Podcasts about mdrs

In this Starr-Led solo episode of Revenue Rehab, Brandi Starr brings a But How perspective to the widespread practice of handing qualified leads from marketing to SDRs and BDRs. Challenging the assumption that sales pressure is the next logical step, Brandi argues that most buyers are actually looking for guidance—not a hard sell—during the critical middle of the funnel. She introduces the vital, often-overlooked role of Marketing Development Reps (MDRs) and offers a blueprint for structuring this function to accelerate revenue. CMOs and CROs will find a compelling case for rethinking funnel strategy to close the costly gap between marketing and sales.  Episode Type: Starr-Led   Brandi Starr cuts through industry noise with bold, unfiltered insights on revenue growth. These solo episodes challenge outdated advice, debunk myths, and break down industry reports to reveal what really drives results. Expect sharp commentary, data-backed analysis, and actionable strategies to refine your marketing and sales approach.  Bullet Points of Key Topics + Chapter Markers:  Topic #1: Middle of the Funnel Is the New Battleground [03:31]  Brandi spotlights a massive structural gap in the revenue funnel, arguing that 95% of the buying journey now happens before a buyer ever engages with sales. She insists that traditional automation and nurture flows can only take buyers so far—leaving them stuck, overwhelmed, and underserved. Her message is clear: CMOs and CROs must prioritize MoFu strategies and stop letting this “messy middle” bleed potential revenue.  Topic #2: Marketing Development Reps (MDRs) are Essential, Not Optional [05:43]  Brandi challenges the notion that sales development roles (SDRs/BDRs) can handle the middle-funnel gap, claiming they are “chasing meetings and demos” rather than nurturing. She makes a bold case for MDRs—empathetic, insight-driven professionals who guide engaged but not-yet-ready buyers—arguing that organizations without them are leaving high-value leads to stall. Her advice: pilot or reassign resources now, and build MDR compensation and measurement around MoFu KPIs rather than pipeline quotas.  Topic #3: Rethink Buying Committee Support and Buyer Experience [14:54]  Brandi exposes how complex sales cycles with large committees need a strategic MoFu resource to guide and enable all stakeholders—not just the lead contact. She advocates for a shift from automation-focused nurturing to human-led support that's “not pushy, not looking for a quota”—arguing that this trust-driven approach becomes a competitive differentiator. Her test: if your deals are complex and require consultative education, then building this role is overdue.   Why Should Revenue Leaders Stop Ignoring This Problem Right Now?  Because you're wasting millions generating leads only to watch 60% vanish into a black hole between marketing and sales. Brandi makes it clear: this isn't a lead quality issue—it's a structural gap where overwhelmed buyers stall out, SDRs get misused, and revenue opportunities die in the messy middle. Ignoring it means you're losing deals not due to weak campaigns, but because nobody is actively guiding buyers through their biggest hurdles before they're ready to talk to sales.  What's the First Action Someone Should Take to Apply This Insight Today?  Brandi says: shift your mindset to focus on the middle of the funnel—stop obsessing over top-of-funnel leads or bottom-of-funnel closes, and interrogate what your buyers actually need between those points so you can design support that accelerates their internal decision process. If you're not prioritizing MoFu strategy, that's your urgency—start now.  Takeaway  Brandi challenges revenue leaders to fundamentally rethink the buying journey, pointing out that most of the action—and friction—now happens in the messy middle of the funnel, not at the top or bottom. She urges leaders to shift their mindset away from traditional sales and marketing silos, and start prioritizing buyer enablement and support during that critical middle stage. The key move? Stop neglecting the middle of the funnel—design roles, strategies, and resources specifically to guide buyers through this phase, ensuring you become their go-to partner, not just another vendor pushing a quota.  Subscribe, listen, and rate/review Revenue Rehab Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts , Amazon Music, or iHeart Radio and find more episodes on our website RevenueRehab.live  

What if filmmakers took their cameras to space? Prepare for a world of zero-G cinematography! From weather-sealed cameras designed to handle unexpected astronaut vomit to the perpetual hum of life-support systems ruining your audio, documentary filmmaking in orbit presents unique challenges. Discover why the International Space Station's lighting is "just awful," how playing a guitar in microgravity sends you spinning in unexpected directions, and why the first task in every Mars simulation is fixing the eternally broken toilet. Explore how future space workers will need specialized trade skills—from plumbers to welders—as humanity expands beyond Earth. This thought-provoking "what if" scenario features insights from documentary filmmaker Sam Burbank and Explore Mars CEO Chris Carberry. —— Chris Carberry is the CEO and co-founder of Explore Mars, Inc. (Explore Mars), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit space advocacy organization that was created to advance the goal of sending humans to Mars by the mid-2030s. Carberry is a well-respected expert and influential director of strategic alliances in the space community as well as with non-traditional organizations. Carberry has presented oral (and written) testimony to both the United States Senate as well as the United States House of Representatives and has been active in all levels of policy engagement with both the Executive and Legislative branches of government. In recent years, he has overseen Explore Mars' annual Humans to Mars Summit, the largest annual conference focused on sending humans to Mars. He has also spearheaded dozens of programs including the Mars Innovation Forum, the annual Community Workshops for the Achievability and Sustainability of Human Exploration of Mars series, the AR/VR and Space workshop series, the ISS and Mars Conference in Washington, D.C. and in Strasbourg, France, and the Women and Mars Conference in Washington, D.C. He has also conducted programs overseas, in such countries as the United Arab Emirates, Australia, and the United Kingdom. Carberry is also the creator, and one of the senior editors, of the annual publication known as the Humans to Mars Report that was highlighted in the NASA Transition Authorization Act of 2017. In 2013, Carberry was awarded a NASA Group Achievement award. Carberry is the author of the 2019 book, Alcohol in Space: Past, Present and Future, and the upcoming book, The Music of Space (to be released in 2022). Both volumes are being adapted into documentary films.Learn more about Chris at https://exploremars.orgCheck out his books at https://www.amazon.com/stores/Chris-Carberry/author/B0CZWN4JNF?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1&qid=1743558561&sr=8-1&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true Watch his film at https://www.amazon.com/Alcohol-Space-Movie-Sam-Burbank/dp/B0DJQZGLG2 —— Sam Burbank is a science-writer and science-documentary filmmaker. Mr. Burbank has worked with PBS, Discovery Channel, and has produced and written two dozen programs for the National Geographic, ranging from renewable energy to the X-Prize. Sam studied creative writing at San Francisco State University, and is a long time member of AAAS. He has spent three summers on Devon Island, near the magnetic north pole, and was a member of the founding crew of the Mars Society FMARS station in 2001. In 2002 he joined a crew at the MDRS station for the one-of-a-kind ICoMP experiment Sam loves snowboarding, journal writing, and dancing a fast 1930's swing step, the Balboa. In 1995, he and wife Linda spent their honeymoon riding a motorcycle to the arctic circle. Some notable quotes about Mr. Burbank include the following: "Sam Burbank is elevating the video-journal to an art genre." Kim Stanley Robinson, author Antarctica, Red Mars. "Sam is a true artist, who makes visible to the eye what before could only be seen by the mind." Robert Zubrin, author The Case for Mars, Entering Space. Learn more about Sam at https://www.samburbank.com/

Inside MDRS: The Latest from the Mars Desert Research StationGet an exclusive update from one of the world's premier Mars analog research facilities — the Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS). Host Ashton Zeth sits down with three key leaders shaping the future of MDRS: James Burk, Executive Director of The Mars Society; Kay Radzik, Director of Refits; and Sergii Iakymov, MDRS Director.They dive into the latest missions, ongoing upgrades, and how you can support the continued modernization of MDRS through their current crowdfunding campaign.Support the future of Mars exploration: mars-desert-research-station.raisely.com/

Choosing between 24 V or 48 V motorized drive rollers (MDRs) for your conveyor system is all about matching the solution to your needs. The 24 V option is safer, quieter, and more energy-efficient, making it ideal for smaller setups and simpler wiring. In contrast, 48 V rollers deliver greater power and are ideal for moving heavy materials, speeding up operations, or handling longer conveyor setups due to minimal power loss over distance. Think of 48 V rollers as the heavy-duty workhorses of conveyor motors—designed for demanding applications or future upgrades. Ultimately, the right choice depends on your specific requirements: load capacity, speed, conveyor length, safety considerations, and your existing equipment setup. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ashton interviews Sergii Iakymov, director of Mars Society's Mars Desert Research Station in Hanksville, Utah. Sergii also talks about his recent mission at HERA -- NASA's human exploration research analog. https://www.nasa.gov/mission/hera/ https://mdrs.marssociety.org/

The Government's push to have more apartments, including shoebox apartments, built should be welcomed over time by a range of buyers including first home buyers, property investors and retirees, suggests John Bolton, founder of mortgage broker, lender and savings product provider Squirrel.Speaking in a new episode of interest.co.nz's Of Interest podcast, Bolton, also a former banker who has dabbled in property development, says apartments, including small ones, offer people who otherwise couldn't afford to buy in Auckland the opportunity to do so. He gives the example of a recent client who wanted an Auckland CBD shoebox apartment."He was actually just over 50 and a first home buyer. He had about $150,000 in savings and an income of about 120,000 and he was just keen to get something. Now, the interesting thing for him is that we worked it out and he could pay it off before retirement and that was his goal. So he was looking to pay it off in about 15 years and the only way he was gonna be able to do that was with a shoebox apartment. He was really happy with that...He'd be a classic example, I guess, of the target market for someone that otherwise couldn't buy."Investors will always look at it on a yield basis, Bolton notes."The numbers have to stack up. The attraction for investors historically with the shoebox apartments has been purely yield, straight yield play. They [can] get much better yields on them than a standard apartment."Bolton also says there's a growing number of retirees struggling to find places to live."When we talk about shoebox apartments or just small living spaces, it could be some single level brick and tile units in the suburbs. It doesn't have to be a traditional high rise apartment with shoeboxes in it, you know, just little living spaces out in the suburbs, all on one level, which gives them easy access.""It's a really important market, and I think it's a market that is going to come with a whole lot of issues in the future because rents are so high. Retirees on the pension simply cannot afford to rent houses or even townhouses. And multi level townhouses are not the right product for them. And so I think getting affordable solutions that cater to our growing retiree market, of whom an increasing proportion of them don't own property, or if they do, they need to downsize because they're taking mortgage debt into retirement. I think there's a real market there, and I think it's not the inner city shoebox that we're talking about. What we're starting to talk about is how do you cater to those communities, and then how do you build a property that's appropriate for them, that's affordable? And I can see that being out in the suburbs, I can see that being in the provinces. So I think there's an opportunity here to reshape the way that parts of our market are operating," says Bolton.Last month Housing Minister Chris Bishop gave a speech outlining the Government's plans for housing.Included in Bishop's speech was a pledge to remove the ability for councils to set rules or guidelines requiring balconies, or floor areas of apartments to be of a minimum size. This, Bishop says, will increase housing supply by enabling more homes to be built at cheaper prices.Auckland Council's rules currently set the minimum net floor size for an apartments at 30 square metres, or 35 in the city centre. The latter can be reduced by five square metres if there's outdoor living space, a balcony, ground floor terrace or roof terrace. The smallest apartment allowed by Wellington City Council is 35 metres squared, and the city centre also has requirements for outdoor living space area with the smallest a minimum area of five metres squared and a minimum dimension of 1.8 metres.In the podcast audio Bolton also talks about the size of deposits needed to get bank loans to buy different sorts of apartments, banks' apartment lending appetites and why they can be reluctant to lend for smaller apartments, apartment developers and pre-sales, construction costs for apartments and financing of new builds, locations for apartments and more.*You can find all episodes of the Of Interest podcast here.

In this episode, we dive into the world of analog space missions with our guest, Michaela Musilova, the former director of HI-SEAS. With a remarkable track record of organizing over 40 Moon and Mars analog missions, she shares her extensive experience and insights. Discover more about HI-SEAS and the Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) as we explore their unique contributions to space research. She also discusses her participation in the 2024 Analog Astronaut Conference held at Biosphere 2 in Arizona. Tune in as she recounts her two impactful missions at MDRS, and her journey from leading a satellite launch team to teaching astrobiology and founding a space technology company in Slovakia. https://michaelamusilova.com

Ashton interviews James Burk, Executive Director of the Mars Society. They talk about the new mission at Flashline Mars Arctic Station, James' mission at MDRS in Utah, and many updates of the Mars Society.

This episode of CISO Tradecraft features a conversation between host G. Mark Hardy and Chris Rothe, co-founder of Red Canary, focusing on cloud security, managed detection and response (MDR) services, and the evolution of cybersecurity practices. They discuss the genesis of Red Canary, the significance of their company name, and the distinctions between Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs) and MDRs. The conversation also covers the importance of cloud security, the challenges of securing serverless and containerized environments, and leveraging open-source projects like Atomic Red Team for cybersecurity. They conclude with insights on the cybersecurity labor market, the value of threat detection reports, and the future of cloud security. Red Canary: https://redcanary.com/ Chris Rothe: https://www.linkedin.com/in/crothe/ Transcripts: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XN4Bp7Sa2geGCVaHuqMRmJckms4q7_L6  

Renting in New Zealand today is more difficult than a decade ago, with fewer properties available, rents continuing to increase, and the quality of rental properties not much better, Shamubeel Eaqub says. However, the economist and co-author of the 2015 book Generation Rent, rethinking New Zealand's priorities, says it's not all bad news.Speaking in the latest episode of interest.co.nz's Of Interest podcast, Eaqub says the "lived reality of renting" has got harder over the past decade, but the regulatory settings are slowly improving."We need to ensure there's sufficient renters' rights ... because in New Zealand renting is so insecure and is such a problematic thing for so many people."One area giving Eaqub optimism is the rise of build to rent, where landlords must offer 10-year rental tenancy agreements."I've been a long time fan of institutional landlords rather than accidental landlords. When you are in the business of land lording, you want to have as little turnover as possible, whereas if you're an accidental landlord, you are much more interested in having quick turnover and being able to sell it off and all those other bits and pieces. The tenant is kind of incidental to the story and a bit of an annoyance, really."Eaqub says build to rent offers two types of security; tenure security and financial security."Because more often than not [build to rent] will come with contracts that will have a known level of [rental] increase for the next, say three years, so you can plan your finances. Whereas in a normal tenancy you have only certainty for 12 months and then you don't know what will happen next."Build to rent is adding new housing supply targeted for one particular use, which he says is unusual in NZ."If you look at what happens in New Zealand, or how it has generally happened in New Zealand in the past, it's the idea of filtering, right? You build houses which are for new homes and for rich people, and then the older homes that are secondhand, that kind of gets recycled into the rental market.""So I'm very encouraged to see this new supply that's coming in, that's very much targeted towards renting specifically. Because if you think about the pressures that we see in terms of emergency housing, social housing and all those kinds of things, that's happening because people are falling out of the rental market, because the rental market is short supplied and is very expensive. And so the more we can do to get more supply directly and retained in the rental market, the better it is," Eaqub says.He also talks about his disappointment at the fracturing of the Labour-National consensus on medium density residential standards (MDRS)."[The consensus] showed me for the first time the grown-up-ness of the way that our politicians can respond to structural problems, that we can put aside our political differences and just do something because it's the right thing to do, not because you're on one side of the House or the other. But that grown up moment of politics lasted very, very briefly, and we threw it away at the first chance when the election campaign started," Eaqub says.In the podcast Eaqub also talks about NIMBYS, the construction sector, what's driving rents, problems with local government, his views on rent controls, the accommodation supplement, emergency housing, what the rental market may be like for his kids' generation, and more.*You can find all episodes of the Of Interest podcast here.

