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3 episodes with thanks jeff
2 episodes with thanks jeff
3 episodes with thanks jeff
It is a cake shop AND pinball arcade! In this episode, we meet the owner of Bite Me Cake Company, Allysha Baca, and the operator of the Flip a Coin arcade, Adam Jordan. We chat about the sell-out of Spooky's two new titles, boozy milkshakes, and pinball cake pairings....need I say more! News Sorce: This Week in Pinball (https://www.thisweekinpinball.com/this-week-in-pinball-7-12-21-spooky-sells-out-marty-friedman-and-halloween-coverage/)(Thanks Jeff!) https://bitemecakecompany.com/ Heist Game Play from our Friends at Buffalo Pinball (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AFRzXmVH48) Silver Falls P3 Deep Dive (https://www.thisweekinpinball.com/silver-falls-deep-dive-in-depth-overview-of-the-machine-features-rules-and-code/) Dory Hill Pinball Campout (http://www.doryhillpinball.com/)
Jeff Dyer is an old friend of mine, and a great dude. He is also a great business man, who founded and runs his own staffing agency, only a few years into knowing the staffing business. Jeff and I talk about the good times, bad times, and everything in between! Thanks Jeff!
Tonight on the show my friend Jeff stops in to chat about his time working as a producer in the industry. We check some of his classic Phaser collection. And we kinda try to play some 70s blues/funk stuff? Yeah its Awesome!!! Thanks Jeff!!! Also we have our first Celebrity on the show? kinda?
Alright everyone, we will be talking about breeding Amazon Tree Boas and everything you will need to know to be successful. So for all of you that have questions or may just be getting into Amazons this will be a great episode, we hope you tune in and we look forward to getting some calls. Thanks - Jeff and Dayton
The website has a very brief page on African philosophy so this is a short episode.African Philosophy is a disputed term, partly because it is not clear if it refers to philosophies with a specifically African theme or context (such as distinctively African perceptions of time, personhood, etc.), or just any philosophizing carried out by Africans (or even people of African descent).One of the earliest works of political philosophy was the Maxims of the Egyptian official and philosopher Ptah-Hotep as early as the 24th Century B.C. The Egyptian Hellenistic philosopher Plotinus of the 3rd Century B.C. is credited with founding the Neoplatonist school of philosophy.https://www.philosophybasics.com/general_african.htmlAnd as mentioned, I'm going to take just a couple of days off to decide my next route. This wraps up 5 Minute Philosophy and I hope you enjoyed it.Back soon with another short series and we have two new interviews coming next week as well.Thanks --- Jeff
Larry Goldberg, Head of Accessibility at Verizon Media, joins Brian Fischler and Jeff Thompson in the studio to talk about bringing awareness to accessibility as May 21, 2020 is Global Accessibility Awareness Day. Larry talks about developers building in accessibility from the start, Born Accessible is how Larry put it, and without regression. Not breaking accessibility. Larry talks about how Teach Access was started to bring awareness to colleges and corporations about having accessibility embedded in the college curriculums so students can become aware and realize the importance of accessibility in the design stages. Larry explains how collectively the big companies, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Intuit, Walmart and more, share the need for developers, engineers and future employees to have accessibility in their education and to offer students the opportunity to see career paths in accessibility. Virtual Reality and Accessibility together? Larry talks about the XR Access Program. This year’s symposium will be held online July 20th, You can learn all about it at xraccess.org. Larry discusses his involvement with the 21st Century Communications Act. Brian, you got that 21st Century, not 20th Century, there’s a difference, and it is about 100 years! Thanks Jeff for the editing. Larry takes us through his day at Verizon Media Group, there is a lot of people to talk to as the Head of Global Accessibility and bringing corporations, companies and organizations together to learn from each other. Hear what Verizon Media Group planned to share at CSUN this year. How the next generation is being showcased. Yahoo Finance brings the accessibility to you with a new approach, listen to your stocks rise and fall through sound interpreting the graphs. Even during this shelter in place, it is still full steam ahead at Verizon Media Group, nearly all workers are getting it done from home and ensuring the customers are being served. And how about that accessible Yahoo Fantasy Football app? Give it a try, it’s all at your fingertips and Voice Over accessible ready. Larry is excited about Global Accessibility Awareness Day. So kick back and enjoy. To find out more, here are some links from the show: Verizon Media Group Teach Access XR Access Yahoo Fantasy Football App on the App Store Yahoo Fantasy Sports App on Google Play Thanks for listening. Contact Send us Feedback via email Follow us on Twitter @BlindTechShow That Blind Tech Show is produced in part with Blind Abilities Network You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store. Get the Free blind Abilities App on the Google Play Store Contact Your State Services If you reside in Minnesota, and you would like to know more about Transition Services from State Services contact Transition Coordinator Sheila Koenig by email or contact her via phone at 651-539-2361. To find your State Services in your State you can go to www.AFB.org and search the directory for your agency. Check out the Blind Abilities Communityon Facebook, the Blind Abilities Page, the Career Resources for the Blind and Visually Impaired, the Assistive Technology Community for the Blind and Visually Impaired. and the Facebook group That Blind Tech Show.
Full Transcript Larry Goldberg, Head of Accessibility at Verizon Media, joins Brian Fischler and Jeff Thompson in the studio to talk about bringing awareness to accessibility as May 21, 2020 is Global Accessibility Awareness Day. Larry talks about developers building in accessibility from the start, Born Accessible is how Larry put it, and without regression. Not breaking accessibility. Larry talks about how Teach Access was started to bring awareness to colleges and corporations about having accessibility embedded in the college curriculums so students can become aware and realize the importance of accessibility in the design stages. Larry explains how collectively the big companies, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Intuit, Walmart and more, share the need for developers, engineers and future employees to have accessibility in their education and to offer students the opportunity to see career paths in accessibility. Virtual Reality and Accessibility together? Larry talks about the XR Access Program. This year's symposium will be held online July 20th, You can learn all about it at xraccess.org. Larry discusses his involvement with the 21st Century Communications Act. Brian, you got that 21st Century, not 20th Century, there’s a difference, and it is about 100 years! Thanks Jeff for the editing. Larry takes us through his day at Verizon Media Group, there is a lot of people to talk to as the Head of Global Accessibility and bringing corporations, companies and organizations together to learn from each other. Hear what Verizon Media Group planned to share at CSUN this year. How the next generation is being showcased. Yahoo Finance brings the accessibility to you with a new approach, listen to your stocks rise and fall through sound interpreting the graphs. Even during this shelter in place, it is still full steam ahead at Verizon Media Group, nearly all workers are getting it done from home and ensuring the customers are being served. And how about that accessible Yahoo Fantasy Football app? Give it a try, it’s all at your fingertips and Voice Over accessible ready. Larry is excited about Global Accessibility Awareness Day. So kick back and enjoy. To find out more, here are some links from the show: Verizon Media Group Teach Access XR Access Yahoo Fantasy Football App on the App Store Yahoo Fantasy Sports App on Google Play Thanks for listening. Contact Send us Feedback via email Follow us on Twitter @BlindTechShow That Blind Tech Show is produced in part with Blind Abilities Network You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store. Get the Free blind Abilities App on the Google Play Store Contact Your State Services If you reside in Minnesota, and you would like to know more about Transition Services from State Services contact Transition Coordinator Sheila Koenig by email or contact her via phone at 651-539-2361. To find your State Services in your State you can go to www.AFB.org and search the directory for your agency. Check out the Blind Abilities Communityon Facebook, the Blind Abilities Page, the Career Resources for the Blind and Visually Impaired, the Assistive Technology Community for the Blind and Visually Impaired. and the Facebook group That Blind Tech Show.
Summary: On this episode of COMMERCE NOW we will discuss how DN can help FI’s adapt and provide new – or maybe not so new technologies to help with how consumer behavior is changing. Supporting Content: Registration Link for COVID-19 upcoming May 20th Webinar COVID 19 Landing page Diebold Nixdorf Website Transcription: Jeff Bender: 00:08 Well, this is Jeff Bender. I'll be your host for today's episode of COMMERCE NOW. We really are living in some unprecedented times right now, and the longterm impacts of COVID-19 on consumer behavior and the financial services industry in general are truly unknown. We do know that both consumers and the FIs do you want to get back to business and the FIs doing everything that they can to make sure they're helping their customers adapt to what will be this new normal in terms of consumer behavior, whatever that might actually look like. So, today I'm joined by Simon Powley who leads our Diebold Nixdorf Global Advisory Consultant Services organization, as well as Heather Gibbons, who leads our US Regional Software and Services organization. Jeff Bender: 00:57 And on this episode, we'll discuss how DN is helping financial institutions adapt and provide new, or maybe even not so new technologies to address these changes in consumer behavior. So with that, Heather, Simon, welcome and thank you for joining us today. Simon Powley: 01:10 [crosstalk 00:01:12]. Heather Gibbons: 01:10 Thanks for [crosstalk 00:01:12]. Jeff Bender: 01:12 Heather I [inaudible 00:01:13] the first question to you. The current situation, obviously, a lot of [inaudible 00:01:18] were shutdowns. We see that there's desire for consumers to social distance, not interact in person as much. And in some cases, obviously government is restricting the ability to actually interact in person as much. So how do you see FIs being able to maintain meaningful connections with those consumers through this pandemic and in a post COVID world? Heather Gibbons: 01:38 Thanks Jeff. Today, we're seeing consumers and retailers across industries modify the way they're doing business. Just as you mentioned, if I even look at how I grocery shop today versus two months ago, I can guarantee that I won't fully go back to the way I did pre-COVID-19. This isn't to say that face to face or retail in-store in the cases of financial institutions and branch transactions, won't take place in the future, but more and more consumers are going to now be more comfortable using technology. And they're also going to realize that some transactions can be done in a more convenient and efficient way than maybe they were before. For financial institutions, this translates to bridging the physical and digital divide, looking at how different consumer endpoints can work better together. I often reference how Amazon and Kohl's teamed up when speaking with customers, because it's really about the physical and the digital coming together and joining forces. Heather Gibbons: 02:35 In this case, it was for Amazon returns and it makes it much easier, much more convenient. You can pre-stage everything on your mobile device or through online. The same can really hold true. When you look at consumers and small business journeys for financial institutions. If you take a closer look at both of those journey maps, I believe it will really lead to more core integration for better data sharing, access to more information. It's also going to lead to face-to-face interaction through video, and basically a more personalized approach while increasing the types of transactions at the self service devices and through online and mobile. Simon Powley: 03:14 Yeah, I would agree with that, Jeff, this is Simon. I think there's a lot of different things going on. I think Heather said it very well. What we're seeing around social distancing is many of the same things that retailers are doing in terms of spacing out people in their branches, certainly monitoring their ability to come in various ways, even taking their temperatures in some cases. And so, that's not the best way to establish a meaningful connection to [inaudible 00:03:37] point. So, when you look at that, I think that there's a real focus on moving the horizon forward, so to speak in terms of digital capabilities and technology. We've done a lot of research on this and people really want to and prefer to transact digitally and interact physically. And so that's been the primary role of the branches to provide those services that can't be done digitally, such as the meaningful conversations about wealth management or taking an in depth look at financial aspects of their life. Simon Powley: 04:07 That's done more in a conversation and when we're having this, and we're beginning to see the changes here over the years, and it depends on the financial institution. The large providers, the Bank of America, the Chase of the world have really led this kind of charge. And now it's really come down to the regional banks to really look at how they want to change and interact with their value proposition and to do that, they have to make their digital channels work better and educate their employees on how to use these and how to educate their customers on those. And we've seen a lot of interesting things happen with COVID such as texting customers links to their mobile sites or tutorials on how to leverage their mobile capabilities or their online capabilities so that they can interact or places to find their most convenient ATM machine to get cash or make a deposit. Simon Powley: 04:57 And we're seeing adoption being driven to those customers that maybe you didn't see value, or maybe they were laggards in technology, so to speak. They're now seeing more and more interest and leveraging these digital channels in new and creative ways. So, I think there's going to have to be continued education. And then I also see a re-inventing of marketing. I think the marketing capabilities that a lot of financial institutions have invested in are brilliant, very targeted ads. Sometimes we're even as far as [inaudible 00:05:25] based, being able to specifically target offers, that's really resonates with their particular customers, which is a really good experience for them and allows them to learn more about their products and services. We're going to continue to see that evolve and they're using it for messaging now on terms and information about COVID, how to protect themselves, but also messaging on which branches