Podcast appearances and mentions of george they

Eric – I’m a retired firefighter and paramedic from LA. You are spot on with everything you are saying and homelessness has also been a huge factor in this (01:52) Kade (10-years-old) - Is it true that God will never give you anything you can't handle? (07:18) George - They never cleaned up the dead brush around here. It seems suspicious, maybe someone started all this on purpose? (11:28) Mike (email) - PLEASE stop politicizing this event (22:53) Stuart - I live here and fires don't just start on their own. It is suspect. (27:21) Cynthia - California leaders need to take responsibility - some were in another country when this happened with no comment (38:22)

Did you know oak supports over 2,300 species of wildlife? Discover this and more fascinating facts in our episode dedicated to the nation's favourite tree. We join Trust experts, Jules and Kate, at Londonthorpe Woods, near Grantham, to find some fascinating growths on oak trees, known as galls, and learn why hunks of deadwood are so important.  We then visit the star of the show and 'Lincolnshire's best kept secret' - the astonishing 1,000-year-old Bowthorpe Oak. It's one of 12 amazing oaks in the running for 2024 Tree of the Year. Which one will you vote for? Don't forget to rate us and subscribe! Learn more about the Woodland Trust at woodlandtrust.org.uk Transcript You are listening to Woodland Walks, a podcast for the Woodland Trust presented by Adam Shaw. We protect and plant trees for people to enjoy, to fight climate change and to help wildlife thrive.  Adam: Well, in this podcast, we're looking at the Woodland Trust's Tree of the Year competition, which is all about oaks and is on a quest to find the nation's favourite one. And there are lots to choose from. There is the Elephant Oak in the New Forest, the Queen Elizabeth Oak in West Sussex, the Darwin Oak in Shropshire, the Capon Oak on the Scottish Borders and plenty of others to choose from across Wales, Somerset, County Fermanagh, Cheshire and well, lots of other places as well. And you can vote for your favourite oak by going to the shortlist of them at the voting site woodlandtrust.org.uk/vote, so that is woodlandtrust.org.uk/vote and we'll repeat that again at the end of this podcast.   Well, today I'm going to see one of the oaks in contention for the Tree of the Year, the Bowthorpe Oak in Bourne, in Lincolnshire, a tree which has a hollow interior and had previously, that interior had been fitted with seats and had been used as a dining room for 20 people in the past, 20 people! It must have been an enormous oak and that's not a practice I think that's recommended these days. Well, certainly not. But nonetheless it's a great oak which has played a great big part in the local landscape and is much loved, not just in the UK but attracts plenty of visitors from abroad as well. Now, oaks have an amazingly important part in our culture and in days gone by were, I think, central in Druid folklore, for instance, in fact one amazing fact I have learnt making this podcast is that the name Druid comes from druer, the Celtic for oak for the word oak and wid means to know, so Druid means oak-knower, so there's a good fact for you. Anyway, enough of me. I'm off to meet some people who know all about oaks and unusually I am not starting by a tree. So, unusually, we're starting in a car and I'm joined by two women from the Woodland Trust. So first of all, introduce yourselves.  Kate: I'm Kate Lewthwaite. I am citizen science manager at the Woodland Trust.  Adam: Wonderful. And our driver for the day is...  Jules: Hi, I'm Jules Acton. I'm a fundraiser with the Woodland Trust.  Adam: So we're going to look at a few oaks today, one of which is actually in the running to be the Tree of the Year, and you can vote on that still and I'll give you details a little later on on how to do that. But first of all, you were telling me that you have a little present for me. I always like to start the day with a little present.  Jules: It's always good to start the day with a little present, I think and here's a little one for you.   Adam: Oh, and it's wrapped up in tissue paper. It's an early Christmas present. How very good. So what is that? OK so do you want to describe it?   Jules: OK so it's a little, it looks like a little woody marble really, doesn't it? And it's got a little tiny hole you can see just there and some extra other little tiny holes. That is an oak marble gall.  Adam: An oak marble...ghoul?  Jules: Gall.  Adam: And how do you spell that?  Jules: G A double L.  Adam: G A double L and what what is it?  Jules: So this is this is incredibly special, so this has in many ways changed human culture, this little tiny thing. Certainly amplified human culture. So this is a gall, which is made by, and it's made by a little tiny wasp. And the wasp lays a an egg in the in the bud of the tree of the oak tree. And it makes the oak change and it sort of changes chemically. It's really strange. And it makes the the oak form this little marble shaped thing on the end of a twig. And that becomes home for the gall wasps' larvae, and so that the little larva grows up inside it and it has this its own special home, but it's also full of lovely food. So that's interesting itself and that it's it's it's it's got this sort of little little home but it what's particularly interesting human, from the human perspective is that these kind of galls were used to make ink for about 1,000 years and the the kind of ink that they made, it was used, I think, until the middle of the 20th century. So kind of until quite recently. So Shakespeare's plays were written on oak gall ink, Newton's theories, the American Declaration of Independence, huge amounts of historic documents.  Adam: So just trying to understand that, Shakespeare's plays were written on ink created by this thing?  Jules: By a gall like, yeah, this kind of thing by by a gall. Yeah. But you can you can still now you can make gall gall ink from these little little things here. So it in many ways it it amplified, this little tiny thing we've got here, amplified the whole course of human history, culture, etcetera in our part of the world.  Adam: Quite an extraordinary place to start our journey today. Wonderful. So, OK, so we're, yes, we'll put that away nice and safe and we'll start our journey. Kate, do you just want to start by telling me what we're going to do when we get out of the car?  Kate: We're going to have a walk round Londonthorpe Wood, which is one of the Woodland Trust sites, one of our thousand woods that we own and we're going to see an oak tree that Jules has found for us to go and talk about.  Adam: Fantastic. All right, well, let's go.  Jules: Well, well so we've just seen some amazing galls on what looks like quite a young tree, it's probably about 30-years-old, would you say, Kate, this one?   Kate: Maybe, yes.  Jules: And, yeah, they're they're bright red and they're on the underside of the oak leaves and they look a bit like cherries and   Adam: I was going to say, the one you showed me was all grey, you gave me an old rubbish one, didn't you? This is what they look like when they're on the tree. It's red, it does look like a cherry.  Jules: Yeah, this is a particularly stunning one, isn't it? And they they are literally called cherry galls. And they again  Adam: They're called cherry balls?  Jules: Cherry galls.   Adam: Galls, cherry galls.  Jules: And they're about the same size as the marble gall that we saw earlier. And I believe they are also caused by a gall wasp. And but what is good about these kind of galls is that they're relatively easy to spot. So once you get your eye in, you start seeing them everywhere, so it's a really lovely thing to start doing, you know, with children or just looking yourself when you're out on a on a walk, you know.  Adam: Wow. So that shows that a wasp has formed that?  Jules: Yeah  Adam: And these are non-stinging wasps, aren't they?  Jules: These are non-stinging wasps. They're teeny, teeny, tiny wasps. They don't look like your your black, you know the big black and and and yellow stripey things that come at your ice cream, not that there's anything wrong with those wasps, they're lovely too.  Adam: Inside that gall is baby wasps? Is that?  Jules: There will be a little larvae inside there.  Adam: And that's what they're using as as food, or is it?  Jules: Yes, that's their home but it's also their food source. And I'm not at some point in the year the the the little tiny wasp, once it's developed, will will kind of drill its way out and then be set free to the to the wider world. But I think we'll find some other kinds of galls, actually. So it might be worth us moving on a little bit and just see if we can.  Adam: OK. Moving on, yeah, that's politely telling me to be quiet and start walking.  Jules: Oh sorry *laughs*  Adam: Sorry, there's a, oh it's a tractor going up and down the field next to us. So that's what the noise is in the background. But the fact that we we sort of just held a branch here and and Kate was already, you know, lots of wildlife, jumped onto her jumper, does raise the issue about how many, how much wildlife an oak supports. And I was hear some fantastic number. Just tell me a little bit about that.  Jules: We know that the oak supports more than 2,300 species and that they could be species that that feed off the oak, that live inside it, that live on, on, on or or around it, that you know they perch in it. So species using the the oak tree in all different ways and they are, they they they're birds and mammals, they're lichen, fungi, invertebrates. All sorts of different kinds of species, but what's important, I think, is that they're only the species we've countered, and I think there are a huge number more that we just haven't got around to counting would, would you agree, Kate? You probably know more about this than me.  Kate: Yes, definitely. And some of those species can live on other types of tree, and some are only found on oak trees, so they're particularly important. And of course, we haven't started talking about the value of deadwood and all those wonderful rare beetles whose larvae live in the wood. So there's lots to be said about that as well.  Adam: I'll tell you what, let's just walk all further away from this tractor, which sounds closer than it is, and you can tell me about the importance of the deadwood.  Jules: Well we might see some spectacular deadwood.  