On this week's episode of the Detection at Scale podcast, Jack talks with Anton Chuvakin, Security Advisor at the Office of the CISO at Google Cloud, and Timothy Peacock, Senior Product Manager at Google. Together, they discuss some of the needs and trends in cybersecurity today, including how to know what level of D&R your organization needs, the use cases for AI today, and how LLMs and SIEMs will handle data at scale. They also talk about the need for more creative solutions to misconfiguration management, three things security practitioners can do to improve cloud security, and why cybersecurity is the "most intellectually stimulating profession on the planet." Topics discussed: What attracted Anton and Timothy to cybersecurity, what makes them stay, and why the intersection of humans and technology make it the “most intellectually stimulating profession on the planet.” How organizations can evaluate the level of security they need, why it's crucial to know whether you need to go from zero to one, or five, or a hundred, and how organizations with no detection and response strategies can get started. What use cases there will be for AI in cybersecurity, and while it may be good at summarizing, explaining complexity, and classifying, it may not be ready to create usable code. Why security practitioners need to think more about whether SIEMs can support planetary scale, and whether decentralization is the solution.  The role LLMs will play in helping to manage large data sets, and how it may change the way organizations use MDRs. Why the industry needs new, creative ways to solve the ongoing problem of cloud misconfigurations in order to break vicious cycles through shared faith.  Three pieces of advice to improve cloud security, including knowing your security needs, practicing, and making friends so you know you're note alone.

DescriptionToo much happened this week in politics, yet despite this political coverage in our media predominantly focused on sad, tired PR lines and horse-race politics between Labur and National as our gallery tried to show how they're somehow exactly the same. We touch briefly on that dynamic but also try to cover MDRS, managed retreat and Hipkins' ludicrous comments on the tertiary sector.This episode's co-hosts:Rustie, Josephine, KyleTimestamps00 intro03:55 MDRS32:45 Managed retreat46:30 Tertiary cuts1:04:00 Media analysisIntro/Outro by The Prophet MotiveSupport us here: https://www.patreon.com/1of200

In this Soap Box podcast Patrick Gray talks to George Glass, the threat intelligence operations leader in the Cyber Risk practice at Kroll. They talk about all sorts of things, like: How the ransomware ecosystem is evolving into “ma and pa” operations Some killer detections they've figured out What separates the good networks from the bad ones Why EDR is of limited value if you're not actually monitoring it Why not letting MDRs do the R part of their job is really, really, really dumb

In this Soap Box podcast Patrick Gray talks to George Glass, the threat intelligence operations leader in the Cyber Risk practice at Kroll. They talk about all sorts of things, like: How the ransomware ecosystem is evolving into “ma and pa” operations Some killer detections they've figured out What separates the good networks from the bad ones Why EDR is of limited value if you're not actually monitoring it Why not letting MDRs do the R part of their job is really, really, really dumb

he Mars Society's live podcast, RedPlanetLive interviews the people instrumental to settling and exploring Mars. In this episode Ashton Zeth interviews James Burk, the Executive Director of the Mars Society. James Burk, Executive Director, The Mars Society James Burk is the Executive Director of the Mars Society, which is the largest and most active Mars advocacy group in the world. He has volunteered with the Mars Society for over 25 years and has occupied the role as Executive Director for the past year and a half. James is also a member of the organization's steering committee and served as Director of Information Technology from 2011 through 2022. As part of this, he helped create the group's MarsVR project, a digital twin VR environment of Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) in Utah. In addition, James is a veteran analog astronaut, having served on multiple crew missions at MDRS and is currently commanding Crew 261 at the facility until May 13th, so he'll be providing us with a firsthand account of and taking your questions about his recent visit "to Mars" during our May 16th podcast.

This week our guest is Sam DeNormandie, Senior Account Director with Silver Sky Security, a Managed Detection and Response (MDR) firm primarily servicing the small and mid-sized business (SMB) market. Sam is a seasoned cybersecurity expert with experience at Cylance, Blackberry, and Cyvatar and understands the security needs of the small to mid-sized business. This episode discusses the challenges faced by SMBs, in part due to the difficulty they have in hiring the people they need and managing the vulnerabilities they face. The MDR industry is growing at CAGR 18.1% and is expected to be $22B by 2030. What does that growth mean for MSSPs? Join us for this episode and learn how companies are struggling to keep pace with the threat environment and how MDRs are filling a void.

The Mars Society's live podcast, RedPlanetLive interviews the people instrumental to settling and exploring Mars. In this episode Ashton Zeth interviews Kristine L Ferrone, the commander of MDRS Crew 269 (Aerospace Corporation) and some crew members about their MDRS mission and more!

In a rare show of bipartisan cooperation, the Labour and National parties teamed-up to enact new housing intensification laws in late 2021.This came through the Resource Management (Enabling Housing Supply and Other Matters) Amendment Act. Pushed through a rushed select committee process to the protestations of the ACT and Green parties, it will allow the building of up to three homes of up to three storeys on most sites in Auckland, Hamilton, Tauranga, Wellington and Christchurch without the need for a resource consent.Councils in the five cities are now moving to adopt medium density residential standards (MDRS). But what does all this really mean, where's the process at, and is this actually the right way to tackle New Zealand's housing crisis?To discuss all this we spoke with Doug Fairgray, director at consulting and economic research firm Market Economics, in a new episode of the Of Interest podcast."One of the effects [of the changes] will be that the distribution of new housing supply is likely to become spread more widely across cities rather than focused around centres and transit stations as is intended under the National Policy Statement [on Urban Development]," Fairgray says."There has been a strong narrative, [over] the last decade at least, that planning is to blame for high housing prices. And that has led to a focus that therefore planning legislation should solve the problem. There's quite a debate about that because house prices have been driven above all by consumer sentiment and interest rates," adds Fairgray, who is also secretary of the Association for Resource Management Practitioners.You can find all episodes of the Of Interest podcast here.

Are MDRs and Outcries eating your lunch? $130 Billion is being allocated to improving mental health in schools. Listen in to the ideas that are being considered.

If you can't beat them, join them!  I set an alarm to record early one morning over Memorial Day weekend, but my sweet guy had other plans… Jack woke up, too!  He interrupted my first ten attempts at recording, sooooo this week's guest is the most special of all—- The Jackman!!!!  Jack and I talk all things special education - LRE, evaluations, MDRs…. Just Kidding!  This is an episode full of complete and udder randomness - a joke, a burp, a fake toot, a list of toys, a little about school, and a lot of trying to get Jack to talk!!!!  :)  This is real life, friends (no, seriously, it's 7 a.m., Jack has a mustache of yesterday's Oreos, and I have only consumed about 1/4 of my first coffee!!)  I'm excited to welcome you into our TV room and to introduce you to my wild and crazy guy!

April is Autism Awareness month so today we'll be talking about what it is, what it is not and some of the reasons why the diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder comes later than it should. Plus we will take a look at some very recent research about why it may be more common in girls than we have thought in the past.Important LinksChild Access to Mental Health and Psychiatry (CHAMP): 601-984-2080 or CHAMP Registration - University of Mississippi Medical Center (umc.edu)Good Will Industries- Job for special needs individuals: 601-853-8110 or Home - Goodwill (goodwillms.org)Mississippi Vocational Rehab Services: 1-800-443-1000 or MDRS (ms.gov)MS Department of Rehabilitation Services- Jennifer Jackson, Autism Program Coordinator: 1-800-443-1000601-969-0601 or jjackson@mdrs.ms.govThe Mississippi Coalition for Citizens with Disabilities (MSCCD) - Pam Dollar, Executive Director: 601-969-0601 or visit MSCCD | Opening Doors Together See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

