Podcasts about Microsoft PowerPoint

Episode 211 In this episode of the Observers Notebook podcast, host Tim Robertson talks to the ALPO member Jim Tomney on the upcoming Virtual ALPO Conference. The dates will be Friday and Saturday, July 25/26, 2025. The conference will also be Live Streamed on the ALPO YouTube channel. As a "virtual" event, this year's ALPO conference will NOT be an in-person event. This way, you can participate from the comfort of your own home or office. The conference times for both days will be from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Pacific Time (1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern Time) and allow for seven paper presentation sessions each day with short breaks on both days. All presentations be limited to approximately 25 minutes each with a few minutes left for audience questions. The schedule of presentations will be posted about one week prior to the event. The ALPO board of directors meeting will be held on Friday, July 25 at 4 p.m. PT (7 p.m. ET). The ALPO Conference is free and open to anyone to attend; however, all presenters must be current members of the ALPO. Digital memberships start at only $22 a year. To join online, go to https://www.alpo-astronomy.org/ALPO/Home/Join. Following a break after the last paper presentation on Saturday afternoon, July 26, will be presentation of the annual Walter Haas Observer Award. This will be followed by our keynote speaker at 4 pm. PT (7 p.m. ET). With the award presentation and keynote speech usually occurring at the traditional Saturday evening dinner, we suggest that you enjoy your own meal during these last two conference events. Door prizes will be awarded following the Keynote address. No purchase necessary. The only hardware required along with your computer are a webcam and microphone. If you will be using a laptop computer, both are already built into your system. An online chat feature will allow type-in text comments for questions once the conference gets underway. All presenters must already have ZOOM installed on their computer prior to the conference dates. ZOOM is free and available at https://zoom.us/ The ZOOM links will be e-mailed out on Thursday, July 24. Send a request to cometman@cometman.net There will be a separate ZOOM meeting set up for each day. The ZOOM virtual (online) meeting room will open 15 minutes prior to the beginning of each day's activities. Upon logging into ZOOM you will be placed into a ‘waiting room' until the meeting begins, and your microphone will be muted automatically. Those individuals wishing to present a paper should submit their request to Tim Robertson at cometman@cometman.net no later than July 1st, along with a brief bio about themselves and a summary of their presentation. Microsoft PowerPoint is the preferred method of visual presentation along with an audio explanation. Contact Information: ALPO Website: http://www.alpo-astronomy.org/ Tim Robertson: cometman@cometman.net ZOOM: https://zoom.us/ ALPO YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/AssociationofLunarandPlanetaryObservers ALPO Podcast- The Observers Notebook: https://soundcloud.com/observersnotebook For more information you can visit the ALPO web site at: www.alpo-astronomy.org/ You can also support this podcast at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ObserversNotebook Listen to the podcast on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/observersnotebook Subscribe on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/observers-notebook-the-alpo-podcast/id1199301885?mt=2 I want to thank the Producer of this podcast, Steve Siedentop and Michael Moyer for their generous support of the Observers Notebook. Our Patreons: Jerry White Jason Inman Bob Lunsford Steve Seidentop Stephen Bennett Michael Moyer Shawn Dilles Damian Allis Carl Hergenrother Michael McShan Michael Blake Nick Evetts Stan Sienkiewicz Carl Hergenrother Stan Sienkiewicz John Rogers Jim McCarthy Stanley McMahan

This episode is giving notes of templates and orange peel. Yes, this episode has three messages that involve templates in three different M365 experiences. SharePoint page templates page gets revamped. PowerPoint offers Copilot as a slide deck template. Teams will let you create your own meeting templates.  Thanks for joining us. Let us know what your picks were for the week.  - Microsoft Project for the web and Project in Teams will retire and redirect to Planner for the web and Planner in Teams  - Microsoft Edge: New location for Edge profile in the toolbar  - Microsoft Teams: Send messages to attendees in the meeting lobby with Lobby chat  - Modern SharePoint: New Template gallery and 50+ out-of-the-box page templates  - Microsoft Teams Premium: New personal meeting templates  - Microsoft PowerPoint for Windows: Create a presentation with Microsoft Copilot from the PowerPoint Backstage view  Join Daniel Glenn and Darrell as a Service Webster as they cover the latest messages in the Microsoft 365 Message Center.   Check out Darrell & Daniel's own YouTube channels at:  Darrell - https://youtube.com/modernworkmentor  Daniel - https://youtube.com/DanielGlenn   

Nach Skype/Skype for business haben wir noch ein Relikt in der Microsoft Welt entdeckt und beschäftigen uns heute damit, was mit Microsoft Sway eigentlich passiert ist. Kennst du das noch? Verwendest du es weiterhin und was ist der Unterschied zu Microsoft PowerPoint?

Discover Thumzup: The Uber for Social Media Advertising Thumzupmedia.com About the Guest(s): Robert Steele is the CEO of Thumzup, an innovative advertising platform often described as the "Uber for advertising." As an experienced tech entrepreneur, Robert has successfully led several technology ventures, raising more than $30 million in financing across three startups. With a background in computer programming dating back to his early childhood, Steele has consistently demonstrated a knack for leveraging emerging technologies and adapting them into business opportunities. Prior to Thumzup, he made significant strides in pioneering mobile technology, such as creating software that allowed users to view Microsoft PowerPoint and AOL MapQuest on mobile devices. Episode Summary: Join Chris Voss on a thrilling journey into the world of innovative advertising with Robert Steele, CEO of Thumzup. With a colorful background in technology and entrepreneurism, Steele shares insights into his journey from computer geek to industry trailblazer. This episode uncovers the unique approach Thumzup takes in redefining advertising by simplifying the process for brands to engage customers through social media, offering monetary incentives to everyday users for sharing posts. This intersection of modern advertising, technology, and gig economy presents an exciting future for both businesses and consumers. In this episode, Chris and Robert delve into the vision driving Thumzup, unveiling strategies that enable gig economy workers to capitalize on their social media presence. They discuss how Thumzup empowers anyone to become a brand ambassador, providing new revenue streams by getting paid for social media posts about brands they love. The conversation also touches on the challenges faced by startups, lessons learned from the ever-evolving tech landscape, and the importance of resilience and balance in the entrepreneurial journey. Through the lens of Steele's career, the episode provides actionable insights for budding entrepreneurs interested in the technology and advertising sectors. Key Takeaways: Thumzup offers an innovative platform likened to Uber for advertising, paying users to post about brands they enjoy on social media. The app bridges the gap between consumers and brands, bringing the power of word-of-mouth advertising into the digital age. Steele's entrepreneurial success is attributed to his persistence and adaptability, showcasing how important resilience is in overcoming challenges. By allowing everyday users to earn money, Thumzup taps into the trend of the gig economy and society's interest in multiple income streams. The platform focuses on smaller influencer engagements, emphasizing authenticity and trust, and providing opportunities even for those with smaller followings. Notable Quotes: "We think of Thumzup as like Uber for advertising." "If you think about it today, you're gonna interact with more, probably more than a dozen brands… Imagine if a significant amount of those businesses and brands were willing to pay you to just make a social media post about 'em." "We're essentially aggregating that and making it so that they can get the effect by more posts, made by people with smaller follower accounts." "My number one advice is don't give up. That's the biggest thing." "We really have invested a lot in Instagram and there's a risk, but we think we can ride that wave."

Today, Brennan and Meth discuss how amazing the One Piece Fan Letter episode was and how absolutely terrible Blue Lock Season2 has been. A truly historic collapse. Also studios are bidding for Kagurabachi, so all the memes ended up working in the end.Send us a text

What do lizards have to do with product growth? In this episode, Gojko Adzic reveals how unusual user behaviors can unlock massive opportunities for product innovation. Discover the four steps to mastering "Lizard Optimization" and learn how you can turn strange user actions into game-changing insights. Overview In this episode of the Agile Mentors Podcast, host Brian Milner chats with Gojko Adzic about his new book, Lizard Optimization. Gojko explains the concept of finding product growth signals in strange user behaviors, sharing examples where unexpected user actions led to product breakthroughs. He outlines a four-step process for optimizing products by learning, zeroing in, removing obstacles, and double-checking. Gojko also discusses helpful tools like session recorders and observability tools that can enhance product development by uncovering and addressing unique user behaviors. References and resources mentioned in the show: Gojko Adzic 50% OFF Lizard Optimization by Gojko Adzic Mismatch: How Inclusion Shapes Design by Kat Holmes Trustworthy Online Experiments by Ron Kohavi Advanced Certified Scrum Product Owner® Subscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast Join the Agile Mentors Community Want to get involved? This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input. Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one. Got an Agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us at podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com This episode’s presenters are: Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He's passionate about making a difference in people's day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work. Gojko Adzic is an award-winning software consultant and author, specializing in agile and lean quality improvement, with expertise in impact mapping, agile testing, and behavior-driven development. A frequent speaker at global software conferences, Gojko is also a co-creator of MindMup and Narakeet, and has helped companies worldwide enhance their software delivery, from large financial institutions to innovative startups. Auto-generated Transcript: Brian (00:00) Welcome in Agile Mentors. We're back for another episode of the Agile Mentors podcast. I'm with you as always, Brian Milner. And today, very special guest we have with us. have Mr. Goiko Atshich with us. I hope I said that correctly. Did I say it correctly? Close enough. Okay. Well, welcome in, Goiko. Glad to have you here. Gojko (00:15) Close enough, close enough. Brian (00:21) Very, very, very happy to have Goiko with us. If you're not familiar with Goiko's name, you probably are familiar with some of his work. One of the things I was telling him that we teach in our advanced product owner class every time is impact mapping, which is a tool that Goiko has written about and kind of come up with on his own as well. Gojko (00:21) Thank you very much for inviting me. Brian (00:47) But today we're having him on because he has a new book coming out called Lizard Optimization, Unlock Product Growth by Engaging Long Tail Users. And I really wanted to talk to him about that and help him explain, have him explain to us a little bit about this idea, this new concept that his new book is about. So, Goiko, let's talk about it. Lizard Optimization, in a nutshell, what do you mean by that? What is it? Gojko (01:14) We're going to jump into that, but I just need to correct one of the things you said. I think it's very, very important. You said I came up with impact mapping and I didn't. I just wrote a popular book about that. And it's very important to credit people who actually came up with that. It's kind of the in -use design agency in Sweden. And I think, you know, they should get the credit for it. I literally just wrote a popular book. Brian (01:19) Okay. Gotcha. Gotcha, gotcha. Apologies for that incorrect. Thank you for making that correction. So lizard optimization. Gojko (01:44) So, lizard optimization. Good. So, lizard optimization is an idea to find signals for product ideas and product development ideas in strange user behaviors. When you meet somebody who does something you completely do not understand, why on earth somebody would do something like that? Brian (02:03) Okay. Gojko (02:11) and it looks like it's not done by humans, it looks like it's done by somebody who follows their own lizard logic, using stuff like that as signals to improve our products. Not just for lizards, but for everybody. So the idea came from a very explosive growth phase for one of the products I'm working on, where it... had lots of people doing crazy things I could never figure out why they were doing it. For example, one of the things the tool does is it helps people create videos from PowerPoints. You put some kind of your voiceover in the speaker notes, the tool creates a video by using text to speech engines to create voiceover from the speaker notes, aligns everything and it's all kind of for you. People kept creating blank videos and paying me for this. I was thinking about why on earth would somebody be creating blank videos and it must be a bug and if it's a bug then they want their money back and they'll complain. So I chased up a few of these people and I tried to kind of understand what's going on because I originally thought we have a bug in the development pipeline for the videos. So... I started asking like, you know, I'm using some, I don't know, Google slides or, you know, keynote or whatever to produce PowerPoints. Maybe there's a bug how we read that. And the person, no, no, we, know, official Microsoft PowerPoint. They said, well, can you please open the PowerPoint you uploaded? Do you see anything on the slides when you open it? And the person, no, it's blank. Right? Okay, so it's blank for you as well. I said, yeah. So. Brian (03:48) Yeah. Gojko (03:54) What's going on? so what I've done is through UX interviews and iterating with users and research, we've made it very, very easy to do advanced configuration on text -to -speech. And it was so much easier than the alternative things that people were creating blank PowerPoints just to use the text -to -speech engines so they can then extract the audio track from it. Brian (03:54) Yeah, why? Gojko (04:23) and then use that and it was this whole mess of obstacles I was putting in front of people to get the good audio. It wasn't the original intention of the tool. It wasn't the original value, but people were getting unintended value from it. And then I ended up building just a very simple screen for people to upload the Word document instead of PowerPoints. And it was much faster for users to do that. A month later, there was many audio files being built as videos. Two months later, audio... production overtook video production. then at the moment, people are building many, many more audio files than video files on the platform. So it was an incredible growth because of this kind of crazy insight of what people were doing. kind of usually, at least kind of in the products I worked on before, when you have somebody abusing the product, product management fight against it. There's a wonderful story about this in... Founders at work a book by Jessica Livingston and she talks about this kind of group of super smart people in late 90s who Came up with a very very efficient Cryptography algorithm and a way to compute the cryptography so they can run it on low -power devices like Paul pilots Paul pilots were you know like mobile phones, but in late 90s and Then they had to figure out, how do we monetize this? Why would anybody want to do this? So they came up with the idea to do money transfer pumping, Palm pilots, you know, why not? And kind of the built a website. This was the late nineties as a way of just demoing this software to people who didn't have a Palm pilot device next to them. The idea was that you'd kind of see it on the website, learn about it, then maybe download the Palm pilot app and use it in anger. People kept just using the website, they're not downloading the Palm Pilot app. So the product management really wasn't happy. And they were trying to push people from the website to the Palm Pilot app. were trying to, they were fighting against people using this for money transfer on the web and even prohibiting them from using the logo and advertising it. They had this whole thing where nobody could explain why users were using the website because it was a demo thing. It was not finished. It was not sexy. It was just silly. And Jessica kind of talks to one of these people who insists that it was totally inexplicable. Nobody could understand it. But then a bit later, they realized that the website had one and half million users and that the Pongpilot app had 12 ,000 users. So they kind of decided, well, that's where the product is really. And that's like today, people know them as PayPal. They're one of the biggest payment processes in the world because kind of, you know, they realized this is where the product is going. And I think in many, many companies, people Brian (07:03) Ha ha. Gojko (07:18) stumble upon these things as happy accidents. And I think there's a lot more to it. We can deliberately optimize products by looking for unintended usage and not fighting it, just not fighting it. just understand this is what people are getting as value. And I think for me as a solo product founder and developer and product manager on it, One of the really interesting things is when you have somebody engaging with your product in an unexpected way, most of the difficult work for that user is already done. That person knows about you, they're on your website or they're using your product, the marketing and acquisition work is done. But something's preventing them from achieving their goals or they're achieving some value that you did not really know that they're going to achieve. you know, that's something the product can do to help them and remove these obstacles to success. So that's kind of what lizard optimization is making this process more systematic rather than relying on happy accidents. And by making it more systematic, then we can help product management not fight it and skip this whole phase of trying to fight against our users and claim that users are stupid or non -technical or... They don't understand the product, but they're trying to figure out, well, that's what the real goals are. And then following that. Brian (08:47) That's awesome. So the pivot, right? The pivot from here's what we thought our problem was we were solving to now here's what we're actually solving and we should organize around this actual problem, right? Gojko (09:02) or here's what we're going to solve additionally. This is the problem we've solved, but hey, there's this problem as well. And then the product can grow by solving multiple problems for people and solving related problems and solving it for different groups of people, for example. And that's the really interesting thing because I think if you have a product that's already doing something well for your users and a subset of them are misusing it in some way, then kind of... Brian (09:04) Yeah. Gojko (09:30) The product might already be optimized for the majority of users, but there might be a new market somewhere else. So there might be a different market where we can help kind of a different group of users and then the product can grow. Brian (09:43) Yeah, I like to focus on the user. There's an exercise that we'll do in one of our product owner classes where we have a fake product that is a smart refrigerator. And one of the exercises we try to get them to brainstorm the different kinds of users that they might have for it. And one of the things that always comes out in that class is as they're going through and trying to describe the types of users, they inevitably hit to this crossroads where they start to decide Well, yes, we're thinking of this as a home product, something for people to use in their homes. But then the idea crosses their mind, well, what about commercial kitchens? What about people who might use this in another setting? And it's always an interesting conversation to say, well, now you've got a strategic choice to make, because you can target both. You can target one. You can say, we're ignoring the other and we're only going in this direction. So to me, I think that's kind of one of the interesting crossroad points is to say, how do I know when it's time to not just say, great, we have this other customer segment that we didn't know about, but actually we should start to pivot towards that customer segment and start to really target them. Gojko (11:03) Yeah, think that's a fundamental question of product development, isn't it? Do you keep true to your vision even if it's not coming out or if something else is there that's kind more important than I think? For me, there's a couple of aspects to that. One is, laser focus is really important to launch a product. You can't launch a product by targeting... the whole market and targeting a niche type, figuring out, you know, user personas, figuring out like really, really, this is the product who we think the product, this is the group who we think the product is for and giving them a hundred percent of what they need is much better than giving 2 % to everybody because then the product is irrelevant. But then to grow the product, we need to kind of grow the user base as well. And I think one of the things that... is interesting to look at and this comes from a book called Lean Analytics. It's one of my kind of favorite product management books is to look at the frequency and urgency of usage. If you have a group that's kind of using your product, a subgroup that's using your product very frequently compared to everybody else, that might be kind of the place where you want to go. The more frequently, the more urgently people reach for your product when they have this problem. the more likely they are going to be a good market for it. with kind of another product that I've launched in 2013, we originally thought it's going to be a product for professional users. And we aimed at the professional users. And then we found that a subcategory that we didn't really expect, were kind of teachers and children in schools. we're using it a lot more frequently than professional users. And then we started simplifying the user interface significantly so that it can be used by children. And it's a very, very popular tool in schools now. We are not fighting against other professional tools. We were kind of really one of the first in the education market there. And it's still a very popular tool in the education market because we figured a subgroup that's using it very frequently. Brian (13:14) Hmm. Yeah, that's awesome. How do you know when, you know, what kind of threshold do you look for to determine that, this is, because, you know, in your book, you're talking about, you know, behaviors that are not normal, right? People using your product in a way that you didn't anticipate. And what kind of threshold do you look for to that says, hey, it's worth investigating this? You know, I've got this percentage or this number of people who are using it in this strange way. At what point do you chase that down? Gojko (13:49) I think it's wrong to look at the percentages there. I think it's wrong to look at the percentages because then you get into the game of trying to justify economically helping 0 .1 % of the users. And that's never going to happen because what I like about this is an idea from Microsoft's Inclusive Design and the work of Kat Holmes who wrote a book called Mismatch on Brian (13:52) Okay. Gojko (14:17) assistive technologies and inclusive design for disabled people. And she talks about how it's never ever ever going to be economically justified to optimize a product to help certain disabilities because there's just not enough of them. And there's a lovely example from Microsoft where, Microsoft Inclusive Design Handbook where they talk about three types of, Brian (14:34) Yeah. Gojko (14:44) disabilities, one are permanent. So you have like people without an arm or something like that. And I'm going to kind of throw some numbers out now, order of magnitude stuff. I have these details in the book and there's kind of the micro -inclusive design handbook. Let's say at the moment, the 16 ,000 people in the U .S. without one arm or with a disabled arm. And then you have these kind of situational disabilities where because of an occupation like you have a bartender who needs to carry something all the time or a worker who does it, one arm is not available and they only have one arm to work on and this temporary like a mother carrying a child or something like that. So the other two groups are order of magnitude 20 -30 million. We're not, by making the software work well with one hand, we're not helping 16 ,000 people, we are helping 50 million people. But you don't know that you're helping 50 million people if you're just thinking about like 16 ,000. I think they have this kind of, one of the key ideas of inclusive design is solve for one, kind of help, design for one, but solve for many. So we are actually helping many, many people there. So think when you figure out that somebody is doing something really strange with your product, you're not helping just that one person. Brian (15:45) Right, right. Hmm. Gojko (16:13) you're helping a whole class of your users by making the software better, removing the obstacles to success. this is where I, you know, going back to the PowerPoint thing I mentioned, once we started removing obstacles for people to build the audios quickly, lots of other people started using the product and people started using the product in a different way. And I think this is a lovely example of what Bruce Torazzini talks about is the complexity paradox because He's a famous UX designer and he talks about how once you give people a product, their behavior changes as a result of having the product. So the UX research we've done before there is a product or there is a feature is not completely relevant, but it's a changed context because he talks about people have a certain amount of time to do a task. And then when they have a tool to complete the task faster, they can take on a more complicated task or they can take on an additional task or do something else. I think removing obstacles to use a success is really important. Not because we're helping 0 .1 % of people who we don't understand, but because we can then improve the product for everybody. And I think that's kind of the magic of lizard optimization in a sense, where if we find these things where somebody's really getting stuck. but if we help them not get stuck, then other people will use the product in a much better way. And I think this is, know, the name lizard optimization comes from this article by Scott Alexander, who talks about the lizard man's constant in research. And the article talks about his experiences with a survey that combined some demographic and psychological data. So they were looking at where you live and what your nationality is and what gender you are and then how you respond to certain psychological questions. he said, like there's about 4 % of the answers they could not account for. And one person wrote American is gender. Several people listed Martian as nationality and things like that. some of these, he says some of these things will be people who didn't really understand the question. they were distracted, they were doing something else, or they understood the question but they filled in the wrong box because, know, the thick thumbs and small screens, or they were kind of malicious and just, you know, wanted to see what happens. when you kind of add these people together, they're not an insignificant group. kind of, he says 4%. And if... we can help these people, at least some of these people, and say reduce churn by 1%. That can compound growth. Reducing churn, keeping people around for longer is an incredible way to kind of unlock growth. going back to what we were talking about, some people might be getting stuck because they don't understand the instructions. Some people might be getting stuck because they're using the product in a way you didn't expect. And some people might just like not have the mental capacity to use it the way you expected them to be used. But if we can help these people along, then normal users can use it much, easier. And you mentioned a smart fridge. I still remember there was this one wonderful bug report we had for my other product, which is a collaboration tool. we had a bug report a while ago. that the software doesn't work when it's loaded on a fridge. And it's like, well, it was never intended to be loaded on a fridge. I have no idea how you loaded it on a fridge. It's a mind mapping diagramming tool. It's intended to be used on large screens. Where does a fridge come in? And then we started talking to this person. This was before the whole kind of COVID and work from home disaster. The user was a busy mother and she was kind of trying to collaborate with her colleagues while making breakfast. breakfast for kids and kind of running around the kitchen she wasn't able to kind of pay attention to the laptop or a phone but her fridge had a screen so she loaded the software on the fridge and was able to kind of pay attention to collaboration there and you know we of course didn't optimize the software to run on fridges that's ridiculous but we realized that some people will be using it without a keyboard and without a mouse and then we kind of restructured the toolbar, we made it so that you can use it on devices that don't have a keyboard and then the whole tablet thing exploded and now you get completely different users that don't have keyboards and things like that. I think that's where I think is looking at percentages is a losing game because then you start saying, but 0 .1 % of people use this. But yeah, I think lizard optimization is about using these signals to improve the products for everybody. Brian (21:30) That's a great example. I love that example because you're absolutely right. You're not trying to necessarily solve that one problem because you don't anticipate there's going to be a lot of people who are going to want to run that software on a fridge. However, the takeaway you had from that of, we can do this for people who don't have a keyboard or a mouse. There's another way that they might operate this that could apply to lots of different devices and lots of different scenarios. Now we're talking about a much bigger audience. Now we're talking about opening this up to larger segments of the population. I love that. I think that's a great example. I know you talk about that there's kind of a process for this. Help us understand. You don't have to give away the whole candy story here from the book, but help us kind of understand in broad, terms what kind of process people follow to try to chase these things down. Gojko (22:26) So there's like a four step process that's crystallized for me. And the book is kind of more as a, like a proposal or a process. It's something that works for me and I'm hoping that other people will try it out like that. So it might not necessarily stay like that in a few years if we talk again. And I've narrowed it down to four steps and kind of the four steps start with letters L, Z, R and D. Lizard. And it's kind of so learn how people are misusing your products, zero in on one area, on one behavior change you want to improve, then remove obstacles to use a success and then double check that what you've done actually created the impact you expected to make. I think kind of when we look at people who follow their own logic or people who follow some lizard logic you don't really understand, by definition they're doing something strange. your idea of helping them might not necessarily be effective or it might not go all the way or it might. So double checking at the end that people are actually now doing what you expect them to do or doing something better is really, really, really important. And then using signals from that to improve the kind of feedback loop is critical. I had this one case where people were getting stuck on a payment format entering tax details and The form was reasonably well explained. There was an example in the forum how to enter your tax ID and people were constantly getting stuck. A small percentage of people was getting stuck on it. However, I don't want to lose a small percentage of people that want to pay me on the payment form. So I thought, well, how about if I remove that field from there? I speed it up for everybody and then I can guide them later into entering the tax details to generate an invoice. I thought that was a brilliant idea. tested it with a few users. Everybody loved it, so I released it. And then a week later, I realized that, yes, I've sold it for the people that were getting confused, but I've ended up confusing a totally different group of people that expects the tax fields there. So the net effect was negative. then I went back to the original form. so there's lots of these things where people don't necessarily behave the way you think they will. Brian (24:38) Hahaha. Gojko (24:48) Ron Kohavi has a wonderful book about that called Trustworthy Online Experiments. And he has data from Slack, from Microsoft, from Booking .com and... The numbers are depressive. on one hand, the numbers range from 10 to 30, 40 % success rate for people's ideas. And if leading companies like that do things that don't pan out two thirds of the time, then we have to be honest building our products and say, well, maybe this idea is going to work out, maybe not. Brian (25:03) Hahaha. Wow. Gojko (25:30) the more experimental the population is, the more risky that is. think monitoring and capturing weird user behaviors, capturing errors helps you understand that people are getting stuck. as you said, you don't want to follow everybody. There's going to be a lot of noise there. We need to extract signals from the noise. That's what the second step is about, focusing on one specific thing we want to improve. Then, try to remove obstacles and then double -checking that we've actually removed them. That's the four steps. And there's like a shorter version of all the four steps. It's easier to remember. It's listen alert, zooming, rescue them, and then double check at the end. that's again, LZRD. Brian (26:13) That's awesome. Yeah, I love the process and I love the kind of steps there. Are there tools that you recommend for this that are easier to try to determine these things or chase them down or are there tools that you find are more helpful? Gojko (26:32) So there's lots of tools today for things like A -B testing and looking at experiments and things that are very helpful to do this scale. And it's kind of especially useful for the last step. In terms of kind of focusing and things like that, the five stages of growth from the linear analytics are a good tool. Impact mapping is a good tool. Kind of any focusing product management technique that says, well, these are the business goals we're working on now, or these are the kind of user goals we're working on now. out of, know, 50 lizards we found last week, these three lizards seem to be kind of in that area. And for the first step, spotting when people are getting stuck, there's a bunch of tools that are interesting, like session recorders for web products. There's one from Microsoft called Clarity that's free. There's another called Full Story that's quite expensive. There's a couple of open source one, one is packaged within Matomo analytics application. There's a bunch of these other things. Any kind of observability or monitoring tool is also very useful for this because we can spot when people are getting stuck. One of the things I found particularly helpful is logging all user errors. When a user does something to cause an error condition in a product, the product of course tells them like, know, an error happened. But then... logging it and analyzing that information in the back is really critical. for something like that, people sometimes use web analytics tools or any kind of product analytics. I think what's going to be interesting in the next couple of years, and I think if people start doing this more, is we'll see. more like these technical exception analytics tracking tools mixed with this because most of the product analytics are showing people what they expect to see, not what they don't expect to see. And I'll just give you an example of this way. was really helpful. So I've mentioned the screen where people can upload the Word documents. Occasionally people would select weird file types. So they'll select images, they'll select, I don't know, what else. Brian (28:31) Yeah. Gojko (28:49) Sometimes I guess that's a result of, know, a fat finger press or somebody not selecting the right thing. I have a not insignificant percentage of users every day that try to upload Android package files into a text -to -speech reader. Android package files and application files, I don't know what the right way is to read out an Android application. My best guess is people are doing that. as a, you know, these things where you drop a USB in front of an office and somebody kind of mistakenly plugs it in. So maybe they're hoping that I'll know the Android application on my phone just because they've uploaded it. I don't know, but a small percentage of users was trying to upload files that had SRT and VTT extensions, which are subtitle files. And they were not supported, but Brian (29:31) Yeah. Gojko (29:45) I kept getting information that people are uploading those types of files. And then I said, well, this is interesting because it's a text to speech system. People are uploading subtitle files, there's text in, so why don't I just ignore the timestamps and read the text? I can do that. And I started supporting that. And then some people started complaining that, well, the voice is reading it slower than the subtitles. I said, well, yes, because... Brian (30:11) Ha Gojko (30:12) You know, you're uploading subtitles that were read by an actor in a movie. This is a voice that's reading it at their speed. And then we started talking and it turns out that these people were doing it for corporate educational videos where they have a video in English, they need it in French, German, Spanish and all the else, but they don't want to kind of re -edit the video. They just want an alternate audio track. Okay, I mean, I have the timestamps, we can speed up or slow down the audio, it's not a big deal. And we've done that and this was one of the most profitable features ever. Like a very small percentage of the users need it, but those that need it produce hundreds of thousands of audio files because they translate the corporate training videos. And now, you know, we're getting into that numbers game. If I said, you know, there's like 0 .1 % of people are uploading subtitle files. Brian (30:58) Yeah. Gojko (31:07) then it doesn't matter. if we start thinking about, this is potentially interesting use case, it creates growth on its own because then people find you. And I think my product was the first that was actually doing synchronous subtitles. Competitors are doing it now as well. But it opened the massive, massive market for us. And people, you know, I got there by monitoring user errors, by, you know, the fact that somebody uploaded a file that had an unsupported extension. That was our insight. Brian (31:38) Wow, that's really cool. That's a great story. This is fascinating stuff. And it makes me want to dive deeper into the book and read through it again. But I really appreciate you coming on and sharing this with us, Goiko. This is good stuff. Again, the book is called, Lizard Optimization, Unlock Product Growth by Engaging Long Tail Users. And if I'm right, we talked about this a little bit before. We're going to offer a discount to to the listeners, Gojko (32:07) Yes, we will give you a listen as a 50 % discount on the ebook. the ebook is available from Lean Pub. If you get it from the discount URL that I'll give you, then you'll get a 50 % discount immediately. Brian (32:24) Awesome. So we'll put that in our show notes. If you're interested in that, you can find the show notes. That's a great deal, 50 % off the book and it's good stuff. well, I just, I can't thank you enough. Thanks for making time and coming on and talking this through your book. Gojko (32:40) Thank you, it was lovely to chat to you.

