know. Go to college, or maybe you were told by your mom and dad you got to be a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer. Be an artist, no, shut that part of you off.  So you do what you're supposed to do. You live through this mask, this persona that you've erected of how you're supposed to show up so you get accepted by people. And so you go on this rat race. You make good money, have the kids, buy the house, whatever it is that you're supposed to do to look like you're successful. Then usually in mid-life, especially people in their 40's is like, "This is all there is? How come I'm not happy despite the money, status, and stuff? Who am I? Why am I here on this earth? I know I'm a good doctor and a lot of physicians I used to call on, but this is just a rat race." Dr. Veronica: It's funny for me. I feel like it was a year in practice that I started my own from patient zero that I knew this ain't it. Then I became more and more miserable and depressed because I had no idea how to get out of it at that point in addition to thinking that, oh my god, I spent so many years to get here. I spent so many years to get here and now I can't stand it. What am I going to do? In addition too, because in our culture and society people are just so sick nobody's going to help you get out because they want you as their doctor. Emily: And I think the other frustration that a lot of physicians used to share with me is I give them these tools. The same old song and dance, you got to eat right, you got to exercise, move your body. And so these patients try and they don't succeed. Because they want to just stay in the darkness because... Oh my god, I just had a conversation the other day with a new client and she says, "Oh my god, who am I if I showed up in my thousand watt light? I've never shown up in that way." And so it's scary. You need to do the emotional healing work. Because what happens is we're so off from center because we don't have the right story in our head. So maybe there are physicians that could stay in medicine. But when you do so many inner works understand who you are and what drove you to overachieve. A lot of that over achievement can be due to... you were the smartest kid in class and the bullies all make fun of you for wearing pocket protectors or whatnot. And it's like, "I'll show them."  So we don't even know we have that story going on in our head. And then just the pressure from mom and dad. They want... It's only the way I'm going to get approval is if I get an MD, or JD, or MBA after my name. So you keep seeking validation from the outside. Because when you were young stuff happened at school or at home where you felt neglected, when you felt like you didn't belong. I had a physician that I worked with and this is one of his most traumatic moments. When he was in second or third grade he had to smell the feet of the bully on the school bus. Just imagine how humiliating that is. And the kids also shoved him down the sewer when he was in first grade.  And so he had all of these. He had great parents but he had all these bad incidences from the bullies and made him believe, took on the belief, "I am not enough. I'm not lovable. Look at what they did to me. I am ashamed." He was also a minority so you felt like I didn't belong and that's why they're discriminating.  And so that drove him to succeed and become a doctor and whatnot. Yeah, over achievement but now he is sabotaging his relationships. He's a very handsome man and he always had trouble with... Logically he knows he's handsome, but every time he sees a beautiful woman at the bar or at some party or whatever he's so afraid to approach her because of that little boy that was in the sewer. That little boy that was on the school bus believing that he is worthless. So that little voice is like, "Why would she want to go out with me?" The logical brain says, "Of course she wants to go out with you. You're successful, you're a doctor." But that little boy inside of him is like, "No, you don't deserve her." And even if he did get her to go out he'll sabotage it.  Dr. Veronica: Let's break some ground here. Because we both talk to all kinds of audiences. But I want to break a little ground here because there are some subject matter that people just gloss over and they don't talk about it. And if we don't start talking about these cultural identities we're never going to get people well.  And so we are sitting here, you're an Asian woman, I'm an African American. First we got the woman thing going on but then we have the not from the European culture thing going on. Where do you think that plays a role? Let's talk a little bit about that. As an Asian woman where were you. Because I know there was self-talk and I have plenty of Asian friends who tell me what was going on in their family.  And I look at Asian people and say, "You guys start out with an A because everybody expects you to have the A. And then you have to knock yourselves down in grades. You start out with the A. But as a black person you start out with an F and then you got to work yourself up to the whatever.  But there's all kinds of positive and negative things going on in this and I know there's plenty of people who watch you and or watch me because I'm an African American woman, or because you're an Asian woman. They're going to listen to what you have to say.  