About AshleighAshleigh Early is a passionate advocate for sales people and through her consulting, coaching, and The Other Side of Sales, she is devoted to making B2B sales culture more inclusive so anyone can thrive. Over the past ten years Ashleigh has led, built, re-built, and consulted for 2 unicorns, 3 acquisitions, 1 abject failure and every step in between.  She is also the Head of Sales at the Duckbill Group! You can find Ashleigh on Twitter @AshleighatWork and more about the Other Side of Sales at Othersideofsales.comLinks: Twitter: https://twitter.com/ashleighatwork LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashleighearly 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: Couchbase Capella Database-as-a-Service is flexible, full-featured and fully managed with built in access via key-value, SQL, and full-text search. Flexible JSON documents aligned to your applications and workloads. Build faster with blazing fast in-memory performance and automated replication and scaling while reducing cost. Capella has the best price performance of any fully managed document database. Visit couchbase.com/screaminginthecloud to try Capella today for free and be up and running in three minutes with no credit card required. Couchbase Capella: make your data sing.Corey: Today's episode is brought to you in part by our friends at MinIO the high-performance Kubernetes native object store that's built for the multi-cloud, creating a consistent data storage layer for your public cloud instances, your private cloud instances, and even your edge instances, depending upon what the heck you're defining those as, which depends probably on where you work. It's getting that unified is one of the greatest challenges facing developers and architects today. It requires S3 compatibility, enterprise-grade security and resiliency, the speed to run any workload, and the footprint to run anywhere, and that's exactly what MinIO offers. With superb read speeds in excess of 360 gigs and 100 megabyte binary that doesn't eat all the data you've gotten on the system, it's exactly what you've been looking for. Check it out today at min.io/download, and see for yourself. That's min.io/download, and be sure to tell them that I sent you.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. My guest today does something that I, sort of, dabbled around the fringes of once upon a time, but then realized I wasn't particularly good at it and got the hell out of it and went screaming into clouds instead. Ashleigh Early is the Head of Sales here at The Duckbill Group. Ashleigh, thank you for joining me.Ashleigh: Thanks for coming on and running, screaming from my chosen profession [laugh]. You're definitely not the only one.Corey: Well, let's be clear here; there are two ways that can go because sure, I used to dabble around in sales when I was, basically, trying to figure how to not starve to death. But I also used to run things; it's basically a smart team. I was managing people and realized I was bad at that, too. So, really, that's, sort of, an open-ended direction. We can go either side and…But, let's go with sales. That seems like a more interesting way for this to play out. So, you've been here for—what is it now—it feels like ages, but my awareness for the passing of time in the middle of a global panini is relatively not great.Ashleigh: Yeah. I think we're at day—what is it—1,053 of March 2020? So, time is irrelevant; it's a construct; I don't know. But, technically, by the Gregorian Calendar, I think I'm at six months.Corey: It's very odd to me, at least the way that I contextualized doing this. Back when I started what became The Duckbill Group, I was an independent consultant. It was, more or less, working people I knew through my network who had a very specific, very expensive problem: The AWS bill is too high. And I figured, this is genius. It is the easiest possible sale in the world and one of the only scenarios where I can provably demonstrate ROI to a point where, “Bring me in; you will inherently save money.”And all of that is true, but one of things I learned very quickly was that, even with the easiest sale of, “Hi. I'd like to sell you this bag of money,” there is no such thing as an easy enterprise sale. There is nuance to it. There is a lot of difficulty to it. And I was left with the, I guess, driving question—after my first few months of playing this game—of, “How on earth does anyone make money in this space?”The reason I persisted was, basically, a bunch of people did favors for me, but they didn't owe me at all. It was, “Oh, great. I'll give them the price quote.” And they're, like, “Oh, yeah.” So cool, they turned around and quoted that to their boss at triple the rate because, “Don't slit your own throat on this.” They were right. And not for nothing, it turns out when you're selling advice, charging more for it makes it likelier to succeed as a project.But, I had no idea what I was doing. And, like most engineers on Twitter, I look at something I don't understand deeply myself, and figure, “Oh. Well, it's not engineering, therefore, it's easy.” Yeah, it turns out that running a business is humbling across a whole bunch of different axes.Ashleigh: I wouldn't even say, it's not running a business; it's working with humans. Working with humans is humbling. If you're working with a machine or even something as simple as, like, you know, you're making a product. It's follow a recipe; it's okay. Follow the instructions. I do A, then B, then C, then D, unless you don't enjoy using the instructions because you don't enjoy using instructions. But you still follow a set general process; you build a thing that comes out correctly.The moment that process is, talk to this person, and then Person A, then Person B, then Person C, then Person D, then Back to Person A, then Person D, and then finally to Person E, everything goes to heck in a handbasket. That's what really makes it interesting. And for those of us who are of a certain disposition, we find that fascinating and enthralling. If you're of another disposition, that's hell on earth [laugh]. So, it's a very—yeah, it's a very interesting thing.Corey: Back when I was independent, and people tried to sell me things—and yeah, sometimes it worked. It was always interesting going through various intake funnels and the rest. And, like, “Well, what role do you hold in the organization? Do you influence the decision? Do you make the decision? How many people need to be involved in the rest?”And I was looking around going, “How many people do you think fit in my home office here? Let's be serious.” I mean, there are times I escalated to the Chihuahua because she's unpleasant and annoying and basically, sometimes so are people. But that's a separate topic for later. But it became a very different story back as the organizational distance between the people that needed to sign off on a sale increased.Ashleigh: Mm-hm. Absolutely. And you might have felt me squirm when you described those questions because one of my biggest pet peeves is when people take sales terminology and directly use that with clients. Just like if you're an engineer and you're describing what you do, you're not going to go home and explain to your dad in technical jargon what exactly; you're going to tell him broad strokes. And if they're interested, go deeper and deeper; technical, more technical.I hate when salespeople use sales jargon, like, “What's your role in the organization? Are you the decision-maker?” Don't—mmm. There are better ways to deal with that. So, that's just a sign of poor training. It's not the sales rep's fault; it's his company's fault—their company's fault. But that's a different thing.It's fascinating to me, kind of, watching this—what you said spoke of two things there. One is poor training, and two, of a lack of awareness of the situation and a lack of just doing a little bit of pre-work. Like, you do five seconds of research on Corey Quinn, you can realize that the company is ten to 15 people tops. So, it makes sense to ask a question around, “Hey, do you need anyone else to sign off before we can move forward with this project?”That tells me if I need to get someone for technical, for budget, for whatever, but asking if you're a decision-maker, or if you're influencing, or if you're doing initial research, like, that's using sales terminology, not actually getting to the root of the problem and immediately making it very clear, you didn't do any actual research in advance, which is not—in modern selling—not okay.Corey: My business partner, Mike, has a CEO job title, and he'll get a whole bunch of cold outreach constantly all day, every day. I conducted a two-week experiment where in front of my Chief Cloud Economist job title, I put ‘CTO/' just to see what would happen, and sure enough, I started getting outreach left, right, up, down, and sideways. Not just for things that a CTO figure might theoretically wind up needing to buy, but also, job opportunities for a skill set that I haven't dusted off in a decade.So, okay. Once people can have something that hits their filters when you're searching for very specific titles, then you wind up getting a lot more outreach. But if you create a job title that no one sensible would ever pick for themselves, suddenly a lot of that tends to go by the wayside. It shined a light on how frustratingly dreary a lot of the sales prospecting work really can be from—Ashleigh: Oh, yeah.Corey: —just from the side of someone who gets it. Now, I'm not exaggerating when I say that I did work in sales once upon a time. Not great at it, but one of the first white-collar-style jobs that I had was telemarketing, of all things. And I was spectacular at it because I was fortunate enough to be working on a co-branded affinity credit card that was great, and I had the opportunity to position it as a benefit of an existing membership or something else people already had. I was consistently top-ten out of 400 people on a shift, and it was great.But it was also something that was very time-limited, and if you're having an off day, everything winds up crumbling. And, eventually, I drifted off and started doing different things. But I've never forgotten those days. And that's why it just grinds my gears both to see crappy sales stuff happening, and two, watching people on Twitter—particularly—taking various sales-prospect outreach for a drag. And it's—Ashleigh: Oh, God. Yeah.Corey: —you know, not everyone is swimming in the ocean of privilege that some of the rest of us are. And understand that you're just making yourself look like a jerk when you're talking to someone who is relatively early-career and didn't happen to google you deeply enough before sending you an email that you find insulting. That bugs me a fair bit.Ashleigh: And I think part of that is just a lack of humanity and understanding. Like, there's—I mean, I get it; I'm the first person to be jumping on Twitter and [unintelligible 00:08:41] when something goes down, or something's not working, and saying, you know—I'm the first one to get angry and start complaining. Don't get me wrong. However, what I think a lot of people—it's really easy to dehumanize something you don't see very often, or you're not involved in directly. And I find it real interesting you mentioned you worked in, you know, doing telemarketing.I lasted literally two weeks in telemarketing. I full-on rage-quit. It was a college job. I worked in my college donations center. I lasted two weeks, and I fully walked out on a shift. I was, like, “Screw this; I'm never doing anything like that ever again. I hate this.”But what I hated about it was I hated the lack of connection. I was, like, I'm not just going to read some scripts and get yelled at for having too much banter. Like, I'm getting money; what do you care? I'm getting more money than other people. Maybe they're not making as many calls, but I'm getting just as much, so why do you care how I do this?But what really gets me is you have to remember—and I think a lot of people don't understand how, kind of, most large, modern sales organizations work. And just really quickly giving you a very, very generic explanation, the way a lot of organizations work is they employ something called SDRs or Sales Development Reps. That title can be permeated in a million different ways. There's ADRs, MDRs, BDRs, whatever. But basically, it's their job to do nothing but scour the internet using, sometimes, actual, like, scripts.Sometimes they use LinkedIn; sometimes they have—they purchase databases. So, for example, like, you might change your title on LinkedIn, but it's not changing in the database. Just trust me Corey, they have you flagged as a CTO. Sorry. What [crosstalk 00:10:16].Corey: My personal favorite is when I get cold outreach asking me on the phone call about whether we have any needs for whatever it is they happen to be selling at—and then they name a company that I left in 2012. I don't know how often that database has been sold and resold and sold onwards, yet again. And it's just, I work in tech. What do you think the odds are that I'm still in the same job I was ten years ago? And I get that it happens, but at some point, it just becomes almost laughable.Ashleigh: Yeah. If you work in a company—that when in doubt—I tell every sales, kind of, every company team that I work with—do not use those vendors. Ninety percent of them are not very good; they're using old databases; they don't update. You're better off paying for a database that is subscription-based because then, literally, you've got an SLA on data quality, and you can flag and get things fixed. The number one sales-data provider, I happen to know for a fact, I actually earned, I think, almost $10,000 in donations to a charity in—what was this—this was 2015 because I went through and did a scrub of are RCRM versus I think, LinkedIn or something else, and I flagged everything that wasn't accurate and sent it back to them.And they happened to have a promotion where for every—where you could do a flag that wasn't accurate because they were no longer at the company. They would donate a buck to charity, and I think I sent them, like, 10,000 or something. [unintelligible 00:11:36] I was like, “None of these are accurate.” And they're, like, you know? And they sent me this great email, like, “Thank you for telling us; we really appreciate it.”I didn't even know they were doing this promotion. They thought I'd be saving up for it. And I was, like, “No, I just happened to run this analysis and thought you'd want to know.” So, subscriptions—Corey: You know, it turns out computers are really fast at things.Ashleigh: Yeah, and I was very proud I figured out how to run a script. I was, like, “Yay. Look at me; I wrote a macro.” This was very exciting for—the first—God, the first five or so years of my sales career, I've consistently called myself a dumb salesperson because I was working in really super-technical products. I worked for Arista Networks, FireEye, Bromium, you know, PernixData. I was working in some pretty reasonably hard tech, and I'd always, kind of, introduced myself, I definitely talked about my technical aptitude because I have a degree in political science and opera. These are not technical fields, and yet here I am every day, talking about, you know, tech [crosstalk 00:12:25].Corey: Well, if the election doesn't pan out the way you want, why don't you sing about it? Why not? You can tie all these things together.Ashleigh: You can. And, honestly, there have several points—I've done a whole other shows on, like, how those two, seemingly, completely disparate things have actually been some of the greatest gifts to my career. And most notably, I think, is the fact that I have my degree in political science as a Bachelor of Science, which means I have a BS in BS, which is incredibly relevant to my career in a lot of different ways.Corey: This episode is sponsored by our friends at Oracle Cloud. 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Visit snark.cloud/oci-free that's snark.cloud/oci-free.Ashleigh: Yeah, so wrapping up, kind of, how modern-skills organizations work, most companies' employees can be called BDRs, and they're typically people who have less than five years of sales experience. They, rightly or wrongly, tend to be people in their early-20s who have very little training. Most people get SDRs on phones within a week, which means—Corey: These are the people that are doing the cold outreach?Ashleigh: —they've gotten maybe five or six hours of product training. Hmm? Sorry.Corey: These are the people who are doing the cold outreach?Ashleigh: These are the people who are doing the cold outreach. So, their whole job is just to get appointments for account execs. Account execs make it—again; tons of different names, but these are the closers. They'll run you through the sales cycle. They typically have between five and thirty years of experience.But they're the ones depending on how big your company is. [unintelligible 00:13:35] the bigger your company, typically the more experience your sales rep's going to have in terms of managing most separate deal cycles. But what ends up happening is you end up with this SDR organization—this is where I've spent most of my career is helping people build healthy sales-development organizations. In terms of this churn-and-burn culture where you've got people coming in and basically flaming out because they go on Twitter or—heaven forbid—Reddit and get sales advice from these loud-mouthed, terrible people, who are telling them to do things that didn't work ten years ago, but they then go try it; they send it out, and then their prospects suddenly blasting them on Twitter.It's not that rep's fault that they got no training in the first place, they got no support, they just had to figure it out because that's the culture. It's the company's fault. And a lot of times, people don't—there was a big push against this last year, I think, within the sales community against other sales leaders doing it, but now, it's starting to spread out. Like, I have no problem dragging someone for a really terrible email. Anonymize the company; anonymize the email. And, if you want to give feedback, give it to them directly. And you can also say, “I'm going to post this, but it's not coming back to you.” And tell them, like—Corey: Whenever I get outreach from—Ashleigh: “Get out of that terrible company.”Corey: Yeah. Whenever I get outreach from AWS for a sales motion or for recruiting or whatnot. I always anonymize the heck out of the rep. It's funny to me because it's, “Don't you know who I am?” It is humorous, on some level. And it's clear that is a numbers game, and they're trying to do a bunch of different things, but a cursory google of my name would show it. It's just amusing.I want to be clear that whenever I do that, I don't think the rep has done anything wrong. They're doing exactly what they should. I just find it very funny that, “Wait, me? Work at an AWS? The bookstore?” It seems like it would be a—yeah. Yeah, the juxtaposition is just hilarious to me. They've done nothing wrong, and that's okay. It's a hard racket.I remember—at least they have the benefit over my first enterprise sales job where I was selling tape drives into the AS/400 market, competing against IBM on price. That was in the days of “No one ever gets fired for buying IBMs.” So, yeah. The place you want to save money on is definitely the backup system that's going to save all of your systems. I made one sale in my time there—and apparently set a company record because it wasn't specifically aimed at the AS/400—and I did the math on that and realized, “Huh, I'd have to do two of these a month in order to beat the draw against commission structure that they had.”So, I said, “To hell with this,” and I quit. The CEO was very much a sales pro, and, “Well, you need to figure out whether you're a salesperson or not.” Even back then, I had an attitude problem, but it was, “Yeah, I think that—oh, I know that I am. It's just a question is am I going to be a salesperson here?” And the answer is, “No.” It [laugh]—Ashleigh: Yeah.Corey: It's a two-way street.Ashleigh: It is. And I say this all the time to people who—I work with a lot of salespeople now who are, like, “I don't think sales is for me. I don't know, I need [unintelligible 00:16:24]. The past three companies didn't work.” The answer isn't, “Is sales for you?”The answer is, “Are you selling the right thing at the right place?” And one of the things we've learned from the ‘Great Recession' and the ‘Great Reshuffling' in everything is there's no reason to stay at a terrible company, and there's no reason to stay at a company where you're not really passionate and understand what you're selling. I joked about, you know, I talked down about myself for the first bit of my career. Doesn't mean I didn't—like, I might not understand exactly how heuristics work, but I understand what heuristics are. Just don't ask me to design any of them.You know, like, you have to understand and you have to be really excited about it. And that's what modern sales is. And so, yes, you're going to get a ton of the outreach because that's how people—it still works. That's why we all still get Nigerian prince emails. Somebody, somewhere, still clicks those things, sadly. And that gets me really angry.Corey: It's a pure numbers game.Ashleigh: Exactly. Ninety percent if enterprise B2B sales is not that anymore. Even the companies that are using BDRs—which is most of them—are now moving to what's called ‘account-based selling'. We're using hyper-personalized messaging. You're probably noticing videos are popping up more.I'm a huge fan of video. I think it's a great way to force personalization. It's, like, “Hi. Corey, I see you. I'm talking to you. I've done my research. I know what you're doing at The Duckbill Group and here's how I think we can help. If that's not the case, no worries. Let me know; I'll leave you alone.” That's what selling should be.Corey: I have yet to receive one of those, but I'm sure it'll happen now that I've mentioned that and put that out into the universe.Ashleigh: Probably.Corey: What always drove me nuts—and maybe this is unfair—but when I'm trying to use a product, probably something SaaS-based—and I see this a lot—where, first, if you aren't letting me self-serve and get off with the free tier and just start testing something, well, that's already a ding against you because usually I'm figuring this out at 2 o'clock in the morning when I can't sleep, and I want to work on something. I don't want to wait for a sales cycle, and I have to slow things down. Cool. But at some point, for sophisticated customers, you absolutely need to have a sales conversation. But, okay, great. Usually, I encounter this more with lead magnets or other things designed to get my contact info.But what drives me up a wall, when they start demanding information that is very clearly trying to classify me in their sales funnel, on some level. I'll give you my name, my company, and my work email address—although I would think that from my work email address, you could probably figure out where I work and the rest—but then there are other questions. How big is your company? What is your functional role within the company? And where are you geographically?Well, that's an interesting question. Why does that matter in 2022? Well, very often leads get circulated out to people based upon geography. And I get it, but it also frustrates me, just because I don't want to have to deal with classifying and sorting myself out for what is going to be a very brief conversation [laugh] with a salesperson. Because if the product