Stephen M. Yoss, Jr., is a visionary CPA, a contributor to CPA Trendlines, and the entrepreneurial mind behind CPE Today. Get more Steve Yoss at cpatrendlines.com here: https://cpa.click/steve-yoss Starting his tech journey at age 10, Stephen quickly progressed to establish his own IT company at 13 and began crafting software by 15. He holds a dual degree in Accountancy and International Business from Loyola Marymount, complemented by a Master of Science in Information Systems and Technology with a focus on Geographic Information Systems from Claremont Graduate University.Since 2017, Stephen has been at the helm of CPE Today's parent company, Devmatics LLC. He specializes in developing tailored software solutions, mobile apps, and sophisticated automation systems to solve complex, critical challenges for a variety of clients. His innovative approach to technology was first applied at his family's firm, Yoss & Allen, where he revolutionized their technological infrastructure.As an authoritative speaker and prolific author, Stephen is a powerhouse in professional education, presenting at over 100 events annually and having authored more than 50 CPE courses. His sessions, packed with expertise and actionable insights, cover critical technology topics from cloud computing to preventing data breaches, artificial intelligence, automation, and empowering professionals across the globe.Stephen's expertise in the realm of pyrotechnics is equally impressive. As a licensed pyrotechnician, he's contributed to some of the nation's most memorable fireworks displays, including the Macy's July 4th Spectacular and the Golden Gate Bridge's 75th Anniversary celebrations, the annual Burning Man event, and many other shows around the country. His precision and creativity illuminate the sky, showcasing his dedication to this explosive art form.When he's not developing software, enlightening professionals, or lighting up the sky with fireworks, Stephen indulges in his passions for music, community service, and the great outdoors. His commitment to community and adventure is evident, whether he's at Burning Man or volunteering in his hometown of Big Bear Lake, CA.Dive deeper into Stephen's blend of technological innovation, educational contribution, and pyrotechnic artistry at https://yoss.io.

Vaishali Dialani is a multi-award-winning Customer Experience professional in the Middle East, has been recognized as a CXPA Emerging Leader, a finalist for CX Leader of the Year 2023, and has been ranked among the top CXMStars worldwide in both 2023 and 2024. She is a firm believer in the power of knowledge sharing to foster growth and awareness within the CX community.  With over eight years of experience as a data-savvy experienced designer, research specialists, and strategic change-maker, Vaishali passionately advocates for the integration of emotions and efficiency through customer experience research, product insights and communication. She currently serves as a Senior CX Strategist at Konabos, a consulting firm specializing in digital transformation.   Her commitment to knowledge sharing is evident through her involvement in podcasts, blogs, guest lectures, speaking engagements, and training programs. Additionally, she conducts leadership training workshops for professionals with low literacy levels, making a positive impact through collaborative efforts across diverse spheres.    Questions · Now, we always like to start off by giving our guests an opportunity as I mentioned before to share a little bit about your journey from where you are were to where you are today. · Can you share with us just a little bit about your culture, how customer experience is. If you were to give it a score, maybe on a scale of one to 10 with 10 being the best, what score would you give it and just any insights that you think would be beneficial to our listeners. · What would you say have been as a leader in the different organizations that you've worked in, maybe one or two things that you believe has made or contributed to your success in driving CX design and CX delivery? ·How have employees across different industries adapted to the integration of technologies, specifically in artificial intelligence, like ChatGPT, to enhance customer service experiences? What future trends do you predict for technology's role in CX, and do you believe human interaction will remain vital in this space? · Can you also share with us what's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your business? · Can you also share with our listeners, maybe one or two books that have had a great impact on you? It could be a book that you read a very long time ago, or even one that you've read recently, but it has had a great impact on you. · Can you also share with us what's one thing that's going on in your life right now that you are really excited about, either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people. · What would you say are maybe two or three emerging trends that you believe will continue? Or will emerge over the next couple of months? · Where can listeners find you online? · Now, we always like to ask our guests before we wrap our episodes up, do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adverted adversity or challenge, you'll tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you get the real or you get off track, a quote kind of helps to get you back on track.   Highlights  Vaishali's Journey Me: Now, we always like to start off by giving our guests an opportunity as I mentioned before to share a little bit about your journey from where you were to where you are today.   Vaishali shared that she started her career back in 2015, right after she graduated from Heriot-Watt University in Dubai, and just like any other graduate, she was like, “I don't know what I want to do with my life. I think I'll start with marketing.” Right quickly as she dived into marketing in the advertising world, it was chaotic, busy, a great learning curve, she learned what she liked. But most importantly, she learned what she didn't like. And that's where her analytical journey began from, she understood that it's important to know and work on your skills that you like. She paved her way to get her MBA done, and learn more about research and analytics, and then dived into a CRM officer where she picked up different aspects of what experience means, how you're helping small businesses grow, what is innovation and research, it's a very cool experience.  And then she moved back to Dubai where she joined her FinTech company as the head of customer engagement. Now, this was a whole new world for her while she already knew marketing and analytics, but now running campaigns and media was super interesting. And just like in any other startup, you have to wear many other hats was very interesting, because normally she would play so many different roles, she had different opportunities where you would design experiences for low income migrant workers in the UAE.  It was almost like her postgraduate degree or a PhD, she would say, at no money, where she learned a lot of things. And that's where her curiosity for CX began, when she was designing experiences and working with the ideal. One thing paved to another and then she dived into CX, and she's been in the industry for almost four to five years now.   Me: All right, that is a wonderful journey.   Vaishali's Views on Customer Experience in Her Culture  Me: Now, throughout your journey, Vaishali, could you share with our listeners, I know you mentioned the different industries that you've worked in, but seeing that you've been in the CX space for a while, and our show is about navigating the customer experience, maybe you could share with our listeners a little bit about what your views are on customer experience. And I know you are in a different part of the world. And I know culture and behaviour varies depending on where you are. Can you share with us just a little bit about your culture, how customer experience is. If you were to give it a score, maybe on a scale of one to 10 with 10 being the best, what score would you give it and just any insights that you think would be beneficial to our listeners.   Vaishali shared that for the listeners, she comes from the Middle East from they say the light of gold, which is Dubai, and it's very interesting because it feels like you're always served in a platter. So, over the last few years, she's been travelling a lot, and especially to the West and the East port. And she thinks there's major cultural shock that she almost have is why somebody not serving her enough. Being in Dubai hospitality is huge; services at its peak, people come for the luxury and lifestyle in Dubai. And so, she's never had even if she goes to a restaurant, if she's in Dubai, if she asks anyone to please can you pack this, I need a take away, they'd be like, “Yeah, sure madam”, and all of that. But when she comes to the West, they give her a box, and she's like, “Oh, so am I supposed to pack myself?” So many different experiences that are such culturally different, yet you're working on designing those right kind of experiences is very interesting. Being in the space that she worked across education, FinTech, healthcare, manufacturing, nonprofit organizations, and one thing that she finds, despite no matter where you are, in which part of the world across which culture you have been raised, is that we all are humans, and we all want to feel heard. And we want to all feel listened and feel the emotion that we're feeling whether it's with another person or a brand. So, despite many, many differences, being from the Middle East, one common thing is what kind of human experiences are we really designing?   Effective Leadership Strategies for Driving Customer Experience Design and Delivery Me: What would you say have been as a leader in the different organizations that you've worked in, maybe one or two things that you believe has made or contributed to your success in driving CX design and CX delivery?   Vaishali stated that's a difficult one. But she thinks something that's really helped her, and she truly believes in this is the power of love languages, and how you can mold that and use that in designing experiences, especially customer experiences, whether it is quality time and actually speaking to your customers, making them feel heard, and understanding where they come from, to just simple words of affirmations. And this can be digital affirmations, she's not saying everything has to be in person, it's more about how you make someone feel like, “oh, this person hears me and understands me.” Do simple acts of service you do for them digitally, again, reward them that make them feel loyal to you.  So, when it comes to leadership, every different project is so different from one another despite being in the CX space, because they are spread across different verticals, from governance, to analytics to design, she's had the experience of learning that we need to understand what kind of emotions we want to create, and then create those journeys. So, for her, that's been one of the key things is, drive and understand what emotion you want to create.   AI Integration in Customer Service; Employee Adaptation, Future Trends, and the Human Touch Me: Now, a big part of CX is technology, right? Technology is here to help us and support us in delivering a more seamless and a less friction kind of experience with customers. In your part of the world, how have you seen your employees across different industries and verticals, as you had mentioned, adapting to the technologies, specifically in the area of artificial intelligence, there is ChatGPT and different things that organizations may integrate to enhance the service experience with their customers and cut down the more route type of activities that are very mundane and monotonous, they're investing in a technology to kind of reduce. How have you seen the adoption of that take place? And if you were to be a fortune teller, if you were to look into the future, where do you see this going? And do you believe human interaction will still play a very integral role in CX?   Vaishali stated, wow, what a question. It's very interesting. So, to answer the first part of the question, which is adoption levels. She thinks adoption levels are at its peak right now. We have no option but to keep up because a lot of the CX experiences and designs that they choose to design for their customers is technology driven. You can have the best of the best designs on Figma or Canva, or Miro, but to really bring them to life, you need the right tools in place. And to be able to do that, you will be able to understand which technology or business is actually using at the moment, what kind of architecture do they have in their back end systems, and what is really possible.   And in the ever evolving space, also, she thinks, today, all kinds of businesses, especially in the tech industry, they are coming up with niche tools and technologies across diverse industries specific to different features that allow them to give the best of the best services to their end users. But most importantly, they are very open to saying we'll integrate with another tool, whether it is in the healthcare industry, and you're looking at billing and medical insurance, they're creating their own tools to integrating with personalization tools to understanding when a patient needs to have their next checkup and reminding the patient about it to actually having analytical tool. There's so much that is happening in today's space and the adoption is at its absolute peak to keep up with the industry at the moment. That's the first part of the question.   And then the second part of the question is, there's so much that you can do with today's technology, no matter what you do human intervention can never be impacted directly she feels, they will always coexist in her space, she doesn't think it's going to be one or the other and completely replaceable. They will always need human beings because human beings evolve. And technology is made by humans.   Me: Very true. Alright. I love that.   App, Website or Tool that Vaishali Absolutely Can't Live Without in Her Business When asked about an online resource that she cannot live without in her business, Vaishali shared that she's a very tech person, she loves using her app, she has apps for almost everything. But at work, she uses a lot of Canva; she's creative as a person. So, whether it's the whiteboard or whether it's just designing something that she needs to just throw it out. She loves using Canva.   Me: Amazing. I like when I hear guests talk about using Canva. Recently, I did a presentation skills workshop for a client and they wanted to basically teach the team how to use Canva. And I remember, it was so fascinating, especially for persons who have never been exposed to the platform before, when they looked at the user interface of Canva versus a Microsoft PowerPoint, Canva is just like, it's like the Apple of design. Like in terms of how easy it is, you just drag and drop it, in PowerPoint, you take three steps, in Canva, you take one. And I just I find it so amazing, it really has brought design to the average person; even if you weren't creative Canva would find some way to stimulate your creativity.   Vaishali agreed, and more than anything, even like the guided templates too, they have everything, you can just create a design system in place to be able to do anything with it. Previously, developers used to use draw.io a lot to create the map and the technology flows. And like, guys no, we need to use Canva make it more colourful. And it's so easy to use.   Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Vaishali When asked about books that have had a great impact. Vaishali shared that she just finished two books recently, but they are more spiritual, but she thinks one of the books that she's still continuing to read, and she's amazed by it is Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck. That the book is taking her longer to complete in all honesty is because you really need to retrospect and think, is this the way I think.  And it's just the way she would want to think like from growth mindset or fixed mindset and how our childhood, the way we just appreciate it really impacts on the way we work and our personality, or our character. So, there's a lot of retrospective to do. And she thinks she'll have to read the book 2, 3 times. But for now, this has been the biggest impact on the way she's started evolving and thinking, so she'd highly recommend this book.   What Vaishali is Really Excited About Now! When asked about something she's excited about, Vaishali stated that she'll give two things. So, the first one is she's very excited because she's travelling on a personal level. She's travelling to Vancouver tonight to for her brother's graduation. And it's been a journey for their family. So, they're very, very excited for his graduation.  And professionally, what she's very excited about is at the moment, she's working on three different projects across manufacturing, healthcare, and education. And the best part about all of it is, is that all of them are across different verticals of CX, and that really shows the power of a) customer experience, but b) also how vast our growing industry is. And we all have some stuff to do and make an impact across different verticals of CX, so she feels super blessed.   Me: Alright, well, congratulations to you, brother and his graduation. That's awesome.   Emerging Trends Shaping the Near Future   Me: Now, can you tell our listeners, if you were to just think about maybe two or three trends that you believe will continue to grow and emerge as we wrap up on the second and embark on the third quarter of 2024, what would you say those are just based on working with clients, in your own business, listening to podcasts, being on podcasts, writing blogs, interfacing with other CX experts across different industries. What would you say are maybe two or three emerging trends that you believe will continue? Or will emerge over the next couple of months?   Vaishali stated, great question. And we all have been talking about this, start of the year, we were like, what's 2024 going to hold for CX and is AI going to replace but she thinks now conversations have shifted, and everyone agrees, and a lot of the conversations she's hearing about is, we are going to coexist together. So, that trend is kind of going to continue and only emerge, people are not going to lose their jobs because of AI, but they're just going to be supported better and to design better experience. So, that's definitely one.  The second one is what she sees as a shift, based on discussing with clients and having these daily one on one conversations, being the centre front of the industry is that there's a grey area that was first there was digital experience and customer experience, but she sees that becoming a grey area now to becoming actually digital customer experience, and people finding out and learning more about it. And that's a very interesting space, because it makes room for everyone to grow together and learn and share experiences, which she thinks is phenomenal. So, there are no more silos within even the experience design space anymore. And the third one she would say is, she sees extremely authenticating orthodox industries, especially such as manufacturing, or education, which had a certain way of doing certain things digitally, are now ready to evolve and embark on a transformation journey. Because they think it's extremely important to kind of keep up to the industry and the world and the customer needs. And those are massive projects that they're working on internally. So, she thinks it's very, very interesting to see that shift in the industry right now.    Me: Alright, exciting times ahead.   Where Can We Find Vaishali Online LinkedIn – Vaishali Dialani X – Vaishali Dialani    Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Vaishali Uses Me: Now, we always like to ask our guests before we wrap our episodes up, do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adverted adversity or challenge, you'll tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you get the real or you get off track, a quote kind of helps to get you back on track.   When asked about a quote or saying that she tends to revert, Vaishali shared that she does. And it's one of her favourite quotes that she's actually tattooed and it's called, “Fly with full faith.” So, it's always do your hard work and have faith in whatever you do. Because most of the times, it feels like we're doing so much and we still not able to get to the next place, we're stuck in a circle or a rod. And it's important to have faith and while you have faith, always, always do your hard work.   Me: All right, thank you so very much. So, Vaishali, I just wanted to extend our deepest gratitude to you again, for taking time out of your busy schedule, and hopping on this podcast with us and sharing all these great insights, especially as it relates to your culture and what's happening over there. Because the world is very small, even though we are in different continents or different places, human behaviour is still pretty much the same I believe throughout, we are through and through emotional beings. And I liked the fact that that came out in your message in terms of what we should be focused on in CX and ensuring that we're connecting with people on an emotional level, and what kind of feelings do we want them to have after they've interacted with us. So, I thought it was great that you brought that across in a message. So, thank you again.    Please connect with us on Twitter @navigatingcx and also join our Private Facebook Community – Navigating the Customer Experience and listen to our FB Lives weekly with a new guest   Links •     Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck    The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience Grab the Freebie on Our Website – TOP 10 Online Business Resources for Small Business Owners  Do you want to pivot your online customer experience and build loyalty - get a copy of “The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience.” The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience provides 26 easy to follow steps and techniques that helps your business to achieve success and build brand loyalty. This Guide to Limitless, Happy and Loyal Customers will help you to strengthen your service delivery, enhance your knowledge and appreciation of the customer experience and provide tips and practical strategies that you can start implementing immediately! This book will develop your customer service skills and sharpen your attention to detail when serving others. Master your customer experience and develop those knock your socks off techniques that will lead to lifetime customers. Your customers will only want to work with your business and it will be your brand differentiator. It will lead to recruiters to seek you out by providing practical examples on how to deliver a winning customer service experience!