are open or how they're shortening their hours. Simon Powley: 05:46 So those kinds of messaging. So you're going to see those kinds of interactions begin to really change where they can continue to drive their value proposition in a meaningful and convenient way for their customers in a digital channel. Jeff Bender: 06:00 Well, that makes a lot of sense. And so Simon, how do you see that actually translating to the small business space as well? Is there a role that technology is playing there in relationship with the small business owners? Simon Powley: 06:11 Well, sure. I'll tell you what we do know. The first is that small business owners are really the highest users of branches and are very what we'd call branch dependent on that. So they come in more often than a consumer would and in many cases that's weekly. On average, small businesses spend over an hour per week transacting in a branch. And in the same time, less than 80% of them have a dedicated relationship manager for their business and only 13% of them are really truly satisfied with their financial institution in terms of their offerings and capabilities to support them. So, there's a lot of opportunity for financial institutions specifically with small businesses. And they've got to cope with that in a number of ways. First, I think Heather talked about the journey mapping that's really gone on in the consumer space. That same rigor has not been done within the small business journey mapping. Simon Powley: 07:03 And so, the first thing financial institutions have to look at is, how are they going to define their journey maps and what can they do to alleviate their business rules and make it more conducive for them to be able to use automation to make their deposits, withdraws. They need faster access to their cash, they don't want their cash cycle disrupted. And in many cases right now, technology does that for them. And so, how do they change their interactions with their small business customer to be able to make that more consumer friendly or more like their consumer journeys. And so, access to those cash from the business rules, locations to be able to generate more activity in those particular cases. In many cases, the hardware now is being made with a deeper throat, so to speak. So more bills can go in there to help with those journey capabilities. Software capabilities need to be able to keep up with that, to ensure that both hardware and software work together to make these journeys a little bit easier for them. Simon Powley: 08:02 So I think that the ATM will be a viable road. I think we'll see more cardless cash activities or pre-staging transactions, so employees can interact with those a little bit easier. And what that will really do is allow banks to repurpose their staff in the branches to be able to help them with their financial needs, such as business lending. PPP was a big change and a big process given to banks in a very short amount of time to try to react to. That's going to create different relationships with their small business customer. So, freeing up that FTE to allow them to have those deep conversations is really, really important as well as changing those business rules and enabling technology and hardware for making those checks and cash deposits in a more efficient way. Jeff Bender: 08:48 Very interesting. So competition is changing on all levels and it presents both a threat and an opportunity. Simon Powley: 08:54 Yes. Jeff Bender: 08:55 Heather, anything you would want to add to that? Heather Gibbons: 08:57 Yeah. Thanks, Jeff. I think I probably just add a little bit to what Simon mentioned around journey mapping, because I do think it's really critical, which is one of the reasons why I had kind of mentioned it earlier. What we see more and more our financial institutions have a really strong focus on consumer experience. And I think just making sure to remember that small businesses is just another segment of consumer experience that they need to really look at, what I do think is interesting is a lot of times those two groups are looked at very separately. Where I think if you started to try to bring them together a bit more, you'll see that you can utilize a lot of the same technology to do the things that Simon just went through. And really when you look at those different types of business rules that I think you can get a much greater return on investment if you're looking at both groups at the same time and utilizing the technology to be able to do that. Heather Gibbons: 09:53 And Simon even mentioned one really good example of that is the pre-stage transactions. It's not a secret, my family owns a small business so, I kind of see what they go through on a day to day basis. And small business has the words [inaudible 00:10:08] it because it's one of the biggest things that they have to consider because they just don't have the resources that other organizations have. And they want to be able to do things remotely, do them much more quickly, do them in a much more efficient way. These are the types of things that really help out small business owners, because they're just busy trying to handle their customers and their day to day operations that they have. Heather Gibbons: 10:32 Interestingly enough, when I kind of look at it from that perspective, to me financial institutions with COVID-19 are now kind of finding themselves with some of the same concerns as small businesses. Limited resources, they need to have virtual access to services, to data, along with really reprioritizing the need to transform how they conduct business and really serve their customers on a day to day basis. And I think the key to all of that really comes around automation and doing that through technology. So that's where again, we get into these concepts of CRM integration, core integration, looking at recycling cash at the self service devices to be able to give more access to it for both consumers and in small businesses. Jeff Bender: 11:21 And Heather, how does that translate to the roadmap? I know you're in front of customers a lot, you and your entire organization. What are you hearing from them right now in terms of how that's impacting the areas in which they're investing today? Heather Gibbons: 11:34 I would say we're having more and more customers that are looking at the ATM channel a little bit differently. This is something that every time we go talk to customers, we straight up ask them, how do you look at the ATM channel? Do you look at it as a strategic end point or do you kind of look at it as a necessary evil, you just it to dispense cash and be available at all times. And other than that, you don't see maybe as much use for the channel. What we're seeing with all of this as self service and being able to do things remotely or through digital channels is really having them look at it as a critical connection point between the physical and the digital channels. It's becoming much more important to them. And they're trying to think of ways that they can utilize it maybe a little bit differently than the ways they have in the past. And also look at what they're going to do with it in the future. Heather Gibbons: 12:26 We're seeing many FIs that are going back to the drawing board, looking at their strategic initiatives, kind of doing sanity checks on those. In some cases they're reprioritizing or speeding up some of the projects that they were maybe looking at for the future and other cases they're revisiting solutions or options they once had passed on. Video, core integration, marketing are all really good examples of that. Simon Powley: 12:51 Yeah, I would agree with everything Heather said. What I'm seeing again is moving that horizon forward. I think that the need for technology has never been stronger. I think COVID is proved that out even to FIs that felt like maybe their value proposition wasn't to leverage technology in the way that they're now being forced to, or their customers need to. We're seeing a couple of different things. I'd kind of formated three different buckets. One is what's happening now? From now is what are financial institutions can do and what can they do in a very short amount of time and realistically purchase and implement, to be able to move their financial instance forward and to make this happen, maybe even faster for them than what they expected. And those are low hanging fruit, like deposit automation, right? Teller automation, those kinds of things, or video that Heather talked about. Rather, those are the things that we can implement very, very quickly for a customer and make that come to life for them in a very, very quick period of time. And then on the roadmap, it comes kind of what's next? Simon Powley: 13:50 And so next is okay, what are the things that we need to put on the roadmap? It may take a little bit longer than six months for us to be able to completely implement and design due to capacity, or what have you. And then, that's really the core integration. Things that really bring all of these things to life. Certainly the cardless and the contact is there or the recycling. And that's really where I think small business fits into that as well as how do we really gear up and get the functionality ready to go so we can implement that. And then finally, I'd say is then what? What's kind of on the longer term roadmap and what do we put out there and how does that change based upon COVID and that's more as a service models or open banking, digital integration with specialists. Those kinds of things that really need to be done, but you have to of course stagger these things for financial institutions. So, I would say those three buckets are kind of what we're seeing financial institutions reposition as. Jeff Bender: 14:40 Oh, that makes sense. Simon Powley: 14:40 Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jeff Bender: 14:41 Anything self-services are going to be a priority in this day and age right now. Now Simon, just kind of building on that, what are the ways that DN is helping FIs reinvent how they serve customers? It's all about convenience and availability today. So what new capabilities is DN bringing to market to help FIs adapt to the new consumer norm? Simon Powley: 14:59 Yeah, I think this is just a great time to be a part of the organization, I think and exciting from my perspective. We really value our partnerships and I think we differentiate ourselves in the market pace by really looking at every FI individually and helping tailor things specifically for them. And what I mean by that is not only with our advisory services group to come in and take a step back and help consultant and look at these roadmaps through that all the way into our teams and the way that they really go into investigate, ask questions and really find out what the pain points are for financial institution. And what we're really finding coming out of those things is things such as ATM as a service. Simon Powley: 15:38 Again, those model really changing that and allowing... Not only just shifting the capital expense to operational expense, but really allowing them to focus on their core business. I think from what we've learned over the last several years, that's been trending, that's now just being impacted even more dramatically is banking is very complex and what they really want to focus on is their core business and allowing good partners to come in and help them operationalize. Some of these things certainly change the expense parameters around those things and take some of that weight off their shoulders so they can really focus on their customers and their core business is really critical to them right now. Heather Gibbons: 16:16 Yeah. And Simon, I think some other things that I would maybe add to this are, the one thing that we've really learned from going and meeting and partnering with all of our customers and really listening to them is, there is no one size fits all model for all of these different financial institutions. You range from banks to credit unions, from customers that have one ATM to 16,000 ATMs. So, there's definitely differences around the goals that they have, objectives, key priorities, resources. So, what we've really been trying to do as an organization is to make sure that we can help them wherever they need it and however they need that. And Simon really alluded to it with some of the different business models that we have around how customers can really consume the offerings that Diebold Nixdorf is putting out there today. Heather Gibbons: 17:10 So, we've mentioned many of these items and we have customers that really look at hosting and owning on-premise solutions to be able to do things like video and marketing and pre-stage transactions. But what we've really found is there's a subset of the marketplace that that's not what their core competency is. They want others that are the experts in those areas and in this case, we would say, Diebold Nixdorf is the expert when it comes especially to the ATM channel. And with that, they want to hand it over all to us and say, "Hey Diebold Nixdorf, we'd like to really outsource these types of services or capabilities to you." That can range anywhere from software updates, through remote distribution to the ATM, handling the cash management at the ATM. We had a customer in the global solution center and he said, when he handed over cash, it was one of the greatest days of his life. His family immediately within a week noticed the difference in him because he wasn't having to take phone calls all the time with cash at the ATMs and the branches. Heather Gibbons: 18:15 Security is another major concern, something that we outsource, customers can outsource to us, and we provide managed services around that. And then of course monitoring the overall availability of the terminals as well. What we also see if we've got customers that really have a mixed bag of the offerings and how they want to see them. So, that's something that we've really tried to do with the portfolio itself is to make it flexible from a [inaudible 00:18:40] model perspective. If they want us to handle certain items of the operations of the ATMs, we can do that. They can be as hands on or hands off as they want. Heather Gibbons: 18:51 And then we're also offering cloud based solutions. So, what this is doing is really making access to more of the advanced technology and solutions that we have much easier for financial institutions and in a more affordable way so that they don't have to really work about the maintenance of servers and the security around all those servers, that they have the ability to really control the solutions and have them work the way that they want and make adjustments on the fly. If that's something that they want to be able to do. Jeff Bender: 19:21 That's excellent. Just a good lead and there's a lot that we covered today in this podcast and a lot of different topics, different delivery models, different priorities for different size institutions and Heather, Simon I appreciate you being here. I'd really like to hear more. And in fact, I'd like to tee up for our listeners to tune into a on-demand webinar from Wednesday, May 20th. During the webinar, our DN Global Advisory Services team covers how you can stabilize the operations of your environment, how you can establish a plan of action? And then also how you can continuously assess your execution against that plan? You can listen now at dieboldnixdorf.com/COVID-19. And as always, thank you to our listeners for tuning into another episode of COMMERCE NOW. Until next time, please keep checking back on iTunes or however you listen to your podcasts for new topics on COMMERCE NOW.