works, great, I'm going to buy. If it doesn't work, I'm going to get frustrated and not want to hear from you forever.Which gets to my big question for you—and please don't take the question as anything other than the joking spirit in which it's intended—but why are so many salespeople profoundly annoying?Ashleigh: I would—uh, hmm.Corey: Sales processes is probably the better way to frame it because—Ashleigh: I was going to say, “Yeah, it's not the people; it's the process.” So—Corey: —it's not the individual's fault, as we've talked about it.Ashleigh: —yeah, I was going to say, I was, like, “Okay, I think it's less the people; more of the processes.” And processes that will make [crosstalk 00:19:37]—Corey: Yeah. It expresses itself as the same person showing up again and again. But that is not—Ashleigh: Totally.Corey: —their fault. That is the process by which they are being measured at as a part of their job. And it's unfair to blame them for that. But the expression is, “This person's annoying the hell out of me, what gives?”Ashleigh: “Oh, my gosh. Why does she keep [unintelligible 00:19:51] my inbox? Leave me alone. Just let me freaking test it.” I said, “I needed two weeks. Just let me have the two weeks to freaking test the thing. I will get back to you.” [unintelligible 00:19:58] yeah, no, I know.And even since moving into leadership several years ago, same thing. I'm like, “Okay, no.” I've gotten to the point where I've had several conversations with salespeople. I'm like, “I know the game. I know what you're trying to do. I respect it. Leave me alone. I promise I will get back to you, just lea”—I have literally said this to people. And the weird thing is most salespeople respect that. We really respect the transparency on that.Now, the trick is what you're talking about with lead capture and stuff like this, again, it comes down to company's design and it comes down to companies who value the buyer experience and customer journey, and companies who don't. And this, I think, is actually more driven by—in my humble opinion—our slightly over-reliance on venture capital, which is all about for a gathering of as much data as possible, figuring out how to monetize it, and move from there. In their mind, personal experience and emotion doesn't really factor into that equation very much, so you end up with these buyer journeys that are less about the buyer and more about getting them from click to purchase as efficiently as possible in terms of company resources, which includes salespeople time. So, as to why you have to fill out all those things, that just to me reeks of a company that maybe doesn't really understand the client experience and probably is going to have a pretty, mmm, support program as well, which means the product had better be really freaking good for me to buy it.Corey: To be clear, at The Duckbill Group, we do not have a two-in-the-morning click here and get you onboarded. Turns out that we have yet to really see the value in building a shopping cart system, where you can buy, “One consulting please,” and call it good. We're not quite at the level of productizing our offering yet and having conversations is a necessary part of what we do. But that also aligns with our customer expectation where there is not a general expectation in this industry that you can buy a full-on bespoke consulting engagement without talking to a human being. That, honestly, if someone trying to sell someone such a thing, I would be terrified.Ashleigh: Yeah, run screaming. Good Lord. No, exactly. And that's one of the reasons I love working with this team and I love this problem is because this isn't a quick, you know, download, install, and save, you know, save ten percent on your AWS bill by installing Duckbill Group. It ain't that simple. If it were that simple, like, AWS wouldn't have the market cap it does.So, that's one of the things I love. I love really meaty problems that don't have clean answers, and specifically have answers that look slightly different for everybody. I love those sort of problems. I've done the highly prioritized stuff: Click here, buy, get it on the free tier, and then it's all about up-sale, cross-sale as needed. Been there, done that; that's fun, and that's a whole different bucket of challenges, but what we're dealing with every single day on the consulting's of The Duckbill Group is far more nuanced and far more exciting because we're also seeing some truly incredible architecture designs. Like, companies who are really on the bleeding edge of what they're doing. And it's just really fun—Corey: Cost and architecture are the same thing in the Cloud.Ashleigh: —[crosstalk 00:22:59] that little—Corey: It's a blast to see it.Ashleigh: It's so much fun. It's, it's, it's… the world's best jigsaw puzzle because it covers, like, every single continent and all these different nuances, and you got to think about a ‘ephemerality,' which is my new favorite word. So…Corey: It's fun because you are building a sales team here, which opens up a few interesting avenues for me. For one, I don't have to manage and yell at individual salespeople in the same way. For example, we talk about it being a process and not a person thing. We're launching some outbound sales work and basically, having the person to talk to about that process—namely you—means that I don't need to be hovering over people's shoulders the way I felt that I once did, as far as what are we sending people? These passive-aggressive drip campaigns of, “Clearly, you don't mind lighting money on fire. If that changes, please let me know.”It's email eight in a sequence. It's no. This stuff has an implicit ‘Love, Mike and Corey' at the bottom of everything that comes out of this company, and it represents us on some respect. And let's be clear, we have a savvy, sophisticated, and more-attractive-than-the-average audience listening to all of these shows. And they'll eat me alive if we start doing stuff like that—Ashleigh: Oh, yeah.Corey: —not to mention that I find it not particularly respectful of their time and who they are. It doesn't work, so we have to be very conscious of that. The fact that I never had to explain that concept in any depth to you made bringing you in one of the easiest decisions we've ever made.Ashleigh: Well, I think it helped—I think in one of my interviews I went off on the ‘alligator email,' which is this infamous email we've all gotten, which is basically, like, you know, “Hi. I haven't heard from you yet, so I want to know which one of these three scenarios has happened to you. One, you're not interested in my product but didn't have the balls to email me and say that you're not interested. Two, you're no longer in this position, in which case, you're not going to read this email anyway. Or three, you're being chased by an alligator, and I should call animal control because you need help.” This email was—Corey: He, he, he, hilarious.Ashleigh: Ugh. And there's variations of it. And I've seen variations of it that are very well done and are on brand and work with the company. I've seen variations that could be legitimately, I think, great humor. And that's great.Humor in emails and humor in sales is fantastic. I have to shout out my friend, Jon Selig up in Canada, who actually, literally, does workshops on how sales teams can integrate humor into their prospecting. It's freaking brilliant. But—Corey: Near and dear to my heart.Ashleigh: —if you're not actually trained in that stuff, don't do it. Don't do the alligator email. But I think I went off on that during one of our interviews just because I was just sick of seeing these things. And what kills me, again, it comes back to the beginning, is people who have no training, no experience coming in—I mean, it really kills me, too, because there's a real concerted effort in the sales community to get more diverse people into sales to, kind of, kill the sales bro just by washing them out, basically. And so, we're recruiting hard with veterans, with black and other racial minority groups, LGBTQ communities, all sorts of things, and indigenous peoples.And so, we're bringing people that also are maybe a little bit more mature, a little bit older, have families they're supporting, and we're throwing them in a role with no support and very little training. And then they wash out, and we wonder why. It's, like, well, maybe because you didn't—it's, like, when I explain this to other people who aren't in sales, like, “Really, imagine coming in to being hired for a coding job, being told you're going to be trained on, you know, Ruby on Rails or C# or whatever it is we're currently using”—my reference is probably super outdated—but then, being given a book, and that's it. And told, “Learn it. And by the way, your first project is due in a month.” That's what we're doing in sales—Corey: For a lot of folks, that's how we learned in the engineering spaces, but let's be clear, the people who do well in that, generally have tailwinds of privilege at their back. They don't have headwinds of, “You suck at this.” It was, you're-born-on-third-you-didn't-hit-a-triple school-of-thought. It's—Ashleigh: Yeah.Corey: —the idea of building an onboarding pipeline, of making this stuff more accessible to people earlier on is incredibly important. One of my, I guess, awakening moments as we were building this company was it turns out that if you manage salespeople as if they were engineers, it doesn't go super well. Whereas, if you manage engineers like they're salespeople, they quit—rage quit—cry, and call you out as being an abusive manager.One of the best descriptions I ever heard from an advisor was that salespeople are sharks. But that's not intended to be unkind. It is simply a facet of their nature. They enjoy the hunt; they enjoy chasing things down, and they like playing games. Whereas, as soon as you start playing games with your engineers on how much money they're going to make this week, that turns out to be a very negative thing. It's a different mindset. It's about motivating people as whatever befits what it is that they want to be doing.Ashleigh: It is. And the other thing is it's a cultural conditioning. So, it's really interesting to say, you know, “People,” you know, “Playing games.” We do enjoy—there's definitely some enjoyment of the competition; there's the thrill of the hunt, absolutely, but at the same time, you want your salespeople to quit? Screw with their money.You screw with their money; we will bail so fast it'll make your head spin. So, it's like, people think, “Oh, we love this.” No, it's really more—think of it as we are gamblers.Corey: Yeah. To be clear when I say, “Playing games with money,” I'm talking about the idea of, “Sell to a company in this profile this quarter, and we'll throw a $5,000 bonus your way,” or something like that. It is if the business wants to see something, great, make it worth the sales team's while to pursue it, or don't be surprised when no one really cares that much about those things—Ashleigh: Exactly.Corey: It's all upside. It is not about, “He, he. And if you don't sell to this weird thing that I can't really describe effectively to you, we're going to cut your bet—” Yeah, that goes over like a lead balloon. As it should. My belief is that compensation should always go up, not down.Ashleigh: Yeah. No, it should. Aside from that, here's a fun stat—I believe this came out of Forrester, it might've been out of [Topel 00:28:54]; I apologize, I don't remember exactly who said this, but a recent study found that less than 68 percent of sales reps make their quota every month. So, imagine that where if you're—we have this thing called OTE, which is On Target Earnings. So, if you have this number you're supposed to take home every month, only 68 percent of sales reps actually do that every month.So, that means we live with this number as our target, but we're living and budgeting anywhere from 30 to 50 percent below that. And then hoping and doing the work that goes in there. That's what we've been conditioned to accept, and that's why you end up with sales reps that use terms like ‘shark' and are aggressive and are in your face and can get—[unintelligible 00:29:30]—Corey: I didn't realize it was pejorative.Ashleigh: I know. No. But here's the thing too, but somebody called it ‘commission breath,' which I love. It's, like, you can smell commission breath coming off us when we're desperate. You totally can. It's because of this antiquated way of building commissions.And this is something that I—this was really obvious to me, and apparently, I was a little bit ahead of the curve. When I started designing comp plans, everyone told me, “You want to design a comp plan? Tie it to what you want them to do very specifically.” So, if you want them to move a pen, design a comp plan that they get a buck when they put the pen from the heel of your hand to the tips of your fingers. Then they get a buck. And then they can do that repeatedly. That's literally how I was taught design comp plans.In my head, that meant that I need to design it in such a way that it's doable for my team because I don't want my team worrying about how they're going to put food on the table while they're talking to a client because they're going get commission breath and it'll piss off the client. That's not a good client experience; that's not going to lead to good performance. Apparently—Corey: Yeah. My concern as a business owner has nothing to do with salespeople making too much money. In fact, I am never happier than I am than paying out commissions. The concern, then, therefore has to become the, “Okay, great. How do I keep the salespeople from being inadvertently incentivized to sell something for $10 that costs me $12 to fulfill?”It's a question of what behaviors do you incentivize that align what they're motivated by with what the company needs. And very often getting that wrong—which happens from time to time—is not viewed as a learning experience that it should be. But instead, “They're just out to screw us.” And I've seen so many company owners get so annoyed whenever their salespeople outperform. But what did you expect? That is the positive outcome. As opposed to what? The underperforming sales rep that can't close a deal? Please.Ashleigh: Well, no. And let's think about this too, especially if it's tied to commission and you're paying out commission. It's, like, okay, commission is always some, sort of, percentage—depending on a lot of things—but some sort of percent of what they're bringing in. If you design a comp plan that has you paying out more in commission than the sales that were earned to bring it in, that's on you; you screwed up. And you need to either be honest and say, “I screwed up; I can't pay this,” and know that you're going to lose some sales reps, but you won't lose as many as if you just refuse to pay it.But, honestly, and I'm not even kidding, I know people. I've worked at a company that I happen to know did this. That literally fired people because they didn't have the money to pay out the commission. And because they fired them before the commission was due to be paid out, then that person no longer had a legal claim to it. That's common. So, the commission goes both ways.Corey: To be clear, we've never done that, but I also would say that if we had, that's a screaming red flag for our consultancy, given the nature of what it is that we do here. It turns out that when we're building out comp plans, we model out various scenarios. Like, what is the worst way that this could wind up unfolding? And, okay, some of our early drafts it's, yeah, it turns out that we would not be able to pay salaries because we wound up giving all of that in commission to people with uncapped upside. Okay, great.But we're also not going to cap people's commissions because that winds up being a freaking problem, so how do we wind up motivating in a way that continues to grow and continues to incentivize the behaviors we want? And it turns out it's super complicated which why we brought you in. It's easier.Ashleigh: Yeah, it's a pain. But the other side of this too, I think, is there is another force at play here, which is finance. A lot of traditional finance modeling is built around that 50 to 70 percent of people hit commission. So, if all of the sudden, you design a comp plan such of a way that a hundred percent of the team is hitting commission, finance loses their shit. So, you have to make sure that when you're designing these things, one of the things I learned, I learned the hard way—this is how I learned that not everyone does it this way—I built my first comp plan; my team's hitting it.My team's overperforming, not a ton, but we're doing really well. All of the sudden, I'm getting called to Finance and getting raked over the coals. And they're like, “What did you do?” I'm like, “What do you mean what did I do? I designed a comp plan; we're hitting goal. Why are you mad?” “Well, we only had this much budgeted for commission.”And I was, like, “That's not my fault.” “Well, that's what historic performance was.” “Okay, well that's not what we're going to do going forward. We're going to do this.” And they're like, “Oh, well, you need to notify us if you're going to change it like that.” And I was, like, “Wait a minute. You modeled so that my team would not hit OTE?” “Yes.” “That's how you've always done this?” “Yes.” “Okay. Well, that's not what we're going to do going forward, and if that's a problem, I'll go find a door.” Because, no.Especially when we're talking about people who are living in extremely expensive areas. I spent most of my career living and working in San Francisco, managing teams of people who made less than six figures. And that's rough when you're paying two grand in rent every month. And 60 percent of your pay is commission. Like, no. You need to know that money's coming.So, I talk about modern sales a lot because that's what I'm trying to use because there's Glengarry Glen Ross, kind of, Wolf of Wall Street school, which is not how anyone behaves anymore, and if you're in an environment that's like that or treats your salespeople like that? Please leave. And then you've got modern sales, which is all about, “Okay, let's figure out how we can set up our salespeople to be the best people they can be to give our clients the best experience they can.” That's where you get top performance out of, and that's where you never run into the terrible emails with the alligators, and the, “Clearly you like lighting piles of money on fire.” That's where you don't get emails to Corey Quinn asking him if he's interested in coming to work for AWS, the book company.It's by incentivizing the people and creating good humans where they can really thrive as salespeople and as people in general. The rest comes with time. But, it's this whole, new way of looking at things. And it's big, and it's scary, and it costs more upfront, but you get more on the back end every single time.Corey: Not that you care about this an awful lot, but you have your own podcast that talks about this, The Other Side of Sales. What inspired you to decide, not just to build sales teams through a different lens, but also to, “You know what? I'm going to go out and talk into microphones through the internet from time to time.” Which, let's be clear, it takes a little bit of a certain warped perspective. I say this myself, having done this far too often.Ashleigh: Yeah. No, it's a fun little origin story. So, I'm a huge Star Trek geek; obsessive. And I was listening to a Star Trek podcast run by a couple of guys who are a little bit embarrassed to run a Star Trek podcast, called The Greatest Generation. Definitely not safe for work, but a really good podcast if you're into Star Trek at all.And they always do, kind of, letters at the end of the shows. And one of the letters at the end of the show one day was, “Hey, I was really inspired by you guys and I started my own podcast on this random thing that I am super excited about.” And I'm literally driving in the car with my husband, and I'm, like, “Huh. I don't know why I'm not listening to sales podcasts. I listen to enough of these other random ones.” Jumped online, pulled up a list of sales podcasts, and I think I went through three or four articles of, like, every sales podcast that was big. And this was, like, January of 2019.Corey: “By Broseph McBrowerson, but Everyone Calls Him ‘Browie.'” Yeah.Ashleigh: Literally, there was, Conversations with Women in Sales with the late, great—with the amazing Lori Richardson, who's now with it, but she took over for a mentor of mine who passed in 2020, sadly. But there was that, and then there was one other that was hosted by a husband-and-wife team. And that was it out of, like, 30 podcasts. And [laugh] so it was this moment of, like, epiphany of, like, “I can start my own podcast,” and, “Oh, I probably need to,” because, literally, no one looks or sounds like someone who I would actually want to hang out with ever, or do business with, in a lot of cases. And that's really changed. I'm so grateful.But really, what it came down to was I didn't feel there was a podcast for me. There wasn't a podcast I could listen to about sales that could help me, that I felt like I identified with. So, I was, like, “All right, fine. I'll start my own.” I called up a friend, and she was, literally, going through the same thing at the same time, so we said, “Screw it. We'll do our own.”We went full Bender from Futurama. We're like, “Just screw it; we'll have our own podcast… with liquor… and heels… and honest conversations that happens to us every day,” and random stuff. It's a lot of fun. And we've gone through a few iterations and it's been a long journey. We're about to hit our hundredth episode, which is really exciting.But yeah, we're—The Other Side of Sales is on a mission to make B2B sales culture truly inclusive so everyone can thrive, so, our conversations are all interviews with amazing sales pros who are trying to do amazing things and who are 90—I think are over 90 percent—are from a minority background, which is really exciting to, kind of, try and shift that conversation from Broseph McBrowerson. Our original tagline was the ‘anti-sales bro' podcast, but we thought that was a little too antagonistic. So…Corey: Yeah, being a little too antagonistic is, generally, my failure mode, so I hear you on that. I really want to thank you for taking so much time out of your day to speak with me. Because—well, not that I should thank you. It's one of those, I should really turn around and say, “Wait a minute. Why aren't you selling things? Why are you still talking to me?” But no—Ashleigh: No, I'm waiting for you to say, “Back to work.”Corey: Do appreciate your—exactly. I think that's a different podcast. Thank you so much for your time. If people want to learn more, where's the best place to find you?Ashleigh: Well, definitely please go check out duckbillgroup.com. We would love to talk to with you about anything to do with your AWS bill. Got a ton of resources on there around how to get that managed and sorted.If you're interested in connecting with me you can always hit me up at—I'm on Twitter @ashleighatwork, which is another deep-cut Star Trek reference, or you can hit me up at LinkedIn. Just search Ashleigh Early. My name is spelled a little weird because I'm a little weird. It's A-S-H-L-E-I-G-H, and then Early, like ‘early in the morning.'Corey: And links to all of that will wind up in the [show notes 00:39:11]. Thanks so much for your time. It's appreciated.Ashleigh: This has been fun; we'll do it again soon.AndIf 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.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