Episode 188 In this episode of the Observers Notebook podcast, host Tim Robertson talks to the ALPO Executive Director, Ken Poshedly on the upcoming Virtual ALPO Conference. The dates will be Friday and Saturday, July 26/27, 2024. The conference will also be Live Streamed on the ALPO YouTube channel. The conference times for both days will be from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Pacific Time (1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern Time) and allow for seven paper presentation sessions each day with short breaks on both days. All presentations be limited to approximately 25 minutes each with a few minutes left for audience questions. The schedule of presentations will be posted about one week prior to the event. The ALPO board of directors meeting will be held on Friday, July 26 at 4 p.m. PT (7 p.m. ET). The ALPO Conference is free and open to anyone to attend; however, all presenters must be current members of the ALPO. Following a break after the last paper presentation on Saturday afternoon, July 27, will be presentation of the annual Walter Haas Observer Award. This will be followed by our keynote speaker at 4 pm. PT (7 p.m. ET). With the award presentation and keynote speech usually occurring at the traditional Saturday evening dinner, we suggest that you enjoy your own meal during these last two conference events. Door prizes will be awarded following the Keynote address. No purchase necessary. An online chat feature will allow type-in text comments for questions once the conference gets underway. All presenters must already have ZOOM installed on their computer prior to the conference dates. ZOOM is free and available at https://zoom.us/ The ZOOM links will be e-mailed out on Thursday, July 25. There will be a separate ZOOM meeting set up for each day. The ZOOM virtual (online) meeting room will open 15 minutes prior to the beginning of each day's activities. Upon logging into ZOOM you will be placed into a ‘waiting room' until the meeting begins, and your microphone will be muted automatically. Participants are encouraged to submit research papers, presentations and experience reports concerning various aspects of Earth-based observational solar system astronomy. Suggested topics for papers and presentations include the following: • New or ongoing observing programs and studies, specifically, how those programs were designed, implemented, and continue to function. • Results of personal or group studies of solar system or extra-solar system bodies. • New or ongoing activities involving astronomical instrumentation, construction or improvement. Those individuals wishing to present a paper should submit their request to Tim Robertson at cometman@cometman.net no later than July 1st, along with a brief bio about themselves and a summary of their presentation. Microsoft PowerPoint is the preferred method of visual presentation along with an audio explanation. Contact Information: ALPO Website: http://www.alpo-astronomy.org/ Tim Robertson: cometman@cometman.net ZOOM: https://zoom.us/ ALPO YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/AssociationofLunarandPlanetaryObservers ALPO Podcast- The Observers Notebook: https://soundcloud.com/observersnotebook For more information you can visit the ALPO web site at: www.alpo-astronomy.org/ You can also support this podcast at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ObserversNotebook Listen to the podcast on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/observersnotebook Subscribe on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/observers-notebook-the-alpo-podcast/id1199301885?mt=2 I want to thank the Producer of this podcast, Steve Siedentop and Michael Moyer for their generous support of the Observers Notebook. Our Patreons: Jerry White Jason Inman Matt Will Steve Seidentop Stephen Bennett Michael Moyer Shawn Dilles Frank Schenck Damian Allis Carl Hergenrother Julian Parks Michael McShan Michael Blake Nick Evetts Rik Hill Stan Sienkiewicz

We yearn for the tunnels... so do ghosts in Switzerland! They especially like to hitch rides through the Belchen Tunnel.   Twitter and Instagram - @biarpodcast Facebook - Bug in a Rug Email us your ideas at biarpodcast@gmail.com   Sources: Belchen Tunnel: Key Route in Swiss Transport Network - Vignetteswitzerland.com Belchen Tunnel - Wikipedia Hörbuch «Sage uf d Ohre» erzählt Unheimliches aus dem Baselbiet (bzbasel.ch) Microsoft PowerPoint - 2014 03 Vortrag Belchentunnel ETH_druck handout.pptx (ethz.ch) Road Trip of Terror: Exploring the World's Most Haunted Highways - Nightmare on Film Street (nofspodcast.com) Shrove Tuesday - Wikipedia The spookiest places in Switzerland (thelocal.ch)