Adam: Oh well, we might see some, OK. OK, so we have stopped by some deadwood and you're going to explain why, is that right? Right. OK. Kate is going to explain. Well, why have we stopped here, Kate?  Kate: Because deadwood is absolutely fantastic and we have a history of a nation of being a little bit too tidy and taking it away and using it for firewood and other things, when actually it's an amazing habitat in its own right. I'm just looking at the variety of rot holes, of larval galleries where the insect larvae have fed, and then the adults emerged. And it is like a whole habitat in its own right. And actually deadwood is really rare. Much of the woodland in the UK is not felt to be in good ecological condition and one of the reasons for that is a lack of deadwood. So it's incredibly important habitat and we don't have enough of it.  Jules: One of the things I didn't understand until recently and Kate, you might know more about this than me, but there's there's different kinds of deadwood. So if you have, it's important to have deadwood in different formats, so standing deadwood so when the old tree is still standing upright, and and deadwood that's lying down on the ground.  Adam: Right. What what why, so it matters if it's vertical or horizontal?  Jules: It it it matters that you have both kinds.  Adam: And why?  Jules: Because, I feel like I'm at the edge of my knowledge, so it's because about it's about different habitats, isn't it Kate, is that right?  Kate: Yeah, I think so. And the the wood will rot at a different rate. It's quite ironic because the one we're standing at now is actually at a 45° angle. So it's neither vertical nor nor horizontal. And of course, oak trees are absolutely full of of tannins, which I think are the same compound you find in the oak galls that enable the writing. But they also mean, you know this huge, great piece of deadwood here could be around for hundreds of years because it won't, it will rot very, very slowly.  Jules: And and one of the great things is when you have deadwood right next to living wood as well, because that creates all these different conditions which will suit different kinds of invertebrates and fungi as well, so that that's really important to have this collection of of different kinds of wood in in you know in a similar area.   Adam: Excellent. OK, we've, we've stopped. We've stopped Kate, and you've got very excited.  Kate: It happens quite easily when I'm out in nature. And there's a whole pile of knopper galls on the floor here, and they're black. You know, they've dropped off the tree. They've done their job. The the wasp has flown off. But I wondered if we could, I've no idea if this is gonna work, I wondered if we could actually try writing with them because they are oozing black.  Adam: Oh my, right, this is so exciting. OK, so this is like this is a modern day Shakespeare. Have you got? OK. The line is to be or not to be. I see. Hold on a second. So you've picked it up, right, I I think you might do something to it.   Kate: Well, I might have to. Shall we see, shall we see if it just?  Adam: Right, but you're not, you're just gonna?  Jules: Ohh there we go.  Kate: There is a brown ooze and it's I think it's not just from the path.  Adam: I was going to say, it's not just mud.  Kate: It's not. It's this kind of coffee colour.  Adam: Wow, OK. And you are writing to be or not to not be.  Kate: I am writing to be or not to be, I I don't know if I break it open a bit more if you might get. Ohh. This is gonna stain my nails, isn't it?  Adam: OK. Ohh dear, don't worry I'll I'll pay for the the visit to to the nail parlour.  Kate: *laughs* I shouldn't worry. Yes, we are actually getting some.  Adam: To be or not to be. Well, I'm sure that would have actually been mixed with water or something.  Kate: Most likely  Adam: Or some alcohol and put into a quill, but that does what hold on, let me just rub it, see. Well, I can confirm that is not just what we have now created ink. Proper exciting.  Kate: Absolutely.  Adam: Thank you very much. Well, we're heading away from our ink gall-bearing oaks to see the main attraction of the day, which is a short drive from here. It is the Bowthorpe Oak, one of the contenders for Tree of the Year. It is rooted in a grass paddock behind the 17th century farmhouse nearby. In 2002, the Tree Council, in celebration of the Golden Jubilee of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, designated the Bowthorpe Oak one of 50 great British trees. One of the 50 greatest British trees in recognition of its place in our national heritage. And I'm meeting the current custodian of the oak who runs the farm in which it lives.  George: My name is George Blanchard and I am one of the family members here that farm at Bowthorpe Park Farm.  Adam: Right. And you have, we're standing by this famous tree. People come here to see this tree?  George: They do, yeah, we get them from all over the world. A lot of lot of UK, obviously, Europe and America, we get a lot of interest from America.  Adam: Well, tell me a bit about this tree.  George: So this tree, the Bowthorpe Oak, is the UK's largest girthed oak tree. It's absolutely stunning as you can, as you can see, fully in leaf at the moment it looks amazing and yeah, that's it's claim to fame.  Adam: Right it's wide the widest I think it was the second widest tree in the UK. Is that right?  George: We know it's the largest largest oak tree in in terms of it's it's the most complete, you know. So I think there could be wider ones, but not quite as complete.  Adam: Not quite as good as your tree!  George: Yeah, exactly. This is yeah *laughs*  Adam: No, I agree. And and is is this a family farm? Is this?  George: It is yeah.  Adam: Right so you've grown up, you've you played under the boughs of this tree.  George: I have. Yeah, yeah and and inside it as well. Remember it is hollow so.  Adam: Right. Yeah. So tell me a bit about the sort of the folklore and the stories around the tree.  George: Yeah so oak trees naturally start to hollow at around 500 years old, but this one was hollowed even further, back in the 1700s by a chap called George Pauncefort and  Adam: It was, it was, it wasn't naturally hollow, he hollowed it out?  George: They they do, they do naturally hollow, but he hollowed it even further. And you can tell this when you're looking inside it, because the the sides are quite flat. It's very unnatural. You can see so the hollowing has been done by by tools. And so he also put benches around the inside of it and a and a doorway on on the west side and even even sort of paved the flooring but and and put a pigeon loft in the crown, which I think, I think back in the day in the 1700s, if you had a pigeon loft in your tree, you were somebody *laughs*.  Adam: Ohh really that's like Lamborghini time, right? OK, forget your Lamborghinis, I've got a pigeon loft in my tree.   George: Exactly. Yeah, yeah. And he would have parties in there as as you would, wouldn't you?  Adam: Well, yeah, of course. I mean, you've gone to all that trouble. Was he a member of the family? Was this being passed down?   George: No, no, there's no there's no relation, no relation. We've we've only been farming here since the sort of late 40s.  Adam: Right. OK, amazing. Amazing stuff. And I mean, and it looks in fairly, I mean as you say, it's in good leaf, it's in also just it looks to the untutored eye in good nick as well, generally healthy.  George: It is yeah. Really good really good condition currently. We lost a a limb off the back and that was that was quite concerning because it's it's quite dramatic when they shed a shed a limb, but it is what they they naturally do. We have an inspection done on the tree annually, but at the time of losing the limb, we were, we were quite concerned. So we upped the type of inspection we had done. And they were quite, quite invasive, I say invasive it was, you know, using really small drills, to see if there's any adverse rotting in any places. But no, they were really happy with the condition of the tree and and how healthy it is so other than any sort of man-made issue, I don't see why it shouldn't carry on growing as it is.  Adam: And it's amazing because, I mean, you know, it's taken us quite a while to get here and people come here all this way just to see this tree.  George: They do, yes, yes, seek it out, we call it Lincolnshire's best kept secret.  Adam: Right. Amazing. From all over the world?  George: They do yeah yeah. From all over the world. Like I say, a lot of a lot of Europe people come from Europe and a lot of people come from America. We find that the two two types of people from America, those that really appreciate it and those that just can't get their head around it because it's nowhere near as big as their redwoods *laughs*  Adam: Right? Call this big. Call this big, you should see...  George: Exactly. Yeah, call this big, we've got bigger.  Adam: Yeah OK. Brilliant well thank you very much, I will take a tour round it.  George: Thank you.  Adam: So one of the other, now I have to say, first of all, let me have a look at the front front, we've taken a book with us because Jules has published a book called Oaklore and you've brought it out here because there is a poem about this oak in your book.  Jules: There is and it was written well over 100 years ago by a poet called John Clare and but the interesting thing is when he wrote this poem this would have already been an ancient tree, so it's it's quite an interesting record that he was standing in awe, looking at this tree, just like we are now really.  Adam: Right, right. So when did he write this?  Jules: I don't have the exact date in front of me, but I know it's over well over 100 years ago.  Adam: OK, well over 100 years and you're going to put on your best poetry reading voice.  Jules: *laughs* I'll have a go.  Adam: Go on, give us, I always love, I mean, we did this in the Sherwood Forest podcast where we took a book about Sherwood Forest and a book about a tree to the tree it's about. So we're now going to read a poem about the tree we're standing by. So this poem by John Clare.  Jules: And it's called Burthorp Oak. So here we go. Burthorp Oak.   Old noted oak! I saw thee in a mood  Of vague indifference; and yet with me  Thy memory, like thy fate, hath lingering stood  For years, thou hermit, in the lonely sea  Of grass that waves around thee! Solitude  Paints not a lonelier picture to the view,  Burthorp! than thy one melancholy tree  Age-rent, and shattered to a stump. Yet new  Leaves come upon each rift and broken limb  With every spring; and Poesy's visions swim  Around it, of old days and chivalry;  And desolate fancies bid the eyes grow dim  With feelings, that earth's grandeur should decay,  And all its olden memories pass away.  