An updated 4.7" iPhone SE is released, Apple and Google team up to develop contact tracing technology to reduce the spread of COVID-19, and our hosts go in-depth on more of their favorite Mac utilities. Send us your favorite Mac utilities by tweeting at us and using the hashtag #aipodcast We'd love to hear your feedback. Tweet at Stephen Robles and Andrew O’Hara, or email us here. Find us in your favorite podcast player by searching for "AppleInsider" and support the show by leaving a 5-Star rating and comment in Apple Podcasts here. Sponsored by: ExpressVPN - AppleInsider listeners can get three extra months when you sign up for a year of service! Get the most secure and fastest VPN service today. iPhone SE 2020 And iPad Magic Keyboard Apple unveils new iPhone SE priced at just $399 Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro now available to order New Apple iPad on Amazon Covid-19 Tracking Apple, Google team on ‘contact tracing’ smartphone software to combat spread of COVID-19 Trump says Apple-Google contact tracing system is ‘amazing,’ but raises ‘big constitutional problems’ Apple and Google detail COVID-19 contact tracing program, focus on privacy u Apple and Google must convince public that contact tracing is secure, senator says Mac Utility Follow-Up Default Folder X - Thanks Jeff! TextExpander CopyClip Copied Keyboard Maestro Plex ToothFairy Fantastical Bar None Hazel DaisyDisk Squash Deliveries Bear iStat Menus Sugarmate Paste Bartender 3 Setapp
With so many Disney Memes popping up online we had a great one appear on our The Mouse and More Podcast Facebook Group submitted by our agent Jeff Zagaroli! Only Choose 2: 6 Anytime FastPasses, One Free Hotel Night, No Rain For a Week or 3 Free Meals! Thanks Jeff for submitting this Disney Meme! We would love to hear from you our listseners with show topics, Disney Memes or just some positive feedback during this waiting period! You can always find us on our Facebook Page or follow us on Twitter and Instagram @ The Mouse and More Podcast! If you're looking to go to Walt Disney World in Florida or Disneyland in California, contact a travel agent at Main Street and More Travel and have one of us make your trip easy and stress FREE!! It is always FREE to use our Travel Agency Services so why not help out a small business when your ready to go somewhere! And IF you REALLY like us, please give us a review on iTunes, we love Good Reviews! Hope you enjoy this episode, talk to you soon!!
Learn more about Sky ZoneDue to COVID-19 we are no longer asking for financial support for the show, instead you can now join free mentorship group calls with Fabian to get through this together. Join here.Full Transcript:F Geyrhalter:Welcome to the show, Jeff.J Platt:Thanks for having me.F Geyrhalter:Absolutely. Look, I usually only have founders and cofounders on Hitting The Mark and your company Sky Zone which a lot of people listening know very well, it was technically founded by your dad, but it was you who actually came in and pivoted it. You are now considered a cofounder at this point because you really made the company what it is today. Tell us a little bit about that pivotal moment of what actually happened when you came in or what you realized.J Platt:I definitely got to get my dad credit. He is the visionary behind it. He was the one who founded the business. I was lucky enough for him to bring me involved and get me involved in a way listened to directionally where I wanted to take the business, but he, by all means, is the real founder, if you will. When we first started the business as a professional sport, which was a crazy idea at the time, we decided to pivot the business into what it is today. It's nothing that he should take credit for or I should take credit for. It really came from listening to our customer at the time which were some neighborhood kids who wanted to just come in and play.J Platt:They saw our R&D center that we had in Las Vegas. They peeked their head in the door because there was an indoor skatepark next door to us. These kids were constantly coming to the center and they'd look through the windows. They used to bang on the doors and just ask my dad, "Can we come in here and jump around?" He'd let them. Then one day, instead of training athletes to launch the sport that was going to be played on trampolines, the decision was made to start charging them money to just jump around and play. We did and then the business took off from there. We opened a couple locations. I approached him one day and said, "Let's start franchising our business." In 2009-2010, we began to franchise. That's when the growth really started to take off.F Geyrhalter:Have there been any companies at that point that did something similar when you guys decided, "Hey, let's have these kids come in and let's just start charging for it"?J Platt:Yeah, it was that simple. I think in business in general, it's super important to listen to your customers. In our world, we call them guests. We've learned a lot from them over the years. When I think back at really how this whole thing started, it was, it was listening to these neighborhood kids.F Geyrhalter:That's so great. I'm a brand consultant and the beauty of my job is that I come into companies as the outsider looking in which makes it so much easier to see what is actually going on and what brand wisdoms and values deserve to be uncovered. You were the Undercover Boss in the season finale of the show by the same name. Now, I have a good amount of former Shark Tank contestants on Hitting The Mark, but you are only the second Undercover Boss. I had Shelly Sun of Brightstar which is also an amazing franchise on the show prior and she was an Undercover Boss as well. How was that experience and what did it teach you about your brand that you did not know before?J Platt:It's a pretty incredible experience. I'd like to say it's probably the most exhausting 10 days of work I've ever had between traveling every day and you're up early and you're working late and that wasn't the issue. The issue is that there's a camera in your face 24 hours a day pretty much. And so you really have to watch what you're saying because you have no editing rights and they're going to put on that show what they want to put on. You're also lying all day long about who you are. You're pretending to be someone you're not.F Geyrhalter:Tell me more.J Platt:That is exhausting. You really have to watch everything you say. Those were grueling days. I think one of the thing, and it's interesting because it doesn't get talked about a lot around that show, one of the things that was so interesting for me is when you have a title as president or CEO or cofounder, whatever it may be, when you have a big title, you don't get to talk to people the same way as if you were just a friend of theirs or maybe just a director level or manager level, but when you have that title people, they look at you differently and they talk at you differently.J Platt:It's unfortunate, but it's just people can sometimes be intimidated by the role. I try and go out of my way to be very approachable, but you don't get to share the stories that you do with someone when you're the CEO or the president. That show, because I'm just a contestant on the show, a made-up show that, of course, they don't know it's made up, but I was able to engage and talk with our frontline team in a way that I would not have been able to if I wasn't this fake character.F Geyrhalter:RightJ Platt:I was able to learn from them, engage with them and frankly just get to know some people that I would have never gotten to know if it wasn't for that experience. I think one of the things that made me realize is really the incredible diverse team that we have around the country and these stories of these team members and what they've been through and the role that Sky Zone has played in their life, mainly good thankfully in helping them and setting their careers off and learning and development for them.J Platt:That was the most, and I guess in a selfish way, it gave me a lot of pride and a lot of enthusiasm and really a lot of energy around continuing to grow the brand to say, "How can we create more stories like these individuals?" It was really a humbling and rewarding experience all around.F Geyrhalter:That is really, really great to hear because very often with those shows it's all about drama, and like you said, you have to be at your very, very, very best behavior, but that idea where a founder, a president, the CEO, it's easier for you to suddenly take over a customer service line and listen to what people actually have to say on the other line, but it's really hard to do that internally, especially if you have franchises. I don't know how many locations you have. I think the last I checked it's like 210 or so locations. I'm sure it's been growing, right?J Platt:Yup.F Geyrhalter:It's really, really difficult to tap into that. I totally get it. That must have been an amazing experience and just high fiving with those people that usually would stare at you when you walk into the room.J Platt:Exactly, not want to speak to you. It's interesting because it doesn't get talked about enough around that show, just that you can engage in a totally different way because you're just seen as another person to them. Unfortunately, again, when you put a title on yourself, you automatically have some stigma attached to you or stereotype if you will because you're the "boss."F Geyrhalter:Totally. Absolutely. A typical Sky Zone location hosts about a thousand guests a day according to Wikipedia. You have expanded through the franchising model. I had 1-800-GOT-JUNK founder, Brian Scudamore, on the show which sadly only resulted in a transcribed interview due to technical difficulties that day. That was one of my first episodes and he was kind enough to be on it. He's obviously a very well-respected entrepreneur in the franchising world. It was interesting to hear him answer this question. I'll ask you the very same question because you are deep inside the franchising world.F Geyrhalter:What were some of the key steps that you had to go through to create a platform of brand rules and guidelines to empower franchise owners rather than solely restrict them? It's still true to the brand and they have rules to follow, but it still feels like they've got to say in their own location and then shape something and be a cocreator.J Platt:It's a good question and it's always a tough balance in franchising.F Geyrhalter:Oh, I'm sure.J Platt:We tend to use this saying a lot that we want to give freedom within a framework because I firmly believe and it's my leadership style that you've got to give your team or people you work with freedom. If you give them enough freedom, then that's where real creativity and innovation can happen. Allow them to try things and allow them to fail. It's talked about a lot in business and I wholeheartedly believe it. I think it's the same with franchise owners. You've got to give them a certain amount of freedom because some of the best innovation comes from them, but it's got to be within a framework.F Geyrhalter:Right.J Platt:You got to some guardrails around it, the magic of enough freedom but a framework that is wide enough to truly let them try things but not so wide that they go outside the boundaries. I think like anything the key is making sure they're involved in the process. From the time we did our first real branding exercise, hired the third-party consultant, brought them in, really gave ourselves a look, a feel, talk about what our brand is. We did those exercises. God, this is dating back I think the first time, maybe six or seven ... Well, the first time we did it was 10 or 11 years ago, but I'd say the first time we did it in a real methodical way with a professional was seven years ago.J Platt:We had franchise owners sitting in that room with us and the senior leadership of the team. They were sitting in there with us going through the exercises and doing all of it, A to Z with us. Every time that we've done some form of refresh, they've been along the journey with us. Not all of them because you can't have 120 franchise owner sitting in the room with you, but you find a couple who are passionate about branding and know it and you invite them and you make them part of the process. Make them part of a process so they feel like it's theirs and then define that framework, make sure it's got enough freedom within it for them to make it their own, but also make sure it's still us, those guys.F Geyrhalter:Consistency because that's the lifeline of any brand, especially with the franchise. Very, very cool the way that you do that. I think that's very smart. How do you deal with core values? Because core values are so important to any company, but you're across continents, right? Sky zone is not only in the US. You're global at this point. How do