First, speak to your Asian brothers and sisters and let everybody else know a little bit about what's going on with the negative self-talk in the Asian community. And I know it's not monolithic. I understand that. When people are looking from the outside they tend to lump in. And this is one of our problems, we're not educated. But there's some Asian personas that from having friends that are Japanese, Korean, Filipino, Taiwanese, all the different areas. I've seen some similarities in the way the families operate. Talk about that and the negative self-talk. Emily: Yes. I'm an immigrant. I came here when I was nine. Dr. Veronica: I'm still listening, but keep talking. Emily: Okay. I came here when I was nine years old and without a word of English. And so I was trying to assimilate in Los Angeles which was not so traumatic. What became traumatic was when the family moved to New York in the middle of junior high, in the middle of the school year. And we ended up living in a two bedroom, non-air conditioned, third floor walkup for six people, four kids and two parents, one bathroom. And so it was not fun.  I just felt so ashamed for having to live that way. We were one of the poorest kids on the block. And so the first neighborhood that we lived in there were a lot of African Americans in the school and I was teased a lot for being Asian. I was called all sorts of discriminatory names. And I didn't share those with my parents.  My parents was toxicity at home with the way my father was emotionally abusing my mother, belittling her. And just witnessing that was horrible. And so I didn't feel the love at home because there was no love between them. So they didn't know how to show up as parents. And so I had to break up their fights and stuff, so I had bad trauma.  And then I have all the trauma of the stuff that I experienced at school where I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I'm wearing hand me down clothing. Nothing matches. I needed braces. I felt ugly." And so that shame kept going on because we had moved again in the middle of the school year and I didn't feel like I fitted in. We were living amongst a lot of Jewish and Italian families in bay side Queens way back in the 70's. There weren't a lot of Asians. Again, I felt different. Dr. Veronica: It's interesting because Queens now is like little Asia. Emily: Yes. I know. And so the point is however we grow up, because when we feel different that's when we take on the beliefs of I don't fit in. And so I always felt ashamed about my Asian-nes because I was never accepted as an Asian.  And I had an incident where I was at the home of a Jewish boy working on a project, somebody that I had a crush on. And his mother comes home and just says to him, "Take her home please. She doesn't need to come here and do this project with you." It was just the way that she said and I remembered just being frozen. It's like, "Oh my god, here I am being discriminated against." So all of that toxicity at home and then the stuff that I was feeling at school, it drove my overachievement gene, because I said, "I got to get out of here." I am never coming back home.  Fortunately, I got into Cornell, got into a good school, but at Cornell the discrimination continued. I was in the fraternity parties and the frat boys I was overhearing them saying, "You got to go ask that chink to dance with you." The names that I was called it was horrifying. I kind of shoved all of that shame under the rug and I was fortunate that I was able to get a great job. Eight months out of college I started working for Pfizer, got out on my own. And because I was now making money I wasn't poor anymore, I decorated myself in designer clothing. I made sure I looked perfect to just make sure nobody knew who that Emily was underneath all of this package of perfection. And there's a saying that perfectionism is just shame wrapped up in a pretty little box. And that's what I was hiding. And so I met my husband, got married, had a kid, and all that other kind of stuff. I have another trauma which is when I was five months pregnant. My husband suffered a heart attack. He was only 38, I was 29. That's a whole another side of the story. He's alive today. He's doing well. But for 15 years I had to deal with raising a kid and trying to figure out is his next shoe going to drop. When is he going to die? He's gone through a couple of angioplasties, quadruple bypass surgery, all that stuff.  I was frozen. I lived a numbed out life. I was like, "Okay, just keep making money. You got health insurance and just do what you're supposed to do. Go out on a nice vacation." But then at the end of the day I really wasn't addressing the fact that I really wasn't satisfied. I was doing my job in my sleep but I knew that there was more of me that could be unleashed, I just didn't know what that was going to look like. And I wasn't going to worry about it until I retired. The universe had a different game plan.  In 2011 that's when they decided, okay, it's time to lay you off and to wake you up. And so on this entrepreneurial journey is where I found my joy. Even though it's extremely hard. I've hit many speed bumps, got into very stinky potholes, gotten stuck there. The rest of my emotional karma stuff that wasn't worked on had to be worked out. And so the reason why I gained this courage and fearlessness to go on the entrepreneurial journey was because 10 years prior, in my 40, I'm 54 now. In my 40's all of the emotional baggage that I've never addressed kind of came to the surface and I ended up in a depression and anxiety state for a year. It was triggered by a situation at work which led me to address all of the anger and range that I had towards my father for the way he treated my mother. The anger and rage for him being so afraid and not being able to support the family in a way where I could at least had clothing that made me feel like I fit in with the group. The anger and rage of not being able to afford braces for me to feel like I look normal. And I also addressed all of the shame of being Asian that I had to address.  Initially I had gone to a hypnotist to heal and I had to go back and access these young parts of me, including the part of me that was growing inside of my mother's womb. I was the oldest of four kids. What's interesting is looking at the picture, my mother being pregnant with me I knew right then and there that fetus, she was praying for me to be a boy. Because my grandmother used to say to my mother all the time, keep getting pregnant until you produce sons.  