Adam: Brilliant. That's that's a lovely poem to read by by the tree.  Jules: I think it's quite interesting that he says age rent and shattered to a stump so it it sort of suggests that the tree is in a worse condition than now, wouldn't you say so Kate? And it looks like it might be happier now than when Clare saw it.  Kate: I was just looking at it and I mean it looks like some of those shoots have put on a good foot of growth this year. So that's the amazing thing about ancient oaks is they they so-called retrench. So all the limbs, the limbs drop off, they become shorter and and and wider and then they might all just start to sort of grow again and it sort of goes through these amazing cycles. Certainly there's a lot more vegetation on it than when I last saw it 15 years ago. It looks fabulous.  Adam: And also a lot of oaks grow very tall. This isn't so tall it it is wider, isn't it? It's a squatter tree. Is that because it's actually not had to compete, because it's actually in a field by itself isn't it? It's not competing for light with lots of other trees.  Kate: Yes, maybe. And also trees like this do, the really ancient trees they do tend to become short and squat and it's part, and hollow, and that's part of their survival strategy is that they'll shed some of these top branches and they'll, they'll shorten and and widen.  Adam: Right. I mean, oaks are really important, aren't they in the UK especially, they're part of the national identity, really, aren't they? And and a lot of that's got to do with folklore, which I know, Jules, you've written about as well.  Jules: Yeah, I mean the the oak has been part of our culture well, as far as as, as as far as we know as far as written records go back and even we we believe that the the Druids themselves were very also very interested in oak trees and they worshipped in oak groves and they particularly worshipped mistletoe, the rare mistletoe that came off off oaks. Of course, we don't have written records on the the Druids, so we don't, we know very little about them, but that's certainly what we believe. And then it's been threaded throughout our our history and our culture that the oaks right up to the present day, you know people are still writing about it and painting painting oak trees and you've got wonderful ambassadors like Luke Adam Hawker who is very inspired by oak trees and goes out drawing them.  Adam: Why do you, I mean I don't suppose there's an answer, but do you have a take on why we've landed on the oak as such a a central part of our mythology and identity?  Jules: Well, I I think I think all of our native trees will play a role in that in our folklore and our mythology and and our culture, I think the oak is is is a particularly impressive tree isn't it, especially when you're standing next to a tree like this that that is so majestic and and you know the words like majestic, kingly, queenly, grand, they they just sort of pop into your head. There is just something incredibly awe-inspiring about the oak tree. And then, as we've we've seen before it, it just has such a huge impact on our ecology as well. So I think I think it's just something it it does a lot of heavy lifting culturally and also naturally the oak tree.  Adam: And almost every pub is called the Royal Oak.  Jules: Yes, yes, I think there's at the last count there's well over 400 pubs called the Royal Oak.  Adam: And you know that personally by visiting them?   Jules: Well, I've yes, I've I've tried to count them all. I've still got some way to go *both laugh*  Adam: Yeah. OK, OK, alright. Well, it's it's a good project to be having.  Jules: So there's an interesting story behind the that name the Royal Oak. And the reason the pubs are called that relates back to a very special oak tree, the Boscobel Oak. Now we have to go back in history a few hundred years. And it takes us back to the Battle of Worcester and the son of Charles I was in in battle with the with, with, with the parliamentarians, and he took a drubbing at the Battle of Worcester, and he needed to escape. And he reached this place called Boscobel House, and he was going to hide out in, in that house and try and escape the the soldiers, the the enemy. But it was very insecure and one of his advisers suggested he, instead of hiding in the house, he hid in the oak tree. So they spent the whole night in the oak tree, which subsequently called called the Boscobel Oak, and this and and and they escaped capture and the king spent the whole night with this chap called William Careless as he as he was called   Adam: William Careless?  Jules: William Careless who turned out not to be careless at all because he actually saved the king. And apparently the king sort of curled up with his head on Careless' knee and and he, they they got away. They got away with it and because of that you know that then obviously led into a whole series of events which ultimately led to the restoration of the monarchy and said King became Charles II and and because of that there was an enormous celebration of oak trees. So they they they were raised in status even further. So we've got all the Royal Oak pubs which are effectively commemorating that occasion. But there's also a great day of celebration was declared. It was the 29 May. I think that was the King's birthday, and it was 29 May. And it became oak apple day. And that was when we would all when people across the land would would gather and and celebrate the restoration of the monarchy. And one of the things they used to do was they people would bring branches with oak apples, which is another of those amazing galls. And the more oak apples you had on your branches, the better the better you were, you know, the, the, the cooler you were at the party. And if you didn't bring oak branches with you, apparently people would be mean to you and they'd whip you with nettles.   Adam: Blimey, this story took a turn!  Jules: Yeah, these parties got these these parties got quite out of hand. I actually think we should bring these days back. Not, no nettles. But I think actually wouldn't it be great if we spent every 29 May celebrating our amazing oak trees and and and also the wider nature around us.  Adam: Yeah, we've missed it this year, but I'm putting a date in for us to meet at a Royal Oak somewhere between us on 29 May.  Jules: Yeah, let's do it. Let's party. Yeah. And maybe drink a glass of oak flavoured wine or whisky.  Adam: OK, never had that, but I'm I'm up for it. I'm up for it. Kate, this is also important because this is in the running for Tree of the Year.  Kate: Absolutely. So the Woodland Trust hosts the UK Tree of the Year competition, and this year we've focused on oak trees.   Adam: So so they're all oaks.  Kate: All of them are oak trees this year, so we've got 12 candidates from across the UK and the wonderful Bowthorpe Oak here is one of them. It's my local tree so I'm a little bit biased, but these trees all tell amazing stories. We've got one that's shaped like an elephant in the New Forest. We've got one that has survived being in the middle of pine plantation in the Highlands of Scotland and we've got one that's sadly under threat from a bypass in Shrewsbury. So we've got some amazing stories from these trees and the public can vote. So voting closes on the 21 October 2024 and you can go to the Woodland Trust website so it's woodlandtrust.org.uk/vote.  Adam: There were some cow noises just as you said that in the background! Just to prove that we're in a farm *all laugh*.  Thank you for listening to the Woodland Trust Woodland Walks. Join us next month when Adam will be taking another walk in the company of Woodland Trust staff partners and volunteers. And don't forget to subscribe to the series on iTunes or wherever you are listening. And do give us a review and a rating. If you want to find out more about our woods and those that are close to you, check out the Woodland Trust website. Just head to the visiting woods pages. Thank you. 

We are now launching our dedicated new YouTube and Twitter! Any help in amplifying our podcast would be greatly appreciated, and of course, tell your friends! Notable followon discussions collected on Twitter, Reddit, Reddit, Reddit, HN, and HN. Please don't obsess too much over the GPT4 discussion as it is mostly rumor; we spent much more time on tinybox/tinygrad on which George is the foremost authority!We are excited to share the world's first interview with George Hotz on the tiny corp!If you don't know George, he was the first person to unlock the iPhone, jailbreak the PS3, went on to start Comma.ai, and briefly “interned” at the Elon Musk-run Twitter. Tinycorp is the company behind the deep learning framework tinygrad, as well as the recently announced tinybox, a new $15,000 “luxury AI computer” aimed at local model training and inference, aka your “personal compute cluster”:* 738 FP16 TFLOPS* 144 GB GPU RAM* 5.76 TB/s RAM bandwidth* 30 GB/s model load bandwidth (big llama loads in around 4 seconds)* AMD EPYC CPU* 1600W (one 120V outlet)* Runs 65B FP16 LLaMA out of the box (using tinygrad, subject to software development risks)(In the episode, we also talked about the future of the tinybox as the intelligence center of every home that will help run models, at-home robots, and more. Make sure to check the timestamps