This week Lynn is speaking to Brian Saranovitz of Your Retirement Advisor. This episode is an excerpt from a live Ask the Advisor Q&A session that was recorded in December of 2021. Brian kicked off the session with a discussion of what he calls the Multi-Discipline Retirement Strategies or MDRS. These are little known retirement optimized strategies that people can deploy in their plan to really improve their retirement outcome. This episode will give you some ideas you may not have heard before, so join Lynn to learn more.

Opponents of the bipartisan bill aimed at enabling housing blitzed the media over the past few weeks. Many of the reports failed to include relevant context and balancing opinion.

Opponents of the bipartisan bill aimed at enabling housing blitzed the media over the past few weeks. Many of the reports failed to include relevant context and balancing opinion.

Labour and National have joined forces behind a radical new housing policy, the Housing Supply Bill, which they say will help address the housing crisis by allowing as many as 105,500 new homes to be built in less than a decade. The Government says the law will result in at least 48,200 and as many as 105,500 new homes built in the next five to eight years. It would achieve this by allowing up to three homes of up to three storeys can be built on most sites without the need for a costly and frustrating resource consent. Housing Minister Megan Woods and Environment Minister David Parker announced the changes - along with National leader Judith Collins in a rare show of unity. Woods said that a PwC analysis said the Government's existing densification policy would mean 72,000 additional dwellings could be expected by 2043 as a result of implementing the intensification policies. That estimate was now being considered "conservative" and said the 48,200 to 105,500 number of homes expected to be built as a result of the bill would be in addition to the 72,000 homes already expected under the Government's current density policy. Collins claimed a victory for National. "In January, I wrote to the Prime Minister proposing that National and Labour work on a bipartisan and urgent solution to the housing crisis," the National leader said. "As I said then, our resource consent process makes it too difficult to build more housing in New Zealand." Collins said that in April, she "presented a draft Bill that would have required local authorities to zone more space for new housing, drastically cutting consent requirements for those wishing to build new dwellings whether through intensification or greenfields development". And by June, Parker and Woods wrote to National confirming "they saw merit in my proposal to increase the supply of residential housing". "They welcomed National's contribution to further development of policy to allow a serious uplift in new housing in urban areas," she said. National's housing spokeswoman Nicola Willis said the bill would enhance property owners' "Right to Build", making it easier for people who currently own land to build more houses on existing sections. "This legislation takes power away from town planners and gives it back to the people they serve. It will allow our cities to develop and grow, with a range of housing types to suit people at different stages of life," she said. Parker said that new "medium density residential standards (MDRS) will enable landowners to build up to three homes of up to three storeys on most sites up to 50% maximum coverage of the site without the need for a resource consent. "Before this change, district plans would typically only allow for one home of up to two storeys," he said. The bill will bring forward parts of the National Policy Statement on Urban Development - a 2019 measure to increase housing supply in cities. While widely applauded, the NPS-UD as it is known, was criticised for being too slow to take effect, with most measures coming into force in 2024. That will now be brought forward by at least one year - something National had been urging the Government to do since December last year Parker said that by speeding up the implementation of the NPS-UD, "councils in greater Auckland, Hamilton, Tauranga, Wellington and Christchurch have their intensification policies and rules in place by August 2023, at least a year earlier than under current timelines". There would be some exemptions to the medium density rules, "in areas where intensification is inappropriate, such as where there is a high risk of natural hazards, or a site has heritage value". Today 's announcement is significant as it ends decades of standoff on the housing crisis. 

The TASP Talks crew is back to discuss considering the 2 questions of the MDR and a second chance at the lightning round with Cassandra Hulsey, TASP President. Got a question or comment? reach us at podcast@txasp.org Intro/Outro Music by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com

Co-host of the new TASP Talks Podcast Chris Ponce shares his experiences working as a school psychologist in the San Antonio schools, before and after COVID and Zoom. Join us as we wax poetic about helping kids and prepare for the greatest season of all, #SchoolPsychWeek ...which is in November, but still. #Schoolpsych graduate students, interns, and early career peeps will find this especially interesting, but everybody likes the Elmo Potty Song, so don't miss it even if you're just a regular human, either. (Plus, our guest interviews US at the end, and you might just find out which one swam in trash cans as a child!)Honorable Mentions:-Dr. Jeremy Sullivan, the Silver Fox https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jeremy-Sullivan-5-Bases of power https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_56.htm-the Elmo Potty Song-SES and parent involvement-Advice for school psych students/interns/supervisees-Pros and cons of telehealth for school psychs-FBAs, MDRs, REEDs, ARDs, and IEPs, OH MY!-Social capital (and how to build visibility during a pandemic)-the MIGDAS https://www.wpspublish.com/migdas-2-monteiro-interview-guidelines-for-diagnosing-the-autism-spectrum-second-edition-the CSRPI ("Crispy") https://www.parinc.com/Products/Pkey/72-TASP TALKS Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/70CDPS7bJY3UJxRg7SU8ke and Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-tasp-talks-podcast/id1570910285To find out more about becoming a #schoolpsychologist ...or to learn more about what the hell that even is, visit the Texas Association of School Psychologists at https://www.txasp.org---Chris Ponce, LSSP is a school psychologist (#saymyname!) =currently employed in a public district in San Antonio. He graduated from UTSA in 2016 and has been practicing for five years. He has been on the Texas Association of School Psychologists (TASP) board for the past two years. He has occupied the position of Public Relations and Information Chair and is currently the Area 5 representative (region 20 & 15). He is also the host of the newly formed TASP TALKS podcast.https://www.instagram.com/txasp/https://www.facebook.com/pg/TXASP/photos/---Welcome to The Psychologists Podcast, where we talk about all things psychology through a very personal lens.Gill Strait PhD and Julia Strait PhD are both Licensed Psychologists (TX) and Licensed Specialists in School Psychology (LSSPs, TX). They are alumni of The University of South Carolina School Psychology Doctoral Program (Go Gamecocks).Gill is a teacher, researcher, and supervisor at a university graduate psychology training program.Julia is a testing psychologist at Stepping Stone Therapy in Houston, TX: https://steppingstonetherapy.org/strait/ Instagram: @drjuliatx https://www.instagram.com/drjuliatx/?hl=en

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is investigating “numerous” medical device reports (MDRs) describing patient infections and other possible contamination issues possibly associated with reprocessed urological endoscopes. Dr. Larry Muscarella, an independent safety expert who advises hospitals, manufacturers and the public about medical device safety and infection prevention, talks about the letter to healthcare providers from the FDA. He also breaks down what it means, what surprised him about this latest course of action surrounding endoscopes and reprocessing, and what to watch for next.

The cyberthreats are out there. They're real. And they're not going away. This is why having a strong Managed Detection and Response program is absolutely necessary for the modern organization. MDRS matters. And in the latest #CybersecurityByDesign conversation, Shariq Hassan, EPAM's Senior Manager Technology and Security Consulting, and Anton Romm, our Service Delivery Manager, explain to Producer Ken Gordon, why. It's a complicated moment, and we need to take great care with everyone who wishes to connect with our organizations. As Hassan says: “Every user that logs into a network is a privileged user and should be considered a privileged user.” Listen to these experts to understand what Romm describes as “proactive threat-hunting activities.” Host: Alison Kotin Engineer: Kyp Pilalas Producer: Ken Gordon

In this episode, host Shahin Hoda chats with Darren Reid, Director of Marketing and Alliances at Interactive, about how organisations should manage the SDR role and when it should fall under the marketing team.  Darren also talks about how and why Interactive has MDRs (Marketing development representatives) and not SDRs during the conversation. He shares the origination of the MDR role at Interactive and how MDRs are groomed for their expected results. Darren concludes by sharing some of the mistakes organisations make while setting up an outbound-inbound MDR/SDR team and advises B2B marketers to go with their gut to test new ideas quickly.  Read the show notes: https://xgrowth.com.au/blogs/sdr-team-marketing Join the Slack channel: https://growthcolony.org/slack

Sorry, folks. You won't find Paul Bakken on social media. You will find him running around the LunAres habitat repairing, improving and applying his years of analog astronaut experience to our mission in the LunAres Research Station!  We've been beyond grateful that Paul's been selected as one of our crew mates- in addition to his extensive background in law, community service, and analog missions, Paul happens to be an incredible chef! After enjoying this conversation with Paul, you will have a perfect understanding of what a mission generalist does, and then you'll find yourself asking, “where can I find a mission generalist to help me in my everyday life?!?!”      “I like fixing things and feeding people. It's what I enjoy doing at home, so it's a natural fit for me to do it here at LunAres.”  -Paul Bakken from the Casual Space Podcast    About Paul  Paul Bakken is a native Minnesotan, husband of 28 years and a father of three children. He has served his community as an elected official for over 18 years. He serves on the Board of Directors for his local distribution cooperative. Other community experience and volunteering includes Boy Scouts, where he has earned the rank of Eagle Scout, and service as an officer in the Minnesota Army National Guard.    Bakken earned a B.A. in Political Science and Classics from St. Olaf College and a M.A. from the Humphrey School of Public Affairs. Paul has also earned his J.D. from the University of Minnesota Law School, and has completed the FEMA/ EMI Integrated Emergency Management Course.    When he's not baking up amazing food for analog astronauts, Bakken enjoys reading science fiction and tinkering. He has a long-standing interest in the exploration of space, and particularly in our exploration of the Moon and Mars. As an analog astronaut, he has served as Commander of two crew rotations at the Mars Desert Research Station, or MDRS, and as Executive Officer for NEPTUNE, a five-day underwater research mission. He's also served as the Operations Officer for Selene I, a fourteen-day lunar analog research mission at HI-SEAS. He's currently enjoying his new title of Mission Generalist on the LunAresX Sensoria mission in Pila Poland at the LunAres Research Station.   