As a fetus that's growing we pick up on all those energy. I knew that I was a worthless human being from the very get go. So it was me, my sister, and my two brothers. And even when my grandfather died he only asked for my brothers to go back to Taiwan. And he didn't ask for me and my sister. It's just all the cultural burdens. It's not their fault. They were downloading these beliefs and programming it to us. It's a legacy part that we have to release. It's not my parents' fault that they were fighting with each other or they couldn't be present for me. It's because they are wounded. They didn't do the healing. So when we do our healing that's when we forgive all of the people that have hurt us. And we forgive ourselves. And so I had to do all these healing, repairing all these young parts of me that didn't feel... Because when you're experiencing that kind of trauma. You take on the beliefs that I must not be worthy. I must not be lovable. I must not be enough. That's why I get discriminated against, that's why I get made fun of.  And what happens is there's parts of you that go into overdrive to try to overcompensate, so the overachievement gene. You're overachievement to try to show that you are worthy. So my drive to make money to make myself look good. Now we're doing it for the wrong reasons and that's why it will come back to haunt you especially in midlife. Dr. Veronica: Some of these issues that are societal and cultural don't necessarily go away. But there are people who end up thriving because they heal from them. And people who are hurting with spiritual, emotional, and physical issues want to know how to heal. So you talk about this negative self-talk and how to be extraordinary. And you specifically talk a lot about people attracting love into their lives and why they cannot attract love into their lives. I deal with people like this all the time and one of their biggest sources of pain is they don't have a life partner. And so you talk about, "Hey, this is what you're doing wrong. Here's how you shifted." Talk a little bit about what people attract in their life. Because people just feel like, "I always get the bad guys or I never get the bad guys."  We're in a culture now as African American women, we feel like we're the last chosen. I look at Asian women, I think, those are the pretty dolls that everybody wants. Everybody wants an Asian woman. Which I think is a burden to be thought of like that of course. On the other side when you're put up on that pedestal and everybody wants you and they're going to take care of you that's different than being from a group of women where you feel like you're the last chosen all the time. Emily: Yeah. I find that fascinating. Knowing how I grew up, like, "Why would they want me? Here I am, the Asian that nobody wanted." And now all of a sudden all these men... Dr. Veronica: Everybody thinks you're hot. Emily: Why didn't they think I was hot when I was growing up? Wayne Dyer famously said you will not attract what you want into your life, you will attract who you are. So if you're attracting the same losers over and over again it's because it's a reflection of who you feel you are on the inside. So if you don't think you're worthy that's the energy that gets transmitted. And if you're addicted to stuff you're going to attract another addict. If you're so used to watching your dad beat the heck out of your mom or vice versa then that's a familiar energy. So you're going to attract that energy because that little girl inside of you who has not been healed is attracted to the little boy inside of him that has not been healed, so it's familiar.  The goal of a love relationship is for us to finish childhood. And that is why we are attracted to the people. There's one group of people that is attracted to the people with the positive and the negative qualities of the people that hurt us in the past. "Oh my gosh, no wonder I'm attracted to my father, or my mother, whatever," that's one group of people. And then another group of people is because they experience so much pain they end up attracting somebody's who's safe, who they don't go through the emotional ups and downs with. And they just live life more or less like roommates.  So absolute joy and love relationship is not going to happen without absolute depth of pain. Because the pain when you're triggering each other, you can't get along. But there's a part of you that's like, "But why am I so magnetically attracted to him?" It's because he is reminding you of somebody from the past that you have unfinished business with.  And when you recognize that and say, "Okay, he yelled at me for the way I emptied the dishwasher." I know this is not life or death but there was a part of him that reminded him of sloppily you emptied the dishwasher. Nothing is lined up directly in the cupboards. That's like a part of him that needs order and detail. And it's because it's a part of him from the past that is reminding him of the order and detail that mom used to have or whatever. Mom used to yell at him for not having things in order. So now he's trying to re-live that life through the partner and he's nitpicking on every little thing. Dr. Veronica: Turn that around just a little bit because there are people who are watching where they've been through the trauma and they get it why they were attracted to that partner that's not serving them well now. But on the other side there's people who are in relationships that seem to be doing well and it seems to be working. What's going on there? Emily: Relationships that seem to be working, you do have to eventually do... If you really want mind blowing, emotionally intimate relationships you have to work on yourself individually, and you have to work on couple relationship. Because you have to recognize that the stuff that pushes your buttons, the triggers, it's all a gift for you to grow intimately closer. And you have to recognize that when there's that angry edge that comes out it's not really anger towards you, it's really anger towards himself and towards somebody in the past.  