  Amazon Sunsets AmazonSmile Amid Cost-Cutting  The AmazonSmile will be ending by February 20th, according to a statement from the company, as reported by NPR and others. While the program dispersed nearly $449 million to nonprofits globally, the company says that the donations were spread too thin, minimizing impact. Amazon pointed to other efforts, such as its Housing Equity Fund, which supports affordable housing efforts near its headquarters, as an example of a social impact program receiving investment. However, smaller nonprofits that received AmazonSmile donations say that the donation were helpful and would be missed. The move comes after Amazon announced 18,000 layoffs, amid a winter defined by tech layoffs across the industry. Read more ➝   Summary Time's Up to halt operations, shift resources to legal fund | ABC News  People are only just realising what happens to the money IKEA makes - and it's blowing their minds | The US Sun Founder of Seattle West African immigrant nonprofit accused of embezzling millions | king5.com  What if school was all outside, every day? N.J. ‘nature schools' take class outdoors, rain or shine.  NJ.com The Eagles thought their Christmas album would fund a toy drive. It ended up doing much more. | https://www.inquirer.com     Rough Transcript [00:00:00] George: This week on the nonprofit news feed. Well, we are talking about turning that Amazon smile upside down. I was first off, really happy to be able to come up with that subject line. Um, not as happy that this program is ending. Uh, Nick, how's it going? [00:00:42] Nick: It's going good. George, this is, I think, gonna be one of those weeks where we are just focused on, on one-liners and, and puns. But alas, I'll take us into the top story, which you alluded to, which is that Amazon Smile. The program that donated a PORs, uh, portion of the proceeds from purchases on Amazon to nonprofits will be coming to a close on February 20th. [00:01:07] This comes via reporting from NPR and other outlets. And in the history of the program, it dispersed nearly 449 million to nonprofits globally. However, the company says that the donations were spread too thin, minimizing impact. That's in quotes. Um, Amazon pointed in their statement to other efforts such as its Housing equity fund to support affordable housing. [00:01:34] Here its headquarters as an example. Of a social impact program it was investing in. However, in the articles, smaller nonprofits said that Amazon SMILE donations were helpful and would be missed. And this comes amid broader economic headwinds that the industry is facing. Amazon has announced 18,000 layoffs. [00:01:57] Tech layoffs are now commonplace across the board. Amazon Smile more like a frown these days. [00:02:06] George: I'm sad to see a CSR corporate social responsibility program of this magnitude get sunset in this way in short order. I've been looking on LinkedIn, um, the reactions, and some folks are saying, you know, good riddens, this was a distraction for nonprofits because it sort of baits an organization into becoming an affiliate marketer. [00:02:30] Meaning you get a portion of the sales based on a trackable link and you're pushing product as opposed to your purpose. , I hear that. I also see 449 million, uh, across nonprofits being something meaningful now. Yeah. You spread peanut butter too thin and it turns into nothing. Right. If I were to donate that, but like, that's still just, that's a lot of money. [00:02:55] You know, there's, um, 1.5 ish million nonprofits, so I don't, I don't know that I buy that full narrative of like, it was too small to make a difference. , it was part of, for some organizations, a balanced fiscal diet. It was a diversification of revenue streams. You know, it was something that they, they got and ideally didn't have to push too hard for. [00:03:19] So bad thing too bad. You know, I, I, I don't think that, I'm curious why, and, and I'll maybe never know the reason of like the actual, like, is this a cost cutting? Is there just a change in csr? Did they not get enough, uh, from it? Because on the same token, it actually served them as well because guess what? [00:03:42] Somebody was buying something from them. You know, it was the affiliate marketing strategy. It was actually pretty darn clever, and it worked so sad to see it. And hopefully there'll be a, another solution that arises, an opportunity that shows up for, for those organizations. [00:04:02] Nick: I agree. I. It can't have cost them that much money to run though. Like that's the thing, right. [00:04:11] George: Well, the the other thing is like you can just sign up for an affiliate link and sell things, but I think the difference also with Amazon Smile is that, You could have your supporters put Amazon Smile on their purchasing. So I had it for, for my nonprofit, and it was just, anytime I buy, I had something on Amazon. [00:04:27] A point went that way. So I, I, maybe you need to backtrack on like affiliate marketing versus actually it was adding a layer that said, for these customers, a portion of your proceeds go back to this organization. So that is uniquely different. [00:04:43] Nick: That's fair. That's fair. We'll continue to see if we hear more about this, maybe they'll roll out something different or new. Alas, we move along to our next story, and this one is from a ABC News and others that the Times Up organization, the Me Too, the organization born out of the Me Too movement, particularly the that one in Hollywood, um, has Hal. [00:05:13] Operations and is shifting remaining financial resources to the Legal Defense fund. So Times Out has had a. Go of it. Fallout from associations with Andrew Cuomo and that scandal, um, and has been something of an EM battered, uh, embattled organization rather, um, over the past couple years and is now closing doors and, and shifting that money to the legal defense fund, which does, uh, provide, uh, resources for women in, in specific industries. This is kind of a weird one because it's such a high profile organization that came up very quickly. I think there's probably some lessons to be learned here. George, what are those lessons and what is your take on this? [00:06:03] George: I wish I was smart enough to actually understand the, the full implications of of this. The different narratives that I see here, one, are the types of organizations that pop up in these. Cultural moments have a lot of headwinds. Later they start off with a disproportionate amount of attention and funding upfront, which certainly times updated and they did remarkable work, certainly around if we're looking at victims of Harvey Weinstein, and then the way that they were able to, I'd say, update the way that victims were dealt with. [00:06:44] In these cases from a legal standpoint and a lot of achievements there, but there's a certain type of what feels like immutable. What goes up must come down type of physics here, where the speed at which with which you rise to fame. also seems to all but guarantee the fall from Grace. That is kind of like the inverse Lindy effect. [00:07:15] The Lindy effect is if you have been here for this long, you'll probably continue to be here. Uh, coming from the. Run of show for Broadway, uh, productions that if a Broadway production had been on, you know, it's a, it's a wonder that cats ever stopped being on Broadway. Cause cats had been forever on Broadway. [00:07:32] And it was this, this joke of like, once you're in the line cafe, you'll sort of never be removed. Um, I've gone far from the topic, I'm gonna come back to it. So the first thought, the speed with which something rises probably dictates the speed with which it falls the next. Looking at organizations that need to sort of spin up with all of the overhead, with all of the infrastructure and hiring staffing, like to create a new organization takes a lot of, of work and wealth. [00:08:08] And the fact that now at the end of it, you know, they, they talk about, and even in this quote, very simply, the Legal defense Fund really reflects who we were, not only at our inception, but really at our core. And that's a quote from, uh, Schultzer. And that's why, you know, the, the remaining 1.7 million, which is, is quite small, uh, in the grand scheme of the size of the organization, uh, is going back to that fund. [00:08:33] And the question I guess in my mind is, you know, the fund administered by the National Women's Law Center in Washington? Which has provided and provides legal administration help to, to workers that identify as low income and 40% of people of color. I, I'm, I'm curious as to what the world would've looked like, had times Up simply been a branch of that organization, how much more could have been applied to it and the, the learnings and the staff and that ability rolled into an existing organization rather than saying, we need a new organization. [00:09:08] You know, could this have. A campaign or a program of that legal defense fund. Those are just questions in my mind, and it's, it's tough with an organization under this level of scrutiny. I, I have a hard time getting behind some of those decisions they made with, you know, Andrew, Andrew Cuomo and, and consulting, allegedly consulting with them behind closed doors that was then later revealed by reports. [00:09:33] Uh, It's tough. I think nonprofits are under, uh, a much, much greater microscope and it doesn't take much to set the, set the tide in the wrong direction because you exist at the public's. Will you rely on funding and funders and if those funders are then effectively being shown. as public donors because nine 90 s are all public. [00:09:59] We can see donors and donations. Are you then saying, oh, a large donor has to then reconsider like, wait a minute, am I supporting an organization that supported Andrew Cuomo? Not saying that that is a direct line, but all things being equal, it doesn't take much to hurt in that reputation, and it's tough for organizations that are in that frontline type of work. [00:10:17] Nick: George, I, I think that's, that's a great point. You bring up a lot of different nuances and the threads there, and it makes me think that your nonprofits have to play by different rules than businesses, right. [00:10:33] George: They do. You can't just go on an apology tour being like, Hey, sorry, we fired him. We're all back to normal. Like, nevermind that our news station. Maybe let this kind of go by the wayside. [00:10:44] Nick: Yeah. Yeah. Um. Yeah, I guess we'll, we'll continue to keep an eye on this story. It'll be interesting to see how that legal defense portion of it, which is still administered by, um, that, uh, the other organization, the, the woman's um, uh, legal organization, how that all pans out. Um, so we'll keep our listeners updated, but to that end, I will take us to our next story. [00:11:12] And this one comes. From King five.com and the founder of a Seattle West African immigrant nonprofit is accused of embezzling millions. Um, so. Uh, the, the gentleman in, in question, Issa I apologize cause I know I'm mispronouncing. That was the founder and longtime executive director of the West African Community Council or W A C C, which is based in Seattle. [00:11:44] Um, and after decade of service, um, he was ousted, uh, on December 16th. Accused of embezzling, which is, which is, you know, terrible, terrible, um, especially, you know, people who really, really need help. And then this long article kind of goes into it, it goes into, uh, in DA's started of the story, um, as well side of the story rather, and it kind of a complicated one. [00:12:11] But, uh, George, what's