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Maya Kaczorowski, Chief Product Officer at Tailscale, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss what sets the Tailscale product approach apart, for users of their free tier all the way to enterprise. Maya shares insight on how she evaluates feature requests, and how Tailscale's unique architecture sets them apart from competitors. Maya and Corey discuss the importance of transparency when building trust in security, as well as Tailscale's approach to new feature roll-outs and change management.About MayaMaya is the Chief Product Officer at Tailscale, providing secure networking for the long tail. She was mostly recently at GitHub in software supply chain security, and previously at Google working on container security, encryption at rest and encryption key management. Prior to Google, she was an Engagement Manager at McKinsey & Company, working in IT security for large enterprises.Maya completed her Master's in mathematics focusing on cryptography and game theory. She is bilingual in English and French.Outside of work, Maya is passionate about ice cream, puzzling, running, and reading nonfiction.Links Referenced: Tailscale: https://tailscale.com/ Tailscale features: VS Code extension: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=tailscale.vscode-tailscale  Tailscale SSH: https://tailscale.com/kb/1193/tailscale-ssh  Tailnet lock: https://tailscale.com/kb/1226/tailnet-lock  Auto updates: https://tailscale.com/kb/1067/update#auto-updates  ACL tests: https://tailscale.com/kb/1018/acls#tests  Kubernetes operator: https://tailscale.com/kb/1236/kubernetes-operator  Log streaming: https://tailscale.com/kb/1255/log-streaming  Tailscale Security Bulletins: https://tailscale.com/security-bulletins  Blog post “How Our Free Plan Stays Free:” https://tailscale.com/blog/free-plan  Tailscale on AWS Marketplace: https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/prodview-nd5zazsgvu6e6  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: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn, and I am joined today on this promoted guest episode by my friends over at Tailscale. They have long been one of my favorite products just because it has dramatically changed the way that I interact with computers, which really should be enough to terrify anyone. My guest today is Maya Kaczorowski, Chief Product Officer at Tailscale. Maya, thanks for joining me.Maya: Thank you so much for having me.Corey: I have to say originally, I was a little surprised to—“Really? You're the CPO? I really thought I would have remembered that from the last time we hung out in person.” So, congratulations on the promotion.Maya: Thank you so much. Yeah, it's exciting.Corey: Being a product person is probably a great place to start with this because we've had a number of conversations, here and otherwise, around what Tailscale is and why it's awesome. I don't necessarily know that beating the drum of why it's so awesome is going to be covering new ground, but I'm sure we're going to come up for that during the conversation. Instead, I'd like to start by talking to you about just what a product person does in the context of building something that is incredibly central not just to critical path, but also has massive security ramifications as well, when positioning something that you're building for the enterprise. It's a very hard confluence of problems, and there are days I am astonished that enterprises can get things done based purely upon so much of the mitigation of what has to happen. Tell me about that. How do you even function given the tremendous vulnerability of the attack surface you're protecting?Maya: Yeah, I don't know if you—I feel like you're talking about the product, but also the sales cycle of talking [laugh] and working with enterprise customers.Corey: The product, the sales cycle, the marketing aspects of it, and—Maya: All of it.Corey: —it all ties together. It's different facets of frankly, the same problem.Maya: Yeah. I think that ultimately, this is about really understanding who the customer that is buying the product is. And I really mean that, like, buying the product, right? Because, like, look at something like Tailscale. We're typically used by engineers, or infrastructure teams in an organization, but the buyer might be the VP of Engineering, but it might be the CISO, or the CTO, or whatever, and they're going to have a set of requirements that's going to be very different from what the end-user has as a set of requirements, so even if you have something like bottom-up adoption, in our case, like, understanding and making sure we're checking all the boxes that somebody needs to actually bring us to work.Enterprises are incredibly demanding, and to your point, have long checklists of what they need as part of an RFP or that kind of thing. I find that some of the strictest requirements tend to be in security. So like, how—to your point—if we're such a critical part of your network, how are you sure that we're always available, or how are you sure that if we're compromised, you're not compromised, and providing a lot of, like, assurances and controls around making sure that that's not the case.Corey: I think that there's a challenge in that what enterprise means to different people can be wildly divergent. I originally came from the school of obnoxious engineering where oh, as an engineer, whenever I say something is enterprise grade, that's not a compliment. That means it's going to be slow and moribund. But that is a natural consequence of a company's growth after achieving success, where okay, now we have actual obligations to customers and risk mitigation that needs to be addressed. And how do you wind up doing that without completely hobbling yourself when it comes to accelerating feature velocity? It's a very delicate balancing act.Maya: Yeah, for sure. And I think you need to balance, to your point, kind of creating demand for the product—like, it's actually solving the problem that the customer has—versus checking boxes. Like, I think about them as features, or you know, feature requests versus feature blockers or deal blockers or adoption blockers. So, somebody wants to, say, connect to an AWS VPC, but then the person who has to make sure that that's actually rolled out properly also wants audit logs and SSH session recording and RBAC-based controls and lots of other things before they're comfortable deploying that in their environment. And I'm not even talking about the list of, you know, legal, kind of, TOS requirements that they would have for that kind of situation.I think there's a couple of things that you need to do to even signal that you're in that space. One of the things that I was—I was talking to a friend of mine the other day how it feels like five years ago, like, nobody had SOC 2 reports, or very few startups had SOC 2 reports. And it's probably because of the advent of some of these other companies in this space, but like, now you can kind of throw a dart, and you'll hit five startups that have SOC 2 reports, and the amount that you need to show that you're ready to sell to these companies has changed.Corey: I think that there's a definite broadening of the use case. And I've been trying to avoid it, but let's go diving right into it. I used to view Tailscale as, oh it's a VPN. The end. Then it became something more where it effectively became the mesh overlay where all of the various things that I have that speak Tailscale—which is frankly, a disturbing number of things that I'd previously considered to be appliances—all talk to one another over a dedicated network, and as a result, can do really neat things where I don't have to spend hours on end configuring weird firewall rules.It's more secure, it's a lot simpler, and it seems like every time I get that understanding down, you folks do something that causes me to yet again reevaluate where you stand. Most recently, I was doing something horrifying in front-end work, and in VS Code the Tailscale extension popped up. “Oh, it looks like you're running a local development server. Would you like to use Tailscale Funnel to make it available to the internet?” And my response to that is, “Good lord, no, I'm ashamed of it, but thanks for asking.” Every time I think I get it, I have to reevaluate where it stands in the ecosystem. What is Tailscale now? I feel like I should get the official description of what you are.Maya: Well, I sure hope I'm not the official description. I think the closest is a little bit of what you're saying: a mesh overlay network for your infrastructure, or a programmable network that lets you mesh together your users and services and services and services, no matter where they are, including across different infrastructure providers and, to your point, on a long list of devices you might have running. People are running Tailscale on self-driving cars, on robots, on satellites, on elevators, but they're also running Tailscale on Linux running in AWS or a MacBook they have sitting under their desk or whatever it happens to be. The phrase that I like to use for that is, like, infrastructure agnostic. We're just a building block.Your infrastructure can be whatever infrastructure you want. You can have the cheapest GPUs from this cloud, or you can use the Android phone to train the model that you have sitting on your desk. We just help you connect all that stuff together so you can build your own cloud whatever way you want. To your point, that's not really a VPN [laugh]. The word VPN doesn't quite do it justice. For the remote access to prod use case, so like a user, specifically, like, a developer infra team to a production network, that probably looks the most like a zero-trust solution, but we kind of blur a lot of the lines there for what we can do.Corey: Yeah, just looking at it, at the moment, I have a bunch of Raspberries Pi, perhaps, hanging out on my tailnet. I have currently 14 machines on there, I have my NAS downstairs, I have a couple of EC2 instances, a Google Cloud instance, somewhere, I finally shut down my old Oracle Cloud instance, my pfSense box speaks it natively. I have a Thinkst Canary hanging out on there to detect if anything starts going ridiculously weird, my phone, my iPad, and a few other things here and there. And they all just talk seamlessly over the same network. I can identify them via either IP address, if I'm old, or via DNS if I want to introduce problems that will surprise me at one point or another down the road.I mean, I even have an exit node I share with my brother's Tailscale account for reasons that most people would not expect, namely that he is an American who lives abroad. So, many weird services like banks or whatnot, “Oh, you can't log in to check your bank unless you're coming from US IP space.” He clicks a button, boom, now he doesn't get yelled at to check his own accounts. Which is probably not the primary use case you'd slap on your website, but it's one of those solving everyday things in somewhat weird ways.Maya: Oh, yeah. I worked at a bank maybe ten years ago, and they would block—this little bank on the east coast of the US—they would block connections from Hawaii because why would any of your customers ever be in Hawaii? And it was like, people travel and maybe you're—Corey: How can you be in Hawaii? You don't have a passport.Maya: [laugh]. People travel. They still need to do banking. Like, it doesn't change, yeah. The internet, we've built a lot of weird controls that are IP-based, that don't really make any sense, that aren't reflective. And like, that's true for individuals—like you're describing, people who travel and need to bank or whatever they need to do when they travel—and for corporations, right? Like the old concept—this is all back to the zero trust stuff—but like, the old concept that you were trusted just because you had an IP address that was in the corp IP range is just not true anymore, right? Somebody can walk into your office and connect to the Wi-Fi and a legitimate employee can be doing their job from home or from Starbucks, right? Those are acceptable ways to work nowadays.Corey: One other thing that I wanted to talk about is, I know that in previous discussions with you folks—sometimes on the podcast sometimes when I more or less corner someone a Tailscale at your developer conference—one of the things that you folks talk about is Tailscale SSH, which is effectively a drop-in replacement for the SSH binary on systems. Full disclosure, I don't use it, mostly because I'm grumpy and I'm old. I also like having some form of separation of duties where you're the network that ties it all together, but something else winds up acting as that authentication step. That said, if I were that interesting that someone wanted to come after me, there are easier ways to get in, so I'm mostly just doing this because I'm persnickety. Are you seeing significant adoption of Tailscale SSH?Maya: I think there's a couple of features that are missing in Tailscale SSH for it to be as adopted by people like you. The main one that I would say is—so right now if you use Tailscale SSH, it runs a binary on the host, you can use your Tailscale credentials, and your Tailscale private key, effectively, to SSH something else. So, you don't have to manage a separate set of SSH keys or certs or whatever it is you want to do to manage that in your network. Your identity provider identity is tied to Tailscale, and then when you connect to that device, we still need to have an identity on the host itself, like in Unix. Right now, that's not tied to Tailscale. You can adopt an identity of something else that's already on the host, but it's not, like, corey@machine.And I think that's the number one request that we're getting for Tailscale SSH, to be able to actually generate or tie to the individual users on the host for an identity that comes from, like, Google, or GitHub, or Okta, or something like that. I'm not hearing a lot of feedback on the security concerns that you're expressing. I think part of that is that we've done a lot of work around security in general so that you feel like if Tailscale were to be compromised, your network wouldn't need to be compromised. So, Tailscale itself is end-to-end encrypted using WireGuard. We only see your public keys; the private keys remain on the device.So, in some sense the, like, quote-unquote, “Worst” that we could do would be to add a node to your network and then start to generate traffic from that or, like, mess with the configuration of your network. These are questions that have come up. In terms of adding nodes to your network, we have a feature called tailnet lock that effectively lets you sign and verify that all the nodes on your network are supposed to be there. One of the other concerns that I've heard come up is, like, what if the binary was compromised. We develop in open-source so you can see that that's the case, but like, you know, there's certainly more stuff we could be doing there to prevent, for example, like a software supply chain security attack. Yeah.Corey: Yeah, but you also have taken significant architectural steps to ensure that you are not placed in a position of undue trust around a lot of these things. Most recently, you raised a Series B, that was $100 million, and the fact that you have not gone bankrupt in the year since that happened tells me that you are very clearly not routing all customer traffic through you folks, at least on one of the major cloud providers. And in fact, a little bit of playing a-slap-and-tickle with Wireshark affirm this, that the nodes talk to each other; they do not route their traffic through you folks, by design. So one, great for the budget, I have respect for that data transfer pattern, but also it means that you are in the position of being a global observer in a way that can be, in many cases, exploited.Maya: I think that's absolutely correct. So, it was 18 months ago or so that we raised our Series B. When you use Tailscale, your traffic connects peer-to-peer directly between nodes on your network. And that has a couple of nice properties, some of what you just described, which is that we don't see your traffic. I mean, one, because it's end-to-end encrypted, but even if we could capture it, and then—we're not in the way of capturing it, let alone decrypting it.Another nice property it has is just, like, latency, right? If your user is in the UK, and they're trying to access something in Scotland, it's not, you know, hair-pinning, bouncing all the way to the West Coast or something like that. It doesn't have to go through one of our servers to get there. Another nice property that comes with that is availability. So, if our network goes down, if our control plane goes down, you're temporarily not able to add nodes or change your configuration, but everything in your network can still connect to each other, so you're not dependent on us being online in order for your network to work.And this is actually coming up more and more in customer conversations where that's a differentiator for us versus a competitor. Different competitors, also. There's a customer case study on our website about somebody who was POC'ing us with a different option, and literally during the POC, the competitor had an outage, unfortunately for them, and we didn't, and they sort of looked at our model, our deployment model and went, “Huh, this really matters to us.” And not having an outage on our network with this solution seems like a better option.Corey: Yeah, when the network is down, the computers all turn into basically space heaters.Maya: [laugh]. Yeah, as long as they're not down because, I guess, unplugged or something. But yeah, [laugh] I completely agree. Yeah. But I think there's a couple of these kinds of, like, enterprise things that people are—we're starting to do a better job of explaining and meeting customers where they are, but it's also people are realizing actually does matter when you're deploying something at this scale that's such a key part of your network.So, we talked a bit about availability, we talked a bit about things like latency. On the security side, there's a lot that we've done around, like I said, tailnet lock or that type of thing, but it's like some of the basic security features. Like, when I joined Tailscale, probably the first thing I shipped in some sense as a PM was a change log. Here's the change log of everything that we're shipping as part of these releases so that you can have confidence that we're telling you what's going on in your network, when new features are coming out, and you can trust us to be part of your network, to be part of your infrastructure.Corey: I do want to further call out that you have a—how should I frame this—a typically active security notification page.Maya: [laugh].Corey: And I think it is easy to misconstrue that as look at how terrifyingly insecure this is? Having read through it, I would argue that it is not that you are surprisingly insecure, but rather that you are extraordinarily transparent about things that are relatively minor issues. And yes, they should get fixed, but, “Oh, that could be a problem if six other things happen to fall into place just the right way.” These are not security issues of the type, “Yeah, so it turns out that what we thought was encrypting actually wasn't and we're just expensive telnet.” No, there's none of that going on.It's all been relatively esoteric stuff, but you also address it very quickly. And that is odd, as someone who has watched too many enterprise-facing companies respond to third-party vulnerability reports with rather than fixing the problem, more or less trying to get them not to talk about it, or if they do, to talk about it only using approved language. I don't see any signs of that with what you've done there. Was that a challenging internal struggle for you to pull off?Maya: I think internally, it was recognizing that security was such an important part of our value proposition that we had to be transparent. But once we kind of got past that initial hump, we've been extremely transparent, as you say. We think we can build trust through transparency, and that's the most important thing in how we respond to security incidents. But code is going to have bugs. It's going to have security bugs. There's nothing you can do to prevent that from happening.What matters is how you—and like, you should. Like, you should try to catch them early in the development process and, you know, shift left and all that kind of stuff, but some things are always going to happen [laugh] and what matters in that case is how you respond to them. And having another, you know, an app update that just says “Bug fixes” doesn't help you figure out whether or not you should actually update, it doesn't actually help you trust us. And so, being as public and as transparent as possible about what's actually happening, and when we respond to security issues and how we respond to security issues is really, really important to us. We have a policy that talks about when we will publish a bulletin.You can subscribe to our bulletins. We'll proactively email anyone who has a security contact on file, or alternatively, another contact that we have if you haven't provided us a security contact when you're subject to an issue. I think by far and large, like, Tailscale has more security bulletins just because we're transparent about them. It's like, we probably have as many bugs as anybody else does. We're just lucky that people report them to us because they see us react to them so quickly, and then we're able to fix them, right? It's a net positive for everyone involved.Corey: It's one of those hard problems to solve for across the board, just because I've seen companies in the past get more or less brutalized by the tech press when they have been overly transparent. I remember that there was a Reuters article years ago about Slack, for example, because they would pull up their status history and say, “Oh, look at all of these issues here. You folks can't keep your website up.” But no, a lot of it was like, “Oh, file uploads for a small subset of our users is causing a problem,” and so on and so forth. These relatively minor issues that, in aggregate, are very hard to represent when you're using traffic light signaling.So, then you see people effectively going full-on AWS status page where there's a significant outage lasting over a day, last month, and what you see on this is if you go really looking for it is this yellow thing buried in his absolute sea of green lights, even though that was one of the more disruptive things to have happened this year. So, it's a consistent and constant balance, and I really have a lot of empathy no matter where you wind up landing on that?Maya: Yeah, I think that's—you're saying it's sort of about transparency or being able to find the right information. I completely agree. And it's also about building trust, right? If we set expectations as to how we will respond to these things then we consistently respond to them, people believe that we're going to keep doing that. And that is almost more important than, like, committing to doing that, if that makes any sense.I remember having a conversation many years ago with an eng manager I worked with, and we were debating what the SLO for a particular service should be. And he sort of made an interesting point. He's like, “It doesn't really matter what the SLO is. It matters what you actually do because then people are going to start expecting [laugh] what you actually do.” So, being able to point at this and say, “Yes, here's what we say and here's what we actually do in practice,” I think builds so much more trust in how we respond to these kinds of things and how seriously we take security.I think one of the other things that came out of the security work is we realized—and I think you talked to Avery, the CEO of Tailscale on a prior podcast about some of this stuff—but we realized that platforms are broken, and we don't have a great way of pushing automatic updates on a lot of platforms, right? You know, if you're using the macOS store, or the Android Play Store, or iOS or whatever, you can automatically update your client when there is a security issue. On other platforms, you're kind of stuck. And so, as a result of us wanting to make sure that the fleet is as updated as possible, we've actually built an auto-update feature that's available on all of our major clients now, so people can opt in to getting those updates as quickly as needed when there is a security issue. We want to expose people to as little risk as possible.Corey: I am not a Tailscale customer. And that bugs me because until I cross that chasm into transferring $1 every month from my bank account to yours, I'm just a whiny freeloader in many respects, which is not at all how you folks who never made me feel I want to be very clear on that. But I believe in paying for the services that empower me to do my job more effectively, and Tailscale absolutely qualifies.Maya: Yeah, understood, I think that you still provide value to us in ways that aren't your data, but then in ways that help our business. One of them is that people like you tend to bring Tailscale to work. They tend to have a good experience at home connecting to their Synology, helping their brother connect to his bank account, whatever it happens to be, and they go, “Oh.” Something kind of clicks, and then they see a problem at work that looks very similar, and then they bring it to work. That is our primary path of adoption.We are a bottom-up adoption, you know, product-led growth product [laugh]. So, we have a blog post called “How Our Free Plan Stays Free” that covers some of that. I think the second thing that I don't want to undersell that a user like you also does is, you have a problem, you hit an issue, and you write into support, and you find something that nobody else has found yet [laugh].Corey: I am very good at doing that entirely by accident.Maya: [laugh]. But that helps us because that means that we see a problem that needs to get fixed, and we can catch it way sooner than before it's deployed, you know, at scale, at a large bank, and you know, it's a critical, kind of, somebody's getting paged kind of issue, right? We have a couple of bugs like that where we need, you know, we need a couple of repros from a couple different people in a couple different situations before we can really figure out what's going on. And having a wide user base who is happy to talk to us really helps us.Corey: I would say it goes beyond that, too. I have—I see things in the world of Tailscale that started off as features that I requested. One of the more recent ones is, it is annoying to me to see on the Tailscale machines list everything I have joined to the tailnet with that silly little up arrow next to it of, “Oh, time to go back and update Tailscale to the latest,” because that usually comes with decent benefits. Great, I have to go through iteratively, or use Ansible, or something like that. Well, now there's a Tailscale update option where it will keep itself current on supported operating systems.For some unknown reason, you apparently can't self-update the application on iOS or macOS. Can't imagine why. But those things tend to self-update based upon how the OS works due to all the sandboxing challenges. The only challenge I've got now is a few things that are, more or less, embedded devices that are packaged by the maintainer of that embedded system, where I'm beholden to them. Only until I get annoyed enough to start building a CI/CD system to replace their package.Maya: I can't wait till you build that CI/CD system. That'll be fun.Corey: “We wrote this code last night. Straight to the bank with it.” Yeah, that sounds awesome.Maya: [laugh] You'd get a couple of term sheets for that, I'm sure.Corey: There are. I am curious, looping back to the start of our conversation, we talked about enterprise security requirements, but how do you address enterprise change management? I find that that's something an awful lot of companies get dreadfully wrong. Most recently and most noisily on my part is Slack, a service for which I paid thousands of dollars a year, decided to roll out a UI redesign that, more or less, got in the way of a tremendous number of customers and there was no way to stop it or revert it. And that made me a lot less likely to build critical-flow business processes that depended upon Slack behaving a certain way.Just, “Oh, we decided to change everything in the user interface today just for funsies.” If Microsoft pulled that with Excel, by lunchtime they'd have reverted it because an entire universe of business users would have marched on Redmond to burn them out otherwise. That carries significant cost for businesses. Yet I still see Tailscale shipping features just as fast as you ever have. How do you square that circle?Maya: Yeah. I think there's two different kinds of change management really, which is, like—because if you think about it, it's like, an enterprise needs a way to roll out a product or a feature internally and then separately, we need a way to roll out new things to customers, right? And so, I think on the Tailscale side, we have a change log that tells you about everything that's changing, including new features, and including changes to the client. We update that religiously. Like, it's a big deal, if something doesn't make it the day that it's supposed to make it. We get very kind of concerned internally about that.A couple of things that were—that are in that space, right, we just talked about auto-updates to make it really easy for you to maintain what's actually rolled out in your infrastructure, but more importantly, for us to push changes with a new client release. Like, for example, in the case of a security incident, we want to be able to publish a version and get it rolled out to the fleet as quickly as possible. Some of the things that we don't have here, but although I hear requests for is the ability to, like, gradually roll out features to a customer. So like, “Can we change the configuration for 10% of our network and see if anything breaks before rolling back, right before rolling forward.” That's a very traditional kind of infra change management thing, but not something I've ever seen in, sort of, the networking security space to this degree, and something that I'm hearing a lot of customers ask for.In terms of other, like, internal controls that a customer might have, we have a feature called ACL Tests. So, if you're going to change the configuration of who can access what in your network, you can actually write tests. Like, your permission file is written in HuJSON and you can write a set of things like, Corey should be able to access prod. Corey should not be able to access test, or whatever it happens to be—actually, let's flip those around—and when you have a policy change that doesn't pass those tests, you actually get told right away so you're not rolling that out and accidentally breaking a large part of your network. So, we built several things into the product to do it. In terms of how we notify customers, like I said, that the primary method that we have right now is something like a change log, as well as, like, security bulletins for security updates.Corey: Yeah, it's one of the challenges, on some level, of the problem of oh, I'm going to set up a service, and then I'm going to go sail around the world, and when I come back in a year or two—depending on how long I spent stranded on an island somewhere—now I get to figure out what has changed. And to your credit, you have to affirmatively enable all of the features that you have shipped, but you've gone from, “Oh, it's a mesh network where everything can talk to each other,” to, “I can use an exit node from that thing. Oh, now I can seamlessly transfer files from one node to another with tail drop,” to, “Oh, Tailscale Funnel. Now, I can expose my horrifying developer environment to the internet.” I used that one year to give a talk at a conference, just because why not?Maya: [crosstalk 00:27:35].Corey: Everything evolves to become [unintelligible 00:27:37] email on Microsoft Outlook, or tries to be Microsoft Excel? Oh, no, no. I want you to be building Microsoft PowerPoint for me. And we eventually get there, but that is incredibly powerful functionality, but also terrifying when you think you have a handle on what's going on in a large-scale environment, and suddenly, oh, there's a whole new vector we need to think about. Which is why your—the thought and consideration you put into that is so apparent and so, frankly, welcome.Maya: Yeah, you actually kind of made a statement there that I completely missed, which is correct, which is, we don't turn features on by default. They are opt-in features. We will roll out features by default after they've kind of baked for an incredibly long period of time and with, like, a lot of fanfare and warning. So, the example that I'll give is, we have a DNS feature that was probably available for maybe 18 months before we turned it on by default for new tailnets. So didn't even turn it on for existing folks. It's called Magic DNS.We don't want to touch your configuration or your network. We know people will freak out when that happens. Knowing, to your point, that you can leave something for a year and come back, and it's going to be the same is really important. For everyone, but for an enterprise customer as well. Actually, one other thing to mention there. We have a bunch of really old versions of clients that are running in production, and we want them to keep working, so we try to be as backward compatible as possible.I think the… I think we still have clients from 2019 that are running and connecting to corp that nobody's updated. And like, it'd be great if they would update them, but like, who knows what situation they're in and if they can connect to them, and all that kind of stuff, but they still work. And the point is that you can have set it up four years ago, and it should still work, and you should still be able to connect to it, and leave it alone and come back to it in a year from now, and it should still work and [laugh] still connect without anything changing. That's a very hard guarantee to be able to make.Corey: And yet, somehow you've been able to do that, just from the perspective of not—I've never yet seen you folks make a security-oriented decision that I'm looking at and rolling my eyes and amazed that you didn't make the decision the other way. There are a lot of companies that while intending very well have done, frankly, very dumb things. I've been keeping an eye on you folks for a long time, and I would have caught that in public. I just haven't seen anything like that. It's kind of amazing.Last year, I finally took the extraordinary step of disabling SSH access anywhere except the tailnet to a number of my things. It lets my logs fill up a lot less, and you've built to that level of utility-like reliability over the series of longtime experimentation. I have yet to regret having Tailscale in the mix, which is, frankly, not something I can say about almost any product.Maya: Yeah. I'm very proud to hear that. And like, maintaining that trust—back to a lot of the conversation about security and reliability and stuff—is incredibly important to us, and we put a lot of effort into it.Corey: I really appreciate your taking the time to talk to me about how things continue to evolve over there. Anything that's new and exciting that might have gotten missed? Like, what has come out in, I guess, the last six months or so that are relevant to the business and might be useful for people looking to use it themselves?Maya: I was hoping you're going to ask me what came out in the last, you know, 20 minutes while we were talking, and the answer is probably nothing, but you never know. But [laugh]—Corey: With you folks, I wouldn't doubt it. Like, “Oh, yeah, by the way, we had to do a brand treatment redo refresh,” or something on the website? Why not? It now uses telepathy just because.Maya: It could, that'd be pretty cool. No, I mean, lots has gone on in the last six months. I think some of the things that might be more interesting to your listeners, we're now in the AWS Marketplace, so if you want to purchase Tailscale through AWS Marketplace, you can. We have a Kubernetes operator that we've released, which lets you both ingress and egress from a Kubernetes cluster to things that are elsewhere in the world on other infrastructure, and also access the Kubernetes control plane and the API server via Tailscale. I mentioned auto-updates. You mentioned the VS Code extension. That's amazing, the fact that you can kind of connect directly from within VS Code to things on your tailnet. That's a lot of the exciting stuff that we've been doing. And there's boring stuff, you know, like audit log streaming, and that kind of stuff. But it's good.Corey: Yeah, that stuff is super boring until suddenly, it's very, very exciting. And those are not generally good days.Maya: [laugh]. Yeah, agreed. It's important, but boring. But important.Corey: [laugh]. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to talk through all the stuff that you folks are up to. If people want to learn more, where's the best place for them to go to get started?Maya: tailscale.com is the best place to go. You can download Tailscale from there, get access to our documentation, all that kind of stuff.Corey: Yeah, I also just want to highlight that you can buy my attention but never my opinion on things and my opinion on Tailscale remains stratospherically high, so thank you for not making me look like a fool, by like, “Yes. And now we're pivoting to something horrifying is a business model and your data.” Thank you for not doing exactly that.Maya: Yeah, we'll keep doing that. No, no, blockchains in our future.Corey: [laugh]. Maya Kaczorowski, Chief Product Officer at Tailscale. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn, and this is Screaming in the Cloud. This episode has been brought to us by our friends at Tailscale. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice along with an angry, insulting comment that will never actually make it back to us because someone screwed up a firewall rule somewhere on their legacy connection.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.

Per LJ, communicating with your partner takes only two words: Microsoft PowerPoint. In other news, no one should take relationship advice from LJ unless they thrive in chaos and want to invest in a very good therapist and psychiatrist team. Communicating with a partner can be tough, any way you slice it. Do you share every single thought and worry with them, or do you pick and choose what you share? Do you hide things to avoid fights, or bear it all and use it as a growth opportunity? Join LJ and Di... and Jack as they break down partner communication with an episode of White Lotus. See how well Jack and Di know LJ's ability to communicate emotions as they play a game called - 'how would LJ handle this?.'

Taihlaura Denman-Francis is a Managing Marketing Consultant at Kingthing. In this role, Taihlaura enjoys the thrill of dreaming up big ideas for her clients. She has an undeniable passion for all things in the digital space, and her favourite things are strategic planning, marketing tactics, social media management and digital advertising. Taihlaura is also a Launceston Tamar Valley Tourism Association (LTVTA) committee member, where she's been able to use her marketing prowess to provide more avenues for tourism operators in the area to discuss, share and learn.Taihlaura delivered an insightful workshop at this year's Tourism Conference, titled ‘Designing effectively on Canva' and in today's episode, she sits down with Tom Wootton to chat all about it. For those who are not aware of Canva, it is a simple to use, cloud-based design platform which can assist you to design anything you can possibly think of – social media tiles, letters, invites, logos, business cards, email signatures etc. Instead of using an app such as Microsoft PowerPoint, Canva is an online tool which you can access via the internet. There is a free version or a pro version for the cheap price of $164.99 per year (which is cheaper than Netflix!).Taihlaura explains some simple yet important design techniques and things to avoid doing, such as ‘font frenzy', the use of negative space in your design, not over-crowding content and keeping the use of colour to a minimum.We've all heard, ‘less is more' but Taihlaura explains how important this truly is when designing effective marketing material. Tourism products and experiences are often communicated visually, which means investing time and energy into a platform like Canva can go a long way to creating high-quality material that makes you stand out from the crowd. Digital marketing doesn't have to be daunting – just jump onto Canva and give it a go!Today's episode is brought to you by our partner, the Department of State Growth. The Department of State Growth brings together four interrelated divisions developing a strategic approach that drives economic growth, and supports the community, industry, and business in the creation of jobs and opportunities for Tasmanians. Thanks to the Department of State Growth for their generous support of TICT and for helping to make this episode of Talking Tourism possible.

In this episode of the Learning While Working Podcast, we explore how AI technologies can be used to increase the efficiency of instructional designers. We tackle the challenges and ethical concerns of using AI-generated tools, focusing on their limitations and potential misinterpretations. Get insights into the importance of maintaining the human element in instructional design, especially in areas like assessment design.About  Cara NorthCara North has worked in the instructional design field for more than a decade and has won multiple awards for her learning experiences. Cara has worked in both higher education and corporate, and runs her own consulting business, The Learning Camel. Some of the clients The Learning Camel has served include Universal Records, WesBanco, NASA, Daisy and the National Association for Talent and Development (ATD).Key takeaways:Generative AI can be used for brainstorming and translation. Tools like Chat GPT are valuable for creating first drafts, but they lack the ability to capture context-specific language and formality. As such, human input is required for this purpose.There are tools that are useful in the localization and translation of content. Cara gives examples of Microsoft PowerPoint's built-in translation tool and Sonix.ai, which help in rapidly reproducing content in different languages, improving efficiency in the learning design process.The use of AI avatars for role-playing exercises in instructional design helps avoid logistical challenges associated with producing videos. However, these AI avatars require human input for more nuanced performance.Segmented time stamps:(00:00) The importance of focusing on making the best learning experience possible and not the tools(01:13) How Cara uses AI in her learning design process(04:42) Some key AI tools to check out (06:25) What human input is needed from AI translation tools(10:19) AI-generated avatars(15:39) Authenticity in art and AI(20:16) Cara's advice for instructional design and using genetic AI nowLinks from the podcast Connect with Cara on LinkedInCheck out The Learning Camel 