those core values translate? How do you deal with that?J Platt:Fortunately for us, we kept ours pretty simple, so they do translate across countries. They're not overly complex. Actually for the first time, this has been going on for about a year or so, we're actually looking at making some updates to those. Core values are not things that should be a flavor of the year, that you change often at all, but we're actually looking at doing a bit of a refresh on them because we recently, as you pointed out before we started talking, you saw that we've done a little creative refresh on the brand and so we're looking across all aspects of our business, core values being a part of it and looking to do a refresh there too.J Platt:I think what's key with ... Brands get into a lot of these concepts and mission statements and vision statements and purpose statements and core values and brand tenets. They all want to define them. You have so many things that you can't remember, "Is that a mission statement or a purpose statement? Is that my vision? Wait, what are my core?" I think the key with all this is keep it super, super simple. I think brands tend to, and you probably know this better than I do, overcomplicate all this stuff.F Geyrhalter:Thank you. Hallelujah. I'm so happy to hear this from a founder's viewpoint because for me it's all about simplifying, simplifying. I even simplify it so much that at the end of my branding sessions with clients, we have one word, right? It all comes down to that one word. You and I talked about that a little bit in the prep that that's a question that's coming up. I didn't even do mission and vision statements with my clients because I felt that, a, it's two extra statements and, b, aren't you on a mission to fulfill your vision? Isn't it one statement? Now that too many of them asked me after workshop, they're like, "But Fabian, we didn't do a mission statement and a vision statement." I'm like, "All right." Now, I'm doing a mission/vision statement which is a combo plate between the two and that just makes it simpler. I agree. The more statements, the more stuff around your brand, the harder it is to remember and follow any of it. Isn't that the core purpose of all of that? I believe you've got some pretty cool little pieces of brand communications like small gestures of brand delight that turned into customer favorites. I think when you enter a location, you get a sticker, which I haven't because no one invited me to check it out prior to this interview, but whatever, anyway ; ) so I haven't but I heard that these orange stickers, they turn into a recognizable brand element for you, right?J Platt:Yeah, the orange stickers and actually even more so than the orange stickers is our socks.F Geyrhalter:That's right. How has it always been around the socks? Is that a common-J Platt:The socks we introduced maybe six years ago or so now. Sometimes, I lose track. Sometimes, I still think it's 2018, but the socks, we introduced six or seven years ago. For a very long time, and it might still be the case actually, it was the most Instagrammed thing part of our brand. If people would post images of themselves at our parks, usually it's them and the sock is the hero of the shot because it's like a badge. It says, "I am at Sky Zone," or, "I love Sky Zone because I've got my socks."F Geyrhalter:That's super cool. You did the socks obviously for hygienic reasons, I suppose, and for people, to make sure that they have socks on because a lot of them might just walk in with their sandals. Hold on second. There's a lot of ambulance action out there or something. Super cool. By the way, the whole socks thing. I just thought it Ion the site now when I looked at it. I didn't even pick that up when I prepped for the interview the last time, so it's pretty neat. All right. I guess the ambulance is dying down over there. No pun intended. That was horrible. It didn't mean it though.F Geyrhalter:Cool. Perfect. Let's talk about the socks for a second little bit more. Was it intentional that you thought the socks would actually become a brand element or did you just need the socks for a reason and afterwards you just said, "Well, let's color it in our brand color"?J Platt:Originally, the socks started for two reasons, one, hygiene and the second one is they have a grip on the bottom of them. It's easier for you to grip the trampoline and you're jumping on it. We didn't decide to do the socks. It was, "Oh, this would be an amazing brand element." As we started introducing them into our operations and then we made them orange because that was a main color for us and they really popped and we noticed people really like them, we thought, "Okay, this is a great opportunity that becomes a badge of honor that you love our brand if you have our socks." It's one of the things that I always say to ... People say to me, "Oh, what do I do?" I say, "Have you ever heard of Sky Zone?" Eight out of 10 times, the first thing someone says to me is, "Yeah, I have six pairs of your socks."F Geyrhalter:That was my next question. Do people steal the socks or do you actually own them afterwards? How does that work?J Platt:No, they own them. They own them. They're all-F Geyrhalter:Which makes it so much easier for you because what are you going to do with them?J Platt:Yeah, much easier. We're not going to get into machine washing business. That's what we do. We branded them. Now interestingly enough, people bring their socks back because they own them. We said, "Okay, people really love these. Now, we need to make them different and let's expand the design and the color of them." We've now introduced, God, maybe a dozen different design socks, ankle socks, high socks, camo color, different funky designs. We even post our new designs on our Facebook page, asked people to vote on which ones they want us to roll out. It's become a big part of our brand now, socks.F Geyrhalter:That is so smart. That's super, super smart. I mean that can grow into all kinds of different directions, but it's so cool because it's a merchandise you don't have to buy. You just get and the idea of anything that's being limited edition or anything that changes, that's what people want to post. That's what people want to own. Super, super cool. How do you talk to your different customer segments? You've got toddlers and their parents and then you've got amateurs, like you said, just kids that want to jump around and I mean kids of any age really, but all the way to professional dodgeball players, which yes, that's definitely a thing. Do you segment your channels such as Instagram and YouTube by those groups?J Platt:Segmentation has become ... As we've gotten bigger and a little bit more sophisticated, at least I'd like to think, we've started to do a lot more segmented marketing. It's just like just as you nail one platform, the next one pops up that you've got to learn like TikTok, but we do a lot of segmentation and it's not necessarily by age always. We've recently launched memberships. We're gaining a pretty big membership base across all of our parks. We have very targeted communication that goes just to our members.J Platt:We obviously know a lot about those members and who they are, who's buying these memberships and what's important to them and why they're buying memberships and what offers they want to see as being a member that's going to entice them to want to continue to come back. We're not just segmenting based on a teenager or a toddler. One thing is for sure is we're talking to mom a lot. Mom is a big decisionmaker. We're definitely talking to mom in a lot of our communication, but we want to be cool, we want to be relevant, we want to be, to a degree, edgy and up with the latest trends.J Platt:One of the things we just did from a branding perspective is we just refreshed our creative. We talked about this a little bit earlier. We brought in a lot of pattern and some softer colors. At first when I saw it, it felt kitty to me, but if you go out and look in the world today, especially fashion, this is what is on trend right now. I'm not talking about fashion for six, seven, eight, nine, 10-year-olds. I'm talking about fashion for teenagers, people in the early 20s. It is what is considered cool, if you will. We're constantly talking to different audiences and figuring out a way to target messaging, but at the end of the day, mom is one of our biggest customers.F Geyrhalter:Totally. Then, the kids need to find that their experience with the brand is hip as well and then they grow out of mom being a decision maker and you feel like readying yourself for the entire customer journey which is very smart. The big question is do members get special member socks?J Platt:It's funny you said that because it's something we're actually working on.F Geyrhalter:There you go.J Platt:We have a concept of potentially giving them different socks and those socks based on visit history and such, like belts in karate ...F Geyrhalter:Badge of honor.J Platt:... that you would earn. Yeah, exactly.F Geyrhalter:Super cool. We talked about dodgeball for a second, I just mentioned it, but let's talk about the Sky Zone Ultimate Dodge Ball Championship because it's easy to poke fun at sport because most know it as a kid's game, but you did something quite amazing by creating this league and having it air on ESPN2. I think it earned something ridiculous like over 200 million media impressions. How did that brand extension of sorts come about?J Platt:Oh, you know what? I've got to give my father credit really there. He was always very passionate about doing something involving sports with our brand. Originally, as I mentioned, that the whole concept started out as it was going to be a sport played on trampolines and that game was actually called Sky Zone and it was a crazy game, but that never really took off. What people did love to do was play dodgeball on trampolines. He really wanted to legitimize that. So many, many years ago, he had this dream and wish to just make a real concerted effort to try and make dodgeball something big.J Platt:We started out doing tournaments at all of our locations and tournaments were popular. Then we said, "Wow, what if we make those tournaments regionally based and then the regional base tournament, there's a winner. Then what if the regional tournament winner gets to play into a national tournament? Then everybody flies to Vegas, but then how are we going to convince people to fly to Vegas to play for this national tournament?" We actually used to do it in Torrance many, many years ago. We started doing in Vegas recently.J Platt:Then, we threw cash prizes on it and people then really wanted to come because there was a big cash prize and it gained a huge following. Somebody here internally in our team ran the whole thing and did a great job with it and started getting sponsors involved. The next thing you know, ESPN2, they want to show a profile of it. It's a really fun content, so it started getting a lot of hits on YouTube. It just organically happened. It was sort of this total ... Talking about segments, it was this total subsegment of our business that that really was never about how much revenue can we generate from this.J Platt:It was more fun and a different angle on our brand. It was about sport and competition and a super, super passionate group of players that help grow this sport organically. It was fascinating the way it all happened.F Geyrhalter:It's so great because it reminds you of the roots of the company, right? As you start spreading into all these different directions, there's still this core which is really neat. You use the word organically a lot. In a way, I'm sure a lot of it spread organically, but I think it's also because you're most probably humble about it. I think you've got a pretty good idea of how to grow a brand. What is an advice that you would have for a young company that maybe has one or two locations and they want to turn into a franchise? How would you spread the word and find brand growth to follow your lead?F Geyrhalter:What are some of the things that you feel like made you successful in the beginning that might be something that people might be able to replicate in a totally different industry?J Platt:Well, I think one thing that's really important, if I was starting from scratch today, something I would do from day one that I think it wasn't until we were maybe four years in or so that we did this, but it's hire a brand consultant and create what many people in the industry refer to as a brand book. What truly is your brand? What is the identity? What are your core values? Do you have a vision statement, which I don't think you need to have a mission statement, but if you do define it? You don't have to have a mission or purpose statement, but if you do define it.J Platt:What does it look like? What does it feel like? What does it not that's