your takeaway on. [00:12:16] George: I look. Board members for this, and this is a reminder for the fiscal responsibilities that your board members take on. And I'm not saying send this article to your board members, but if you are on a board, if you are building a board, fiscal stewardship and hiring and firing the c e o, those the primary jobs and roles of a board. [00:12:38] And so I see this and I don't look at, you know, in the D and say, oh, what a bad actor. Like there are bad actors. One out of a thousand people, one out of 10,000 people are not the, you know, folks that you should be trusting. The job of the board is to hire and fire and make sure the right people are in there. [00:12:56] And the fact that this was an extra bank account started in 2014, like a secret bank account, and like hundreds of thousands of dollars going through there, you know, I'm looking at auditors, I'm looking at board members looking at that, and so paying attention to those things like, oh, it can't happen. . Um, it, it is just a function of odds and, uh, again, I wouldn't have put this in here actually if it had not been for the size of the, the embezzlement. [00:13:25] We have millions of dollars. It's, it's brutal. Uh, so it's a reminder to, to board members out there that, uh, while those finance meetings may be boring, and also the people preparing them, like, here's, here's what you're actually doing. Um, you're making sure money gets to the. The right places and you're avoiding, um, tragedies like. [00:13:45] Nick: Absolutely. I think that's a fantastic point and we always like to keep our listeners on their toes to protect themselves from this happening at their organization. I have our next story is an interesting one. Um, Georgia. Did you know that IKEA is owned by a nonprofit? [00:14:11] George: Here's the thing. I didn't know that Ike. Was owned by a nonprofit. Frankly, this is like a non-story story, but it's fascinating because, uh, you know, in the , the rep reputable, the US Sun , and this title says no Ikea, uh, people are only just realizing what happens to the money IKEA makes, and it's blowing their minds. [00:14:32] I mean, first off, a plus on a hook title. But it's funny because there is a nonprofit involved and owner of the main entity. So IKEA is actually a nonprofit organization. So the money made from those, uh, you know, fund to assemble wardrobes, uh, you know, beyond paying is, is put away into, um, a nonprofit. And the charity's big mission is to further the advancement of interior design. [00:15:01] Nick: Novo, Novo. [00:15:03] George: uh, They're putting it out there further, the advancement of interior design. I mean, you've gotta believe in that mission, I suppose. Um, I did. I didn't have anything else here. Just I thought it was funny. [00:15:17] Nick: it's really funny. So the detail is I e Ikea store stores are franchised by a company called, Inga Holdings, which is fully owned by a nonprofit organization called Stitching Inga Foundation. Um, yeah, I , it's kind of funny. I wanna do a deep dive on this. We need like a little mini documentary on what the hell's happening, but. [00:15:45] Uh, I am willing to bet there is some criticism in the wonderful Scandinavian world about, uh, whether this is truly because people are passionate about, um, easy to assemble interior design pieces, or whether this is some kind of, uh, super duper clever, uh, tax loophole that is being taken advantage of. [00:16:09] George: Yeah, I mean, look, there's some definitive, like this is a tax play very clearly. They pay according to online mba, 33 times less taxes than the average business. The Economist, the overall setup of IKEA minimizes taxes and disclosure handsomely, rewards the founding camra Cam Prad family, and makes IKEA immune to takeover. [00:16:32] So it's interesting. That when you're saying like, this is a strategic reason, like frankly as a business owner, now you have me thinking, should a nonprofit own whole whale and suddenly we don't have to pay taxes. We have, I'm gonna go ahead and say a loftier mission then to improve, I'm sorry, I want to get it accurately to, uh, to further advance, uh, the advancement of interior. [00:17:00] Further the advancement of interior design. So I would say ours has built a healthier, more just and sustainable world as an agency. I, uh, I don't know. One of the funnier quotes here is, uh, no wonder why you gotta put everything together yourself at Al Okaya, because they rely on a bunch of volunteers to put their stuff together. [00:17:20] So, you know, they have a lot of volun, big volun. I have volunteered for Ikea on more than one occasion, [00:17:29] Nick: Volunteering on for IKEA is a, a family pastime. Um, That's funny. Here's another one for you, another light story. We're, this is a good week. There's nothing too traumatic in [00:17:42] George: I mean, just, you know, massive embezzlement, half a billion dollars of CSR stopping at Amazon. This is a good week, [00:17:49] Nick: Yeah, this is, [00:17:50] George: on [00:17:51] Nick: this is a good week for [00:17:53] George: this. Okay, you're classifying Good week on this. Okay. [00:17:55] Nick: I, you know, maybe it's just because it's sunny out. But that is a perfect segue into our next story, where one New Jersey school asked What if school was outside all the time? Every day. So New Jersey Nature schools are taking class outdoors, rain or shine. Um, and this article talks about bundled up kindergarten students at a Star Child Nature School in Medford, New Jersey, outside collecting tree sap to make glue. [00:18:28] Four handmade ornaments. So this is an immersive, you are outside, you are learning, you are one with nature type situation at this school. And that brings us to, uh, the relevant question of making, uh, the question of nature versus nurture ever. The more salient. [00:18:46] George: Wow. It's, it's all, it's all nature school here. Uh, and I know some are nonprofits, some are for-profits, but there's a number of them, and I'll call out one quote here From the South Mountain Nature School, our programs promote social and emotional development and instill confidence and foster independence. [00:19:01] Said Mary Claire Solomon. Who also in other news happens to be my sister. And so I'm incredibly proud of my sister for starting one of these nature schools, pushing through the pandemic and growing to the size that they have, uh, in New Jersey. And, you know, I get to see the, the pictures and the approach that they take in. [00:19:23] There's, you know, that question that comes up, well, what about when it snows? And it's like, you know, there's no bad weather, just bad apparel. So they, they are out there, rain or shine. I think this is a, a really healthy way for, for young people who are inevitably going to wander into the world of screen first learning and engagement and work to realize that, you know, food comes from the ground. [00:19:52] SAP is fun and it's, uh, it's great to see. I'm very proud of my sister, though. In other news, [00:20:00] Nick: That's super. George did you know that's mine, hometown, A South Mountain Reservations with in walking distance from where I grew up. [00:20:07] George: He can go over and say hi. [00:20:09] Nick: Go over, say hi. Maybe a little too old for, uh, the Nature School thing, [00:20:14] George: you could volunteer perhaps. [00:20:17] Nick: love it. All right. How about a feel good story? [00:20:21] George: Yeah. What do we. [00:20:22] Nick: This one comes from the Philadelphia Inquirer, uh, and it's about the eagle. The team, not the group, uh, thought that their Christmas album would fund a toy drive and it ended up doing so much more. So the Philadelphia Eagles of a football and. Sports fame can tell. [00:20:44] I follow football. Uh, thought that they were just raising a mere $30,000, um, for this charity toy drive, when in fact they raised [00:20:59] George: Quarter million 250,000 I believe. [00:21:02] Nick: million. Wow. Wow. Good for. [00:21:07] George: Yeah. What it's nice is also going to be funding not just one, but two toy drives and a summer camp, uh, which. Objectively I, while I respect toy drives and I like those moments, it's great to also say, what about dealing with, uh, the summer learning gap and supporting communities when, um, when you are needing a potentially even more. [00:21:29] So, uh, congratulations. Also, full disclosure here. Nick thought that this wasn't the team, the Eagles, but the band, uh, the Eagles. And it took him a couple of reads to realize that it was a fact about the sports ball. So Nick, I think we all learned something today. [00:21:49] Nick: We've learned a lot. [00:21:51] George: Have we, well, before I give you a terrible joke, I have a bit of a sponsored post here and it. A note that we are opening up our, as far as I know, we only do it once a year and it's the ad grant cohort and we're teaching. Organizations how to run the ad grant, the Google Ad grant, the thing that you get 10 K a month in in-kind ads for placing ads that drive traffic and value to your organization. [00:22:20] We're doing a five week live cohort. This isn't pre-recorded. This is hands-on and we're sharing exactly how we run this ad grant to maximize the ROI for your organization. And so we're gonna help, uh, only I think it's limited, 25 organizations. It always sells out. Registration is now open. Uh, and you can find that link in the show notes or wander around whole whale.com/university and you'll find it there. [00:22:47] Alrighty, question Nick, for you. [00:22:52] Nick: Uh oh. [00:22:53] George: Why, why did the clown donate his salary? [00:22:57] Nick: Hmm. I don't know about the clown thing, but why did the clown donate his salary? [00:23:02] George: Uh, it was a nice gesture. [00:23:05] Nick: Ah, ah, ah. [00:23:09] George: He, he laughs sometimes he doesn't know. And then we like, go off, Nick, did you actually get this one or is this gonna be the one where you like pause and you're like, I didn't get it. Explain it to [00:23:17] Nick: I, I got this one. I'm a huge Shakespeare Stan. I, I'm very familiar with a court gesture and this was, yes, but offering to explain was as well a nice gesture. Um, cuz [00:23:30] George: I just wanted to do it cause I feel like I cut off. I'm like, this would've been much funnier if he didn't understand it. He was like, I laugh, I don't get it. Alright. Thanks for humoring me and this is what you get for staying to the end of the podcast. Leave us a review. Thank you. Bye. [00:23:46] Nick: Bye.