Steve Tuck, Co-Founder & CEO of Oxide Computer Company, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss his work to make modern computers cloud-friendly. Steve describes what it was like going through early investment rounds, and the difficult but important decision he and his co-founder made to build their own switch. Corey and Steve discuss the demand for on-prem computers that are built for cloud capability, and Steve reveals how Oxide approaches their product builds to ensure the masses can adopt their technology wherever they are. About SteveSteve is the Co-founder & CEO of Oxide Computer Company.  He previously was President & COO of Joyent, a cloud computing company acquired by Samsung.  Before that, he spent 10 years at Dell in a number of different roles. Links Referenced: Oxide Computer Company: https://oxide.computer/ On The Metal Podcast: https://oxide.computer/podcasts/on-the-metal TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: This episode is brought to us in part by our friends at RedHat. As your organization grows, so does the complexity of your IT resources. You need a flexible solution that lets you deploy, manage, and scale workloads throughout your entire ecosystem. The Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform simplifies the management of applications and services across your hybrid infrastructure with one platform. Look for it on the AWS Marketplace.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. You know, I often say it—but not usually on the show—that Screaming in the Cloud is a podcast about the business of cloud, which is intentionally overbroad so that I can talk about basically whatever the hell I want to with whoever the hell I'd like. Today's guest is, in some ways of thinking, about as far in the opposite direction from Cloud as it's possible to go and still be involved in the digital world. Steve Tuck is the CEO at Oxide Computer Company. You know, computers, the things we all pretend aren't underpinning those clouds out there that we all use and pay by the hour, gigabyte, second-month-pound or whatever it works out to. Steve, thank you for agreeing to come back on the show after a couple years, and once again suffer my slings and arrows.Steve: Much appreciated. Great to be here. It has been a while. I was looking back, I think three years. This was like, pre-pandemic, pre-interest rates, pre… Twitter going totally sideways.Corey: And I have to ask to start with that, it feels, on some level, like toward the start of the pandemic, when everything was flying high and we'd had low interest rates for a decade, that there was a lot of… well, lunacy lurking around in the industry, my own business saw it, too. It turns out that not giving a shit about the AWS bill is in fact a zero interest rate phenomenon. And with all that money or concentrated capital sloshing around, people decided to do ridiculous things with it. I would have thought, on some level, that, “We're going to start a computer company in the Bay Area making computers,” would have been one of those, but given that we are a year into the correction, and things seem to be heading up into the right for you folks, that take was wrong. How'd I get it wrong?Steve: Well, I mean, first of all, you got part of it right, which is there were just a litany of ridiculous companies and projects and money being thrown in all directions at that time.Corey: An NFT of a computer. We're going to have one of those. That's what you're selling, right? Then you had to actually hard pivot to making the real thing.Steve: That's it. So, we might as well cut right to it, you know. This is—we went through the crypto phase. But you know, our—when we started the company, it was yes, a computer company. It's on the tin. It's definitely kind of the foundation of what we're building. But you know, we think about what a modern computer looks like through the lens of cloud.I was at a cloud computing company for ten years prior to us founding Oxide, so was Bryan Cantrill, CTO, co-founder. And, you know, we are huge, huge fans of cloud computing, which was an interesting kind of dichotomy. Instead of conversations when we were raising for Oxide—because of course, Sand Hill is terrified of hardware. And when we think about what modern computers need to look like, they need to be in support of the characteristics of cloud, and cloud computing being not that you're renting someone else's computers, but that you have fully programmable infrastructure that allows you to slice and dice, you know, compute and storage and networking however software needs. And so, what we set out to go build was a way for the companies that are running on-premises infrastructure—which, by the way, is almost everyone and will continue to be so for a very long time—access to the benefits of cloud computing. And to do that, you need to build a different kind of computing infrastructure and architecture, and you need to plumb the whole thing with software.Corey: There are a number of different ways to view cloud computing. And I think that a lot of the, shall we say, incumbent vendors over in the computer manufacturing world tend to sound kind of like dinosaurs, on some level, where they're always talking in terms of, you're a giant company and you already have a whole bunch of data centers out there. But one of the magical pieces of cloud is you can have a ridiculous idea at nine o'clock tonight and by morning, you'll have a prototype, if you're of that bent. And if it turns out it doesn't work, you're out, you know, 27 cents. And if it does work, you can keep going and not have to stop and rebuild on something enterprise-grade.So, for the small-scale stuff and rapid iteration, cloud providers are terrific. Conversely, when you wind up in the giant fleets of millions of computers, in some cases, there begin to be economic factors that weigh in, and for some on workloads—yes, I know it's true—going to a data center is the economical choice. But my question is, is starting a new company in the direction of building these things, is it purely about economics or is there a capability story tied in there somewhere, too?Steve: Yeah, it's actually economics ends up being a distant third, fourth, in the list of needs and priorities from the companies that we're working with. When we talk about—and just to be clear we're—our demographic, that kind of the part of the market that we are focused on are large enterprises, like, folks that are spending, you know, half a billion, billion dollars a year in IT infrastructure, they, over the last five years, have moved a lot of the use cases that are great for public cloud out to the public cloud, and who still have this very, very large need, be it for latency reasons or cost reasons, security reasons, regulatory reasons, where they need on-premises infrastructure in their own data centers and colo facilities, et cetera. And it is for those workloads in that part of their infrastructure that they are forced to live with enterprise technologies that are 10, 20, 30 years old, you know, that haven't evolved much since I left Dell in 2009. And, you know, when you think about, like, what are the capabilities that are so compelling about cloud computing, one of them is yes, what you mentioned, which is you have an idea at nine o'clock at night and swipe a credit card, and you're off and running. And that is not the case for an idea that someone has who is going to use the on-premises infrastructure of their company. And this is where you get shadow IT and 16 digits to freedom and all the like.Corey: Yeah, everyone with a corporate credit card winds up being a shadow IT source in many cases. If your processes as a company don't make it easier to proceed rather than doing it the wrong way, people are going to be fighting against you every step of the way. Sometimes the only stick you've got is that of regulation, which in some industries, great, but in other cases, no, you get to play Whack-a-Mole. I've talked to too many companies that have specific scanners built into their mail system every month looking for things that look like AWS invoices.Steve: [laugh]. Right, exactly. And so, you know, but if you flip it around, and you say, well, what if the experience for all of my infrastructure that I am running, or that I want to provide to my software development teams, be it rented through AWS, GCP, Azure, or owned for economic reasons or latency reasons, I had a similar set of characteristics where my development team could hit an API endpoint and provision instances in a matter of seconds when they had an idea and only pay for what they use, back to kind of corporate IT. And what if they were able to use the same kind of developer tools they've become accustomed to using, be it Terraform scripts and the kinds of access that they are accustomed to using? How do you make those developers just as productive across the business, instead of just through public cloud infrastructure?At that point, then you are in a much stronger position where you can say, you know, for a portion of things that are, as you pointed out, you know, more unpredictable, and where I want to leverage a bunch of additional services that a particular cloud provider has, I can rent that. And where I've got more persistent workloads or where I want a different economic profile or I need to have something in a very low latency manner to another set of services, I can own it. And that's where I think the real chasm is because today, you just don't—we take for granted the basic plumbing of cloud computing, you know? Elastic Compute, Elastic Storage, you know, networking and security services. And us in the cloud industry end up wanting to talk a lot more about exotic services and, sort of, higher-up stack capabilities. None of that basic plumbing is accessible on-prem.Corey: I also am curious as to where exactly Oxide lives in the stack because I used to build computers for myself in 2000, and it seems like having gone down that path a bit recently, yeah, that process hasn't really improved all that much. The same off-the-shelf components still exist and that's great. We always used to disparagingly call spinning hard drives as spinning rust in racks. You named the company Oxide; you're talking an awful lot about the Rust programming language in public a fair bit of the time, and I'm starting to wonder if maybe words don't mean what I thought they meant anymore. Where do you folks start and stop, exactly?Steve: Yeah, that's a good question. And when we started, we sort of thought the scope of what we were going to do and then what we were going to leverage was smaller than it has turned out to be. And by that I mean, man, over the last three years, we have hit a bunch of forks in the road where we had questions about do we take something off the shelf or do we build it ourselves. And we did not try to build everything ourselves. So, to give you a sense of kind of where the dotted line is, around the Oxide product, what we're delivering to customers is a rack-level computer. So, the minimum size comes in rack form. And I think your listeners are probably pretty familiar with this. But, you know, a rack is—Corey: You would be surprised. It's basically, what are they about seven feet tall?Steve: Yeah, about eight feet tall.Corey: Yeah, yeah. Seven, eight feet, weighs a couple 1000 pounds, you know, make an insulting joke about—Steve: Two feet wide.Corey: —NBA players here. Yeah, all kinds of these things.Steve: Yeah. And big hunk of metal. And in the cases of on-premises infrastructure, it's kind of a big hunk of metal hole, and then a bunch of 1U and 2U boxes crammed into it. What the hyperscalers have done is something very different. They started looking at, you know, at the rack level, how can you get much more dense, power-efficient designs, doing things like using a DC bus bar down the back, instead of having 64 power supplies with cables hanging all over the place in a rack, which I'm sure is what you're more familiar with.Corey: Tremendous amount of weight as well because you have the metal chassis for all of those 1U things, which in some cases, you wind up with, what, 46U in a rack, assuming you can even handle the cooling needs of all that.Steve: That's right.Corey: You have so much duplication, and so much of the weight is just metal separating one thing from the next thing down below it. And there are opportunities for massive improvement, but you need to be at a certain point of scale to get there.Steve: You do. You do. And you also have to be taking on the entire problem. You can't pick at parts of these things. And that's really what we found. So, we started at this sort of—the rack level as sort of the design principle for the product itself and found that that gave us the ability to get to the right geometry, to get as much CPU horsepower and storage and throughput and networking into that kind of chassis for the least amount of wattage required, kind of the most power-efficient design possible.So, it ships at the rack level and it ships complete with both our server sled systems in Oxide, a pair of Oxide switches. This is—when I talk about, like, design decisions, you know, do we build our own switch, it was a big, big, big question early on. We were fortunate even though we were leaning towards thinking we needed to go do that, we had this prospective early investor who was early at AWS and he had asked a very tough question that none of our other investors had asked to this point, which is, “What are you going to do about the switch?”And we knew that the right answer to an investor is like, “No. We're already taking on too much.” We're redesigning a server from scratch in, kind of, the mold of what some of the hyperscalers have learned, doing our own Root of Trust, we're doing our own operating system, hypervisor control plane, et cetera. Taking on the switch could be seen as too much, but we told them, you know, we think that to be able to pull through all of the value of the security benefits and the performance and observability benefits, we can't have then this [laugh], like, obscure third-party switch rammed into this rack.Corey: It's one of those things that people don't think about, but it's the magic of cloud with AWS's network, for example, it's magic. You can get line rate—or damn near it—between any two points, sustained.Steve: That's right.Corey: Try that in the data center, you wind into massive congestion with top-of-rack switches, where, okay, we're going to parallelize this stuff out over, you know, two dozen racks and we're all going to have them seamlessly transfer information between each other at line rate. It's like, “[laugh] no, you're not because those top-of-rack switches will melt and become side-of-rack switches, and then bottom-puddle-of-rack switches. It doesn't work that way.”Steve: That's right.Corey: And you have to put a lot of thought and planning into it. That is something that I've not heard a traditional networking vendor addressing because everyone loves to hand-wave over it.Steve: Well so, and this particular prospective investor, we told him, “We think we have to go build our own switch.” And he said, “Great.” And we said, “You know, we think we're going to lose you as an investor as a result, but this is what we're doing.” And he said, “If you're building your own switch, I want to invest.” And his comment really stuck with us, which is AWS did not stand on their own two feet until they threw out their proprietary switch vendor and built their own.And that really unlocked, like you've just mentioned, like, their ability, both in hardware and software to tune and optimize to deliver that kind of line rate capability. And that is one of the big findings for us as we got into it. Yes, it was really, really hard, but based on a couple of design decisions, P4 being the programming language that we are using as the surround for our silicon, tons of opportunities opened up for us to be able to do similar kinds of optimization and observability. And that has been a big, big win.But to your question of, like, where does it stop? So, we are delivering this complete with a baked-in operating system, hypervisor, control plane. And so, the endpoint of the system, where the customer meets is either hitting an API or a CLI or a console that delivers and kind of gives you the ability to spin up projects. And, you know, if one is familiar with EC2 and EBS and VPC, that VM level of abstraction is where we stop.Corey: That, I think, is a fair way of thinking about it. And a lot of cloud folks are going to pooh-pooh it as far as saying, “Oh well, just virtual machines. That's old cloud. That just treats the cloud like a data center.” And in many cases, yes, it does because there are ways to build modern architectures that are event-driven on top of things like Lambda, and API Gateway, and the rest, but you take a look at what my customers are doing and what drives the spend, it is invariably virtual machines that are largely persistent.Sometimes they scale up, sometimes they scale down, but there's always a baseline level of load that people like to hand-wave away the fact that what they're fundamentally doing in a lot of these cases, is paying the cloud provider to handle the care and feeding of those systems, which can be expensive, yes, but also delivers significant innovation beyond what almost any company is going to be able to deliver in-house. There is no way around it. AWS is better than you are—whoever you happen to—be at replacing failed hard drives. That is a simple fact. They have teams of people who are the best in the world of replacing failed hard drives. You generally do not. They are going to be better at that than you. But that's not the only axis. There's not one calculus that leads to, is cloud a scam or is cloud a great value proposition for us? The answer is always a deeply nuanced, “It depends.”Steve: Yeah, I mean, I think cloud is a great value proposition for most and a growing amount of software that's being developed and deployed and operated. And I think, you know, one of the myths that is out there is, hey, turn over your IT to AWS because we have or you know, a cloud provider—because we have such higher caliber personnel that are really good at swapping hard drives and dealing with networks and operationally keeping this thing running in a highly available manner that delivers good performance. That is certainly true, but a lot of the operational value in an AWS is been delivered via software, the automation, the observability, and not actual people putting hands on things. And it's an important point because that's been a big part of what we're building into the product. You know, just because you're running infrastructure in your own data center, it does not mean that you should have to spend, you know, 1000 hours a month across a big team to maintain and operate it. And so, part of that, kind of, cloud, hyperscaler innovation that we're baking into this product is so that it is easier to operate with much, much, much lower overhead in a highly available, resilient manner.Corey: So, I've worked in a number of data center facilities, but the companies I was working with, were always at a scale where these were co-locations, where they would, in some cases, rent out a rack or two, in other cases, they'd rent out a cage and fill it with their own racks. They didn't own the facilities themselves. Those were always handled by other companies. So, my question for you is, if I want to get a pile of Oxide racks into my environment in a data center, what has to change? What are the expectations?I mean, yes, there's obviously going to be power and requirements at the data center colocation is very conversant with, but Open Compute, for example, had very specific requirements—to my understanding—around things like the airflow construction of the environment that they're placed within. How prescriptive is what you've built, in terms of doing a building retrofit to start using you folks?Steve: Yeah, definitely not. And this was one of the tensions that we had to balance as we were designing the product. For all of the benefits of hyperscaler computing, some of the design center for you know, the kinds of racks that run in Google and Amazon and elsewhere are hyperscaler-focused, which is unlimited power, in some cases, data centers designed around the equipment itself. And where we were headed, which was basically making hyperscaler infrastructure available to, kind of, the masses, the rest of the market, these folks don't have unlimited power and they aren't going to go be able to go redesign data centers. And so no, the experience should be—with exceptions for folks maybe that have very, very limited access to power—that you roll this rack into your existing data center. It's on standard floor tile, that you give it power, and give it networking and go.And we've spent a lot of time thinking about how we can operate in the wide-ranging environmental characteristics that are commonplace in data centers that focus on themselves, colo facilities, and the like. So, that's really on us so that the customer is not having to go to much work at all to kind of prepare and be ready for it.Corey: One of the challenges I have is how to think about what you've done because you are rack-sized. But what that means is that my own experimentation at home recently with on-prem stuff for smart home stuff involves a bunch of Raspberries Pi and a [unintelligible 00:19:42], but I tend to more or less categorize you the same way that I do AWS Outposts, as well as mythical creatures, like unicorns or giraffes, where I don't believe that all these things actually exist because I haven't seen them. And in fact, to get them in my house, all four of those things would theoretically require a loading dock if they existed, and that's a hard thing to fake on a demo signup form, as it turns out. How vaporware is what you've built? Is this all on paper and you're telling amazing stories or do they exist in the wild?Steve: So, last time we were on, it was all vaporware. It was a couple of napkin drawings and a seed round of funding.Corey: I do recall you not using that description at the time, for what it's worth. Good job.Steve: [laugh]. Yeah, well, at least we were transparent where we were going through the race. We had some napkin drawings and we had some good ideas—we thought—and—Corey: You formalize those and that's called Microsoft PowerPoint.Steve: That's it. A hundred percent.Corey: The next generative AI play is take the scrunched-up, stained napkin drawing, take a picture of it, and convert it to a slide.Steve: Google Docs, you know, one of those. But no, it's got a lot of scars from the build and it is real. In fact, next week, we are going to be shipping our first commercial systems. So, we have got a line of racks out in our manufacturing facility in lovely Rochester, Minnesota. Fun fact: Rochester, Minnesota, is where the IBM AS/400s were built.Corey: I used to work in that market, of all things.Steve: Really?Corey: Selling tape drives in the AS/400. I mean, I still maintain there's no real mainframe migration to the cloud play because there's no AWS/400. A joke that tends to sail over an awful lot of people's heads because, you know, most people aren't as miserable in their career choices as I am.Steve: Okay, that reminds me. So, when we were originally pitching Oxide and we were fundraising, we [laugh]—in a particular investor meeting, they asked, you know, “What would be a good comp? Like how should we think about what you are doing?” And fortunately, we had about 20 investor meetings to go through, so burning one on this was probably okay, but we may have used the AS/400 as a comp, talking about how [laugh] mainframe systems did such a good job of building hardware and software together. And as you can imagine, there were some blank stares in that room.But you know, there are some good analogs to historically in the computing industry, when you know, the industry, the major players in the industry, were thinking about how to deliver holistic systems to support end customers. And, you know, we see this in the what Apple has done with the iPhone, and you're seeing this as a lot of stuff in the automotive industry is being pulled in-house. I was listening to a good podcast. Jim Farley from Ford was talking about how the automotive industry historically outsourced all of the software that controls cars, right? So, like, Bosch would write the software for the controls for your seats.And they had all these suppliers that were writing the software, and what it meant was that innovation was not possible because you'd have to go out to suppliers to get software changes for any little change you wanted to make. And in the computing industry, in the 80s, you saw this blow apart where, like, firmware got outsourced. In the IBM and the clones, kind of, race, everyone started outsourcing firmware and outsourcing software. Microsoft started taking over operating systems. And then VMware emerged and was doing a virtualization layer.And this, kind of, fragmented ecosystem is the landscape today that every single on-premises infrastructure operator has to struggle with. It's a kit car. And so, pulling it back together, designing things in a vertically integrated manner is what the hyperscalers have done. And so, you mentioned Outposts. And, like, it's a good example of—I mean, the most public cloud of public cloud companies created a way for folks to get their system on-prem.I mean, if you need anything to underscore the draw and the demand for cloud computing-like, infrastructure on-prem, just the fact that that emerged at all tells you that there is this big need. Because you've got, you know, I don't know, a trillion dollars worth of IT infrastructure out there and you have maybe 10% of it in the public cloud. And that's up from 5% when Jassy was on stage in '21, talking about 95% of stuff living outside of AWS, but there's going to be a giant market of customers that need to own and operate infrastructure. And again, things have not improved much in the last 10 or 20 years for them.Corey: They have taken a tone onstage about how, “Oh, those workloads that aren't in the cloud, yet, yeah, those people are legacy idiots.” And I don't buy that for a second because believe it or not—I know that this cuts against what people commonly believe in public—but company execs are generally not morons, and they make decisions with context and constraints that we don't see. Things are the way they are for a reason. And I promise that 90% of corporate IT workloads that still live on-prem are not being managed or run by people who've never heard of the cloud. There was a decision made when some other things were migrating of, do we move this thing to the cloud or don't we? And the answer at the time was no, we're going to keep this thing on-prem where it is now for a variety of reasons of varying validity. But I don't view that as a bug. I also, frankly, don't want to live in a world where all the computers are basically run by three different companies.Steve: You're spot on, which is, like, it does a total disservice to these smart and forward-thinking teams in every one of the Fortune 1000-plus companies who are taking the constraints that they have—and some of those constraints are not monetary or entirely workload-based. If you want to flip it around, we were talking to a large cloud SaaS company and their reason for wanting to extend it beyond the public cloud is because they want to improve latency for their e-commerce platform. And navigating their way through the complex layers of the networking stack at GCP to get to where the customer assets are that are in colo facilities, adds lag time on the platform that can cost them hundreds of millions of dollars. And so, we need to think behind this notion of, like, “Oh, well, the dark ages are for software that can't run in the cloud, and that's on-prem. And it's just a matter of time until everything moves to the cloud.”In the forward-thinking models of public cloud, it should be both. I mean, you should have a consistent experience, from a certain level of the stack down, everywhere. And then it's like, do I want to rent or do I want to own for this particular use case? In my vast set of infrastructure needs, do I want this to run in a data center that Amazon runs or do I want this to run in a facility that is close to this other provider of mine? And I think that's best for all. And then it's not this kind of false dichotomy of quality infrastructure or ownership.Corey: I find that there are also workloads where people will come to me and say, “Well, we don't think this is going to be economical in the cloud”—because again, I focus on AWS bills. That is the lens I view things through, and—“The AWS sales rep says it will be. What do you think?” And I look at what they're doing and especially if involves high volumes of data transfer, I laugh a good hearty laugh and say, “Yeah, keep that thing in the data center where it is right now. You will thank me for it later.”It's, “Well, can we run this in an economical way in AWS?” As long as you're okay with economical meaning six times what you're paying a year right now for the same thing, yeah, you can. I wouldn't recommend it. And the numbers sort of speak for themselves. But it's not just an economic play.There's also the story of, does this increase their capability? Does it let them move faster toward their business goals? And in a lot of cases, the answer is no, it doesn't. It's one of those business process things that has to exist for a variety of reasons. You don't get to reimagine it for funsies and even if you did, it doesn't advance the company in what they're trying to do any, so focus on something that differentiates as opposed to this thing that you're stuck on.Steve: That's right. And what we see today is, it is easy to be in that mindset of running things on-premises is kind of backwards-facing because the experience of it is today still very, very difficult. I mean, talking to folks and they're sharing with us that it takes a hundred days from the time all the different boxes land in their warehouse to actually having usable infrastructure that developers can use. And our goal and what we intend to go hit with Oxide as you can roll in this complete rack-level system, plug it in, within an hour, you have developers that are accessing cloud-like services out of the infrastructure. And that—God, countless stories of firmware bugs that would send all the fans in the data center nonlinear and soak up 100 kW of power.Corey: Oh, God. And the problems that you had with the out-of-band management systems. For a long time, I thought Drax stood for, “Dell, RMA Another Computer.” It was awful having to deal with those things. There was so much room for innovation in that space, which no one really grabbed onto.Steve: There was a really, really interesting talk at DEFCON that we just stumbled upon yesterday. The NVIDIA folks are giving a talk on BMC exploits… and like, a very, very serious BMC exploit. And again, it's what most people don't know is, like, first of all, the BMC, the Baseboard Management Controller, is like the brainstem of the computer. It has access to—it's a backdoor into all of your infrastructure. It's a computer inside a computer and it's got software and hardware that your server OEM didn't build and doesn't understand very well.And firmware is even worse because you know, firmware written by you know, an American Megatrends or other is a big blob of software that gets loaded into these systems that is very hard to audit and very hard to ascertain what's happening. And it's no surprise when, you know, back when we were running all the data centers at a cloud computing company, that you'd run into these issues, and you'd go to the server OEM and they'd kind of throw their hands up. Well, first they'd gaslight you and say, “We've never seen this problem before,” but when you thought you've root-caused something down to firmware, it was anyone's guess. And this is kind of the current condition today. And back to, like, the journey to get here, we kind of realized that you had to blow away that old extant firmware layer, and we rewrote our own firmware in Rust. Yes [laugh], I've done a lot in Rust.Corey: No, it was in Rust, but, on some level, that's what Nitro is, as best I can tell, on the AWS side. But it turns out that you don't tend to have the same resources as a one-and-a-quarter—at the moment—trillion-dollar company. That keeps [valuing 00:30:53]. At one point, they lost a comma and that was sad and broke all my logic for that and I haven't fixed it since. Unfortunate stuff.Steve: Totally. I think that was another, kind of, question early on from certainly a lot of investors was like, “Hey, how are you going to pull this off with a smaller team and there's a lot of surface area here?” Certainly a reasonable question. Definitely was hard. The one advantage—among others—is, when you are designing something kind of in a vertical holistic manner, those design integration points are narrowed down to just your equipment.And when someone's writing firmware, when AMI is writing firmware, they're trying to do it to cover hundreds and hundreds of components across dozens and dozens of vendors. And we have the advantage of having this, like, purpose-built system, kind of, end-to-end from the lowest level from first boot instruction, all the way up through the control plane and from rack to switch to server. That definitely helped narrow the scope.Corey: This episode has been fake sponsored by our friends at AWS with the following message: Graviton Graviton, Graviton, Graviton, Graviton, Graviton, Graviton, Graviton, Graviton. Thank you for your l-, lack of support for this show. Now, AWS has been talking about Graviton an awful lot, which is their custom in-house ARM processor. Apple moved over to ARM and instead of talking about benchmarks they won't publish and marketing campaigns with words that don't mean anything, they've let the results speak for themselves. In time, I found that almost all of my workloads have moved over to ARM architecture for a variety of reason, and my laptop now gets 15 hours of battery life when all is said and done. You're building these things on top of x86. What is the deal there? I do not accept that if that you hadn't heard of ARM until just now because, as mentioned, Graviton, Graviton, Graviton.Steve: That's right. Well, so why x86, to start? And I say to start because we have just launched our first generation products. And our first-generation or second-generation products that we are now underway working on are going to be x86 as well. We've built this system on AMD Milan silicon; we are going to be launching a Genoa sled.But when you're thinking about what silicon to use, obviously, there's a bunch of parts that go into the decision. You're looking at the kind of applicability to workload, performance, power management, for sure, and if you carve up what you are trying to achieve, x86 is still a terrific fit for the broadest set of workloads that our customers are trying to solve for. And choosing which x86 architecture was certainly an easier choice, come 2019. At this point, AMD had made a bunch of improvements in performance and energy efficiency in the chip itself. We've looked at other architectures and I think as we are incorporating those in the future roadmap, it's just going to be a question of what are you trying to solve for.You mentioned power management, and that is kind of commonly been a, you know, low power systems is where folks have gone beyond x86. Is we're looking forward to hardware acceleration products and future products, we'll certainly look beyond x86, but x86 has a long, long road to go. It still is kind of the foundation for what, again, is a general-purpose cloud infrastructure for being able to slice and dice for a variety of workloads.Corey: True. I have to look around my environment and realize that Intel is not going anywhere. And that's not just an insult to their lack of progress on committed roadmaps that they consistently miss. But—Steve: [sigh].Corey: Enough on that particular topic because we want to keep this, you know, polite.Steve: Intel has definitely had some struggles for sure. They're very public ones, I think. We were really excited and continue to be very excited about their Tofino silicon line. And this came by way of the Barefoot networks acquisition. I don't know how much you had paid attention to Tofino, but what was really, really compelling about Tofino is the focus on both hardware and software and programmability.So, great chip. And P4 is the programming language that surrounds that. And we have gotten very, very deep on P4, and that is some of the best tech to come out of Intel lately. But from a core silicon perspective for the rack, we went with AMD. And again, that was a pretty straightforward decision at the time. And we're planning on having this anchored around AMD silicon for a while now.Corey: One last question I have before we wind up calling it an episode, it seems—at least as of this recording, it's still embargoed, but we're not releasing this until that winds up changing—you folks have just raised another round, which means that your napkin doodles have apparently drawn more folks in, and now that you're shipping, you're also not just bringing in customers, but also additional investor money. Tell me about that.Steve: Yes, we just completed our Series A. So, when we last spoke three years ago, we had just raised our seed and had raised $20 million at the time, and we had expected that it was going to take about that to be able to build the team and build the product and be able to get to market, and [unintelligible 00:36:14] tons of technical risk along the way. I mean, there was technical risk up and down the stack around this [De Novo 00:36:21] server design, this the switch design. And software is still the kind of disproportionate majority of what this product is, from hypervisor up through kind of control plane, the cloud services, et cetera. So—Corey: We just view it as software with a really, really confusing hardware dongle.Steve: [laugh]. Yeah. Yes.Corey: Super heavy. We're talking enterprise and government-grade here.Steve: That's right. There's a lot of software to write. And so, we had a bunch of milestones that as we got through them, one of the big ones was getting Milan silicon booting on our firmware. It was funny it was—this was the thing that clearly, like, the industry was most suspicious of, us doing our own firmware, and you could see it when we demonstrated booting this, like, a year-and-a-half ago, and AMD all of a sudden just lit up, from kind of arm's length to, like, “How can we help? This is amazing.” You know? And they could start to see the benefits of when you can tie low-level silicon intelligence up through a hypervisor there's just—Corey: No I love the existing firmware I have. Looks like it was written in 1984 and winds up having terrible user ergonomics that hasn't been updated at all, and every time something comes through, it's a 50/50 shot as whether it fries the box or not. Yeah. No, I want that.Steve: That's right. And you look at these hyperscale data centers, and it's like, no. I mean, you've got intelligence from that first boot instruction through a Root of Trust, up through the software of the hyperscaler, and up to the user level. And so, as we were going through and kind of knocking down each one of these layers of the stack, doing our own firmware, doing our own hardware Root of Trust, getting that all the way plumbed up into the hypervisor and the control plane, number one on the customer side, folks moved from, “This is really interesting. We need to figure out how we can bring cloud capabilities to our data centers. Talk to us when you have something,” to, “Okay. We actually”—back to the earlier question on vaporware, you know, it was great having customers out here to Emeryville where they can put their hands on the rack and they can, you know, put your hands on software, but being able to, like, look at real running software and that end cloud experience.And that led to getting our first couple of commercial contracts. So, we've got some great first customers, including a large department of the government, of the federal government, and a leading firm on Wall Street that we're going to be shipping systems to in a matter of weeks. And as you can imagine, along with that, that drew a bunch of renewed interest from the investor community. Certainly, a different climate today than it was back in 2019, but what was great to see is, you still have great investors that understand the importance of making bets in the hard tech space and in companies that are looking to reinvent certain industries. And so, we added—our existing investors all participated. We added a bunch of terrific new investors, both strategic and institutional.And you know, this capital is going to be super important now that we are headed into market and we are beginning to scale up the business and make sure that we have a long road to go. And of course, maybe as importantly, this was a real confidence boost for our customers. They're excited to see that Oxide is going to be around for a long time and that they can invest in this technology as an important part of their infrastructure strategy.Corey: I really want to thank you for taking the time to speak with me about, well, how far you've come in a few years. If people want to learn more and have the requisite loading dock, where should they go to find you?Steve: So, we try to put everything up on the site. So, oxidecomputer.com or oxide.computer. We also, if you remember, we did [On the Metal 00:40:07]. So, we had a Tales from the Hardware-Software Interface podcast that we did when we started. We have shifted that to Oxide and Friends, which the shift there is we're spending a little bit more time talking about the guts of what we built and why. So, if folks are interested in, like, why the heck did you build a switch and what does it look like to build a switch, we actually go to depth on that. And you know, what does bring-up on a new server motherboard look like? And it's got some episodes out there that might be worth checking out.Corey: We will definitely include a link to that in the [show notes 00:40:36]. Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it.Steve: Yeah, Corey. Thanks for having me on.Corey: Steve Tuck, CEO at Oxide Computer Company. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn, and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this episode, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, along with an angry ranting comment because you are in fact a zoology major, and you're telling me that some animals do in fact exist. But I'm pretty sure of the two of them, it's the unicorn.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.