Maybe he's so angry at the fact that you don't keep things in a neat way. Because it's really residual anger and rage towards his mother for making him do things just so. And so it's that residual anger that's coming out when he's sees that you're not really behaving in the right way.  When you recognize that that's where it's from this is when you... let's say you're the female partner, you could say, "Hey Dan, can this part of you that is so neurotic about order, can that part of you just chill out a little bit? I just need a little bit space here. What does it need from me in order for this part of you to relax?" Essentially now there's three people in the conversation. It's yourself, the husband, and then the part of the husband that has his need for order. So you're not blaming him, you are saying this is this part of you that is showing up in this relationship. "Now, you're reminding me of my father the way he used to scold me of how sloppy I was." And it just goes back and forth. When you both recognize it that is where the true healing can take place, to say, "Hey Dan, let me hold your hand. Just let this part of you know that I'm going to do my best to make it a little bit neater the next time. And if you could just relax. Nothing bad's going to happen if the dishes aren't quite stacked up in an orderly way." And so that's when intimacy happens. And so you need a tool set to understand, you're going through the doorway for Dan, this part of him that is neurotic about order. You get to know this part of him. Sometimes he gets to know this part. You kind of separate out. Maybe you use a glass, maybe the image comes out as the soldier or whatever.  We have these little sub personalities inside of our minds, of these parts of us that are kind of running our show, the voices inside of our head. And you have to separate out from that part and get to know the job of this part that's neurotic about order. What's its job? It's job is to make sure everything's in order. It's just job is to make sure that you are seen as somebody who's neat. It'll keep telling you the story. And you ask it, what is it afraid of if it doesn't do its job of keeping things in order? It's afraid that things are going to fall apart. It's afraid that people are going to judge you. It's afraid that you're going to get criticized. It's afraid that you're going to fail if things aren't in order. And so you peel back the layers. And then once this part tells you its story of why it keeps in this neurotic state then it will show you then who's the vulnerable child inside of you that this part is protecting. He says, "It's that seven year old part of me that is just crying in the closet after mom yelled at me for not lining my books up in the right way." Dr. Veronica: I get what you're saying, but there's all these buttons that have been pushed, starting from even before we're born. You're telling about things that were happening and you're parents and their thought process before you were even born. How do we incorporate that in to make it from a harming experience to a, this is one of the biggest blessings that I realized it is.  I can see things. I'm intuitive and so things flash in and I understand them on a different level more now. I see things that happen when I was young and I realized, "That's why I'm not so happy with the way my body looks in this particular situation." You can know what that is. I've been made the way I am. I love me the way I am. But what do you do when there's the negative signals coming from all over the place. And so as I'm saying, hey, you're saying, "People think I'm hot?" You were getting a signal that has been a positive signal. But for a lot of people they've been getting those negative signals. A lot of people that I work with they're overweight. And they're like, "I've always been a fat kid." And they had that negative story that's been going on and they still have it and the society at a whole is going to continue to have that picture.  And so while you're healing from it, while you're getting back your health give us some keys to switching over into that positive wealth of how the healing begins. Because I know once people start embracing these issues the problems they've been dealing with including health problems, they start to heal and go away. And it's miraculous how all of a sudden, "Oh my god, it's easy for me to lose the weight right now," or whatever it is. "My gosh, my blood pressure is lower. My medicine's lower. My cholesterol's lower." That fear, anger, and sadness that they've been holding on as they let go, the health problems go away. But the society hasn't changed. The culture hasn't changed. How do people start to deal with what's going on in the negative out there that they feel is harming but let it go enough so they can heal themselves. Emily: Yes. And so I started to talk about some of the steps of how you heal, getting to know this part. And so I'm going to describe the typical client that has the fat part. Anybody that's been through a weight struggle has this fat part of me that sabotages. And so maybe this is a good time to mention the gift that I'm going to give them. Dr. Veronica: Oh please, yes. Emily: If the audience goes to nonegativetalk.com they could enter their email and get the whole protocol of how to get to know these parts of you that are holding you back. So this way you don't have to keep taking notes. And if we're going all over the place with our conversation you have a protocol to follow.  