George Bronten is the Founder and CEO of Membrain. In markets where your solution looks very similar to the competition's, how you sell is the big differentiator. George digs into the elements of how most sellers sell and the role of sales technology in making the how of selling better and not just faster. He also discusses the key metrics that sales teams should be paying more attention to, but in all likelihood, are not. The very words sellers use also matter and George defines some terms which are commonly used in sales, such as buyer's journey but are often confusing in their interpretation. HIGHLIGHT QUOTES Learn to use language strategically to build trust - George: "How will we stand out in this competitive market? When we talk to clients, I mean even down to which words we use because if you sound like every other seller and you're just self-centered and that comes through, you won't build that trust that you need to gain their business in the end. It's like the trust equation. You divide it by the level of self-interest that you convey." Measure metrics around sales effectiveness and outcomes - George: "They should be measuring the increased win rate for the client, not the adoption rate, and how many times they log onto the product. So there's a big mismatch there. I think in many companies, including ours, if we're selling win rates and sales effectiveness, why aren't we measuring increased win rates and deal sizes? Why are we looking at adoption rates? I mean, that's not really what the customer's interested in." Find out more about George in the links below: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgebronten/ Website: https://www.membrain.com/ More on Andy: Connect on LinkedIn Get Andy's new book "Sell Without Selling Out" on Amazon Learn more at AndyPaul.com Sponsored by: Revenue.io | Unlock exponential growth with an AI-powered RevOps platform | Revenue.io Scratchpad | The fastest way to update Salesforce, take sales notes, and stay on top of to-dos | Scratchpad.com Blueboard | World's leading experiential rewards & recognition platform | Blueboard.com Explore the Revenue.io Podcast Universe: Sales Enablement Podcast Selling with Purpose Podcast RevOps Podcast

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Use the Try Harder, Luke, published by Eliezer Yudkowsky on the LessWrong. "When there's a will to fail, obstacles can be found." —John McCarthy I first watched Star Wars IV-VI when I was very young. Seven, maybe, or nine? So my memory was dim, but I recalled Luke Skywalker as being, you know, this cool Jedi guy. Imagine my horror and disappointment, when I watched the saga again, years later, and discovered that Luke was a whiny teenager. I mention this because yesterday, I looked up, on Youtube, the source of the Yoda quote: "Do, or do not. There is no try." Oh. My. Cthulhu. Along with the Youtube clip in question, I present to you a little-known outtake from the scene, in which the director and writer, George Lucas, argues with Mark Hamill, who played Luke Skywalker: Luke: All right, I'll give it a try. Yoda: No! Try not. Do. Or do not. There is no try. Luke raises his hand, and slowly, the X-wing begins to rise out of the water—Yoda's eyes widen—but then the ship sinks again. Mark Hamill: "Um, George..." George Lucas: "What is it now?" Mark: "So... according to the script, next I say, 'I can't. It's too big'." George: "That's right." Mark: "Shouldn't Luke maybe give it another shot?" George: "No. Luke gives up, and sits down next to Yoda—" Mark: "This is the hero who's going to take down the Empire? Look, it was one thing when he was a whiny teenager at the beginning, but he's in Jedi training now. Last movie he blew up the Death Star. Luke should be showing a little backbone." George: "No. You give up. And then Yoda lectures you for a while, and you say, 'You want the impossible'. Can you remember that?" Mark: "Impossible? What did he do, run a formal calculation to arrive at a mathematical proof? The X-wing was already starting to rise out of the swamp! That's the feasibility demonstration right there! Luke loses it for a second and the ship sinks back—and now he says it's impossible? Not to mention that Yoda, who's got literally eight hundred years of seniority in the field, just told him it should be doable—" George: "And then you walk away." Mark: "It's his friggin' spaceship! If he leaves it in the swamp, he's stuck on Dagobah for the rest of his miserable life! He's not just going to walk away! Look, let's just cut to the next scene with the words 'one month later' and Luke is still raggedly standing in front of the swamp, trying to raise his ship for the thousandth time—" George: "No." Mark: "Fine! We'll show a sunset and a sunrise, as he stands there with his arm out, straining, and then Luke says 'It's impossible'. Though really, he ought to try again when he's fully rested—" George: "No." Mark: "Five goddamned minutes! Five goddamned minutes before he gives up!" George: "I am not halting the story for five minutes while the X-wing bobs in the swamp like a bathtub toy." Mark: "For the love of sweet candied yams! If a pathetic loser like this could master the Force, everyone in the galaxy would be using it! People would become Jedi because it was easier than going to high school." George: "Look, you're the actor. Let me be the storyteller. Just say your lines and try to mean them." Mark: "The audience isn't going to buy it." George: "Trust me, they will." Mark: "They're going to get up and walk out of the theater." George: "They're going to sit there and nod along and not notice anything out of the ordinary. Look, you don't understand human nature. People wouldn't try for five minutes before giving up if the fate of humanity were at stake." Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org.

Welcome to the Recruitment Hackers Podcast. A show about innovations, technology and leaders in the recruitment industry brought to you by Talkpush, the leading recruitment automation platform.Max: Hello, welcome back to the Recruitment Hackers Podcast. I'm your host Max Armbruster and today on the show, I'm delighted to welcome. George LaRocque who is SVP of insights for unleashed. Welcome to the show, George. George: Thanks Max. Thanks for having me.Max: Pleasure. George and I met in the real world, a real world event with real people you can touch and feel, right? Well you're not supposed to touch him, but that was in 2018, I think. And, back then unleashed was, I think the leading events company in an HR and TA tech, or one of the leading ones. Anyway, I mentioned you've had a pretty, shocking year. George: Yeah. That's to say the least, and I'm sure everybody who's receiving this podcast will nod in agreement. When we met, I think I was partnering with unleash, and my involvement has increased over the last couple of years. So I actually jumped on board in the middle of this craziness, as unleashes moved the business to the media, given that we get to your point, we can't get together physically at the moment.Max: Right, right. And can you tell us, for the audience, a little bit about your bio, how you ended up being a voice of TA tech? For many of us knowing. Are you a practitioner basically? George:  Yeah, I've been in this market. It's just over 30 years now, which is crazy. I spent the first 10 as a practitioner, I came out of the staffing world. Like many people make their transition. I moved from the agency side, where I was working in tech just at the end of the eighties, early nineties, and then moved over 10 years, moved on to  what would have been the client side, into the employer side. Then started a consulting firm. What would have been now called an RPO in the Boston area, focused on internet startups and our customers were all involved... Customer was called the monster board. We did all their hiring  in the Boston area for sales. ThreeComma, a Datacom company in the US back at the beginning of like, you know, TCP, IP and networking protocols.And we did engineering for them, but through that, I jumped onto the tech side. So I spent 10 years in HR technology and I was employee number 10 or 11 at a company called Brass Ring and took them through to 50 million. I had a couple of good runs and  another one people might recognize, I ran global sales for Bull Horn, through their first big VC ramp. Yep. And then I was a general manager at telemetry, which actually was Higher Desk and turned into telemetry and now they are part of Jobvite. And, 10 years ago I started in this advisory and analyst world. And that's what brings us here, it's been an evolution, up to date. And so that's where I am. Max: It sounds like you've had some pretty stressful jobs. You were well-prepared for 2020, for a stressful year. Because you were there when beating salesmen Bullhorn was going through its rapid growth phase, I guess from 10 to 100 or 10 to 50, maybe. George: That's about right. And you know, to go from, you know, zero customers at brass ring to 50 million in a few years. Right? Yeah. And then to watch the bubble burst in 2000 and be right in the, you know, like sitting on the bubble when it burst then the financial crisis of 2008. I would say the thing that prepares you just in a general sense is stress, but also you get instincts for a down market, you know, that's the part that we've seen before. But even that's different here. It's spotty, like your people are either drowning in. You know, overwhelmed with business, or they can't find it. And there's very little in between. So this is unusual, but yeah, I would say, it didn't make me any more confident than the next person, but I felt like I had some instincts to fall back on.Max: Yeah. Yeah. I guess, in March and April, I was trying to, yeah. Some up those memories from 2008 because I was a business owner back then already. And I remember the bad news just kinda following each other. It was bad news  like for six months straight.You just never see the end of it. And so 2020. I think most people knew if I head back into March that, okay, this isn't going to be a bad year.  It's going to stay with us for a while. And, you know, it's hard to know exactly if we're out of this yet, but  it teaches you to be more conservative. I'm sure people have had enough of the gloom. I hear about those businesses that can't keep up with demand. You mentioned some companies are doing super well right now. What are they focused on? George: I would say, well in the HR tech space, there are two types of companies that have done well. One, would be those tech providers who were really exclusively marketing into a really large enterprise, and had an established brand, established product. The larger employers have while they may have furloughed or had a reduction in force, you know, within recruiting or HR, some percentage of their workforce. They've also invested in some digital transformation. So we're seeing that, and that's just a fancy way of saying they're upgrading their systems, in some cases. Max: So the guy from the eighties, it's coming back. George: There you go. Yup. They've crossed the chasm. So there was definitely a tapping of the brakes, you know, April, May. Big companies weren't buying software at that time for a moment. And then, I think as we moved into later in the spring, early summer, some of the vendors that are in that segment had some of their best quarters, deals were accelerated or deals came back to life.The other type, even where you would expect companies that were marketing into the SMB or middle market would have been hit hard. And that's true. If they were focused with customers, if they were lucky enough to have companies in industries that were, let's say a grocery or a healthcare, or logistics or tech, they did better than they should. There were some vendors who cut staff and then grew at a rate greater than they expected,. and which is, you know, it's been such a difficult time for everyone but a lot of folks, a lot of vendors we're really at an early stage, they didn't have any momentum, maybe the product wasn't mature, the point solution. There were some really, tough tales to tell that came out of... There's