Episode 166 In this episode of the Observers Notebook podcast, host Tim Robertson talks to the ALPO Board Member Ken Poshedly on the upcoming Virtual ALPO Conference. The dates will be Friday and Saturday, July 28/29, 2023. The conference will also be Live Streamed on the ALPO YouTube channel. The conference times for both days will be from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Pacific Time (1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern Time) . All presentations be limited to approximately 25 minutes each with a few minutes left for audience questions. The ALPO board of directors meeting will be held on Friday, July 28 at 4 p.m. PT (7 p.m. ET). The ALPO Conference is free and open to anyone to attend; however, all presenters must be current members of the ALPO. Digital memberships start at only $22 a year. To join online, go to http://www.astroleague.org/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=10&products_id=39, Following a break after the last paper presentation on Saturday afternoon, July 29, will be presentation of the annual Walter Haas Observer Award. This will be followed by our keynote speaker at 4 pm. PT (7 p.m. ET). The only hardware required along with your computer are a webcam and microphone. If you will be using a laptop computer, both are already built into your system. Those with PC desktop computers can obtain an inexpensive webcam with built-in microphone from either your local computer retailer or online. An online chat feature will allow type-in text comments for questions once the conference gets underway. All presenters must already have ZOOM installed on their computer prior to the conference dates. ZOOM is free and available at https://zoom.us/ The ZOOM links will be e-mailed out on Thursday, July 27. There will be a separate ZOOM meeting set up for each day. The ZOOM virtual (online) meeting room will open 15 minutes prior to the beginning of each day's activities. Upon logging into ZOOM you will be placed into a ‘waiting room' until the meeting begins, and your microphone will be muted automatically. Participants are encouraged to submit research papers, presentations and experience reports concerning various aspects of Earth-based observational solar system astronomy. Suggested topics for papers and presentations include the following: • New or ongoing observing programs and studies, specifically, how those programs were designed, implemented, and continue to function. • Results of personal or group studies of solar system or extra-solar system bodies. • New or ongoing activities involving astronomical instrumentation, construction or improvement. Those individuals wishing to present a paper should submit their request to Tim Robertson at cometman@cometman.net no later than Monday, July 3rd, along with a brief bio about themselves and a summary of their presentation. Microsoft PowerPoint is the preferred method of visual presentation along with an audio explanation. Contact Information: ALPO Website: http://www.alpo-astronomy.org/ Tim Robertson: cometman@cometman.net ZOOM: https://zoom.us/ ALPO YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/AssociationofLunarandPlanetaryObservers ALPO Podcast- The Observers Notebook: https://soundcloud.com/observersnotebook For more information you can visit the ALPO web site at: www.alpo-astronomy.org/ You can also support this podcast at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ObserversNotebook Listen to the podcast on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/observersnotebook Subscribe on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/observers-notebook-the-alpo-podcast/id1199301885?mt=2 I want to thank the Producer of this podcast, Steve Siedentop and Michael Moyer for their generous support of the Observers Notebook. Our Patreons: Jerry White Jason Inman Matt Will Steve Seidentop Stephen Bennett Michael Moyer Shawn Dilles Frank Schenck Damian Allis Carl Hergenrother Julian Parks Michael McShan Michael Blake Nick Evetts Rik Hill Stan Sienkiewicz

EdTech Thought (3:02) The Power of Community for Educators: A community is much more than a mere group of individuals; it serves as a robust support system and a platform for shared experiences and ideas. Within a community, we can find solace and encouragement during challenging times while celebrating our triumphs together. The realization that we are not alone in our struggles, achievements, and aspirations becomes a profound source of motivation. Building a Sanctuary for Educators: By actively building a community of educators, we create a sanctuary where knowledge is exchanged, best practices are shared, and innovative ideas are collaboratively developed. This nurturing environment becomes a wellspring of encouragement, inspiration, and the fuel that drives us to strive for excellence within our classrooms. Benefits of Joining an Educator Community: Knowledge Exchange: In a vibrant community, educators can tap into a vast pool of knowledge and expertise. By engaging in conversations and sharing insights, we can enhance our teaching methods, discover new approaches, and refine our craft. Best Practices: Within the community, educators can share successful strategies, proven techniques, and effective classroom management skills. This collaboration allows us to learn from one another and adapt these best practices to suit our unique teaching contexts. Collaboration and Innovation: An educator community provides a fertile ground for collaboration and innovation. By working together on projects, lesson plans, and educational initiatives, we can amplify our impact and create transformative experiences for our students. Support and Encouragement: The challenges of being an educator can sometimes feel overwhelming. However, within a community, we find unwavering support and encouragement from like-minded professionals who understand our journey. This support system bolsters our resilience and empowers us to navigate through difficulties with renewed vigor. EdTech Recommendation (8:24) I want to introduce you to a powerful tool that is revolutionizing the way educators deliver presentations. ClassPoint is an innovative solution that seamlessly integrates with Microsoft PowerPoint, elevating your teaching experience to new heights. Let's explore how ClassPoint enhances your existing PowerPoint presentations and transforms them into dynamic and interactive learning experiences. Transforming PowerPoint into a Dynamic Teaching Platform: ClassPoint elevates PowerPoint from a basic presentation tool to a dynamic teaching platform. By incorporating ClassPoint into your digital lessons, you can enhance student engagement, foster interactivity, and create memorable learning experiences. Take your teaching to the next level by giving ClassPoint a try and experience the transformative power it brings to your classroom. Share your feedback and let me know how it enhances your teaching. If you're already using ClassPoint, I would love to hear from you too! Featured Content (10:29) In today's world, podcasting is becoming an increasingly influential tool in many educational settings. We delve deep into this topic, particularly the benefits of podcasting in schools. This episode explores how podcasting contributes to students' development and growth in various subjects, boosting their communication and social skills. Whether you're based in Brazil like my listener Leo Calbusch, in Pennsylvania like Mike Brilla, or anywhere else in the world, this episode provides insightful answers to critical questions on the role of podcasting in enhancing student engagement and commitment. Resources: #1 Resource: https://chrisnesi.com/schoolpodcast https://everything-everywhere.com/everything-everywhere-daily-podcast/ http://zebrapodcastnetwork.com Topics and questions addressed: What are the benefits of podcasting in school? How does it contribute to students' development and improvement in different subjects? How does it enhance their communication and social skills? Does it help them become more organized? Curious about student engagement and commitment What do they learn and what skills do they develop or improve by podcasting? Could you provide some guidance on how to distribute a podcast on major platforms such as Apple, Google, and Spotify? How regularly do you meet with your podcasting club at school? How can I introduce the concept of podcasting to students who may be unfamiliar with it? What are some engaging topics or themes that students can explore in their own podcast episodes? What roles can students take on in the production of a podcast (host, producer, editor, etc.)? How can we ensure that students' podcasts are appropriate and safe for sharing? How can we involve parents and the wider school community in our podcasting project? Can you provide any examples of successful student-led podcasts or podcasting projects in schools?

InDesign 18.21 release CreativePro Week 2023 June 4–9, Phoenix, Arizona (and online!) NEW Design + Marketing Summit (online, July 27–28) Awesome lineup, including Jesus Ramirez, Von Glitschka, Amy Balliet, and new speakers incluing the amazing Jim Krause, Brodi-Rose Newsome, Kyle Hamrick Creative Pro Magazine issue 18 feature story is about motion and video in Photoshop!  All about Measurements: You're bound to learn a few tips Obscure InDesign Feature: Not Shifted Sponsors for this episode >>PageProof is the top online proofing workflow platform for your creative process: InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, PowerPoint, image files, and more. It's free for reviewers, and flat rate pricing for you and your designers makes it easy to get started! Learn more about PageProof in David's in-depth interview in this CreativePro Conversation on YouTube.  >>Microsoft PowerPoint has a mission: To empower people and organizations to tell the world's most compelling stories to anyone, anywhere, at any time. Check out our newest feature, Cameo, which lets you integrate a live camera feed into your presentation. Learn more about Cameo here. Links mentioned in this podcast More on Measurements Changing InDesign's Default Ruler Measurements: link InDesign Measurements Changing Unexpectedly: link Scaling an Object to an Exact Size: link Measuring Angles: link Measurement Field Secrets: link Measure Distance with Ruler Guides: link Set the Size of Text Exactly (based on cap or x-height): link A Great Script Lets You Add Measurements in InDesign or Illustrator: link

Welcome to Dev Game Club, where this week we continue our series on Dwarf Fortress. We talk about working on a thing for a long time, the refinements of the latest version, and a host of other small issues. Dev Game Club looks at classic video games and plays through them over several episodes, providing commentary. Sections played: Several hours of the latest version of the game Issues covered: rendering different glyphs, working on a thing for twenty years, the historical record, preservation, iteration, a game of saying yes, being able to leverage systems to other purposes, adding to the interface, modernizing their UI, experimentation and direction, setting goals, greater clarity, when a dwarf can't do a thing, doing more planning due to exposure to the systems, intuiting where things should go in relation to one another, the presentation of UI, the depth of the emotional state of the dwarves, world generation and fantasy elements, amount of space determining how dwarves will act, hotkeying to views, elevation levels of the world, planning ahead, the responsiveness of the dwarves, increased tick rate and the way it impacts play, communicating state of what the dwarf is up to, how the game might do on Steam, the appeal of life simulation games, emergent stories, a child playing with the trash, adding dialog for trade, giving goals or quests without a quest system, making a thing out of the trade panel, the tradeoff of fidelity and simulation, the benefits of Moore's Law, games we have a hard time playing now, liking problematic things, the sign that a thing is a problem from another's perspective, simple mechanics that work, increasing the fun. Games, people, and influences mentioned or discussed: Monkey Island, Grim Fandango, Halo, World of Warcraft, APEX Legends, Fortnite, SimCity, Lynx, Lexis-Nexis, DOS, Linux/Unix, Emacs, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Minecraft, Populous, Civilization, RimWorld, The Sims, Will Wright, DOOM (1993), Cities: Skylines, Fallout, Farmville, Skyrim, Flight of the Conchords, Colin Tougas, GTA III, Pokemon Red/Blue, Hideo Kojima, Metal Gear Solid, Dragon's Lair, Tron, Death Stranding, Jarkko Sivula, Rogue, Dark Souls, RPG Maker, Unity, Godot, Uncharted, Mainichi, Mattie Brice, Microsoft Powerpoint, Sierra On-Line, Kirk Hamilton, Aaron Evers, Mark Garcia.  Next time: The Steam Version Twitch: brettdouville or timlongojr, instagram:timlongojr, Twitter: @timlongojr and @devgameclub DevGameClub@gmail.com

Don't get me started on stereotypes. They're everywhere. So, of course, they carry over into the professional world. Psychology is a predominantly female dominated field, while finance is a male dominated industry. International Women's Day seems like the perfect day to break some stereotypes, and today's guest on The Be Ruthless Show lives her life doing that on a daily basis! Whitney D. Walter is the founder and CEO of Harness Your Power, a company dedicated to the development and advancement of professional women. Whitney's drive to help other women was largely a result of her experience working as a financial advisor where she felt her access to mentorship from more tenured professional women was limited. As her career in finance advanced, she traveled the country as a corporate trainer and was soon offering others the professional guidance she had longed for as a young woman climbing the ranks. Now, Whitney speaks passionately on topics that often impact professional women such as practicing self-advocacy, understanding imposter syndrome, overcoming failure, and building confidence. Her company also provides training on LinkedIn and job search strategies, Microsoft PowerPoint, and other popular professional development topics. Her mission is simple; to help women feel confident and capable of achieving anything they set their minds to - both professionally and personally. Whitney is a recognized professional development expert, speaker, and consultant whose insights have been featured in Yahoo Finance, AOL, Business Insider, and Authority Magazine. She holds a Master of Business Administration from Florida State University and a certification in PowerPoint from Microsoft. Join us as we discuss women and finance, women in the workforce. Well being in the workforce, and more! And connect with Whitney at Instagram @whitneydwalter

In This Episode: News Design & Powerpoint Summit now available on-demand CreativePro Week 2023 coming up in June! David's Adobe Live session A few InDesign features that just don't work right (it's not you — it's the software) Obscure InDesign Feature: Footnote Number Sponsors for this episode >>PageProof is the top online proofing workflow platform for your creative process: InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, Powerpoint, image files, and more. It's free for reviewers, and flat rate pricing for you and your designers makes it easy to get started! Learn more about PageProof in David's in-depth interview in this CreativePro Conversation on YouTube.  >>Microsoft PowerPoint has a mission: To empower people and organizations to tell the world's most compelling stories to anyone, anywhere, at any time. Check out our newest feature, Cameo, which lets you integrate a live camera feed into your presentation. Learn more about Cameo here. Links mentioned in this podcast David's dot-matrix printer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ImageWriter Anne-Marie's butter churn: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butter_churn What's new in InDesign 18.2: https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/kb/fixed-issues.html David's “InDesign Fundamentals” with host Izzy Poirier on Adobe Live: https://www.behance.net/live/videos/19521/Adobe-InDesign-Fundamentals-with-David-Blatner Vote for InDesign wish-list features and bugs:  https://indesign.uservoice.com/forums/601021-adobe-indesign-feature-requests Dropbox Lock Editing: https://help.dropbox.com/organize/file-locking Placing an Image with an Object Style: https://creativepro.com/applying-an-object-style-when-placing-an-image/

Here are some habits from those who have signed up for the 5 for 50 Challenge and shared their habits. Also some tips to revise and or improve your habits. We do this together and help each other  become the best versions of ourselves we all can be.  Sign up here to do the 5 for 50 challenge with us! If you enjoyed this episode, make sure and give us a five star rating  and leave us a review on iTunes, Podcast Addict, Podchaser and Castbox. Sign up for the next Follow-Through Challenge Follow me on Social Media:Amy on IGAmy on FacebookCheck out the Amy Ledin WebsiteJoin the Follow-Through Challenge offered every 6 weeksAmy Ledin's 16-week Fat Loss Academy Resources:Lean Bodies Consulting (LBC)Follow LBC on IGCheck out the LBC Community on FBLBC University#5for50 #5for50FamilyEdition #AmyLedin #AmyLedin.com #ErikLedin #LeanBodiesConsulting #LBC #Kamele #KamelePerez