important? Who's the customer? What's important to that customer? How is your brand speaking to that customer, but really define what your brand is? We did that for the very first time. I want to say maybe it's five years after we launched. It might've been five, it might've been six, I don't know. It was not at first. I can tell you that. I think that there's no question that I would do that from day one now because what that does is it aligns people around an idea.J Platt:Your brand is your identity and it's how the world will perceive you. It's important that people that are running the business if you will or will be getting involved in the business, understand what that idea is and make sure that they're communicating the same thing because brand is not just about the colors on your website or the way your brick and mortar location looks, your tone of voice, but brand is also the people that work for you and how they represent themselves. I think having that book is that unifying document that says, "Here's who we are. Here's what we're about. Here's what we're trying to achieve. Here's what's important to us. Here's the customers that we're trying to attract."J Platt:You got to be aligned around that from day one. You don't have to be, but I'd recommend you be.F Geyrhalter:Absolutely. I'm so glad that you say that. That's literally what I do for a living is coming with early stage startup founders. Usually, they have funding, one way or the other. Some of them already did the beta product for a year or so and then I come in and I do exactly what you're talking about. I refuse to work with them if I don't get an entire day with the core team with the founder, cofounder, any VP level, maximum eight people, but minimum the founders because if it is being derived from within and if everyone is working on it together, like you said, so much happens, right? It builds internal culture. It builds that, whatever, North star, whatever it is, like that big idea.F Geyrhalter:You said, "Well, there's colors and there's all of that stuff too," and you're right. It is secondary when you build a brand, but also after that, you call it a book, we actually do it in one long page. It's actually like a six-foot poster of like, "Here is the brand," which we like because one page is easier as a PDF for people to quickly scan through in the book, but that idea that it's written down and it's in front of you, if you then work on the brand, you can always go back to it and say, "Look, it doesn't matter if orange or you like blue. Would our customer like orange and blue? Does it go back to who we want to be and how we want to be seen?"F Geyrhalter:Not needing to repeat anything that you already said, but I'm glad to hear it from you. I'm glad that you'd say that now looking back, actually you would do it early on and that you recommend people to do it early on because a lot of startup founders who don't understand the idea of branding that it's something much bigger, they feel like branding is the last thing they should focus on, right? It's product, product, product. That's how people feel. You can add 10 more features to your product, speaking tech talk, whatever it is, additions to your service. If no one cares about it and if no one sees it as being attractive, then you have nothing, right?F Geyrhalter:I could go off on tangents about that, but since we already talk about it, after everything you've been through with Sky Zone, creating this conglomerate of locations and being a leader in that industry, what does branding mean to you today?J Platt:Fortunately, I think the same thing it did before which is to me, it's how a customer feels when they hear or see or interact with your brand, what is the emotion, the response that, that you get from them. I don't think our brand is about what I say it is. I think it's about what is somebody else because I might have a perception of what it is, but it doesn't mean that we're articulating that well as a brand or communicating that well as brand. I think it's about what is your customer see, feel, believe, what comes to mind when they experience or interact with your brand.J Platt:I think brands, they do it really well. I think we do this well, but we can definitely always improve, is that experience or feeling is consistent across, they use that term omnichannel, but it's just a cross platform. Whether you're interacting on social, whether you're interacting on the web, whether you're interacting by picking up the phone and you're calling and you're talking about booking a party or you're trying to get information or when you're actually physically inside the location itself. I think that's the hardest thing for brands is consistency across channels.J Platt:You might do social media really well, but then when someone comes in store, it's a terrible experience or the way your online presence looks is very different than the way the physical store looks or you might have this brand that's super fun and engaging and exciting, but the team inside the park is not that way at all and ruins it. How do you have consistency across all those channels to me, that's brand.F Geyrhalter:Absolutely. It's already so difficult to have consistency across locations, just that people feel the same thing and agree to the same way and it's the same vibe, but then across channels is a totally different story. I always feel like it's fascinating to me how restaurant chains or hotels, how they either nail it or they totally can't get it together. That is such a multinational experience there. There's one restaurant chain, you might know them, they're called The Hillstone Group. They've got Houstons and all of that.J Platt:I ate at R+D last night. I went to the Hillstone Restaurant.F Geyrhalter:Well, there you go. Perfect. The one in Brentwood, Santa Monica up there, right?J Platt:Yup.F Geyrhalter:I am obsessed with that brand because they give you a fairly upscale experience, not really upscale prices. Regardless of where you go, it is so consistent, the service and the way that you're treated and the way that you feel especially when you go to the Hillstone's and Houston's Steak, the way you fall into this brand and it's dark, it's quiet, it's super professional, you're attended to. To me, it is so fascinating and people think it's silly because it's Houston's. It's a steak, whatever, kind of chain, just an American restaurant. That to me is always fascinating because I know how difficult it is to pull that off.F Geyrhalter:Talking about difficulties, brand difficulties, I know we talked a lot about what Sky Zone is doing right and has been doing right, but you're doing your entire history of growing that brand. Was there enormous brand feel that you went through where something totally went the wrong way, where you thought your customers would act a certain way and then they acted totally differently or where you chomped onto some hip bandwagon and then afterwards you realized it's just a fad and you should have never done that? Anything negative that you want to share, so people can learn from it?J Platt:Nothing I would say overly negative. I will say that at one point we started pivoting our creative a little bit to go a bit edgier, a bit sportier. We used some darker images and coloring, not a skater feel, but almost like that in a way. I think we took it a bit far frankly. This didn't really come from research or anything, but I think we took it a bit far and we had to tone it down a little bit because what I think we became was a little less inviting to the masses. It's almost as if you saw our marketing or creative, you would have said, "It feels like sport to me and not entertainment."J Platt:There's still some elements of our brand that feel that way, but we've started to tone that down a little bit, and after you've seen some of the creative refresh on our website for example, we're now being a little more colorful, a little more pattern oriented. Really what's at the core of all of that is being playful. That's what we want to be about. We want to be playful as a brand in the way we communicate, in the way we look and feel. We are all about play and our brand should be playful. It's not really serious.F Geyrhalter:Exactly and it makes so much sense because in the end, if you're on the height of your game and you're actually in the league, it's still playful. You're still enjoying it. It's still a game, right? For everyone else, it's aspirational if there's a little bit of that competitive tone to the brand or a little bit of that athletic tone to the brand, but you must probably went into the athletic tonality so much that the other customers were left a little bit behind. Now with your refresh and looking at the way that you look at the segmentation's obviously, it's a much bigger exercise to find that perfect in between and having that guiding word, that guiding idea behind it. That's actually my next question. What is one word that can describe your brand overall, which I call your brand DNA? Is it actually playful?J Platt:Yeah, I think so. We are all about promoting play. We want to be playful in everything we do. You can use a lot of different words and you can say it's about fun and freedom and activity and adventure, but at the end of the day, who does not like to play? If we could just be playful all day long, I don't care if you're young or old, you're going to be happy. I've got a 16-month-old now, my first and all day long this kid just runs around and he just wants to play and he's so happy. I just think like, "What if I could live like that?" How much happier would the world be if we could all just be like a 16-year-old, totally present, in the moment, only caring about what's right in front of them? I realize it's not realistic, but how nice would it be?F Geyrhalter:I think your brand is going to change a lot in the future.J Platt:I just want to play.F Geyrhalter:Look, when you mentioned it could be a lot of words, I think that actually defining that one word. It is very peculiar, right? It's particular. It's like there's nothing else that can say playful the way playful can see it, right? I mean freedom and all these other words, they come through different images. I think playful, having that as the guiding light, it's different. I think it's important to have that down because I think everyone internally needs to feel like, "Yeah, that's our brand." Then, everyone externally will sooner or later feel that. What's next for Sky Zone? What's in the future? What can you talk about that is not to secretive?J Platt:More growth, more toys, more attractions. I think the one that we're really super excited about right now that we're just starting to roll out is we're incorporating a lot of slides into our locations. These aren't just normal slides. These are a new spin on slides. Everyone hears slides and you think, "Oh, that sounds really fun. I'll do them at the park, but what's so great about a slide? These are going to be totally different and really big. I'm talking 15, 20, 25 feet and they've got a surface on them that puts you at a totally different speed than if you were just going down a normal slide and you're going to fly off them, of course.J Platt:You're not going to just drop down, but you actually get launched off these slides and a have to land into an airbag. That's an attraction that we're really excited about pumping out here very soon. There's a lot we're doing in the tech space. I think that a year from now you'll see our parks team pretty tech enabled that will be an enhancement to the guest experience and then a lot of international growth getting into new countries and seeing further expansion that way.F Geyrhalter:Very exciting, very exciting. Talking about expansions, I have listeners from all across the world. I think there are a few countries where I don't have listeners, but it's a very international podcast. The majority is still in the US, I think about 48% and then it's all across the world. Listeners who want to get into the Sky Zone, where can they find you?J Platt:skyzone.com, easy as that, our website. It's got all of our locations listed and that's the best place.F Geyrhalter:How many countries are you in right now?J Platt:Oh, we are in 12 countries.F Geyrhalter:Wow.J Platt:Total countries and hopefully expanding. We're very focused on Japan hopefully being the next country we launch.F Geyrhalter:Great. Very cool. Well, listen, Jeff, I hope that the craziness with the coronavirus is not going to affect you too much in what you do and how you expand. It's affecting everyone right now, but I really, really wish you the best. We got some amazing insights out of here today. I love your story. Thank you for taking the time in your busy schedule to share this with myself and my listeners.J Platt:Appreciate it having me on and hope to chat soon.F Geyrhalter:Absolutely. Thanks Jeff.J Platt:Thanks so much.