A typical fat part story. I'm going to tell you a story of a 40-year old woman that I worked with. She had the same 15 pounds that she was gaining and losing over and over again. She was just disgusted. And she's like, "This is not giving me the energy to do what I need to do for the next step of my career because I'm so consumed with food."  And so we got to know this fat part of her. And I said, "When did this fat part of you begin?" She separated out the fat part. It looked like a Michelin... Because we get images of these parts of us. And so she got this part of her that was talking to her, and she says, "Yeah, this part's telling me that it's been my life since third grade." "Okay, what's its job? Keep you fat, keep you..." Because she emotionally ate, and to soothe the emotional pain because it was afraid... it was the fat part. Let's call her Mary. If it didn't keep Mary far what is it afraid is going to happen to Mary if this fat part didn't keep her fat? It said that it's afraid that Mary was going to get teased and criticized. If she got attention from being thin and beautiful it's afraid that she was going to be judged. And so eventually I said, "Okay. What happened in third grade that had you take on this fat part?" And it brought her to a memory in a third grade classroom when she was just frozen because she has beautiful red hair and she was amongst a sea of brunettes. And so she was constantly teased for her beautiful red hair not only by classmates but by her siblings. That part of her believed that it is not safe to shine because I will be teased. As she grew older and older, every time she just didn't feel good about herself because this part was getting triggered. She just ate to numb out that pain. And she couldn't figure out why she would lose it. She would work so hard, "Let me go on this exercise plan, this diet plan." And then this fat part will come back and just self-sabotage the whole thing.  Because the fat part's like, "You didn't get to know me. You don't even know why I keep you fat. You hate me. So the more you hate the part of you that holds you back the more it will be like, "Oh yeah, you hate me? Well guess what, I'm not going away. I'm going to keep coming back until you pay attention to me and hear my story.  As she got to know the fears of this fat part, and this fat part said, "I'm protecting that third grade part of you that's still in the classroom being shamed and bullied for having red hear." She had to update this fat part to say, "You're holding me back. I'm 40 years old. I'm trying to feel good about myself so I could have the confidence and the courage to go for this next promotion because right now I don't feel good in my body. And the fat part was like, "Really, you're 40 years old now? You're no longer seven? And I'm holding you back? Oh, wow." Dr. Veronica: Let me take it up just one notch because we all have our suffering that we go through and some people may be listening and saying, "She got teased because she has red hair." That ain't a big deal. That's really not a big deal. I was sexually abused. I was mentally and emotionally abused. And it continued for years, and years, and years. I went into a relationship and that relationship was abusive. And so red hair, that's easy.  What do you say to those people who've been through really major challenges and difficulties a lot of times at the hands of people that they trusted? What do you say to people like that about...? It's hard to say, "I'm 40 and I got to let it go when it's just..." How do you let go of that to be able to shine and be the best you? Emily: Yes. You can't just let go and just say, "Okay, I'm not that story anymore. You have to do the healing, especially for these incidences of sexual abuse, verbal abuse, these toxic things. That part of accessing that vulnerable child, that part of the journey, it would be irresponsible for me to say, "You could go and heal this yourself.  You could get to know your fat part. A lot of sexually abused people also have a fat part because it's their insulation against further sexual abuse, which is very understandable. And I've worked many sexual abuse survivors. And so you have to go in through the door way of this protective mechanism, the parts of you that you don't like and that's why you got to get to another story.  And so the sexual abuse part, people have been sexually abused, what I want to share with them is you can permanently get over the shame from being sexually abused. And your whole system has to give you permission through the guide of an expert. You can't do this on your own because you could do further damage to yourself. And if you try to do it on your own without the right tools, there's more and more protectors that are going to be erected to prevent you from actually going there. And so the whole goal is to get the whole protective system... Think of the protective system as soldiers that are guarding the door to the dungeon that's filed with these pained and shamed parts of you. And so when they give the permission, okay, now that you could hear my story of why I keep you fat, why I keep you procrastinating, why I keep you angry. You hear the story and you get it. And we're ready to transform into a more positive parts.  Let me show you the parts of you that we're protecting in the dungeon. And so they'll guide you. The highest self, all love for yourself, your highest self has the power to rescue that young part of you that's in the dungeon. And you, that young part of you will be looking at you, your 40-year old self. And that young part of you because she was abused.  Nobody was there where she felt safe to tell the whole story. A lot of abusers, they keep all that to themselves. And so when this four year old girl that was abused can safely trust you, the highest self. She tells you her story. She tells you what happened to her. She tells you the burdens that she's been holding on to, burdens of worthlessness. "I'm not lovable. I'm not enough. I'm dirty." And let her flesh all of that out to you.  