SUMMARY In this episode, Nick discusses the stark generation gap that is growing. In addition to that he explores and discusses how to use digital methods to enhance in the in-person ministry experience. And finally, he poses the question and idea: Are small groups the best new outreach method? Follow us on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/hybridministry or online at http://www.hybridministry.xyz TIMECODES 00:00-01:58 Intro 01:58-07:50 How to Bridge the Generation Gap between Gen Xers, Millennials and Gen Z 07:50-12:53 How to use digital to enhance in-person ministry 12:53-18:57 Are small groups the best new form for outreach? 18:57-19:34 Outro SHOWNOTES https://careynieuwhof.com/episode527/ TRANSCRIPT Nick Clason (00:01): What is up everybody? Welcome to another episode of the Hybrid Ministry podcast. Once again, another solo pod. Matt got him from Spain, um, and he wasn't sure about like his computer situation, but he got it. Uh, um, he's got one, he doesn't have a login yet for it, so that's a little bit problematic. But, uh, you know, once he starts getting settled in and stuff like that, he said he should be good to go. So, uh, one of my all time favorite podcasts is the Carry and New H Leadership podcast has subscribe to it, listen to it. Um, I, I wanna say every week, but it's not like on demand listening per se, it's more just like, Oh, I'll get to it whenever something else isn't there. Um, but I'm a pretty regular and consistent listener. He headed, uh, Dr. Tim Elmore on one of his most recent podcasts, talking about Generation Z. Nick Clason (00:57): So, just got me thinking. Let's talk, let's chat Gen Z today. Let's talk a little bit about that. Let's talk a little bit about some of the distinctives between them and some of the older, different, newer generations. So that's what we're gonna talk about today. Um, hopefully, I don't know, I don't wanna promise anything. Maybe next week, Matt will be back. Um, started, we started talking and circling around the drain about what it would look like to schedule. He, uh, he's in Colorado now. I'm in Texas, and so he's an hour earlier. So, you know, someone's getting up early. It's probably me, I'm not gonna lie. But anyway, uh, that is, that's what is, today we're gonna talk about Generation Gap. What's the difference between Boomers Xers, millennials, and Generation Z? We're gonna talk about how you can use digital to enhance your in-person experiences. And finally, we're gonna talk about how small is the new outreach plan and method that Generation Z is interested in. So let's go. Nick Clason (02:00): All right, what's up, everybody? Uh, let's talk generation Gap. Um, how many of you have ever, uh, wanted to work from home, um, versus work in the office? I think almost all of us are interested in the hybrid work environment type of thing, but most of us work for a corporation, for a man that requires us to be in the office. Um, think about this. Um, I have worked in a couple of churches where there is a paid for gigantic storage server, and that storage server is only available if you are on the church wifi network. That is an office mentality. Compare that to, you know, two terabytes of Google Drive storage for $6 a year that you can get, you know, um, or a Dropbox office account or, uh, 20 terabytes of Google Drive storage or, you know, any of the other numerable cloud-based storage options. Nick Clason (03:05): You know, it's funny because like, I think this, this, this, uh, depiction can be most best portrayed through the comparison between Microsoft and Google. Okay? So, uh, let's just do some comparisons. Microsoft, they started it. They were a part of the office culture. Every office in the world in America has Microsoft Office. Every one of us is forced to use Microsoft Office or Microsoft Outlook or something like that. Okay? And so you have those products, you have those things. They were the industry standard, then comes along Google, what's the difference? Well, everything in Google is browser based. That's so, that was so foreign to Microsoft. Everything was programmatic. Everything was, um, something that you had to install, put on your hard drive, okay? And so then Google begins to compete with Microsoft, right? So they create Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Slides. Guys, I'm telling you, as a youth pastor, I have teenagers who don't even know how to open Microsoft product. Nick Clason (04:08): But here's the thing, they don't actually need to, like, there are, there are just ever so slightly a few limitations between a Google, like, I think the biggest one I see is the Google Slides and Microsoft PowerPoint, but not much. I've had kids who have like, let teach or whatever, build full on presentations in Google Slides, and then they just send it to me. It's a usable, it is a presentable, it is a, uh, it is a, a product that has now competed with, with Microsoft's office, right? Microsoft's office has since tried to adapt and change. And so they've tried to create documents, word, Excel, and the like that you can edit, um, as you go so that like multiple contributors can view as those edits are taking place. Here's the thing, the reality is that Google is a superior product, and we all know it. Nick Clason (05:01): My favorite story about this is last summer, um, at the church I was at before they had switched everybody over to Microsoft Teams as a collaboration method, which teams was fine from a chat perspective. It's like slack light in my personal opinion. But, uh, what we would put all of our storage for like our camp messages in a Microsoft team's folder that was built through SharePoint, which is Microsoft's thing. Not one drive not to be confused with one drive again, so, so clear. I know. Um, and so you, I I, I would make a Word document in teams with a link to a Google doc, and then I would do alma editing in Google Docs. Why did I do that? A because it was very redundant to build something in Google Docs, which is where I was doing it, which was always evolving, always updating, always auto saving, versus having to copy and paste that over into Microsoft Teams every single time. Nick Clason (05:57): And then remember, Oh, yeah, I gotta go over there and update that in Microsoft Teams if anyone wants to see it. So, um, I said, everything in Google Docs, there's a story of a, a kid, um, in Ohio who worked at a painting company. Um, this is, this is from the, the Timmel Moore interview. And he says that he worked for a painting company and he posted a TikTok of himself mixing some paint. No big deal. But he got like, I think over a million views on it and, and, or I'm not sure, a million followers, something big, something in the millions. And so what he did, you know what he did? He went to his executives and he said, Hey, I think we're missing out on an untapped market. Um, and I think that, you know, he presented this whole pitch and he, he was surprised. Nick Clason (06:42): You know why? Because not only did they not go with his idea, they fired him because they said, You're not working on your, your your bo you're stealing from company time. This is the difference we're talking about between the generation gap, the office culture versus the hybrid work environment. And I think both sides have valid agreements. I think that the office side, like, Hey, gotta get there, gotta get your work done, gotta work hard, gotta be reliable, gotta be dependable. But I think that also there are new innovative ideas. And this painter guy, he lost his job, picked up, move from Ohio down to Florida, started his own painting company. It's like that's what's gonna happen, uh, as opposed to people adapting and conforming to old school ways of, of doing things. Instead, they're just gonna pick up and they're gonna leave. So how do you keep good, meaningful talent? How do you reach Generation Z that just thinks categorically, fundamentally differently? And how do you use their creativity that they have and the, the way that they see the world and the way that they, uh, interact with online and digital and the people around them? How can you use that to your advantage? Nick Clason (07:57): All right, What about using digital means to enhance in-person gatherings? When we all got shut down for Covid, uh, I think everybody had to turn to digital only as the option. And how do we replicate and reproduce what make what's happening in the room or in the building or in in room programming? How do we turn that into a completely fully digital experience? And the fact of the matter is, you can't, you cannot replicate and reproduce face to face engagement. Um, but you also, and the same is true on the flip side. You cannot replicate what happens online in the room. So let's use, um, my, my marriage with my wife, for example. We have a relationship, obviously we have two kids, so obviously, um, we live in a house, we do life together, like all the things. Uh, and she's at home. We'll text her out the day. Nick Clason (08:57): There'll be times where, uh, she'll call me on video and be like, Hey, what do you think about this? Give me your opinions on that. Um, we'll do all those types of things, right? Uh, and there's even been times where for extended weeks, either one of us is apart from the other. I mean, when we're part, like, that's, that's hard. Like that is a challenging moment for our relationship. You know what I mean? So what, uh, cuz eventually we, like, we want to be back together. So the same is true for your churches. Like what happens in a small group setting, one on one living life together in community, um, in Ko Ania Fellowship as the Greek word is family carrying one another's burdens, praying for one another, supporting one another, encouraging one another, admonishing one another. Those things can happen digitally, but they mostly and best happen together when you're knee and knee eyeball to eyeball, able to give a hug to one another. Nick Clason (10:04): So how do you use what is going on online with what is also happening in the room? So how can you use Instagram to be like a recap to post pictures, to post reels, as we've talked about on this podcast multiple times to do live voting. Like one of my favorite things is to have a live vote that's taking place in Instagram stories while programming or while you're, um, in room experience is taking place. You can use some of those things to, to drive up drum up engagement. What about TikTok? What about devotionals that you put on there that are tied to the most recent message or recaps that that flesh out the most recent idea, message, whatever. Um, another one, one of my all time favorites is what about reading the Bible? You version plans. What about doing that together? If you're in a small group, what about, uh, being in a a bible study, a you version plan together. Nick Clason (11:06): So what if you're reading at the same time, uh, throughout the week and then you come together in person to discuss it? See, these are all ways that we create this mesh of, of real life that something is happening digitally, but it's not looking to supplant or replace what's happening online, but it's looking to strategically come in alongside it and enhance and raise the bar on the overall experience. You know, I just got like a, a brand new, uh, the brand new Google Pixel phone, man. It is a, it is the biggest phone I've ever held in my hand. Like my thumb hurts now because I am not used to the reach that is required on me. But like when I open the home screen, it has the weather and then the first thing it has is it says, um, uh, projected commute, time to work, typical delays, moderate traffic. Nick Clason (11:57): Like that's pulling directly off of Google Maps because it knows where I am and where I live, and it knows where I work and what it takes to get there, right? That's an example of a hybrid enmeshment. How can the church offer more of that? I find so often that the defacto answer for the church is come online or not Come online, come, come on Sunday, see you nine o'clock and 10 30 and that's it, right? Like, hey, like, like you got an amazing tagline. Like, we wanna reach all people for all generations to know, follow, seek, and become great disciples of Jesus Christ. That's great. If it's catchy, better, whatever. And then what's the actions of, what's the call to action immediately out of that come to church? How can you use the digital resources that you have around you to enhance that, um, and to create moments where students, people, your congregants can connect with you and God throughout the other days of the week? Nick Clason (13:05): All right? I'm wondering if small is the new outreach method. When I was growing up in youth group, the outreach method was let's rent out a laser tag place. Let's, um, charge everybody five bucks. And for every friend you bring, it's a dollar off. And so if you bring five friends, you and all your friends get to go for a hundred percent completely free. You get unlimited video games, unlimited pizza, unlimited soda as much as you want. That was an amazing outreach event when I was a kid. Or yuck night, we get to throw, uh, food at 500 of our least closest friends and strangers, and we're walking away with mashed potatoes in our ears and we have to go home and we have to shower and take care of it and all this stuff, right? Like, what if those are not the most effective outreach tools anymore? Nick Clason (13:57): A recent study on Gen Z, um, and I, I may have referenced this before, I think I probably did from Crossroads Church in Cincinnati, they were able to conduct a survey of students that were still under the age of 18. So a lot of our Gen Z data is of Gen Zers, who are over the age of 18 because of consent reasons, but crossroads through their data department at their church, were able to survey the kids and granted in their church, So this is, you know, regional Cincinnati, um, but they're 76% of their non-churched generation Z students under the age of 18. So kids that are like viable eligible for their, uh, youth group or whatever, 76% of the not connected to church students said that they preferred smaller gatherings versus large parties. Our default I feel often in church, especially in youth ministry, is how are we gonna reach people? Nick Clason (14:53): Let's throw a big party. I mean that, gosh, it is so ingrained in me, like it is so hard to even break that. Like next week we're having a costume party. And so I'm thinking all the things, I'm pulling out all the stops, I'm doing all the hype. But the reality is like, how do we create more warm and more intimate environments for students? Because we, we sat down, uh, with our upperclassmen and our student ministry and we asked them like, um, we talked about what Wednesday nights looked like, and we said the purpose of that is for a lost person to come. And they're like, Yeah, but, but my friend wouldn't come to this. And it's like, first of all, a gut punch. Boom. Oh, but b like, okay, then what? Then why are we doing this? We're doing this because some version of a teenager's friend from 10, 15, 20 years ago, my friend from when I was in high school, would've come to the programming that I'm producing, but maybe not our current students and, and church leader hear me? Nick Clason (15:52): Because you're like, Well, yeah, well, I'm in, I'm in, you know, I do adult ministry, or I'm the lead pastor, I'm executive pastor, whatever. Like, great. However, Generation Z is not just teenagers. They are 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23 years old. And, and hear me when I say this, younger millennials are also in that same age, um, demographic. And in that same way of thinking, they're looking for more warm opportunities. I'll give you an example. Just start a new church. Uh, and their moniker is we're all about connect groups. We're all about connection, connection, connect, connection. Getting a connect group. The best way to take the next step in your faith is getting a connect group. Great. I agree with that. Every single stop of ministry I've been in along the way, I've been in some form of a small group, me and my wife, it's a thing we do. Nick Clason (16:41): We've made it a priority. We've woven it into our schedule. We've dug deep paid for babysitters, you know, done whatever we needed to do to make that happen. Okay? Well connect groups are on Sunday morning, which is also when student ministry programming is happening. And I'm, you know, responsible to be in the room for that. So if I want to connect as a staff member, there really is, there really is no way under the, the current existing framework of the church or my wife can go, but I can't. But if she wants to serve, then we're not gonna be able to go together, right? Like, I am looking for connection. I'm looking for something. I, and so if I'm asking, right, like, hey, are there any groups that that don't meet on campus, um, or that don't meet on Sunday morning? And the answer is yes, but they're unsanctioned. Nick Clason (17:35): Like they're not, they don't fall under the framework of the connect group strategy. They're prob they're not resourced the same way. So like, where do I find that small, like that more intimate type of gathering? And again, if, if you're, um, older and you have grown up in church in a while, like what you're probably hearing is okay, yeah, that's what you want, You're a pastor. But what's fascinating is we're hearing from our high schoolers that that's what they want to bring their friends to. Maybe not the kumbaya session, but like when their connect group does a barbecue, like they'll invite them to that when their connect group goes bowling, they'll invite them to that. When their connect group goes to laser tag, they'll invite them to that, and that's gonna be 10, 15, 20, 25 kids. But when the entire youth ministry goes to laser tag 500 kids, they're like, Nah, it's not me. Nick Clason (18:28): I'm out not interested. And so how do we create smaller, more warm environments? And guess what, guys? Guess what, Guess what? That's easier to reproduce than the large scale of it. You know, I think for years, especially as a youth pastor at smaller churches in smaller environments, what I would do is I would look to the big guys and I'd be like, Well, once I get there, I will have made it. And then all the kids will come flocking. And, and the irony, what I realized is that's honestly been the exact opposite or the bigger it's gotten, the more challenging it's been to try and figure out how to create and make it small, warm environment. Hey, once again guys, thank you for hanging out with me today. We are on Twitter @hybridministry. We are online hybridministry.xyz because of course, hybrid ministry.com was taken not being used, but taken. So check us out on there. You can get show notes. We have full transcripts. We provide and pay for that every single week. So I hope that you're taking advantage of that. And until next time, talk to you later. See ya!

Success comes into your life when you are true to yourself and your beliefs. When you work hard for what you are passionate about and despite the obstacles, you always find ways to overcome them.In today's episode, we will have a guest who met all these requirements perfectly; her name is Milena Cruz, the founder of El Recreo Spanish. True to his Colombian roots and her passion for teaching, behind his business, you can find a hobby and a dream come true, to the point of turning it into a franchise.Today with Milena, we will be talking about passion and entrepreneurship, and she'll be sharing five tips to take your hobbies and dreams to the next level. What about you? Do you have a dream that you want to achieve? Then don't miss this episode and get inspired.EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS[2:40] Who is Milena Cruz.[5:40] What is El Recreo Spanish?The idea behind El Recreo comes from two Latin American mums residing in the UK, with the intention of teaching their children the beauty of Spanish and making them feel connected to their Hispanic roots. El Recro is a class in Spanish for children, adolescents, and adults who want to learn more about this beautiful language.[9:30] The challenges of running a business on your own.Milena started this business along with another mother, but she was left alone. She had to go ahead on her own and take control, something that was not easy for her but that she could overcome with her husband's support.[11:17] What is the success behind El Recreo Spanish Classes?Milena said it was the love, effort, and dedication she put behind it. She not only seeks to fill his classes with information but with creativity, and everyone loves it.[18:16] Turning a hobby into a franchise.The success of El Recreo was such that many people interested in taking these classes in different parts of the UK emerged, so Milena had to make the decision to expand her business. This year she managed to franchise it, and although at first, she was afraid, now she feels proud of having done it.[25:31] Five tips to level up your business.1)Follow your heart.2) Trust the process.3) Get your family involved.4) Create a plan.QUOTES“Your business is not gonna be successful from day one.” — Milena Cruz."Failure is a way to teach you where to go and where to change directions." — Patricia Manley.ABOUT MILENA CRUZFounder and Director at El Recreo Spanish and Financial Manager at ON & OFF.Experienced Business Manager with a demonstrated history of working in the child education, accounting and finance industry. Skilled in Microsoft Word, Management, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, and Foreign Languages.Website: elrecreo.co.ukInstagram: @elrecreospanishEmail: holaelrecreo@gmail.comABOUT PATRICIA MANLEYPatricia Manley is the brain and heart behind the LA MANTUANA brand and was lucky enough to be born in the same city as women like fashion designer Carolina Herrera, Latin-American heroine Luisa Caceres de Arismendi, and music composer Teresa Carreno. Over the years, she has always been true to her roots, taken risks, and grasped any opportunity to establish herself as a real modern-day Mantuana.Website: la-mantuana.comInstagram: @lamantuanauk  | @iammantuanaFacebook:  https://www.facebook.com/lamantuanauk

Passkeys are coming soon to Apple iOS 16 so what are passkeys and why are they an eventual replacement for passwords? Researchers have discovered a new attack that uses mouse movement in Microsoft PowerPoint to deploy malware, and details on how the 2K Games help desk support platform was compromised to push malware through fake […] The post What are Passkeys, PowerPoint Mouseover Attack, 2K Games Support Hacked appeared first on The Shared Security Show.

Latest Uber Trial and Arrest News. New Powerpoint Warning.Blockbuster testimony at the UBER Trial of former CISO Joe Sullivan facing federal charges and possible prison sentence if found guilty. Shocking new testimony and we break it down.Update on the recent Uber Breach and the arrest of the Hacker allegedly involved and his ties to organized crime.BREAKING NEWS!The Russian state-sponsored threat actor known as APT28 has been found leveraging a new code execution method that makes use of mouse movement in decoy Microsoft PowerPoint documents to deploy malware. Find out what this means.And check out our new Merchandise Market available at CyberCrimeJunkies.comWant EXCLUSIVE content? We now have have a special offer for those who want Exclusive Member-Only benefits! Subscribe here and sign up for Prime Access Today! (https://glow.fm/cybercrimejunkiesprime/) Get EXCLUSIVE Special Resources, Career Guidance, Cool Documentaries, Exclusive VIDEO Episodes, & Proprietary Security Trainings!Support the show

Welcome to episode 1... we mean 289! If you're in a funk, don't worry, because Christine can get you out of it with her creepy real life story of seeing a hotel ghost in Knoxville, TN! Then Em covers a tale we've heard about but never knew this amount of details; Spring-Heeled Jack! And on the true crime side Christine tells us the tragic and gruesome story of the Lake Oconee murders. Do you know Jack with the witchy shoes who kills on Cutthroat Lane? ...and that's why we drink! We're SO bummed we had to cancel our cryptid poetry slam last weekend! We're working hard to bring you all the poetry and auction updates as a special episode so stay tuned! And if you haven't gotten a refund from Moment House yet contact help@moment.co

Clicks and Bricks Podcast Episode #210 On Todays Episode of Clicks and Bricks Podcast, ken interviews Asad, they discuss tax credits available to business owners and Asad tells his founder story. About Asad Ahmad: Experienced Senior Accountant with a demonstrated history of working in the financial services industry. Skilled in Microsoft Word, Sales, Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), Social Media, and Microsoft PowerPoint. Strong accounting professional with a BSBA focused in Accounting from University of Central Florida. About FitBiz CPA: The FitBiz CPA is here to help simplify your accounting headaches and help you grow and create a more profitable business. Contact Asad: https://fitbizcpa.org Call or Text: (407) 990 - 2002 Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxr3ah3CL9aLQZCI4mnyYgQ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/asad-a-73405018/ Contact Ken: https://inlink.com/ken Text: (314) 370 - 2871 #GetToWork Jump Ahead: 00:00 Intro 00:34 Who is Asad? 02:15 How Asad Came Up With the Name FitBiz CPA and How He Got Started 05:17 Grants Available to Business Owners 06:23 Employee Retention Credit 06:36 Why Ken Started BoxSTL 08:03 Why Asad Wanted to Help Fitness Studios and Gyms 09:31 Learn More About The Employee Retention Credit 10:09 What do Business Owners Need to Have to Apply for the Employee Retention Credit 12:32 How Long Does it Take to Get the Funds Back? 15:19 How to Contact Asad to Help you with Your Tax Credits. 16:57 How Much Does It Cost For A CPA To Help? 18:26 Virtual CPA Services 19:28 Remove Personal Liability with a CPA or CFO 20:33 The IRS Isn't Always On Your Side! 20:55 Is the IRS Ever Wrong? 23:11 You Have to Take Care of Your Finances 25:04 How Asad Decided to Quit his W2 Job and Start His Own Company 30:58 How Many People Does Asad Employee Now? 33:24 It is A Challenge to Get Great Staff 37:11 Objective Vs Subjective Work 40:00 Pitfalls of Letting People Play to Their Strengths 41:04 Asad's Feed Back Model 44:48 Firing People 48:29 Advice to Someone Ready to Make the Jump to Their Own Business 50:39 Contact Ken Mentions: Brian Castella BoxSTL Upwork  LinkedIn  TIKTOK⠀ ​ QuickBooks ​ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

WHAT ARE WE TALKING ABOUT TODAY? Overusing tools like PowerPoint in your presentations. Most people use these tools as a crutch thinking that it helps the presentation. Sometimes they do, but often they distract from the message. Career success and business growth rely on you being YOU! You are the star of the show, and you don't always need Mother's Little Helper to shine through. We show you a few ways to break your addiction.WHAT TOPICS DO WE COVER?* We DON'T cover tips on how to use PowerPoint better!* We DO talk about the ways PowerPoint can be used effectively.* Use the Rolling Stones's song Mother's Little Helper to illustrate our point.* But we emphasize how to avoid using PowerPoint as a crutch* Examples of how you can shine without using a slideshow* Break the addiction of using a presentation tool in a sales pitch* Show you a real-life example of a non-slideshow presentation.WHAT'S THE TAKE-AWAY? PowerPoint and other slideshow tools can be significant assets - sometimes. But more often than not, they're not needed. They distract from your message, dilute your brand, and bore the audience. You can change that and be a better presenter by breaking the addiction.WE USED THESE RESOURCES:Besides our experiences that directly relate to this topic, we found the following resources very helpful in preparing for this episode:We mentioned these resources in the podcast:Microsoft PowerPoint  https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/powerpointWikipedia Mothers Little Helper song by the Rolling Stones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother%27s_Little_HelperWHO ARE DAVE AND KELLI?An Entrepreneur and Intrapreneur duo with street smarts, ‘preneurial' chops, and a penchant for storytelling.Dave and Kelli met as teenagers and have a life-long story of their own. They took separate and contrasting career paths, both struggling with challenges and celebrating their career successes differently. Over the years, they noticed similarities in their stories about their work, the people they interacted with, and how business was conducted. Kelli, who “worked for the man like a dog for decades,” and Dave, who “started or ran businesses all of his life,” quickly realized there is substantial value for others in those combined experiences. The “My Job Here Is Done” Podcast is the result. Ultimately, you're building a great business or moving up the career ladder of success, and we absolutely know we can help!HOW TO WORK WITH USIf you like what you hear in the podcast, we have more to share with companies that we work with. With the foundation of business experience from Dave and Kelli as a team, in concert with subject matter experts from the rich roster of smart people in our network, we have put these goals, culture themes, and operational processes you hear on the podcast to the test - and they work. If you have a complicated problem AND you like to play to win - click here to learn how you can work with us.