Here I sit at my computer thinking about Episode 43 of HatRadio! with my guest, Jeff Budd......a really important show! What to write? How to approach it? After all Jeff went through, as a kid, the stuff we fear the most - sexual abuse from a teacher. So, I'm mulling this over and thinking, ya he did, and we talked a lot about that time in his life, but you know what, like he told me, he doesn't let that define him as a person. And I love that about Jeff because he means it, and you can just see he's worked arduously to make that a reality. So ladies and gent, let me introduce to you Jeff Budd, a beautiful person who speaks candidly about pretty much mostly everything including: coaching hockey in Israel and working with hockey's greatest coach ever, Roger Nielson; standing proudly when Hatikvah, Israel's National anthem was played in Belgrade after his team's victory; working with children in Kitchener ensuring their environment is safe and loving....and a lot more. And folks, meet my dear friend Jeff Budd who is from my hometown, Kitchener and who adored my parents, his Rabbi and Rebbetzin who were his mentors and teachers. Today Jeff is a stalwart leader in the synagogue responsible for many things including taking care of families who have lost a loved one, and participating in the Jewish rituals required to prepare a body for burial. That's Jeff Budd!!! And yes listeners, Jeff's grade 5 teacher sexually abused him. At 35 Jeff had him arrested and the judge, "a poster child for judicial malpractice" let the guy off for a damn stupid reason. Of course, this time is crucial in Jeff's life, and he speaks openly and at length to describe the tribulations he went through, how his parents and family saved his life, but he's says with confidence: this time in his life does not define him, at least not in whole. I loved this schmooze with Jeff, and I did because he's a marvelous story teller who laughs a lot (as I do) and he can take and give a joke. I loved this talk we shared because it's clear Jeff appreciates life in only a way people do who have gone through great heartship and then later on dance to the music life plays for us. When the interview was done I thought about splendor in our world in the guise of a human being, a guy who lives a quiet life today in Southern Ontario, who rose up from the stomped flora of a toxic garden to blossom into the most splendid of flowers one could imagine, standing tall, proud, handsome and inspirational. Thanks Jeff and God bless you always. This Budds for you! HatRadio! It's the show that schmoozes. Please subscribe at hatradio.ca/subscribe . Thank you. Listen to: 06:54: Avrum and Jeff talk about anti-Semitism today and the importance of recognizing when it's not anti-Semitism 20:53: Asking Zac Hyman if he went to shul on High Holidays 39:06: Jeff begins talking about being sexually abused at 9 years-old 1:11:34: Roger Nielson and Jeff coaching Israel hockey at Canada Center in Metula 1:22:00: The iconic Budd's Department Store in Kitchener ___________________________________________________________________ Thanks to Howard Pasternack for your post-production work as well as the creation of a brand new Youtube video advertising HatRadio! Howard your work is excellent! Thank you. Yashar Koach (Yiddish for 'frickin eh') to my old friend, David Nefesh, who wrote and performed the HatRadio! song. He's the right guy to have done that because we're soul brothers. We get each other. The song cooks, and lets face it, it's the first HatRadio! anthem, and nothing matches that, right Dive!? I love you brother. Credit for music in commercial:Slow Burn Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
In this fabulous episode my guest, Jeff Hoeben and I talk about the power of wonder and how we should be the caretakers of this sense. It is such a fun episode and tickles my philosophical background. It is a must listen to. Thanks Jeff for sharing with us your joy and this fantastic conversation. Book Mentioned: The Embers and the Stars a Philosophical Inquiry into the Moral Sense of Nature
ACEC's Chair-Elect of the Coalition Leaders Steering Committee discusses the importance of coalitions through ACEC membership. Transcript:Host: (00:03)And welcome to another edition of Engineering influence with ACEC. Very happy to have a repeat guest to the podcast. Matt Morello is the Chair-Elect of the Coalition Leaders Steering Committee. Matt Murello: (00:50)Thanks for having me, Jeff. Host: (00:51)Yes, thank you for coming in. I know you're a busy man. You have a lot of hats that you wear. Not only being president of your firm Lewis Goodfriend and Associates out of New Jersey. And Mayor as well. And then also of course Chair-Elect of the coalitions and then also taking on the tax and regulatory committee. So there's a lot going on. But today really focusing in on coalitions. You were just a couple of minutes ago in our large conference room talking to the staff together about the importance of coalitions. Um, take a moment and kind of describe what the coalitions at ACEC do, why are they important? And really what are you trying to get across coming in as the chairman of the coalitions committee. Matt Murello: (01:40)Thanks. Um, so the coalitions for people that aren't aware, are groups within ACEC, many of which are practice centered, uh, whether it's land development or professional surveyors, mechanical electrical engineers or structural engineers, that provide additional information and resources to those practice centered firms. The other of those two are based upon the, the size of the firms who have small firms in the DPC, the larger firms, the small firms counsel that I got involved with as chair in 2012. And the value of the coalitions is, as we were just explaining to staff of ACEC is to provide a pool of information and resources, whether it's peer to peer, I have a question about something I want to do or, or tried to do, or it's just the ability to have access to documents. Matt Murello: (02:35)Right now, the number of documents that any coalition member would have access to if they were to purchase them all would be over $5,000. And that's a, that's a significant investment to affirm. If a firm is starting or growing or merging or adding onto the ability to go and tap into those resources of, um, just the documents or being able to talk, um, in a peer to peer environment and say, look, I want to open a new business or I want to open a new office or I want to develop my next generation of leaders, or how valuable is my firm? Um, at some point somebody's already done it. And within the coalitions you're gonna find that person, probably one that's done it right and one that hasn't. The ability to tap into the information is going to make your firm better off in the end because you have the ability to say, okay, does this, is this method of growing my next generation of leaders? Matt Murello: (03:36)Is it going to work for me or is it not? When we all started to get together in 2011 and 2012 where the different chairs got together and said, okay, each one of our groups, instead of trying to be all things to all members concentrated on what did we do best? And at the Small Firm Council, we decided we were gonna try to be the best at helping you run your business. How can we make you more profitable, grow or maintain your client base, diverse your client your client base while the other coalitions we're making you better surveyors or better land development or better structural engineers or better mechanical electrical engineers, engineering firms. And when we did that, when we got together and said, okay, let's each one of us coalitions do the best we can at what we want to provide our members, that's when the membership of the coalitions in general started to grow rapidly. Matt Murello: (04:33)I've always believed that if we can get anybody who automatically joins ACEC for whatever reasons they do, if you want to be engaged and you want to get the most you can out of ACEC, the advocacy side and the coalition side, although they are completely opposite in terms of what you need to put into them, um, they're going to make your firm stronger, make you a better leader and help you grow your business and develop those next generation of leaders. Host: (05:00)And it's really a little barrier to entry. Matt Murello: (05:02)It really is. I mean, uh, obviously there's a, a significant monetary expense to join ACEC, but to join a coalition is only $250. And if you're a member of the insurance trust they reimburse you part of that. And then if you're a member of a coalition, you want to join another coalition, it's even less expensive. So the cost to join a coalition versus what you get out of it, if nothing else, just the documents themselves is an order of magnitude over what you pay. Host: (05:34)But like you said, it's that information sharing. It's that best practices. Having a center for excellence for firms to learn how best to, I guess grow or change their management structure or whatever they want to do to be more successful in their industry. Not so much professionally, but in their specialization. Even though there's information about that available it's more how can you grow your firm, get it ready to go into M&A if you want to do that or if it's going to be just, you know, a training the next generation coming up, that's really where you can learn. Matt Murello: (06:07)Yeah, you're right. And to be honest with you, Jeff I've been going to the Small Firm Counsel round tables for almost 20 years now. Um, and one of the questions I got asked by staff was, you know, what are the typical topics you discuss on at these approximately two and a half hours of sitting in a room. Um, and what you had mentioned with, uh, with mergers and acquisitions and growing leadership development and from valuation and benchmark performance metrics. Um, we talk about over and over and over again and we're always finding new ways to try to come up with what works best for my firm. I have a very small firm in New Jersey, in the New York City area. Uh, we've, uh, been between five people and 12 people in the 17 years I've owned the business. But the coalitions have always helped me when I want to figure out whether I'm doing well or not doing well. Matt Murello: (06:59)Is this a good time to open a new office? How do I quantify whether it's a good time and whether it's performing well or not. All of that information is readily accessible because people have done it. Um, and there's nothing easier than asking somebody who's done it and not done well at it. Okay. What do, what pitfalls do I avoid so that I can concentrate on being the best acoustical engineer I can offer in this area? Um, and at the same time, because I'm a small firm, I don't have a CFO and HR director. How do I get around or how do I deal with those topics? In my business, which will come up. Um, and what's the best way to deal with it. And I think that that pool of information, that pool of resources is something that's invaluable. Host: (07:40)And something else that was mentioned during your, during your talk was the fact that at the conferences that ACEC holds, it's an open door policy that if you're an ACEC member and you want to just test out a coalition or see if it's something that you're interested in, you can come in and sit in see if it's right for you. Matt Murello: (07:57)Right. The, the, the round tables that exist on the Sunday of the national meetings are where we get, um, it's an open door. Uh, people come in. And I've always found that if someone joins a one of the round tables and find some value in innovation if it's one topic we discussed that it makes their lives easier, um, that's a perspective member that we more often than not can get to join a coalition. Host: (08:21)So Matt, really, what's your elevator pitch for membership coming in and you have some, you know, you're talking to a bunch of new ACEC members and they don't know about coalitions, you know, what's, what's your, what's your pitch to them? Matt Murello: (08:34)I think any firm that decides to be involved with ACEC has already made the decision for the expense of joining and they've determined whatever their need is. If that firm really wants to be actively involved in the industry, have a say, or at least be in the know and to what's changing in our industry from a tax and regulatory standpoint, infrastructure, what bills are coming or not coming, ACEC is the place to be. If you're gonna make that jump into, be actively involved with the organization, losing out on the opportunity for a very small investment in a coalitions of $250 to be involved and get access to that pool of information to grow your business, to manage your business effectively, to grow the next generation of leaders and to become a better engineering firm and a principal is really something that you need to take. And taken into consideration. Otherwise it's an opportunity lost. Um, we all spend most of our time of being responsive as business owners. And if you have an opportunity to tap into information to make you a better leader, to make your firm stronger, more resilient in downturn times as you are in growth. I think it's a resource that everyone should take advantage of. Coalitions is the place to get that. Host: (09:50)Well, that's fantastic. And Matt, thank you for coming down to Washington. Thank you for speaking to our group and I know you have a busy schedule, so I'm not going to hold you up, but thank you so much again, check out our coalitions on www.acec.org Um, and uh, thanks again for coming on.Matt Murello: (10:06)Thanks Jeff. As always.
Links: Facebook’s pivot to privacy Luminary aims to be the Netflix of podcasts Would You Rather… …Have no elbows or no knees? Arms and legs are just as long as they are now, simply no ability to bend them. (Thanks Jeff!) Recommendations: Jon: When I Get Home By Solange Tim: Hope Is Made of Steel By Northcote Ryan: Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost Part 1 By Foals Brought to you by our Patreon supporters. Thanks! Patreon backers now have access to an exclusive post-show in their Patreon feeds.