just bad timing, for them, they weren't able to get out into the market and get that momentum, to sustain. Max: You kind of have to be past that certain level of maturity to survive a crisis like this. You are a young team perhaps, and I don't mean like literally more than 12 years old. I mean like, you know, to a point where you have a solid base of customers.George: Yeah, absolutely. Max: And we've seen, in the industry, a lot of consolidation, I guess not everybody in my audience is going to geek out on TA tech news and find out who gets bought by who. But that's your world and, maybe you can tell us, what are some of the negative trends we're seeing. On my side, I saw that there was a lot of movement from companies that were doing video. Video  used to be a category. But I think now video is more of a feature that everybody has. That was my main takeaway. George: Yep. I'd agree with that. I think the reason I tell practitioners or leaders in talent acquisition, they should watch both, what's happening in investment and with consolidation is to have a sense of what's coming their way. So if you're looking for the emerging technology, I'm not even talking about the specific vendors but, you get a sense over the period of, you know, a few quarters as to where investments are going on emerging tech, emerging solutions. It might not be emerging tech. It might not be that it doesn't have the bells and whistles, like something conversational, but you may see that, for example, right now there's a lot going into analytics and process management around recruiting.You might see not a lot is going into job boards anymore at the moment, or marketplaces which surprisingly have led the category for years. You'd see a lot going into internal mobility and matching  and those areas. So you get a sense of what's coming at the same time for consolidation if you're using point solutions and platforms, you particularly get a sense of what those capabilities are at a platform level. So if you're using an ATS, what moves are these vendors making? And if you're thinking about your tech stack in the next one - three years, I think it's a good Indicator for trends and you need to solve the problems that you have and seize the opportunities that you need to seize and look for the Cape. And it's not one size fits all out there, but these are things that I think are helpful. In that way.Max: A lot of the practitioners got into recruitment for the same reasons you did probably. To be on the sell side and busy dealing with people. And, you know, buying tech came as an add on,  not the main thing and a bit of a chore. And, I think last year, people were still. They had a little fun budget that they can spend on where they can try a few initiatives every year. And then some of those customers would sign on because they needed to show initiative. They needed to show I'm going to try something different this year and it looks good on my resume. And this year, maybe that's not so important anymore. It's more about doing more with less and asking more from your existing vendors. George: Yeah. Oh, a hundred percent. Another good reason to keep your eye on tech and what's happening, in our market and outside of our market, you know, what's happening in the world of technology? And I'm not one to ever recommend that you would modify, let's say a solution from outside of recruiting, into recruiting. That never goes well, it never scaled. But yeah doing more with less  is something that as I mentioned, you know, there have been a lot of layoffs. There are probably fewer recruiters in any given company and those recruiters are asked to do more and, having a sense of what's available to help accomplish that goal is a good thing. And it tends to look like, I think companies are either forced to address the need to automate tasks and what would be administrative to get the recruiters and the leaders in TA focused, you know, where they need to be. On with candidates, candidate engagement, working within the organization, with managers, working the process you know, they're forced to do it because they're doing more with less, or they're taking that step back.I think a lot of larger organizations that are investing in technology right now, it's, it's a way to justify some of the headcount that they're keeping they're implementing these technologies, evaluating these technologies but at the end of the day it's the same goal, which is, you know, how do we get to where freeing up the recruiters, the operators, to be on  that process and driving that process and not drowning in it. Max: Yeah. I can say from my experience, on our side, that the volume of candidates and leads process for the recruiter has tripled over the last six months. And obviously you just can't do this same thing you did before if you have three times the volume you did before. You have to change a little bit, the way you do things, because you adapt to your  environment.You were saying job boards, the big hits, I think most suppliers there and with the compounding effects of Facebook and Google driving also traffic, at least in the high volume space, the driving traffic, a lot of those traffic is free. I imagined, 2021 is probably not going to be an amazing year for indeed, and zip and those guys. Yes, there'll be some recovery. Right. I saw that Zip had some recovery in Australia in Q4. But I want to go back to, you're telling us about your early story. You're not in Boston anymore. Are you? Geroge: No I'm in New Jersey. Like most people in New Jersey, I'm, you know, 40 minutes out of New York city. Yeah. Max: Boston, for those who don't come from Boston, it's not necessarily seen as a tech hub, but I found out over the years that there was kind of the TA tech hub of the world 20 years ago. And I guess still today. Can you tell us about how'd that happen and give us a little bit of the history?George: Sure. So it really, back in those days, you know, Silicon Valley's was always the hub, right? It was always where it all sort of exploded, but there used to be maps that had, it was a map of the US and it had Boston and they shrunk the rest of the country. And then it had Silicon Valley. And you had  your tech belt. It was the highways that went around, the two highways, one 28 and four 95 that went around Boston and all the different tech shops that were either in... Cambridge was a hub for a lot of startups. MIT is in Cambridge, Harvard's in Cambridge.And then out toward the suburbs, you had a lot of larger campuses for tech shops and a couple of the larger, employment advertising shops were out. Emerging shops, innovative shops were out of Boston. And I would say that the first one to really explode and drive traction around HR tech was Adyen, the founder of Adyen was Jeff Taylor who started Monster. And so, I was at that point running a consulting shop. We had about 60 people all around Boston. And, we were dealing with some really some of the first e-commerce shops. And, I mentioned three common others, and Jeff Taylor would show up with a salesperson. Carol McCarthy was her name and they would offer us, you know, we partnered with them and we would bring free postings to our customers. And we would argue with them at the time about you've gotta be on the internet. You've gotta be on the web. And they wouldn't. It was a really fun time because we took employers to the web.We created their career sites and we. Hook them up with, places like what was called the monster board back then. and at that time, the ATS market was run by a couple of shops called Resumex and Rex Track. They own the large enterprise and larger middle market on-premise software and you had a brass ring, which came out of the Boston area. It grew out of a resume processing company. So all the job fairs, all the resumes that came into employers were on paper. And you had these systems like Resumex and Rex Track and others. You would literally go through a factory process that gets scanned optical character recognition turned into data, uploaded in a total QC process.And then, as the web was emerging or able to take applications to the web. That's where the Brass Ring emerged. And there were some other shops on the West coast  that emerged, but didn't, you know, Taleo, which was recruitment software, came out of Canada and then came down. I want to say through Chicago to, ultimately to Silicon Valley, but it was, yeah, the Boston area was teaming with, you know, early job boards early recruitment technology, this was 97, 98 to 2000.Max: It sounds like Monster had a key role to play in that. George: They really did you know, like any success story. It was a combination of vision. so they could see where the market was going and how this was going to evolve before really anybody was seeing it. And timing, they were there, and hard work. Right. And they had some good ideas. Where do they end up going? And that's a brand people love to hate on and that's fine. But they were a major player and they really helped  create the space.Max: They got big and then other problems appeared. But I mean, at the time in the late nineties, They picked that weird grand, they called themselves Monster. Everybody had a much more corporate sounding name back then. The internet was just getting started, all those dotcoms  and, I think they did it a little bit on purpose  to say, you know either you're with us, the incident folks or you're against us, you're part of the old guard. And we don't need you as a customer. It was a bit of a, you know, the boldness, the choice of brand. George: Yeah, we would do all their sales hiring.  They were on the, their first office was, the second floor over a Chinese takeout restaurant. And you know, we'd go on site, spend an hour. A couple of hours with them, with the consultants we had there, you'd leave. And you'd just smell like Chinese food from being in the office. And then as he started to grow, I remember, telling people that they would have to, you know, don't worry they're expanding. They're going to have a facility, but there are two trailers in the parking lot for now. And then just those, you know, these sorts of things that, I'm sure there are people out there somewhere that worked in those trailers. Well we put them there. Max: Yeah. And so with the universities and then maybe circumstance having this gentleman's at Taylor and starting this company in Boston for no other reason than he was there. And then, many of the alumni that moved on to start their own companies. And today I think there are a number of companies that are there, including your old employer of Bullhorn. I think phenom people are quoted there. And then a number of other companies. Was SmashFly as well in Boston?George: Yep. They were founded there. In fact the original founder of SmashFly, Mike Hennessy, was probably employee number three or four at Brass Ring. And so we worked closely together for several years and, you know, like any of those shops. And there are still people that when I've...Back in those days when we could go to events, Brass Ring is now part of IBM. And, if I go by the IBM booth, I see old friends and they've really never left. They've just gone from Brass Ring that connects to IBM. But we used to joke and say there are probably, you know, 300 people that are like the core of the industry. And they just move around and a lot of other people sort of come and go, but there are a lot more than that now, I think.Max: That's true. You do see that. And we hear that in your story is that these companies don't just die, they just merge and they move from one animal to the next. And this is sort of a Darwinian experience. Right. So it's see how it evolves. And they changed names. Like Hot Jobs do you remember that one? George: Yeah. HotJobs got acquired by Yahoo. Max: Oh, yes. George:  And, you know, it was Yahoo hot jobs and Dan Finnegan, who was the founder of Jobvite, I know, was involved with Yahoo hot jobs  and I believe the founder of, Avature came out of one of those groups. You know, early on, when you look at Brass Ring, it had, newspapers behind it.So the newspapers were, they had Excel partners out of Silicon