If you are just getting started in your fitness journey you will want to hear what Karissa has to say. Karissa Adkins is a weight loss and habit change coach, speaker, and radio & TV host dedicated to helping women boss up and get fit. She dives deep into how hitting rock bottom made her take ownership of her health and life. In this episode, you'll learn exactly how to create your fitness game plan. If you're a mom or a busy high-achiever you'll especially want to hear the difference between cardio, HIIT, and strength training. Karissa and I will walk you through the art of using pen and paper and habit formation to set you up on a path to becoming your most confident, strong self.    If you enjoyed this episode, make sure and give us a five star rating  and leave us a review on iTunes, Podcast Addict, Podchaser and Castbox. STRONG Fitness Magazine Subscription Use discount code STRONGGIRLResourcesSTRONG Fitness MagazineSTRONG Fitness Magazine on IGTeam Strong GirlsCoach JVBFollow Jenny on social mediaInstagramFacebookYouTube 

In this episode, we are talking all about how to leverage audio in the classroom. We'll cover podcasting (of course!) and also so many other ways that we can use audio with our students. Topics include word walls, feedback, audio instructions and more!If you like what you hear, we would love it if you could share this episode with a colleague or friend. And make sure you subscribe so that you don't miss out on any new content! And consider supporting the show by buying us a coffee or two!We would love to hear from you – leave a comment on our website OR check out our FLIPGRID!Featured Content**For detailed show notes, please visit our website at https://edugals.com/83**Podcasting or Micro Podcasting:Our presentation slides from VSB: http://bit.ly/podcastVSBUse simple web-based audio toolsGo for done, not perfectScaffold skills over the course of a semester/yearTools: Online Voice Recorder (from 123 Apps), Vocaroo, Mote, voice memo apps on devicesWord Walls:Create QR codes on a wall with audio linking in Google DriveDigital options - Google Slides or Google Sheets with auto-translateInstructions:Include audio in digital handoutsAdding audio to Google Slides vs Microsoft Powerpoint - both use insert audio, need to upload to Google Drive firstFeedback:Benefits - students can hear your tone, levels up buy-in, takes less time than writtenGoal-Setting, Reflection, Portfolios:Students can create audio to set goals, reflect on feedbackCan be a great accommodation for ELLsWritten vs Spoken Assignments:Why do we always need to use written? Why not consider adding audio as an option?Scaffold writing - record audio, use voice dictation in Google docs, then revisePeer feedback:Pair it with sentence stems like 2 wishes and 1 star, 3-2-1, etc1-1 Conferencing:Record for student reviewProvides evidence of learningCan be a bit awkward at first, but stick with it!Support the show (https://www.buymeacoffee.com/edugals)

Knikole Taylor is a self-proclaimed nerd and lover of learning, and my obsession is connecting with other educators to share, learn, and grow. Connect with Knikole http://www.knikoletaylor.com/ Pear Deck helps teachers create powerful learning moments for students of every age and ability with tech solutions rooted in active learning, formative assessment, and sound pedagogical practice. Founded by educators, Pear Deck makes it easy for teachers to build and launch custom interactive presentations from within Google Slides, Microsoft PowerPoint, and Microsoft Teams Segment 1: After George Floyd: Race in America The Liberated Educator and Cultivating Liberation event: bit.ly/LiberatedEducatorEvents Segment 2: Extra Credit: Knikole Taylor Rethinking Learning Conference www.RethinkLearningSummit.com  Segment 3: Price is Wrong Something Useless Donnie Found Online: http://www.worldslongestwebsite.com/ - - - - - Visit our website Share Feedback & Ideas Tweet us at @PartialCreditEd Follow us on Instagram @PartialCreditEd Like us on Facebook

Eric Curts is the man behind Ctrl+Alt+Achieve and he is the author of Control Alt Achieve: Rebooting Your Classroom with Creative Google Projects. Connect with Eric on Twitter Pear Deck helps teachers create powerful learning moments for students of every age and ability with tech solutions rooted in active learning, formative assessment, and sound pedagogical practice. Founded by educators, Pear Deck makes it easy for teachers to build and launch custom interactive presentations from within Google Slides, Microsoft PowerPoint, and Microsoft Teams Segment 1: Back to the Future Segment 2: Tolkien or Antidepressant Something Useless Donnie Found Online: Since 1998!  http://www.drivemeinsane.com/ - - - - - Visit our website Share Feedback & Ideas Tweet us at @PartialCreditEd Follow us on Instagram @PartialCreditEd Like us on Facebook

Ken Shelton is BACK! Check out Ken's website - kennethshelton.net Pear Deck helps teachers create powerful learning moments for students of every age and ability with tech solutions rooted in active learning, formative assessment, and sound pedagogical practice. Founded by educators, Pear Deck makes it easy for teachers to build and launch custom interactive presentations from within Google Slides, Microsoft PowerPoint, and Microsoft Teams Segment 1: Zoom or Bust Segment 2: Diversity and Inclusion in the Age of COVID Segment 3: Pandemic Pantry Something Useless Donnie Found Online: Real or Cake: https://www.coolmathgames.com/trivia/real-or-cake - - - - - Visit our website Share Feedback & Ideas Tweet us at @PartialCreditEd Follow us on Instagram @PartialCreditEd Like us on Facebook

Mark Rounds, Google Innovator, and Trainer joins the show! Connect with Mark on Twitter Pear Deck helps teachers create powerful learning moments for students of every age and ability with tech solutions rooted in active learning, formative assessment, and sound pedagogical practice. Founded by educators, Pear Deck makes it easy for teachers to build and launch custom interactive presentations from within Google Slides, Microsoft PowerPoint, and Microsoft Teams Pandemic: Over/Under Over-under number of days till football is played (125.5 days) Over-under days till social distancing is done with (179.5 days) Over-under days till toilet paper isn't hard to find (59.5 days) Over-under number of days till your next professional haircut (29.5 days) Over-under number of days until a vaccine is discovered (11.5 months) Something Useless Donnie Found Online Pointer Pointer: https://pointerpointer.com/ - - - - - Visit our website Share Feedback & Ideas Tweet us at @PartialCreditEd Follow us on Instagram @PartialCreditEd Like us on Facebook

Lisa Highfill returns and the gang talks soup. Literal Soup. Pear Deck helps teachers create powerful learning moments for students of every age and ability with tech solutions rooted in active learning, formative assessment, and sound pedagogical practice. Founded by educators, Pear Deck makes it easy for teachers to build and launch custom interactive presentations from within Google Slides, Microsoft PowerPoint, and Microsoft Teams. Segment 1: Family Life and School From 1 to 22 Segment 2: 2019 Soup Wars Something Useless Donnie Found Online: This meme does not exist:  https://imgflip.com/ai-meme   Courtsey of brookhouser https://www.thisamericanlife.org/extras/why-i-love-inspirobot   Website   Here's a site Donnie will like- https://www.diffen.com/difference/Soup_vs_Stew Diffen.com - - - - - Visit our website Share Feedback & Ideas Tweet us at @PartialCreditEd Follow us on Instagram @PartialCreditEd Like us on Facebook

Nick Provenzano, "The Nerdy Teacher," is an award-winning educator and best selling author who has traveled the world promoting best practices in education. He has been featured on CNN, Education Week, The New York Times, and other media outlets. He has presented internationally at conferences and worked closely with educators around the world to support their educational goals. He is a Google Certified Innovator, Raspberry Pi Certified Educator, TED-Ed Innovative Educator, Sphero Hero, Minecraft Mentor and holds other certifications with other companies.  Connect with Nick: https://twitter.com/thenerdyteacher http://www.thenerdyteacher.com/ Pear Deck helps teachers create powerful learning moments for students of every age and ability with tech solutions rooted in active learning, formative assessment, and sound pedagogical practice. Founded by educators, Pear Deck makes it easy for teachers to build and launch custom interactive presentations from within Google Slides, Microsoft PowerPoint, and Microsoft Teams. Segment 1: Extra Credit with Nick Provenzano Segment 2: Crazy Facts Trivia Something Useless Donnie Found Online: https://www.worldsdumbestgame.com/ - - - - - Visit our website Share Feedback & Ideas Tweet us at @PartialCreditEd Follow us on Instagram @PartialCreditEd Like us on Facebook

Mari Venturino is a middle school science teacher in San Diego, CA. She is a Google For Education Certified Trainer and Innovator, a Google Certified Educator Levels 1 & 2, Apple Teacher, Leading Edge Certified in Online and Blended Instruction, and a National Board Certified Teacher. Mari was awarded the CUE Outstanding Emerging Teacher of the Year and ISTE Emerging Leader awards in 2017, and is a member of the ASCD Emerging Leader Class of 2018. Mari is the editor of Fueled by Coffee and Love, a collection of real stories by real teachers. She is currently working toward her EdD at Boise State University. Connect with Mari: mari.venturino@gmail.com Twitter & Instagram www.mariventurino.com Pear Deck helps teachers create powerful learning moments for students of every age and ability with tech solutions rooted in active learning, formative assessment, and sound pedagogical practice. Founded by educators, Pear Deck makes it easy for teachers to build and launch custom interactive presentations from within Google Slides, Microsoft PowerPoint, and Microsoft Teams. Segment 1: Extra Credit, Fueled by Coffee and Love - Ms. Mari Venturino Segment 2: What story would we put into Mari's next book? Segment 3: How are we staying sane during the quarantine this week? We're not allowed to say “Playing Tap Sports Baseball” Segment 4: Memes will get us through this. Memes will get us through this together. Something Useless Donnie Found Online: http://www.partridgegetslucky.com/ - - - - - Visit our website Share Feedback & Ideas Tweet us at @PartialCreditEd Follow us on Instagram @PartialCreditEd Like us on Facebook

Natasha Rachell is a Science Teacher, turned Math and Science Transition to Teaching Coach, turned Professional Learning Coach, turned Educational Technology Specialist, turned Science Digital Learning Specialist! Pear Deck helps teachers create powerful learning moments for students of every age and ability with tech solutions rooted in active learning, formative assessment, and sound pedagogical practice. Founded by educators, Pear Deck makes it easy for teachers to build and launch custom interactive presentations from within Google Slides, Microsoft PowerPoint, and Microsoft Teams. Segment 1: Natasha Rachell Google Certified Innovator/Trainer Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert/Surface Expert Our Voice Academy Cohort 1 Science Digital Learning Specialist Books: My New Normal Snapshot in Education 2018 Fueled by Coffee and Love: The Refill Virtual Learning Communities Connect: https://natasharachell.com/ @apsitnatasha Segment 2: Upside of Building a Plane While Flying Segment 3: Staying Sane? Stories we will tell our grandkids about the quarantine. . . Something Useless Donnie Found Online: http://www.donothingfor2minutes.com/ - - - - - Visit our website Share Feedback & Ideas Tweet us at @PartialCreditEd Follow us on Instagram @PartialCreditEd Like us on Facebook

Jessica Rappaport (Jesse's Wife) joins us on the show today! She's an administrator and head of school in Jesse's house. Pear Deck helps teachers create powerful learning moments for students of every age and ability with tech solutions rooted in active learning, formative assessment, and sound pedagogical practice. Founded by educators, Pear Deck makes it easy for teachers to build and launch custom interactive presentations from within Google Slides, Microsoft PowerPoint, and Microsoft Teams. Segment 1: Mom School with Jessica Rappaport Jessica is a former HS English teacher and is currently a House Administrator at White Plains HS. Topics: What are you doing with your own children? What have you learned? What have the kids learned? What have you learned about your kids? What advice would you give others? Segment 2: Time is On Our Side Topics: How are you keeping busy? Quarantine activities Virtual Teaching Staying Sane Something Useless Donnie Found Online How much Toilet Paper: https://howmuchtoiletpaper.com/ - - - - - Visit our website Share Feedback & Ideas Tweet us at @PartialCreditEd Follow us on Instagram @PartialCreditEd Like us on Facebook

Star Wars in the Classroom with Adam Watson! Pear Deck helps teachers create powerful learning moments for students of every age and ability with tech solutions rooted in active learning, formative assessment, and sound pedagogical practice. Founded by educators, Pear Deck makes it easy for teachers to build and launch custom interactive presentations from within Google Slides, Microsoft PowerPoint, and Microsoft Teams. Segment 1: Jeff Heil's Super Bowl Predictions This episode was recorded before Super Bowl 54 was played. Listen to Nostra-Heil's prop bet predictions! Segment 2: Star Wars in the Classroom with Adam Watson New York Times Article Star Wars Lesson Plan Ideas    Philly Inquirer Article Connect with Adam Watson: https://watsonedtech.blogspot.com/ http://twitter.com/watsonedtech Something Useless Donnie Found Online http://www.nooooooooooooooo.com/ - - - - - Visit our website Share Feedback & Ideas Tweet us at @PartialCreditEd Follow us on Instagram @PartialCreditEd Like us on Facebook

Star Wars with Dave Whitehead, Jackson Lubinsky, and Where's Jeff? Pear Deck helps teachers create powerful learning moments for students of every age and ability with tech solutions rooted in active learning, formative assessment, and sound pedagogical practice. Founded by educators, Pear Deck makes it easy for teachers to build and launch custom interactive presentations from within Google Slides, Microsoft PowerPoint, and Microsoft Teams. Segment 1: Dave Whitehead Lessons we can apply from the Star Wars movies to teaching! Segment 2: Jackson Lubinsky Star Wars Teacher Draft by Jesse's son, Jackson! Donnie and Jesse debate. 1 Administrator 2 Teachers 1 Flex Something Useless Donnie Found Online Star Wars Opening in VR - - - - - Visit our website Share Feedback & Ideas Tweet us at @PartialCreditEd Follow us on Instagram @PartialCreditEd Like us on Facebook

Jeff, Jesse, and Donnie talk about how they entered education. Pear Deck helps teachers create powerful learning moments for students of every age and ability with tech solutions rooted in active learning, formative assessment, and sound pedagogical practice. Founded by educators, Pear Deck makes it easy for teachers to build and launch custom interactive presentations from within Google Slides, Microsoft PowerPoint, and Microsoft Teams. Segment 1 Class stuff - Donnie FETC - Jesse and 99.7% Yoga -- Heffe Segment 2 - From School to Teacher... http://bit.ly/schooltoteacher Our journey: Jeff Donnie Jesse Something Useless Donnie Found Online Mario Sequencer: https://minghai.github.io/MarioSequencer/ - - - - - Visit our website Share Feedback & Ideas Tweet us at @PartialCreditEd Follow us on Instagram @PartialCreditEd Like us on Facebook

Jesse wrote a book and we talk resolutions! Pear Deck helps teachers create powerful learning moments for students of every age and ability with tech solutions rooted in active learning, formative assessment, and sound pedagogical practice. Founded by educators, Pear Deck makes it easy for teachers to build and launch custom interactive presentations from within Google Slides, Microsoft PowerPoint, and Microsoft Teams. What have you done over the break? Donnie - watched every Star Wars so I can take my kids to see Star Wars. Definitive ranking: V, IV, VII, VIII, VI, I, II, III (IX TBA) ; got some cool Christmas gifts (lotta hand me downs from my mom; sold their house and cleared out some old goodies from when I was a kid) Accidental tradition of putting the wrong date on the board for a week (Long live 2019!) TIP FOR AUDIENCE: DO NOT USE 20 AT THE END OF THE DATE Jesse - Hit 100 Phish shows, incredible Korean BBQ with friends of the pod Seani and Jess Williams, QT with the family, work from home. Gifts: Before Watchmen, Mandalorian bobblehead, Won an absolutely dominant game of Catan Jeff - took the girls on a roadtrip (all 5 to Las Vegas to see the Cirque de Soliel show LOVE . . .spent time with both girls and Rebecca. . .relaxed, did a lot of cooking . . .won 2 FF leagues! New Years Resolutions for Teachers Donnie -  Getting back into running Changing Diet (It's been nice knowing you, candy)   Importance of routine for sanity Working on National Boards  Jesse Mindfulness Health (including diet) - Been working out in VR (Box VR and The Climb so far) Jeff  Better planning/integration and fewer courses offered Mindful SEL integration (Custom mood meter Google Drawings) Continue my wellness. . .integrating partner yoga into my diet/exercise routine Bug in Ear Coaching https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2019/02/27/with-bug-in-ear-coaching-teachers-get-feedback-on.html?cmp=soc-edit-tw Thoughts on Article? Seems really geared toward SPED and paraprofessionals. . . Reality Doesn't Bite with Reality Bytes We have another published author in our midst! Reality Bytes: Innovative Learning Using Augmented and Virtual Reality

Sean and Jess Williams grab some egg nog and pull up next to the yule log! Pear Deck helps teachers create powerful learning moments for students of every age and ability with tech solutions rooted in active learning, formative assessment, and sound pedagogical practice. Founded by educators, Pear Deck makes it easy for teachers to build and launch custom interactive presentations from within Google Slides, Microsoft PowerPoint, and Microsoft Teams. Segment 1: Die Hard - Christmas movie or not? Segment 2: Best Classroom Christmas Gifts Jessica - Administrator covering a class Donnie - Coffee and a penguin shirt Sean - Coffee, gift cards Jeff - tamales Jesse - Gift Cards, Letter of Appreciation Segment 3: Classroom Christmas Films: Definitive Rankings Donnie 3. Polar Express 2. A Charlie Brown Christmas 1. The Garfield Christmas Special Jesse 3. March of the Wooden Soldiers (classic cinema) 2. Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer (create their own stop motion films) 1. Scrooged (modernizing a classic story) Sean 3. Miracle (on Ice) 2. Cool Runnings 1. It's A Wonderful Life (Miracle on 34th St) Jessica 3. Muppets Christmas Carol (Maker component) + sphero (Jim Henson) 2. Elf - Animation lesson 1. Home Alone (Characterization) Jeff 3. The Grinch 2. The Santa Clause 1. A Christmas Story - love actually if it weren't rated R Useless Websites Donnie Found Online http://www.ismycomputeron.com/ http://www.ismycomputeronfire.com/ https://isitchristmas.com/ BONUS: http://isitsnowinginpdx.com/ - - - - - Visit our website Share Feedback & Ideas Tweet us at @PartialCreditEd Follow us on Instagram @PartialCreditEd Like us on Facebook

Kim Pollishuke from Shukes & Giff The Podcast! Pear Deck helps teachers create powerful learning moments for students of every age and ability with tech solutions rooted in active learning, formative assessment, and sound pedagogical practice. Founded by educators, Pear Deck makes it easy for teachers to build and launch custom interactive presentations from within Google Slides, Microsoft PowerPoint, and Microsoft Teams. The Best of Shukes (Not Giff)... All the shortcuts in Drive/Docs etc. & Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+V #ShukesAndGiff Season 1 Ep 4 with Kim's Top 10 favourite shortcuts Fav extensions: Tab Resize/Tab Glue Blog post by Kim about assessment using Tab Resize & Tab Glue The Toby Chrome Extension Wildlife cams Toby Collection #EarthStories Toby Collection Voyages CONTACT Kim @KimPollishuke kimpollishuke.com shukesandgiff.com Partial Credit Tomatoes - Rating Youtube Videos in the Classroom Donnie Too Late to Apologize: A Declaration https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZfRaWAtBVg Bonus (that I've always wanted to show to my class but don't have the guts): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5n98oj2OvEw Jeff UCSD - We're Up All Night to Get Data https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfhSLTQTLhI Meet the Elements https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=33&v=Uy0m7jnyv6U Jesse The Academic - Bear Claws (Facebook Live) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lO9d-AJai8Q Kim House Hippo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBfi8OEz0rA House Hippo 2.0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5R_tOSRynZU Bonus: Inside the mind of a master procrastinator https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arj7oStGLkU Useless Websites Donnie Found Online http://isitfridayyet.net/ Jesse's Phish Stats:  bit.ly/phishstats - - - - - Visit our website Share Feedback & Ideas Tweet us at @PartialCreditEd Follow us on Instagram @PartialCreditEd Like us on Facebook

Today's episode features the return of Scott's romance-novel voiceover voice while we talk about mixing up Disney Princesses with popular recreational drugs; Microsoft Powerpoint can now help you be a better speaker... allegedly; turning from influencer to celebrity; why some influencers have to pay double for ice cream. All this and more!