The MDR role is becoming more and more popular, as marketing teams need the support of a dedicated business development team to chase up their MQLs. On this episode of the FINITE Podcast, we hear from Heidi Cerenzia, VP, Global Demand Generation at Wrike - a popular work management platform. Heidi herself has a team of MDRs, so she explains why they benefit her marketing function, and how she distinguishes them from SDRs. ---The FINITE Podcast is made possible by 93x, the leading digital marketing agency for B2B technology, software & SaaS businesses delivering SEO & PPC strategy that drives leads, pipeline & revenue growth.---To apply to join the FINITE community, head to finite.community. Support the show (https://finite.community/)

Todos hemos tenido que ajustar nuestras rutinas y estilo de vida durante las ultimas semanas debido a la COVID-19. Desde cómo trabajamos hasta la manera en que convivimos con nuestros seres queridos. Uno de los grandes retos de este aislamiento social es mantener la calma y estructurar nuestros días para hacerlos más llevaderos. The Mars Society es una ONG con la misión de fomentar la exploración y futura colonización de Marte. Como parte de su misión organizan expediciones que simulan cómo seria para astronautas convivir en una base en Marte. Estas expediciones ocurren cada año en el desierto de Utah en el Mars Research Desert Station. Los voluntarios forman tripulaciones de 4 a 6 personas y realizan rotaciones que duran de 1 semana a 3 meses. Todo sin wi-fi. Mi amigo de la universidad Erick Tijerino es ingeniero mecánico y fue parte de la Crew 120 de esta estación en el 2013. Conversamos sobre su experiencia viviendo semanas en la estación, como resolvían conflictos, como lidiaban con el aburrimiento (spoiler, los días están llenos de actividades) y retos que la tripulación tuvo durante su estadía. Me pareció relevante hacer un episodio del podcast sobre este tema. Hay un sinnúmero de opciones de entretenimiento y la presión social de agarrar 1000 clases en linea, aprender 3 idiomas y escribir la próxima gran novela de ciencia ficción es palpable.Sin embargo, te pido que seas paciente y bondadoso contigo mismo y no cedas a esta presión social.  La realidad es que este es un momento para enfocarnos en mantenernos sanos tanto fisicamente como mentalmente. No necesitas hacer 1 hora de Yoga y 1000 burpees en la mañana, con entrenar 20 minutos esta bien. No pretendas leerte un libro al día, con leer 10 minutos al día todos los días esta bien. No tienes que hablar por Zoom 1 hora con cada persona que haz conocido en tu vida, con escribirle un mensaje de texto a los 5 amigos mas cercanos que tienes esta bien. Espero disfrutes este episodio. Fuerza en la cuarentena Si te gusto este episodio escríbeme a hugo@conexiones.io (respondo todos los mensajes)Apoya el podcast via Patreon.com/ConexionesPodcastPuedes leer un AMA que hizo Erick y la tripulación en Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/AMA/comments/15e63c/we_are_crew_120_currently_stationed_at_the_mars/La tripulación 120 mantuvo un blog de su experiencia con fotos y reportes técnicos. Léelo aquí  http://crew120mdrs.weebly.com/

Todos hemos tenido que ajustar nuestras rutinas y estilo de vida durante las ultimas semanas debido a la COVID-19. Desde cómo trabajamos hasta la manera en que convivimos con nuestros seres queridos. Uno de los grandes retos de este aislamiento social es mantener la calma y estructurar nuestros días para hacerlos más llevaderos. The Mars Society es una ONG con la misión de fomentar la exploración y futura colonización de Marte. Como parte de su misión organizan expediciones que simulan cómo seria para astronautas convivir en una base en Marte. Estas expediciones ocurren cada año en el desierto de Utah en el Mars Research Desert Station. Los voluntarios forman tripulaciones de 4 a 6 personas y realizan rotaciones que duran de 1 semana a 3 meses. Todo sin wi-fi. Mi amigo de la universidad Erick Tijerino es ingeniero mecánico y fue parte de la Crew 120 de esta estación en el 2013. Conversamos sobre su experiencia viviendo semanas en la estación, como resolvían conflictos, como lidiaban con el aburrimiento (spoiler, los días están llenos de actividades) y retos que la tripulación tuvo durante su estadía. Me pareció relevante hacer un episodio del podcast sobre este tema. Hay un sinnúmero de opciones de entretenimiento y la presión social de agarrar 1000 clases en linea, aprender 3 idiomas y escribir la próxima gran novela de ciencia ficción es palpable.Sin embargo, te pido que seas paciente y bondadoso contigo mismo y no cedas a esta presión social.  La realidad es que este es un momento para enfocarnos en mantenernos sanos tanto fisicamente como mentalmente. No necesitas hacer 1 hora de Yoga y 1000 burpees en la mañana, con entrenar 20 minutos esta bien. No pretendas leerte un libro al día, con leer 10 minutos al día todos los días esta bien. No tienes que hablar por Zoom 1 hora con cada persona que haz conocido en tu vida, con escribirle un mensaje de texto a los 5 amigos mas cercanos que tienes esta bien. Espero disfrutes este episodio. Fuerza en la cuarentena Si te gusto este episodio escríbeme a hugo@conexiones.io (respondo todos los mensajes)Apoya el podcast via Patreon.com/ConexionesPodcastPuedes leer un AMA que hizo Erick y la tripulación en Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/AMA/comments/15e63c/we_are_crew_120_currently_stationed_at_the_mars/La tripulación 120 mantuvo un blog de su experiencia con fotos y reportes técnicos. Léelo aquí  http://crew120mdrs.weebly.com/