Dr Amit Khera: Welcome to Circulation on the Run, your weekly summary and backstage pass to the journal. I'm Dr Amit Khera, associate editor and digital strategies editor from UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. And I have the privilege of standing in for Dr Carolyn Lam, your usual weekly podcast host. Today we have a special treat. It is our semiannual fellows and training FIT podcast. And the additional part of this treat is we have three very special FITs today. These are our assistant editors for social media for Circulation. And really I want to introduce you just a moment, but I want to thank these three for their hard work and efforts. It really is them that helped bring our social media to life. And importantly for us, we really have a commitment to enhancing fellow education involving fellows in our editorial process and really making sure that the journal is appealing to fellows in training. So we really rely on these three to help us understand what best resonates and what is most helpful for fellows in training. So without further ado, Jainy Savla from UT Southwestern. Welcome Jainy. Jainy Savla: Thanks for having me on the podcast today. Dr Amit Khera: And we have Daniel Ambinder from Johns Hopkins University. Hi Dan. Daniel Ambinder: Hey Amit. Thanks for having me on the podcast today. Dr Amit Khera: Absolutely. And finally we have Jeff Hsu from UCLA. Hi Jeff. Jeff Hsu: Hi Amit and hi everyone. Very glad to be here. Dr Amit Khera: Well, Jainy, I'm going to start with you. You've been with us on the social media side the longest. I think it's maybe almost a year or a bit more that you've been working on these efforts. And again, very much appreciate all of your hard work and insight. Tell us a bit about yourself. Jainy Savla: So I'm currently a research fellow at UT Southwestern. So I completed my general cardiology training and I've been doing some extra research training in one of our basic science labs there. Dr Amit Khera: So not surprisingly with your background, do you select an article? So we've asked them each to select one article as they've been working through the social media side and see all of our articles come through. Each to select one that they found was interesting and perhaps summarize for us what it included and what appealed to them. So Jainy, tell us a little bit about the article you chose and why you chose it. Jainy Savla: So, I chose one of the articles that was published in April of 2018 from the Molkentin team lab. And this is a basic science article that focused on which types of cells contribute to heart regeneration. They hadn't thought that there was cardiac progenitor cell that could contribute to the development of new cardiomyocytes. And more recent data has shown that maybe that's not quite the case. So what this study did was used a lot of fancy lineage tracing models to try to figure out which types of cells we're actually contributing to the development of new cardiomyocytes. So importantly, what came from this was that one of their models, they were able to delete two transcription factors that are necessary for cardiomyocytes to develop from these progenitor cells. But they found that when they did that, they even got a higher number of cardiomyocytes that formed. And then what they were able to show in this paper was that actually comes from fusion of leukocytes to cardiomyocytes. And then interestingly, they found a role for one of these transcription factors and the development of endothelial cells. So that was kind of a new, not known function of one of these genes that was previously thought to be just contributory to cardiac development. Dr Amit Khera: It's really a fascinating article when you think about it. Most of the science we publish are people bringing to light new discoveries and certainly there was a component of that here. But in many ways, it was kind of a different article where there had been this a prevailing thought about these c kit positive cells and here they're actually had gone through, refuted what people had thought was happening with these in this de novo cardiomyocyte formation. So you'll see that very often where people's articles or work is headed out to sort of maybe refute or set right what's happening in the literature in the field. Can you comment on that as to that type of article and how that appealed to you in this study? Jainy Savla: That is interesting because previously it has meant that these cells can be used as a therapeutic option in human patients. But some of them were recent data showed that perhaps the new cardiomyocytes weren't actually coming from these cells, but it was hard to say. So the nice part about this paper was really they used a lot of important lineage tracing models to really show where these cells are coming from. And it helped clarify some of the, I guess, more confusing science that had been in the field since there were a few papers that showed these cells were contributary and then a few papers that have shown that maybe they weren't. So I think that's really helpful, particularly when you're talking about things that could be potentially used as therapeutic agents in human. And also the interesting thing is that while these cells themselves may not be useful to perhaps harvest and give to someone, you could potentially alter these cells and then they produce cells that fuse with cardiomyocytes. Or could you use this a different way? So I thought that was also interesting about this article. Dr Amit Khera: Great points in it. It does remind us again that in our enthusiasm for rushing things to clinical practices in some things in this field, the importance of rigorous basic science to really understand the molecular underpinnings. And as you mentioned, there's some new insights here that could be used for clinical therapeutic purposes in the future. So definitely an interesting article and glad you enjoyed it and brought it to our attention. I'm going to ask you a bit of a different question. You again have been working with this in the social media side for longer. You've seen this now for some time about the different articles that come through. I know you and I've had several conversations about our different platforms, Twitter or Facebook, and how they're different and how we engage with them and how we engage with the audience. Can you tell us a little bit just reflecting now on your time and working with social media from a journal perspective, kind of what you've learned? What are some interesting observations over this year? Jainy Savla: Definitely one interesting observation is just that their general usage of these social media platforms has increased significantly since I've started doing this. And you can see this with when we get articles that are accepted, how many authors have Twitter handles that they'd like to be tagged in some of these posts. And that's just gone up significantly since I've started doing this. And that also changes sort of what the comments we get on some of the posts and the back and forth discussions that we're seeing on these platforms. And then the second thing I found really interesting over time is that the way people use Facebook is really different from the way people use Twitter. And you can follow the discussions that people have linked to our posts a little bit better on Facebook. And then on Twitter, there's also a lot of similar discussions about these posts. But they kind of manifest in different ways and it's really interesting to see how that plays out. Dr Amit Khera: I think those are fantastic points. And from a fellow's perspective, how do you think fellows are engaging with social media now compared to maybe, I don't know, when you started your training a few years back. What have you seen in a positive light? Jainy Savla: I mean in general, there are more fellows on Twitter now than when I was a first-year fellow. Even myself, I've got my Twitter account when I was in fellowship. I didn't have one prior to that. I mean it's interesting because people are able to showcase their work a little bit better I think with these types of handles whereas before maybe you wouldn't know that even one of your own co fellows had published something. So it's kind of nice to see people use that kind of as a networking tool in some ways or to showcase some of their own work, which is something that when I was a first year and I didn't have a Twitter handle and there weren't as many fellows on Twitter, I didn't really notice some of the work that's being done by some of my colleagues at my level. Dr Amit Khera: Those are great points and I'll stoplight some of the things you just said talking about it being a way for fellows to really showcase their work, to help with networking and in some ways, it's sort of the great equalizer. So I think it's really a valuable platform specifically for fellows. Well thank you Jainy. I'm going to move on to Daniel and hear a little bit from Daniel. Tell us a bit about yourself. Daniel Ambinder: I'm currently a second year cardiology fellow at John's Hopkins Hospital and I plan on doing interventional and structural cardiology in the future. Dr Amit Khera: Great and certainly a lively and growing field and so many exciting things happening. Well, it's interesting you chose an article today that is more of a clinical article and obviously quite different than the last one we heard, but equally as interesting. Tell us a little about the article you've chose and why you chose it. Daniel Ambinder: I was very excited about this article that was published in Circulation back in July 2018. So, it's by Dr Borlaug and Reddy on how to diagnose HFpEF and what they did was they took patients with clinical dyspnea and they used invasive human dynamics to kind of assess whether or not they had HFpEF. And by doing so they were able to generate a list of clinical and eco based guidance to help us kind of identify patients with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction. So they came up with this amazing little table which was featured in Circulation and on Circulation twitter, where they have a chart that basically goes through several clinical variables including weight and hypertensiveness, atrial fibrillation, pulmonary hypertension, being elderly. And filling pressure is based on echo cardiographic information. And by that they were able to generate a score and give you a probability of if your patient has HFpEF or not. And the reason why I really enjoyed reading this article and also posting this article was because going through internal medicine and not being so fundamentally aware of echo and kind of what goes into understanding left ventricular filling pressures, it was challenging to make a diagnosis of heart failure with preserved ejection fraction. Do you just basically say, "My patient has lower extremity swelling but normal EF? They have heart failure with preserved ejection fraction and [inaudible 00:09:32] on the [inaudible 00:09:33]. And so I thought that this would be really helpful to the medical community at large. And in fact, shortly after we posted it, I saw that our cardiology console fellow is actually utilizing this exact table to help one of the medicine teams manage a patient with lower extremity swelling and come to the diagnosis of heart failure with preserved ejection fraction. So that is why I chose this article for today. Dr Amit Khera: That's a great article and I thought you summarized it very well. And it is a field. HFpEF you'd see a lot of articles in Circulation on this topic. We have many people that are interested from an editor’s level but also from a society level. This is a huge problem, but we know very, very little. And I'm sure you know that as well and this was a wonderful tool. Just shows you're sort of the beauty and simplicity. Although if you read it, the message were pretty rigorous and they had a lot of great work that they did to develop it. But I love that the H2 HFpEF, how they basically came up with it h for heavy and the f from fibrillation. So I thought that was incredibly creative and a very simplistic but useful score. So, you said your, tell us about yourself. Have you used the H2 of the HFpEF score yet? Daniel Ambinder: Absolutely. I use it in clinic on a daily basis. And I actually pull up the Tweet in my office and show the patients why I think that they have heart failure preserved ejection fraction, especially since many of my patients start to get really nervous when you start talking about heart failure. But then they don't understand that they have a normal functioning heart. They can't really put those two together. And so going through this chart and going through the etiology, or at least what we know about heart failure with preserved ejection fraction, turns out to be quite helpful. Dr Amit Khera: And the basis of this study goes back to hemodynamics. This obviously is a cohort where they had done invasive hemodynamics to essentially diagnosed HFpEF based on pressure. So as you, as someone who's going interventional and structural where we are really seeing kind of the rebirth or refocus on hemodynamics again, tell me a little bit like what you're learning in terms of hemodynamics and how you think that importance in today's practice of cardiovascular medicine. Daniel Ambinder: One of my passions is spending as much time as I possibly can in the cardiac ICU. And we're fortunate to meet many different patients that come in with very different kinds of cardiogenic shock for other hemodynamic compromise from other types of shock. And I have found it extremely helpful to think about either using a virtual Swan or by actually getting the measurements with a PA catheter to kind of identify where the break in the system is to hopefully provide our patients with the ability to turn them around in a fast manner before they develop metabolic compromise from prolonged hypoperfusion. Dr Amit Khera: Great summary of how you're using hemodynamics and the training. And I'm going to pivot. The last question for you is when we first met I think several months back and we're communicating about your interest in social media, one thing that was really interesting and fascinating was the great work you're doing on Twitter on your own account where you essentially, if I think you told me this right, you sit on your iPhone and basically in this matter of a very few minutes would construct cases and teaching points on Twitter. So tell me a little bit about that, about using Twitter for medical education and learning cardiology and cases. And I know you're passionate about that. So tell us a little bit more about that. Daniel Ambinder: Back in May, last year, I had been in my first year of cardiology fellowship. And I was really kind of obsessed with grabbing as much imaging and cases as I could to construct them into teaching stories to share these important stories that I encounter with other people. And so also share the aha moments that I have when I'm learning from my mentors about a new clinical condition or even a clinical condition that I've encountered many times. We never thought about any unique way. And so I was putting these all together and developing somewhat of a library of cases. But I would share them with