And then you give her what she needed at that moment of trauma. And you pour all the love, I'll tell her it's not your fault your uncle abused you. He's broken and we have to forgive him. What counts is I love you. You are enough. And that's released as burden, that's like get it out of the body. And people hold it in certain phases. Maybe for sexually abused people they're holding it in their sexual organs and stuff where they're always clammed up when they're intimate with someone.  Whatever it is the highest self can help this young four year old heart to release all the negative energies and the burns that she's been holding on to. And we could get that four year old part unstuck from the past. Let's get you out of that house, out of that bedroom, and let's go into my current home. And let's burn that house down. If she wanted to burn the house down you help her to burn the house down.  And so as you're actually doing this, this is actually rewiring the memories at the cellular level. Untangling the trauma and then... it's called memory reconsolidation where now the new memory of when you think about this four year old part of you that's been abused, now you think about how your higher self just giving her love, and hugs, and say, "I love you. I got you." You're the one that you need in order to heal yourself. Dr. Veronica: Emily, again, tell people where they can go to get stared with your type of techniques. And before we give that I just got to say to the audience, one thing that Emily said is about you can't do this yourself. Now, in our culture and society everybody's going to Dr. YouTube and getting a degree on the university of Google.  And there's all kinds of "self-help books." But what people who are high performers know, who are in successful in life, who are healthy and happy is you have to have somebody who's an expert to show you the way. It's like when you drive a car. Somebody has to teach you how to drive that car. Would you get into a plane and pilot yourself after you've watched it on YouTube and read it on Google? So reach out to get help. There are traditional doctors and therapists but how's that been working for you? And then there are people like Emily Filloramo and her main website, bemoreextraordinary.com. But Emily, tell us about where people can get your gift again. Emily: nonegativetalk.com will give you the protocol. And then if you want to also learn more after you look at this protocol I would recommend that they read my book, How to Permanently Erase Negative Self-Talk. People, they write me letters to say, "I cried during your book because so many of the stories hit home for me." I said, "The first step to change is awareness." And reading my book and understanding the whole landscape of the internal family system model of psychospiritual healing, you're going to understand, "Oh my god, it is not my fault after all that I'm stuck. It's not my fault that I am fat."  Now, do I want to do something about it? That's a whole another phase of change. So sometimes people want to stay stuck in their negative stories because that means you don't have to answer to anything. You don't have to finally show up. And if that's what they choose to do it's their prerogative. Dr. Veronica: That's where they are. And so we're talking about this for health reasons, why? Because it's just not about diet, exercise, and supplements. It's not just about diet, exercise, and supplements. It's about a lot more than that. Emily: And what's interesting is when I was going through the training with internal family systems my teachers and professors were saying... since I used to work in the pharmaceutical industry, "Imagine if everybody healed themselves, came home to their true self and felt really good, and forgave everybody, you know what, we would not need the pharmaceutical industry. We would not need the diet industry. And all of this emotional burden stuff would be released. We don't need pills, we don't need diets because it's going to naturally heal our bodies. We will be taking many industries out of the water."  That's how powerful this is. Not that we're going to bankrupt all of these industries in our lifetime because there's just so many layers to this. Because internal family systems is not a pharmaceutical pill that some rep can go and sell to you.  Pills are the easy way to [Unintelligible 00:46:52]. "Okay, I have fibromyalgia, let me take this pill." Fibromyalgia is trying to tell you something. Cancer is trying to tell you something. It is a protector that's saying heal emotionally already. I think you and I both know epigenetics and all that stuff, 80% of diseases are caused by environmental things, things that happen to us, and it's not just genes.  Dr. Veronica: It is not just genes. Emily: You can't blame it on your genes.  Dr. Veronica: Root cause of every illness and injury is a spiritual and emotional issue which triggers and goes along with those environmental, genetic, and lifestyle factors. But if you don't have the spiritual, emotional issue sitting there in the first place is not going to trigger even the genes. You got the breast cancer gene. You're going to get breast cancer because you have an issue. Live your heart chakra in that energy center.  Emily: Exactly. If you ask most breast cancer patients why they got breast cancer, it's like, "Oh, I stayed in my marriage too long. It's the toxicity for my husband, that's fine.  Emily: Baggage with my father... Your body's always talking to you and you got to do this virtual healing, and yes, spiritual healing is not a pill. And you have to find a practitioner that you resonate with. And so if traditional psychotherapy, self-help programs have not gotten you to the finish line it's because you haven't found the right modality. Traditional psychotherapy can get you stable but really move the needle. You got to do this "clean up duty" with internal family systems.  