Do you feel like you're living on another planet right now? There's a reason. Humans are social animals and social distancing and isolation is not our normal here on Earth. Mark sits down with his son Tristan, and Carmel Johnston, two crew members from NASA's HI-SEAS IV study to learn what is required to survive and even thrive during an extended mission to Mars and how we can adapt our own behaviors to stay happy here on Earth. Transcript:  MARK BASSINGTHWAIGHTE: Welcome. You're listening to ALPS In Brief, the podcast that comes to you from the historic Florence building in beautiful downtown Missoula, Montana. I'm Mark Bassingthwaighte, the Risk Manager here at ALPS, and today we're going to have a little fun, do something a little bit interesting. Believe it or not, I'm going to try to make some connections between Mars and all of these stay-at-home or stay-in-place orders all over the country. Now, how are we going to do that? I guess saying Mars is a little bit misleading. We are going to talk about a Mars simulation and I am so pleased and excited to have two very special guests on today and honestly both of them are very special people in my life and in the life of my wife. The first is Carmel Johnston. MARK: Carmel is quite an outdoorsman. Boy, trying to get her to do a podcast can be a bit of a challenge, but just because you never know where she is. I was watching this morning, a YouTube of her as she was doing a TV show in Australia of all places, but she also spends quite a bit of time now in Glacier National Park, another place that is near and dear to many of our hearts as folks in Montana. Carmel has a background from Montana State University, a master of science in land resources and environmental sciences. And now she is the Utility Systems Repairer and Operator at the National Park Service. And actually, Carmel, you're going to have to explain, is that the same position in Glacier? CARMEL JOHNSTON: Yeah, so it's called Utility Systems Repair Operator, but essentially it's a water and wastewater operator position so, all the water that people drink we create, and then all the wastewater that happens afterwards, we treat before it is given back to the earth. MARK: Okay, very good. And I'll explain a little bit more about Carmel here in just a minute. The other guest that I'd like to introduce is someone that goes back in my life quite a few years. We first met in, I believe it was, Tristan, wasn't it 1984 if I'm remembering correctly? This is Tristan Bassingthwaighte and Tristan among, and again, like Carmel, these two, you can find them all over the world at different times. Of note, Tristan received his Masters in Architecture from Tongji University in Shanghai, and then went on to complete his Doctorate of Architecture from the University of Hawaii, Manoa. Tristan has done all kinds of things, but my interest in having him visit with us today is, some of what he does is, how would you describe it, in terms of the different, I'm losing my words here, Tristan, but what type of architecture ties in here? TRISTAN BASSINGTHWAIGHTE: I specialize in the design of habitats, research bases, even you could say, drilling platforms, the areas people would go on earth or in outer space that are isolated, dangerous working environments, confined environments, and then how to understand the social and psychological issues that occur with people there, being removed from family and society and walks in the park and fresh coffee, and trying to address them architecturally, so that we could say, live on Mars for 10 years and not have everybody go crazy or something along those lines. MARK: My senior moment was extreme environment design. That's what I was struggling with, just every once in a while recall isn't what it should be. While you listeners might be wondering why I have these two guests visiting with us today and what Mars has to do with stay-at-home orders. Both of these folks were participants in a Mars simulation. It was, what is called HI-SEAS IV, and it was a 366 day mission, and Carmel was the crew commander for this mission and Tristan was the crew space architect, and they really have all kinds of stories and insights and experiences to share. But this was a project between NASA and the University of Hawaii, and they literally lived in a very small space for 366 days, never being able to go outside on the side of, it was Mauna Loa, if I'm remembering correctly, but Carmel, could I have you just share a very brief little background in terms of what this experience was about? And Tristan, of course jump in anytime. TRISTAN: Hmm. CARMEL: Yeah, so we were the six participants of the Hawai'i Space Exploration Analog and Simulation Mission Number Four and that consisted of the six of us living in a 1200 square foot dome on the side of Mauna Loa for the year, and like you said, we couldn't go outside unless we were wearing a space suit and we lived off freeze dried, dehydrated powdered ingredients for the year unless we were able to grow our own vegetables, and we were the guinea pigs studying the effects of isolation and confinement on all of us and out of all the different tools and techniques that people have thought of up to this point for dealing with those psychological aspects of confinement. MARK: Yes. Yep. Very good. And Tristan, maybe you can share just a little bit when we talk about isolation, there were six for those of you listening, a total of six individuals participated in this year long mission and I believe it's to this day, the longest isolation experiment run yet here in the States anyway, but there's isolation, too, in terms of communication and Tristan, could you share a little bit about that? TRISTAN: Yeah. When you actually go up there, you find you've got your row of laptops so we can all do our work and research and everything. You've got several electronic devices like iPads and everything to do quizzes and surveys, enter the various information for the experiments we're doing, write about how we feel, et cetera, sort of tracking our emotions and reactions during the course of the year. But also there's a viciously delayed internet that only allows access to a few research sites because that's what we were doing. Phones don't work. TRISTAN: There's no real time communication with anybody that's not in the dome. So if I was going to say, write an email to grandma, I could compose the whole thing and send it off and it would be held in an ESSA server for 20 minutes and then delivered to her. So, all of our digital communications that people focus on these days are light speed delayed the way they would be if we were actually on Mars. So, you're very, very, very removed from everybody physically and in terms of communication and every way you can imagine. So it's not just, oh, you're in a tent but you can hang out on Snapchat if you want. MARK: Very good, thank you. When you guys signed up for this and got selected in terms of what you were thinking it would be like versus what you ultimately discovered, did you know what you were getting into? TRISTAN: Yeah, I would say I had a fair idea because I was actually applying to this near the tail end of my Masters research and the Masters research was also on [inaudible 00:08:24] environmental architecture, sociology, psychology, and I only found HI-SEAS because I was trying to research analogs that were on earth and then honestly, just ask some of the participants questions and that accidentally turned into applying. MARK: How about you, Carmel? CARMEL: Yeah, I think we knew a lot about what we were getting into, but there's definitely a component to it that we had no idea how isolating it really would be. And several of us had done previous analog simulations before, not to that length of time, but two week simulations here and there, and each simulation you go through whether it's HERA or MDRS or HI-SEAS or SIRIUS, any of those, they all have different components to it. And so, ours was the delayed communications. You had unlimited amount of data to be dropping data packages if NASA needed to send us something, but it would be delayed and it would be in the say, constraints of how they would actually send data to Mars. CARMEL: Whereas other ones it's, oh you have unlimited real time communication but you only get a certain amount of data per day or per week or something. And then every simulation space suits are different and the different things that you're testing are different, which is great because we're compiling all these resources of the different aspects of isolation and confinement, and then, the ultimate test is going there. And so, hopefully if we practice all these different components to it here, then it will it make easier for actually getting there. MARK: Maybe, I'm just going to take a tangent for a quick second, in light of our listening audience here and I really didn't explain what HI-SEAS stands for. It is the Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation. So it's H-I dash S-E-A-S, if you ever want to look something up and see what HI-SEAS is all about. Was it hard? CARMEL: Oh yeah. MARK: How so? CARMEL: I would say that it, well, up to this point, it's been the hardest thing I've done in my life, but that is barring that my parents are still here and so when they go, that'll probably be the hardest thing I have to deal with. But having a lack of communication because our connection to society and our friends and family is humongous and each one of us, Tristan will tell stories about his friends that fell off. Each one of us had friends that wouldn't write back or they'd forget about us until the Martian came out, and then all of a sudden we get a lot of emails and people saying, "Oh, we're thinking of you." And you're like, well, where were you two months ago when I really needed you to respond back to an email? CARMEL: And it's kind of the out of sight, out of mind concept of as soon as you're gone then people forget because you're not in their regular life all the time. And we were just stuck up there doing our research and it was very easy to feel disconnected from the people that we cared about the most, which made us feel like, well, maybe we don't mean that much to them or you start playing all these games in your head about why people don't respond back. It's probably because they have kids and they're living their lives. But to you it seems like, well, this is really important to me. MARK: Tristan? TRISTAN: Yeah, I would definitely agree with that. I had all sorts of people that kind of vanished and dropped away. I mean, half of our relationships these days seem to be over email or text anyways. So, you'd think they'd be able to keep up, but it kind of gave you a good opportunity to, healthy or unhealthy, coping mechanisms can help get you through some stuff. So, it was a chance to pick up some hobbies and try and focus on work and do some other things as well, but you definitely feel it. MARK: Mm-hmm (affirmative). How did you make peace with that, I guess? How were you able to move forward? Because nobody at the end came out crazy, ready to be hospitalized. Nobody died, in terms of, you didn't kill each other, that kind of thing. So how'd you do it? TRISTAN: I think the big thing for me was a string of tiny little fun victories mixed with a few larger goals over the course of the last eight months perhaps. So, Carmel and Cyprian got really into trying to run a marathon and I thought that was the worst idea ever because who wants to run forever? That just hurts. And eventually, Carmel talked me into it and I ended up doing that. So I mean that was a, what did I do, like two and a half months of training to actually get up to that? CARMEL: Yeah, I don't remember having to talk you into it. I think you were like, "Hey, I think I could do this." And we were like, "Well, make your training plan. You can totally do it." TRISTAN: Yeah. Yeah, something like that. So, you start to run and everything and then I think she and Cyprian were coming by every half hour leaving treats on the treadmill and spraying me with water bottles and stuff. So, you've got your camaraderie on the inside and then when there's not some massive thing that you're working on or accomplish that day, Carmel and I invented the pizza cupcake, a lot of fun, small things that like, "Oh, this is today's victory. I have changed the culinary world." MARK: Can you, Carmel, just share for everybody listening again what running a marathon in a dome looks like? CARMEL: So, we have a treadmill there and at the beginning of the year, the treadmill was kind of adjacent to the window and then we found that Cyprian kept falling off of it because he was looking out the window, and so we put it in front of the window and then at least you had the same Mars landscape to look at while you're running, but for the most part you have to watch a lot of movies because running a marathon in general is pretty time consuming depending on how fast you're grounding. Either way, it's a lot of movement and listening to movies or watching movies or listening to podcasts or something, it's kind of the only way to take away from the monotony of one foot in front of the other for so darn long. MARK: Yeah, and for those listening again, can you appreciate what they're sharing? They're running marathons on a treadmill and trust me, this isn't a state-of-the-art brand new high tech thing, in front of, I wouldn't say a window, my memory is it was the window, and it is about the size of maybe a large pizza pan. It's just a circle and you're looking out at volcanic rock. There's nothing out there. So, just trying to put that in perspective. Crazy kinds of stuff. Did you want to share? Go ahead. I think I cut you off. CARMEL: Oh, you're okay. Sometimes there were clouds so that really broke it up and made it a little change of scenery. But yeah, it was pretty monotonous the whole time when you're running, but at the same time, that's the thing that's breaking the other monotonous cycle of your life, which is research and cooking food and being around the same people all day every day, and so that's actually kind of an escape is doing something pretty monotonous. It's funny that way. MARK: Let's shift gears just a little bit. These stay-in-place orders really are having an impact on people. I've been talking with some lawyers in recent weeks, several of whom work in the domestic relations space and they're reporting tremendous increase in families, whether it's just some abuse kinds of things going on to just divorce. People are getting a little crazy and stir crazy. A lot of people I heard in Paris for instance, you're not allowed to exercise outside now and I'd love for you guys to talk about what going outside meant for you, both in terms of how it was done and what it meant for you, but Michigan has just issued an order forbidding contact now with friends and family in terms of extended, you are not to go out and visit with anybody. You can only interact with people that are in your physical home. MARK: Now, of course, I guess you can say hi or smile at somebody at the grocery store. But that's a different thing. So, in light of the challenges, so many are having to face, that have never dealt with anything like this, and for some it's going to be four to six weeks. Others, it might be eight to 10 weeks, nothing like 366 days. But perhaps through the context of sharing your stories, how you survived and things, you could share some tips and insights into how people going through these stay-at-home, stay-in-place orders can again, come out the other side without too many bruises and nobody's killed each other. So, I'll let you guys chat here for a little bit on that. TRISTAN: Yeah well, I mean part of it is this is being forced on everyone, where as we got to volunteer. So we had to begin ours with slightly different mindset, which helps out. But I think, when you go into something like this, the problems that occur sort of, I mean you, you can imagine them being created because you're stuck inside and can't leave and there's no communication, whatever. But really, wherever you go, like when you go on a vacation, your problems are waiting for you when you get back because you were just on vacation. And when you go into isolation. You're just taking your life and your problems with you. So, I would argue that the people who are getting to spend a month with their spouse and then realize they can't stand the way they chew food and they get divorced, probably had other issues, it was likely not the the quarantine them split them all up. TRISTAN: So if you're going to be stuck somewhere and you can't go to the bars and hang with all your friends and do the normal life distraction stuff that defined your existence before all of this, you're going to, whether you realize it or not, meet yourself in some ways and realize where your priorities lay, the character traits that you actually enjoy and hate about the people you're living with. Even start to ask existential questions maybe. I know in the last like couple of weeks I've been like, what am I doing with my life and trying to just figure some of that stuff out again because I've got the time now. MARK: Mm-hmm (affirmative). That's great. You're so spot on. Carmel. CARMEL: Yeah, I think that's really well put, especially because we did choose to be isolated and so, it takes a special kind of special to even want to do that. And I mean honestly, isolation isn't for everyone and we know that because there are only certain people that volunteer for isolation studies or to go to other planets or to live on the ISS or go to Antarctica. Not everyone's volunteering to do that because it just doesn't mesh well with them, and you see people who choose to overwinter in Antarctica year after year. They enjoy it or they are at least able to get through it because that matches with that personality. So, having this forced upon everyone in the world right now really is kind of taking a lifestyle choice for some people and making it a mandatory lifestyle. So, finding coping mechanisms, things that help you make your life as easy as possible for where you are at right now is probably the best step for a lot of people because they might enjoy certain aspects of it, but they definitely aren't going to enjoy everything about it, as we did as well. There are certain things I miss terribly about the dome and then there are some things I'm like, I never need to go back there again for others. MARK: What would you say you missed? I find that interesting. TRISTAN: Oh, the food. CARMEL: The food. I actually kind of do miss the isolation because we were up there and you could just get so much work done and you didn't have a lot of distractions in some ways and I had a treadmill that I could run on most of the time because a couple of weeks ago they took away the gym at work and so now you're forced to exercise outside except for that it's snowing all the time, and they closed the park and they closed the reservation and you literally can't leave a one mile square radius anymore. And so, I'm going a little crazy for other reasons right now. MARK: You raised the term coping mechanisms and I think that's a good, can we explore that a little bit and just have both of you talk, what were your coping mechanisms? What really worked for you and if there was something that you tried and didn't, I'd love to hear that as well. TRISTAN: Yeah, I mean, I would say, part of the reason that we had said food was such a great thing is because Carmel's mom actually taught her to cook very well and I got to be sous chef two days out of the week inventing new things or learning how to make old favorites, whatever. We actually pulled off a super respectable salmon eggs Benedict, a double layer chocolate cake, the aforementioned pizza cupcakes. We made Swedish meat, no, not Swedish meatballs, oh, what were the meatballs we made? Italian meatballs or something and they were actually better than the meatballs at the restaurant we went to when we all got out. So it was a bit of a playing around and creative aspect there. MARK: I was working on my dissertation while I was there so I had some of my personal work as well. Some of my best selling tee shirts, I came up with the ideas and drew them while I was up there because I had the time. You sort of have the option between say, for people going through isolation now, you can do something that is numbing like getting through your favorite series or watching Battlestar, all four seasons, over the course of two weeks and you're sort of pausing yourself as a person in your life while you enjoy something. Or you could say, well I'm going to do something productive or creative and actually find ways to engage the part of yourself that wants to learn the language or an instrument or start doing art or becoming an incredible bonsai Shaffer person. One of those will actually let you survive a year and one of them will let you get through a couple of weeks. TRISTAN: So, I think we're actually going to start to see as these stay- at-home orders carry on, more problems, because a lot of people are doing the numbing route, where they're investing heavily in say, television or whatever, something that's sort of a passive hobby, instead of something that actually lends meaning to what they're doing and helps them feel like they are progressing. MARK: Following up on that, I get concerned, too, about alcohol abuse. If there's not, the numbing kind of thing, just to kind of get through it and it's so easy to just casually increase and increase and increase and what becomes after dinner or before dinner beverage or two, you have a little bit at lunch, you have some in the afternoon. What the heck? I've got another beer or so in the fridge to get the nine o'clock movie and on and on. Carmel, how about you? Your thoughts. CARMEL: Yeah, I think, I have lots of thoughts. I've been thinking about this for five years now. I think right now it's okay to acknowledge that it sucks. Nobody's really having a great time right now and it's okay to say, this is not where we wanted to be and it's changing everything and it's hard, but what can we gain out of it? And it's okay to live in the grumpy mood for a little bit, but then the thing that's going to bring you out of it is planning and having a goal for the day, or I had one person who was retired, they told me the other week, I have at least one thing I have to accomplish every day, even if it's just making my bed or it's stacking firewood or something else. I have to write on the list, I did one thing every day because then once you do one, it'll be find, you'll start doing a bunch of other things, but if you sit in bed first thing in the morning and start watching a show, then it's six shows later, you're like, hmm, I guess I'm kind of hungry now and I might make something or I might just eat leftovers. And so having things to do in your day that need to be done that day is actually helpful because you have a drive and a reason to go. CARMEL: And I'm so thankful that I am still working right now because I have something that makes me, I mean, I would be not getting out of bed otherwise, but you know I have a purpose and I am contributing every single day right now and that gives me a lot of fulfillment knowing that I am still able to do this and I'm not forced to be at home because that would be extremely challenging for anyone to be told, you can't go to work, you're still getting paid, but then you're like, well heck, what am I even contributing right now? So, as Tristan said, coming up with workouts or a craft or a hobby or something you want to master that gives you a purpose for every single day. It's very easy for all your days to run together and to not know what day of the week it is, but if you have something that keeps you going forward every single day, that's a longterm game plan versus a short term plan. MARK: I obviously vicariously went through this experience just as a parent and trying to stay in touch and so I kind of lived the experiment as an earthling. It seemed apparent to me that two coping mechanisms that were very, very effective, and I think not only for the two of you, but that became effective and helped others in the dome, and that would be the use of humor and the ability to get outside. Now, I want to underscore for people listening, getting outside of the dome is not like you get to walk through the air lock and take your tee shirt off and get a little sun and go for a run up the hill. You're in spacesuits, you don't get the fresh air, the sun isn't on your skin for 366 days. Either both of you, if you would just share some thoughts about the importance of, did that matter? How did it matter, in terms of humor or just a change of scenery? TRISTAN: Yeah, I mean the big thing is it's a new stimulus. So, instead of the treadmill to try and escape from whatever's going on or doing our work or our hobbies, you actually can go over the landscape. The physical exertion is, while it has the same unpleasantness as jogging for a long time, it can at the same time feel cathartic and like you're moving your body because you are, so it can help meet some of your exercise goals and help you workout some stress. TRISTAN: But we were lucky enough that, I don't know if it's on the entire mountain, but we had several in the local area we were allowed to explore, but we had lava tubes so you could schedule an EVA, and do all this paperwork and get everything set up, and then the next day, you suit up and go outside and your teams and everything. And instead of just walking around on a barren landscape, which can be beautiful for its own aesthetic reasons, you're getting to wiggle through strange holes and cracks and find giant house-sized volumes under the lava that are totally empty or have a little skylight at the top with a shaft of light and trees and it's dark and a little scary but super pretty, and just this really wonderful fun exploring thing. And that was a massive stimulus and change of pace compared to whatever was going on inside the dome because we had dozens of these lava tubes and pits and everything that you could explore. MARK: Very cool. Carmel. CARMEL: Yeah, I agree that those are probably, I'd say humor, going outside, and exercise are the top three mechanisms for keeping yourself sane while you're there. Tristan was the diffuser of almost all situations we had when anything would get tense, he'd crack a joke about something and we'd be laughing and then everything would be better or at least, it would be better than it was before. And so, one of the most valuable roles you have in a crew is to have humor, to maintain humor around a situation. You can be serious and get your work done, but being lighthearted for certain things is absolutely necessary because if you can't laugh about it then you're going to be in a world of hurt later. CARMEL: And I agree, going outside was huge and we did have, most of our EVAs were, our extra vehicular activities, [inaudible 00:30:28] outside. We put on our space suit and most of them were meant for doing geology research or lava tubes or the different tasks that the research team had for us to do out there. But sometimes it was just to go have fun because things would be so tense. You're like, I just need to go outside and maybe walk in a straight line because you can only do like 21 steps in the dome before you have to turn and round a corner, and you can't just keep doing laps. You have to go back and forth and just go outside and use your long distance vision and stretch all your muscles and you can even just run down the road if you wanted to, just totally different than being inside, and so mixing up that, like Tristan said, the stimuli of being indoors versus outdoors was really, really important. MARK: Yeah, I'm finding that's what's helping me right now. Now I telecommute so a stay-at-home order isn't quite the same impact for my wife and I than with other family situations perhaps, but I've been getting out. Since the stay-at-home, Tristan, you might be impressed here with your old man. I put 150 miles on my bike since the stay-at-home, just get outside, you can still socially distance. Nobody's within six feet of me, but I'm pedaling like crazy, and it's just been good. It really does make a difference, even just in mood. CARMEL: Fresh air is super good for everyone. That's got to be good for, if you are sick, having some fresh air go through your lungs and if you're not sick, helping keep yourself healthy and moving strong. MARK: Well, I feel like I've taken a lot of your time here and I so, so appreciate your willingness of both of you to share a little bit with the ALPS audience. Before I let you go, do you have one final tip or comment you'd like to share in terms of just, this is your chance to say it again, people that are just trying to make it work and figure out how not to go stir crazy. A final thought from each of you. TRISTAN: Yeah, I mean, I'd say the biggest is you've got the time down to let your vices squeeze you. So try and balance that out with less immediately fun but more longterm productive goals because it sucks now. Nobody wants to go and work out for two hours a day or do that paperwork that's lying around but actually producing something instead of just indulging in something will make four weeks feel a lot more like four and less like 10. MARK: Yeah, yeah. Carmel. CARMEL: I like that. I like that a lot. I also think, finding more than one thing, because one of my downfalls in the dome was that running was my thing and then anytime the treadmill wasn't available, whether it was power or it was broken or whatever, I was a wreck because I just didn't have the ability to do my one coping mechanism, and so having a whole suite of them, whether it's painting or you have some online videos you could do or a whole variety of things that make you happy and are helping you and can be productive at the same time, that would be good because if all of a sudden the gym closes and then it's bad weather outside. Then now you're like, well, what am I supposed to do? And you have all this stress or anxiety built up that I can't get rid of. You need to have a whole suite of things you can do in order to be able to relieve that. MARK: Yeah. To that, I would like to add in terms of the comments both of you shared. Just as a family member that was on earth during this whole experience, I would like to underscore the importance of social connectivity that both Carmel and Tristan talked about earlier in this podcast. We can't necessarily go out and meet friends at the local brew pub or something and have a nice evening, but there are alternatives, and to try to just call a little bit more, talk on the phone, do some Zoom meetings with family. We've done a little bit of this with some of the kids and that's been a lot of fun. MARK: So, don't underestimate as well, the value of staying socially connected. I think that can make a big difference. Well, that brings the podcast to an end. To those of you listening, thank you very much for taking the time. I hope you found something of value and please don't hesitate to reach out to me at ALPS. It's m bass, mbass, B-A-S-S @alpsinsurance.com. Happy to try and help in terms of any questions, concerns you might have on ethics, risk management, or even just getting through a stay-at-home order. That's it, folks. Have a good one. Bye bye.

Juandapo, Diego y Boris hablan con cuatro expertos en misiones de aislamiento quienes nos van a dar consejos de como manejar la comida, qué hacer con la cabeza en el encierro y como cuidarnos. Perdonarán la calidad del audio. Alejandra Corzo es Fisióloga espacial quien ha participado en misiones en la Antártida) Jaqueline Silva-Martínez es controladora de vuelo de la estación espacial internacional, quien ha participado en misiones análogas en la estación de investigación del desierto de Utah, MDRS y en el Análogo de Investigación de Investigación Humana, HERA en el centro espacial Johnson de la NASA) Yael Méndez es Microbiologa que ha participado de misiones análogas en el MDRSOscar Ojeda, estudiante de maestría en ingeniería aeroespacial en Purdue University, con investigación en factores humanos y participantes en el MDRS en dos ocasiones.Apóyanos en Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/estupidonerd Twitter: @Estupido_nerd@Juandapo, @Alefrito y @CforerooFacebook: www.facebook.com/EstupidoNerd/Instagram: www.instagram.com/estupidonerd/iTunes Podcast: http://bit.ly/EstupidoNerdGoogle Podcast: http://bit.ly/GooglepodcastSpotify: https://spoti.fi/2LC8XeIYoutube: https://www.youtube.com/c/estupidonerdwww.estupidonerd.com/Editado por: Juandapo.