Valley, very small stake, but over a hundred million came in from the Washington post, the Tribune companies can net newspapers, which is USA today. So newspapers were hedging, their bets against, you know, the classified business was starting to dwindle.They were looking at how that was going to go online. They also created an advertising network, which Knight Ridder became a part of. Which is where career builder grew out of, which is also where, Dan Finnegan came out of that Knight, Ridder group. So you've got different camps from the late nineties like the Post's Tribune camp and then the night Ritter camp, and then a few big brands that came out of that, that were all different. In some cases, the same newspapers in different investing groups that were putting their chips on the table, sort of hedging their bets based on what they were expecting to see with changes, and impact on their classified ad revenue. They didn't do any of it fast enough or go hard enough as we've all seen. But  that's an interesting subplot to the whole, the whole thing as well.Max: With your unique perspective of seeing people moving from place to place and companies evolving, it makes sense that you would be working in automation now. Which is, you know, a great networker and a place where the industry meets.And I think your story is one that can serve as inspiration for people who end up in recruitments and say that I don't want to be interviewing people for the rest of my life, or I don't want to be doing the same thing over and over again. Yeah you can move into technology. You can move into sales, you can move into media, and touch a lot of things and it prepares you for a rich career. And, and if you stick around long enough, then you can see the same faces over and over again. George: Good, good point. You know what? I used to think that, but it was just my great timing. You know and of course there was some of that, I entered the space and the internet was emerging and the web emerged and on demand, you know, cloud-based technologies emerged and I'm passionate about technology. So I was in the right place at the right timeAnd the other thing that's true is that I think the profession has evolved and emerged. What technology has done and what, you know, changes that all businesses have experienced is it really demonstrates how I think recruiting can really have a massive impact.And I think if you look beyond the matches that you're making and the interviews that you're scheduling and if you sort of step back and think about the impact you can have on the business. And if you pursue that internally in your current role or in your career, moving to the next role, there are a lot of places to go with that.If you can see the impact that recruiting and recruitment technology and talent acquisition can have on the market and on any given employer. I think  that's another thing that I was, there to see was sort of how this all, you know, has unfolded and I've been lucky to watch.Max: It's so important to go back to that feeling of I'm helping people get a job and, you know, a good year, a bad year, and you know, God knows 2020 wasn't a great year, but it's still up to this, you know the industry and our people to think: I'm going to help somebody get their next game.George: Yeah.Max:  I guess that's why when you go network with people who've been in the industry for 20 years they're nice folks to be around because they have that purpose in their career. And I hope for the listeners who are in the early stages of their career they can see that, it's not that easy to find purpose that once you have it and you sort of hold onto it, George: Yeah good point.Max: To wrap it up, I'd like to give you a chance to maybe promote some of your upcoming events perhaps with Unleash or tell people how to get a hold of you. George: Well, you can find unleash at unleashgroup.io, and you'll find me there. And the HR winds was my previous brand. It's still there. There's still content there, reports there, unleash is really, for the foreseeable future. It's all about media and content. So everything's there. So the. content about recruiting, about recruiting technology and the rest of the employee experience and HR spectrum, is there as well.  So I would encourage people to go take a look and I'm sure they'll find something interesting if they're listening to this podcast.Max: Absolutely. I go there myself. George interviews some of the industry leaders and has unique data on how the market is changing. So if you want to be ahead of the curve and know what's going to hit you a year or so now that's the place to go and check it out. Thanks so much, George, for joining us and for reminiscing on the old days. I am actually quite happy to know that there's now a record of those souvenirs about the Boston era that has, you know, foundational importance to the world of TA tech saved on our blog.George: Excellent. Thanks for having me. I had a lot of fun.I hope you enjoyed my interview with George as much as I did. George is a real historian of the talent acquisition tech space and from the evolution and meanderings of the industry, we can all get inspiration to constantly reinvent ourselves and renew our industry. If you enjoyed it and you're up for more subscribe to our podcast and please share with friends.

As George and Matt get inundated with great ownership questions, they decide to bring the Q&A tradition to Practice Under Water. What does being a "lazy dentist" actually look like? What does delegation afford George? They answer your best questions! Plus, will George tell us how much money he makes?

Haunting at the MTC On today’s episode Audio Curators Jas and Sher tackle the infamous ghost ‘George’ who is known to haunt and play tricks on people at the infamous MTC (Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre). But who is George? They say he was a crippled teenager who loved the theatre and hoped to star on stage one day, until he died in a fire…..but…..did George ever really exist? Or is it other unknown Spirits from the beyond the grave that continue to linger in the theatre? It is a well-known fact that most theatres are said to be haunted however, Jas and Sher truly question the validity of this particular Ghost Story and for as much as it pains them to challenge an Urban Legend, they did find some very interesting information and relative facts that could possible ‘de-bunk’ this particle ghost story. You be the judge in this week’s Episode 17 and weigh the information that Jas and Sher gathered while falling into a rabbit hole to sort out the truth.

Show Number 12 is hosted by Eamonn with the team of Ted, Stan and George They open the show by reviewing our recent form. The feature interview was with Richard Sadlier who was tipped as the next best thing to come through the ranks since Teddy Sheringham. He gained a full international cap with the Republic of Ireland before his career with Millwall and the Irish came to an abrupt end with a hip injury. On leaving the game he became CEO at St Patrick’s Athletic [I have a question on that later] Now he is a football pundit on the Irish TV and Irish press, as well as a practising psychotherapist. The Team spoke with Dean Brown in respect of son Harvey Brown receiving the accolade of Southwark Junior Citizen of the Year. The NOLUT Team discussed the Fans Questions for the show responses; Our recent form and the upcoming match against QPR; Got Grumpy with a whole host of matters raised by fans; and highlighted a number of Millwall related issues.

Show Number 12 is hosted by Eamonn with the team of Ted, Stan and George They open the show by reviewing our recent form.The feature interview was with Richard Sadlier who was tipped as the next best thing to come through the ranks since Teddy Sheringham. He gained a full international cap with the Republic of Ireland before his career with Millwall and the Irish came to an abrupt end with a hip injury. On leaving the game he became CEO at St Patrick's Athletic [I have a question on that later] Now he is a football pundit on the Irish TV and Irish press, as well as a practising psychotherapist.The Team spoke with Dean Brown in respect of son Harvey Brown receiving the accolade of Southwark Junior Citizen of the Year. The NOLUT Team discussed the Fans Questions for the show responses; Our recent form and the upcoming match against QPR; Got Grumpy with a whole host of matters raised by fans; and highlighted a number of Millwall related issues.

Show Number 11 is hosted by Eamonn with the team of Ted, Stan and George They open the show by reviewing our recent form. Former Lion and probably the scorer of the best goal at Wembley Gary Alexander updates on what he is doing now; his kids and in particular his son George who is in the Under 23 squad at Millwall; how he sees Millwall’s season progressing; his belief in Neil Harris and his own personal aspirations. The NOLUT Team discussed the Fans Questions for the show responses; Tthe forthcoming FA Cup Tie against Brighton; Got Grumpy with a whole host of matters raised by fans; Highlighted a number of Millwall related matters; and talked about their partnership with Love Sport Radio.

Show Number 11 is hosted by Eamonn with the team of Ted, Stan and George They open the show by reviewing our recent form.Former Lion and probably the scorer of the best goal at Wembley Gary Alexander updates on what he is doing now; his kids and in particular his son George who is in the Under 23 squad at Millwall; how he sees Millwall's season progressing; his belief in Neil Harris and his own personal aspirations. The NOLUT Team discussed the Fans Questions for the show responses; Tthe forthcoming FA Cup Tie against Brighton; Got Grumpy with a whole host of matters raised by fans; Highlighted a number of Millwall related matters; and talked about their partnership with Love Sport Radio.

[paypal-donation] We're continuing our discussion with George Throckmorton. He is the expert who discovered how Mark Hofmann was forging documents. Did you know that Mark actually used a toy chemistry set? It's pretty amazing. https://youtu.be/HycdFrbx8bE George:  We finally found the chemicals and the chemicals we found over a year after the bombs. It was in November of 1986. The bombs were in October of '85 and I was out Christmas shopping in a toy store and happened to glance down to the toy chemistry set. And right there was gum Arabic, Roman vitriol, green copperas, and a recipe on how to make iron gallotannic ink. GT: No way, that's crazy. George:  Later on we found out that's where he got the chemicals was at a toy store. GT: At a toy store. George:  And yet they fooled the biggest laboratory in the world, the FBI. GT: So yeah, that's crazy. George: They were looking for a more sophisticated way of doing things today than what he used. He used method that was used 150 years ago. And we don't deal with things 150 years old. We deal with modern, at the time forgeries on checks and stuff like that, credit applications. And we're very proficient at that, but even in the field of document examination, we couldn't go to anybody to get help because we don't deal with documents over 50, 60 years old. We will also discuss George's role in the famous Howard Hughes will. (Is there anything this guy wasn't involved with?) It's really interesting. George:  The Howard Hughes will, that was the big, if they remember that, the Howard Hughes will. He was the richest man in the world at the time and when they found the will, which they call the Mormon will, I don't know how much you're familiar with this story....I got involved in that quite by accident. GT:  Really? George: Yes. ... George: But anyway, that testimony in court on Howard Hughes will, was a result of having the graphologists testifying against the document examiners. Mark Hofmann used a toy chemistry set to fool the FBI lab. Don't forget to sign up for our Gospel Tangents Insiders Club.  First meeting is July 18 at 8 pm ET/6 pm MT on Google Hangouts.  Check this link for more information:  https://tinyurl.com/GTInsider Check out our conversation, and don't forget part 1! [paypal-donation]