Most of the people that are training internal family systems are psychotherapists, you could fine someone near you by going to selfleadership.org. You'll get that information or not, When you're down on my e-book. You go to that website to find somebody near you. They may even take your insurance.  And then there's a bunch of us that are trained, that are not therapist that takes internal family systems way beyond psychotherapy to help people unleash extraordinary, to help people become better leaders. Exactly, and so this is how powerful this is because at its root this is spiritual cleaning. This is not psychotherapy. You got to rescue all of those parts of you that are still stuck in the past burned with the emotional pain of getting bullied at school, sexually abused being made fun of, or you felt like you didn't matter. All those parts are just still frozen and old memories. You got to go and rescue those parts and come into the present with you. Because these parts of you now transform into something positive and they get on the same sheet of music. And they become a part of your inner team, an orchestra member that's actually playing along with you. Because you want to go from point A to point B, you want to make the world a better place, well, you got to get rid of this inner conflict that's up here. And when you fully believe in yourself, when you're madly in love with yourself that's when your vibration changes, and that's when you attract all the people and the opportunities that you need in order to launch yourself into greatness. Dr. Veronica: Fabulous. And we're going to be able to close right there. Before we close with Emily Filloramo give us the gift website again.  Emily: It's nonegativetalk.com. Dr. Veronica: nonegativetalk.com, and the book is How to Permanently Erase Negative Self-Talk: So You Can Be Extraordinary. Emily's other website is bemoreextraordinary.com. Thank you so much Emily. Emily: Thank you so much Dr. Veronica for having me on. Dr. Veronica: Hey everyone. I want to really thank you so much for listening to my new podcast, Dr. Veronica's Wellness Revolution. I really enjoy helping others regain their health. So if this episode helps you, it can definitely help others. Do me a favor. Give us a five star review on iTunes to help me spread this message.  And because I really appreciate your help so much I will be giving away a $25 Amazon gift card each week to a random individual. Check the show notes of this episode for the details on how to win. Thank you so much. Take care. Female VO: Thank you for listening to the Wellness Revolution Podcast. If you want to hear more on how to bring wellness into your life visit drveronica.com. See you all next week. Take care.   

Progressing Through Your Life & Career with Emily Kapit . In this episode of the Boss Mom Podcast, Emily gives insight into her career coaching program, finding your passions and her Boss Mom journey. Sponsored by Quiet Mind Collective.   Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes:  In this episode you’ll hear: How Emily created a career coaching program as a start to her boss mom journey. What she did to figure out her maternity leave as a small business owner. The biggest surprise Emily had after she had her daughter. How Emily helps others find what they enjoy doing and how she supports them. Hearing the truth from someone else and how that is impactful. Her Huffington Post blog post "A Letter to my Daughter." How she left corporate world because she wanted something that was inspirational in her life. Recommendations on networking. Learning to say no. Our Podcast Sponsor: Quiet Mind Collective Quiet Mind Collective is a membership program where you can learn anxiety and stress management techniques in a safe, online space. Stress, burnout, anxiety, panic... most entrepreneurs experience it, but when the feelings continue for days or weeks, there are unexpected consequences. The Quiet Mind Collective is like a gym membership for your emotions. Whether you've conquered anxiety for the time being, whether you want to use this as a supplement to your own professional counseling, or whether you merely want more information about anxiety and stress, the membership is right for you.  Try the Quiet Mind Collective for $1 for your first month using code onedollarbossmom. Recommended links and resources: SimplyNoise.com Self Control App Boss Mom Academy Boss Mom Facebook Community Can I quote you on that?  We like to help our clients figure out what they really like to do and enjoy in their job. - Emily We allow people to take a step to work to identify what to make them happiest in their job. - Emily I prepared the business so it allowed me to have the baby and build the business at the same time. - Emily My team has a lot of parents on it and we understand each other in that aspect. - Emily My husband and I have had to carve out time together because that's really important. - Emily What was interesting for me was my evolution, and then I helped others with their evolution. - Emily It's fine to be pretty, it's better to be smart, it's best to be hard working. - Emily You can find your village even if you've never met those people in real life. - Emily Raising businesses and babies require a work and home support team! - Emily More about our guest, Emily Kapit. Emily Kapit, MS, MRW, ACRW, CPRW – one of the world's only triple certified Master Resume Writers – is the founder, lead writer, and head career strategist at ReFresh Your Step, LLC, a career advisory firm based in Miami, Florida, with clients located nationally and internationally. She and her team of highly certified writers and career