Juandapo, Diego y Boris hablan con cuatro expertos en misiones de aislamiento quienes nos van a dar consejos de como manejar la comida, qué hacer con la cabeza en el encierro y como cuidarnos. Perdonarán la calidad del audio. Alejandra Corzo es Fisióloga espacial quien ha participado en misiones en la Antártida) Jaqueline Silva-Martínez es controladora de vuelo de la estación espacial internacional, quien ha participado en misiones análogas en la estación de investigación del desierto de Utah, MDRS y en el Análogo de Investigación de Investigación Humana, HERA en el centro espacial Johnson de la NASA) Yael Méndez es Microbiologa que ha participado de misiones análogas en el MDRSOscar Ojeda, estudiante de maestría en ingeniería aeroespacial en Purdue University, con investigación en factores humanos y participantes en el MDRS en dos ocasiones.Apóyanos en Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/estupidonerd Twitter: @Estupido_nerd@Juandapo, @Alefrito y @CforerooFacebook: www.facebook.com/EstupidoNerd/Instagram: www.instagram.com/estupidonerd/iTunes Podcast: http://bit.ly/EstupidoNerdGoogle Podcast: http://bit.ly/GooglepodcastSpotify: https://spoti.fi/2LC8XeIYoutube: https://www.youtube.com/c/estupidonerdwww.estupidonerd.com/Editado por: Juandapo.

Dr. Clarke is an exploration geologist, researcher and teacher. He has been interested in Mars since he was about ten years old, before people even walked on the Moon. He currently serves as president of Mars Society Australia , is on the Mars Society International Steering Committee, and is director of science at MDRS. On this Skills for Mars episode we talk about the preparation and research that are taking place here, on earth, to get ready to face this most extraordinary adventure - setting up a new home on Mars. We touch on Mars analogue sites, EVAs, working in isolated environments, testing space suites, teams – formation, leadership & multidisciplinarity, tough schedules and hard work, trust, friendship, courage, endurance, emotional intelligence, problem solving, creativity and reinvention. To show your support for the podcast you can subscribe (free) on my website: iuliaistrate.com/skillsformars and click the YouTube - confirm your subscription button Music: https://www.purple-planet.com/ (https://www.purple-planet.com) Support this podcast

Medical device reporting, or MDR: what is it? What isn't it? Why is it important? The FDA recently released a guidance on medical device reporting, and today we're talking to Mike Drues, president of Vascular Sciences, about MDR and what it means to medical device companies. Mike is a frequent guest on our show and really knows just about everything there is to know about medical device reporting. Sit back and enjoy today's episode of the Global Medical Device podcast. Some of the highlights of the show include: ● Why the 2016 FDA guidance on MDR is so important to post-market surveillance. ● What types of events are supposed to be reported, including tips on trying to find the relationship between a device and potential adverse effects. ● The relationship between complaints and MDRs: The MDR is a subset of complaints, but not all complaints will lead to MDRs. ● Mike's thoughts on the timeliness of the reports when it comes to severity and frequency of the adverse events. ● Why the FDA is putting out this new guidance now, even though the process has been around for a long time. ● Who counts as a manufacturer in terms of the FDA guidance. Mike answers whether dentists, hospitals and physicians must report problems according to the letter of the law vs. the spirit of the law. ● How reprocessors fit into the reporting requirements. ● Mike's thoughts on why medical device reporting might eventually become a moot point.

Today we are going to talk about the connection between complaints, CAPAs, and MDRs. They are all interrelated and they have a big part of developing your company's culture and affecting your risk management processes. Mike Drues, president of Vascular Sciences and expert on all regulatory matters when it comes to medical device development and production, will be our guest today. Mike is a regular guest on the show, and our listeners know that he really knows his stuff. Be sure to take the time to listen to the show. Some of the highlights of the show include: - The connection between Medical Device Reports (MDRs) and complaints: Does one lead to the other? Sometimes it's a two-way street. - Whether the current criteria for necessitating a CAPA should be investigated and maybe changed. - Why reframing the negative thought process behind getting a complaint into thinking about it as an opportunity can keep companies thriving and patients safer. - The importance of having a criteria for when an MDR or complaint should give rise to a CAPA. - How frequent reviews of a product line can help you track the root causes of various issues and see the forest through the trees. - Thoughts on risk management and the importance of having a sound risk management process can mitigate, but not eliminate, risk.

The FDA recently decided to discontinue its alternative summary reporting program due to the allegation that millions of medical device reports (MDRs) that included product-related malfunctions were “hidden” and not disclosed to the public. In this episode, Mike Drues of Vascular Sciences joins the show to discuss the pros and cons of the program and what's expected to happen because of its discontinuation. Some of the highlights of the show include: ● Depending on severity of malfunction, the program gave companies a specified amount of time to report it as part of a summary. ● What created controversy, and why was program cancelled? Potentially fake news headlines, checkbox mentality, and regulatory micromanagement. ● With or without a formal FDA program, companies should follow best practices and not wait for regulations to tell them when and what to do. ● Did program “hide” information? Instead, it reduced redundancy and created a more efficient way to report information. ● FDA needs to clearly identify what events need to be reported; encourage companies to investigate and act to minimize or prevent future problems. ● Quality and Regulatory vs. Product Liability Perspective: Documentation is critical or the kiss of death. There's never enough publicly available information. ● Special 501(k) program will replace alternative summary reporting program to allow some companies to submit summary reports via spreadsheets. ● Quality over Quantity: More isn't always better. Program cancellation could do more harm than good and offers opportunity to truly “hide” information.

Juhu! Bei dieser Folge hatten wir tatsächlich ein Publikum, das Fragen mitgebracht hat – vielen lieben Dank! Den Themenwünschen haben wir uns natürlich umgehend gewidmet und sprechen daher über die GRÜNE Meinung zur Wachpolizei und zu Glyphosat. Außerdem sprechen wir über die Weitergabe von Kontaktdaten von Versammlungsanmelderinnen bzw. -anmeldern an das Landesamt für Verfassungsschutz. Zuletzt reden wir über Gästelisten des MDRs und die Frage, ob man Rechte einladen muss.

The FDA recently decided to discontinue its alternative summary reporting program due to the allegation that millions of medical device reports (MDRs) that included product-related malfunctions were “hidden” and not disclosed to the public. In this episode, Mike Drues of Vascular Sciences joins the show to discuss the pros and cons of the program and what’s expected to happen because of its discontinuation. Some of the highlights of the show include: ● Depending on severity of malfunction, the program gave companies a specified amount of time to report it as part of a summary. ● What created controversy, and why was program cancelled? Potentially fake news headlines, checkbox mentality, and regulatory micromanagement. ● With or without a formal FDA program, companies should follow best practices and not wait for regulations to tell them when and what to do. ● Did program “hide” information? Instead, it reduced redundancy and created a more efficient way to report information. ● FDA needs to clearly identify what events need to be reported; encourage companies to investigate and act to minimize or prevent future problems. ● Quality and Regulatory vs. Product Liability Perspective: Documentation is critical or the kiss of death. There’s never enough publicly available information. ● Special 501(k) program will replace alternative summary reporting program to allow some companies to submit summary reports via spreadsheets. ● Quality over Quantity: More isn’t always better. Program cancellation could do more harm than good and offers opportunity to truly “hide” information.

In today's episode we speak with James L Burk. James is The Mars Society's IT Director and is heading up their newest project, MarsVR! In this interview, we discuss the Mars Society's new VR project MarsVR, how it differs from the other VR and AR projects out there, the creation of "Crowd Exploration", photogrammetry mapping for photorealistic VR experiences, the science, citizen-science, STEM, & outreach applications for MarsVR, how MDRS fits in (and a little info on what MDRS is for the uninitiated), and much more!  Check out more of James work at MarsVr.IO and MarsSociety.org Today’s host is Ron Sparkman, Founder of Stardom (FB, Twitter, & IG: @StardomSpace) and co-creator of I Love Mars (FB, Twitter, & IG: @ILoveMarsFans). The show and its contents are presented by The Mars Society and co-produced with I Love Mars Media. Find out more at: Marssociety.org and www.ILoveMars.info

In today's episode we speak with Cassandra Klos (pronounced Klaus). She is a Boston fine art photographer and for the the past three years has been working on a photography project entitled "Mars on Earth". It documents current Mars analog and simulation projects, astronaut training, and space exploration sciences. She served on MDRS Crew 155 as artist-in-residence and crew journalist. She returned to MDRS on Crew 181 as Commander. Find out more from Cassandra on her artist website at www.cassandraklos.com or her Facebook page: Facebook.com/Cassandraklos/ Today’s host is Bill Hargenrader, Founder of I Love Mars Media. The show and its contents are presented by The Mars Society and co-produced with I Love Mars Media. Find out more at: Marssociety.org and www.ILoveMars.info

Today we are going to talk about the connection between complaints, CAPAs, and MDRs. They are all interrelated and they have a big part of developing your company’s culture and affecting your risk management processes. Mike Drues, president of Vascular Sciences and expert on all regulatory matters when it comes to medical device development and production, will be our guest today. Mike is a regular guest on the show, and our listeners know that he really knows his stuff. Be sure to take the time to listen to the show. Some of the highlights of the show include: - The connection between Medical Device Reports (MDRs) and complaints: Does one lead to the other? Sometimes it’s a two-way street. - Whether the current criteria for necessitating a CAPA should be investigated and maybe changed. - Why reframing the negative thought process behind getting a complaint into thinking about it as an opportunity can keep companies thriving and patients safer. - The importance of having a criteria for when an MDR or complaint should give rise to a CAPA. - How frequent reviews of a product line can help you track the root causes of various issues and see the forest through the trees. - Thoughts on risk management and the importance of having a sound risk management process can mitigate, but not eliminate, risk.

Medical device reporting, or MDR: what is it? What isn’t it? Why is it important? The FDA recently released a guidance on medical device reporting, and today we’re talking to Mike Drues, president of Vascular Sciences, about MDR and what it means to medical device companies. Mike is a frequent guest on our show and really knows just about everything there is to know about medical device reporting. Sit back and enjoy today’s episode of the Global Medical Device podcast. Some of the highlights of the show include: ● Why the 2016 FDA guidance on MDR is so important to post-market surveillance. ● What types of events are supposed to be reported, including tips on trying to find the relationship between a device and potential adverse effects. ● The relationship between complaints and MDRs: The MDR is a subset of complaints, but not all complaints will lead to MDRs. ● Mike’s thoughts on the timeliness of the reports when it comes to severity and frequency of the adverse events. ● Why the FDA is putting out this new guidance now, even though the process has been around for a long time. ● Who counts as a manufacturer in terms of the FDA guidance. Mike answers whether dentists, hospitals and physicians must report problems according to the letter of the law vs. the spirit of the law. ● How reprocessors fit into the reporting requirements. ● Mike’s thoughts on why medical device reporting might eventually become a moot point.

Bill Hargenrader, bestselling author of the Mars Journey series, interviews Lucinda Offer, Executive Director of the Mars Society, who has devoted over 10 years to Humans to Mars advocacy and analog research. Lucinda has been an extremely effective Executive Director of the Mars Society USA, a role which she held in the past, and now again appointed in 2015. She has devoted over 10 years to Humans to Mars advocacy and analog research. Positions included leading lobbying efforts in DC, PR Director, and Executive Director. She completed Crew 97 (January 2011) rotation at MDRS as crew roboticist testing NASA/Mars Society tele-operated exploration rover ‘Sandstorm’, as well as four NASA Science expeditions researching Mars analogues to Saudi Arabia (Mars and Titan), Australia (3.5 Bya stromatolites and the Dawn of Life Trail), the Mojave (tardigrades), and New Zealand (geothermal vents). Backgrounds in Geology, Design, and Science Communication. Lucinda also combines those talents to teach Physical and Earth science concepts using visual communication. She continues her efforts with publishing Mars-oriented educational materials, first published in 2010. The show and its contents are presented by The Mars Society and co-produced with I Love Mars Media. Find out more at: www.marssociety.org and www.ILoveMars.info

Purpose: Cerebral autosomal dominant arteriopathy with subcortical infarcts and leukoencephalopathy (CADASIL) is a cerebral small vessel disease caused by mutations of the NOTCH3 gene. Marked variations in disease severity have raised the hypothesis that non-genetic factors may modulate the expressivity of the phenotype. The aim of the current study was to evaluate whether atherosclerosis, assessed by carotid duplex ultrasonography, is associated with variations in the clinical and MRI phenotype of CADASIL. Methods: Data from 144 consecutive patients enrolled in an ongoing prospective cohort study were collected. Degree of disability was assessed by the modified Rankin Scale, that of cognitive impairment by the Mattis Dementia Rating Scale (MDRS). The total volume of the brain, of lacunar lesions and of white matter hyperintensities, the number of cerebral microhemorrhages, and parameters derived from histograms of apparent diffusion coefficient were measured on cerebral MRI. Atherosclerosis was evaluated by B-mode ultrasonography of carotid arteries. Both the carotid intima-media thickness cIMT) and the presence of carotid plaques or stenosis were recorded. Results: Higher cIMT was found to be independently associated with lower MDRS scores when this score was less than the quartile limit (p = 0.02). Only a trend for a positive association was detected between cIMT and the Rankin score (p = 0.06). There was no significant association between carotid markers and the occurrence of stroke or MRI parameters except for diffusion data. The mean and peak values of MRI diffusion histograms were found positively associated with the presence of plaques (p < 0.01). Conclusion: The results suggest that the severity of atherosclerosis may relate to cognitive decline in CADASIL and that this effect is possibly related to the degree of microstructural cerebral tissue lesions. Longitudinal studies are needed to confirm these results. Copyright (C) 2010 S. Karger AG, Basel