advisors have work extensively with clients on all facets of their career progression, including resumes/cover letters, LinkedIn profiles, job search strategies, mock interviews, career guidance, and more. Emily believes that a key to career excellence – regardless of one's, level, sector, background or goals – is implementing a "Consistency of Excellence" approach to one's job search. To that end, she and her team collaborate with each client on identifying his or her unique career values, accomplishments to-date, and transferable skills before translating this info into powerful professional documents and job search strategies. When not helming the ReFresh Your Step ship, Emily can be found in and around the beaches of Miami with her husband while showing their young daughter the beauty of life and living life every day with purpose. Emily is available for speaking engagements, training seminars, and work with both private clients and corporations. Please contact her at emily@refreshyourstep.com and visit her website at www.refreshyourstep.com. Facebook / Twitter / LinkedIn Connect with Dana: Instagram / The Boss Mom Facebook community (her total happy place) We love hearing from you guys! If you’ve got a question about today’s episode or want to leave us some inbox love, you can email us at hello@boss-mom.com Or, you can always find both Dana hanging out in our Boss Mom Facebook Community.  We would LOVE it if you’d leave a podcast rating or review on iTunes. We also know it can be kind of tricky to figure out. Here are a few step by step instructions on how to leave an iTunes rating or review for a podcast from your iPhone or iPad Launch Apple’s Podcast app. Tap the Search tab. Enter the name of the podcast you want to rate or review. Tap the blue Search key at the bottom right. Tap the album art for the podcast. Tap the Reviews tab. Tap Write a Review at the bottom. Enter your iTunes password to login. Tap the Stars to leave a rating. Enter title text and content to leave a review. Tap Send.

Episode 141: The Arts Don't Need To Be Isolated At Northwest Middle School in Flowood, MS, Emily Wright and Genifer Freeman worked on a play to support the school's summer reading book - A Long Walk To Water. But that was just the beginning. Every class from English, to art to music, to drama, to science and beyond incorporated the book into their lesson plans and they also used the project to raise money to build a well in South Sudan. This is arts integration and cross-curricular education at its finest! Listen in to learn how they accomplished this massive undertaking, and how got the principal on stage too. Show Notes The Walking Boys by Robert McDonough A Long Walk to Water Episode 107: Cross-Curricular in the Drama Classroom Writing Your Research Exercise Speeches From History Episode Transcript Welcome to TFP – The Theatrefolk Podcast – the place to be for Drama teachers, Drama students, and theatre educators everywhere. I'm Lindsay Price, resident playwright for Theatrefolk. Hello! I hope you're well. Thanks for listening. Welcome to Episode 141! You can find any links for this episode in the show notes at theatrefolk.com/episode141. Okay. So, I feel like I am working on a theme here. It's totally by accident. No intense planning or strategy. Just the people who I managed to get to talk on the podcast and we seem to have another podcast that will make you think about the question: “What motivates you for your students?” I won't lie; I really love this question and I have been… it's been awesome. I've been head over heels with the answers. So, on this podcast, you are going to meet Emily and Genifer – two teachers are Northwest Middle School in Flowood, Mississippi. They participated in a massive cross-curricular project – plays, music, dance – and involved every teacher and every subject at their school. And, add to that, they used this project as a fundraising opportunity. Beyond amazing! I should stop talking, right? Yes, I think so. Yes, Lindsay. Okay. I'm going to leave you with this. The arts do not have to be isolated. Let's get to it. LINDSAY: All right. I am here – as opposed to there. I am talking to Emily Wright. Hello, Emily! EMILY: Hi, Lindsay! LINDSAY: And Genifer Freeman. Hello, Genifer! GENIFER: Hey! How are you? LINDSAY: Awesome. First off, tell everybody where in the world you are. EMILY: We are in Flowood, Mississippi. Our school is Northwest Rankin Middle School. LINDSAY: You guys had quite the year last year with a really interesting and unique project which I can't wait to sort of share with everybody and get everybody into it. I guess, where it started, it started last summer, didn't it? EMILY: It did, yes. LINDSAY: Yes, because it sounds like… the whole entire school had to read a book? EMILY: Correct. LINDSAY: Is that a common thing? Is that common? EMILY: This was the first year that it was incorporated with the entire school. Our middle school is seventh and eighth grade, and this was the first year that both grades read the same summer reading book. The book was A Long Walk to Water and it was about the Sudanese civil war and the need for clean water in that region. And so, every discipline was tasked with incorporating the book some way into their curriculum and we fortunately found the play that Robert McDonough wrote, The Walking Boys, which was based on the story of Salva Dut from A Long Walk to Water. Our awesome administration just posed the idea of, “Hey, let's read it, let's incorporate it into our lessons,” and we then did a fundraiser, all different kinds of fundraisers throughout the year to raise money to build a well in South Sudan. LINDSAY: There's two things going on here which was two amazingly huge things that seems to all kind of meld together with your school. The first being a completely cross-curricular project based on a text but then also a fundraising project.