the residents that I was working with at the time. And then Dr Erin Michos was one of my mentors at Hopkins. She's an echocardiographer and she kind of exposed me to the Twitter community where you're really able to just start reaching out to different people and share the same insights that I had saved on my drive on my computer. And so I started constructing these cases, putting that together and developing them and then associating them with like a few bullet pointed tidbits of pearls that I can put on Twitter. And I quickly realized what an amazing community Twitter have to offer in terms of cardiology and in terms of the medical education community at large. At first, I realized you can't put out content and not expect to participate in a conversation. It has to be two ways. You have to really engage with others and others will engage with you. And then just a couple months later, it's really grown that you can post a case, post the teaching pearl and in about 24 hours it can be viewed thousands and thousands of times, really internationally. And generates just so much great conversation. So it's been really a tremendous way to communicate with the world, especially within the cardiovascular world. Dr Amit Khera: Well thanks. I think there's so much learning that can happen and I think the work you're doing with cases and with others. And I know when I've gone on Twitter, even in just two minutes you can see really fascinating things and learn a lot. So keep up the good work and appreciate your efforts there. I'm going to switch gears and finally finished with Jeff Hsu from UCLA. Jeff, tell us a bit about yourself. Jeff Hsu: I'm a fellow at UCLA. So I actually finished my general cardiology fellowship pretty recently and now I'm a research fellow in the STAR program here. I'm also enrolled in the PhD program at UCLA in the Department of Physiology and planning to defend in the next few months. So right now, very stressed out about that. Starting in July, I'll be starting advanced fellowship in advanced heart failure and transplant here at UCLA. Well excellent and best of luck to you in your PhD defense. Now you also chose a very interesting article that again, all of yours are a bit different. So tell us a little about the article you chose and why you chose it. When I chose this article, I was really excited by a few weeks ago. It was published in the December 4th issue of Circulation called Determining the Pathogenicity of a Genomic Variant of Uncertain Significance Using CRISPR/Cas9 and Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells. So this came out of the lab of Joe Wu at Stanford and the co first authors is Ning Ma, Joe Zhang and Ilanit Itzhaki. But I think the beauty of this article is that it really addressed this frustrating clinical scenario in question that we often encounter nowadays in this era of genome sequencing. And now that we're sequencing a lot more people, since the cost of sequencing has come down a lot, we were finding a lot of these mutations that we don't know what to do with, so I think Dr Wu's lab really try to address this question using the disease model with the cardiomyopathy. So, leveraging Dr Wu's expertise in using human induced pluripotent stem cells or iPSCs, they found a patient who is actually healthy but apparently had this mutation in this gene called MYL3 or myosin light chain 3. And so this patient had a variance of uncertain significance in this gene. Now, notably, this patient, again had no clinical phenotype, was very healthy and the patient's family members over three generations were all healthy too. But had this mutation that based on in silico analyses was thought to be likely pathogenic. So using cells from this patient that they reprogrammed into cardiomyocyte, they tested various properties of these cells from the same patient to see whether or not they thought this mutation is actually a pathogenic mutation. So again, using these reprogrammed cardiomyocytes, they tested a variety of things including gene expression, sarcomere structure, and cell contractility, action potentials, and the handling of calcium. And they saw that even with this mutation, there were no abnormal findings in vitro in their system. Now just to prove that their cell culture system and this in vitro model of testing the pathogenicity of certain mutations actually works, they actually took cells from a patient who did have the clinical phenotype as a result of a known mutation that causes hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. And found that when testing those cells in vitro, they did demonstrate abnormal phenotypes in all the parameters I mentioned before. So I thought this is really exciting. I thought this is a great way to address, potentially answer whether or not we think these variants of uncertain significance that we often encounter are indeed pathogenic because we are often just left in this situation where we don't know what to do with this information. But this potentially at least is a proof of concept for this protocol where we can finally take advantage of the ability to take cells from our patient and actually test them in the lab to see whether or not either various treatments work or whether or not these mutations that actually will results in pathology down the line. So I thought overall this was a great paper that was a great summary of how we can take the bedside to the bench actually. And I'm just really looking forward to the future where we can maybe then bring it back to the bedside. Dr Amit Khera: Well thanks. I think that's an excellent choice and a great summary. And this article really hit all of the kind of timely and cutting-edge topics in the era genomic medicine and precision medicine have really kind of individualized treatments. And when we get stuck, these VUSes, these are a nightmare. And also this is sort of proof of concept for extending this to other treatments and other ways to test drugs and therapies. I've heard Joe, we talk about this before and use the word disease in the dishes. He did I think in the article itself and it's exactly that. I mean the potential here is profound. I'll pivot this into the next question for you. For our roles, one thing we do is we interact a lot with media and I interact a lot with them to help translate, I guess, the articles that we have to things that would be able to be digestible for media and for lay individuals. It was interesting because it's hard for us to do that with basic science and most of the time we have some difficulty in translating that. But this one translated pretty well and I think we had done some various press releases and things because it really showed the potential of modern medicine and kind of the excitement of it. But that gets to the question I have for you, something we have discussed as well, your interest in basic science and some of the challenges of taking basic science articles and digesting them down to a couple hundred-word tweet. Even as beautiful as all the pictures are, and in this article I think there's six figures, but each panel is 10 pictures or 10 figures by themselves. And how do we digest basic science articles down to make them really appeal to people on social media and help people understand that may not be in the fields or in basic science that are clinicians, if you will. I know you've thought about that a little bit. Tell me a little bit about your thoughts on that. Jeff Hsu: Jainy, Dan and I have this challenge on a weekly basis, figuring out how to summarize great articles such as this one into a short tweet. And I think that is a big challenge particularly for basic science articles on social media to make it appeal to a broader audience because the audience you're seeing on Twitter and Facebook, again, they're not just basic scientists. If you want to catch people's attention, you need to find a way to really understand the big picture of the question you're answering in your basic science research. So I think that is a challenge. You're challenged to make your science appealing to a broader audience. But I think again, that's one of the advantages of social media is that you can appeal to a larger audience and have a wide range of people engage with your research and understand your research. So it is something that we work on is to try to pick out the figure that best represents the science that was done in these basic science articles. It can be quite challenging because a lot of times one picture won't do it justice. So it's tough to distill a full article in one picture. It is helpful when some articles do have a summary, a graphic or figure where they typically reserve their last figure for either a cartoon or some type of schematic that really explains either the mechanism or pathway that they explored in their article. So what we've found is that these articles that do have some of these illustrations or summary figures, they seem to engage a larger audience on Twitter and social media. So personally I find it more appealing when I do see these summary figures. So if there is one recommendation, I would have the basic science researchers, especially trainees is in this age of social media, try to come up with an illustration or summary figure for your research. I think it helps you figure out what is truly important with the research that you've done and helps you communicate this research to a broader audience. And I've seen a lot of people take advantage of a graphic designers to really help them illustrate their research. And I found that to be very effective in articles I've read on social media. Dr Amit Khera: Thanks Jeff. That's a great point and great suggestion. And certainly these days the most effective communicators are those they can translate their complex science into easily digestible bites and can think of ways to portray them in ways that sort of summarize, like you said, be it summary figures or otherwise. And it's a challenge and also talent. And you all are certainly perfecting that. Well, I think we've had an excellent conversation. I have to tell you, I'm so excited to get the chance to spotlight you all. You do excellent work each day. Every week you're working hard and coming up with great ideas and suggestions and we really value having your input as fellows and training and as a colleague. Thank you for joining us today on our FIT podcast. Amit Khera standing in for Carolyn Lam. We look forward to seeing you for our next edition of Circulation on the Run. This program is copyright American Heart Association 2018.
Ryan’s Tree Was Dead and You Won’t Believe What Happened Next… Would you rather… …live in a world that is one giant ball pit or in a world where every time it rained the earth would be a giant kiddie pool for 3 days then go back to normal? (Thanks Brenton!) …receive the ability of flight or being able to hold your breath for a day at a time? (Thanks Jeff!) Vs Superwoman vs The Flash (Thanks Brandon!) Recommendations Jon: Segundo by Juana Molina Tim: Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Ryan: John Legend’s A Legendary Christmas, Jon Acuff’s Finish, Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, etc
“We’re all celebrities that nobody knows about” Monikers Would You Rather be a celebrity or a business genius no on knows about? (Thanks Jeff!) Recommendations Ryan: The Final Table, Endel Jon: Function with Anil Dash, Superego’s back Tim: Whatevertown on Spotify
Jedi Jeff guest hosts this week talking all about the Ferengi Marauder ship, collectibles and more on the TSF podcast! Thanks Jeff!
Dr. Jeff Lip takes over an interviews me about my 28th Anniversary with my wife. Sit back and enjoy this discussion on the most important relationship in my life. Thanks Jeff for coming up with this great idea. It was really enjoyable to share these things with you.
Guest host Jedi Jeff covers the various versions of the Jupiter 2 from "Lost in Space." Thanks Jeff!
HEY HEY... it's a hot and heavy episode of WhiskeyBoy Radio for you this week! We have audio from the Curtain Club show with a David Galloway interview and some laughs with Sexy News Girl Dani! We have brand new music from Ryan Avila and old music from Pimpadelic. We have some crazy news stories, some jokes (even one from Jeff of the Funkytown Podcast... Thanks Jeff!), some recaps, some updates, and one squirrel up an ass! Oh, don't forget the Leprechaun rapist! All that plus my thoughts on the new movie Ready Player One and a fine thought on the important things in life! Enjoy that and much more on the show tonight!!Updates:Late Show, Date Night!The Weather has gone full bipolar. Curtain Club ShowTrees Show - recap next week… holy shit Sweet ChaosRedefine UpdateDeep Ellum Arts FestKeto StrongReady Player OneDancing at Denim and DiamondsExtra XboxSea of Thieves————Top Stories:- A man claiming to be a time traveler turns himself into police for killing Jesus Christ.- Irish farmer claims he was sexually assaulted by a Leprechaun.- Man transported to the hospital after getting squirrel stuck in his rectum.- Ohio: Naked man on crystal meth bites 28 people in a Walmart store.Upcoming:Fort Worth Main St. Arts FestDJ ing Friday night at Legal Draft in Arlington* 4/20 Messer * Secret of Boris * The Leader The Legend * The Drop Deadlys at TREES* 4/21 Podacalypse* 4/28 Anova/InnrCor/Homesick Alien/Tetrax/Anova Skyway at CurtainThank you for listening to WhiskeyBoy Radio, I appreciate each and every one of you!Be sure to check out and support other independent podcasters, YouTubers, and local bands!Today’s show has been brought to you by Go Epic Health. Makers of Cholesterade “The natural way to lower cholesterol”. Use promo code LDL25 to get 25% off your order, or find a store near you, at www.drinkcholesterade.com.Go visit our website at WhiskeyBoyRadio.com - Be sure to follow the show on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram @WhiskeyBoyRadio - Call our shows' studio and comment line at 972-853-1359, Subscribe via Spreaker, iTunes, iHeart, Stitcher, Tunein, and Follow us on Spotify!Sponsor Links:* www.airrentalz.com* soundcloud.com/real-double-dose-channelMusic Links:David Galloway - https://www.facebook.com/DavidGallowayMusic/Ryan Avila - https://www.facebook.com/ryanavilamusic/Pimpadelic - https://www.facebook.com/OfficialPimpadelic/
Episode 222 of the PetaPixel Photography Podcast. Download MP3 - Subscribe via iTunes, Google Play, email or RSS! Featured: Photographer, author and educator, Jeff Rojas In This Episode If you subscribe to the PetaPixel Photography Podcast in iTunes, please take a moment to rate and review us and help us move up in the rankings so others interested in photography may find us. Show Opener: Photographer, author and educator, Jeff Rojas opens the show. Thanks Jeff! Sponsors: - Get $150-$200 off a MeVIDEO Globetrotter backing its Kickstarter campaign while supplies last. More deals at LensShark.com/deals. Stories: Lightroom realities settle in, but why did Adobe change its mind? (#) Canon patents larger, flippy screens. Are they coming to the 1DX and 5D lines? (#) What you check in your luggage when flying may soon change...and for good reason. (#) Phottix announces the all-manual Juno transceiver flash. (#) While still active, use our offer code (PetaPixel20) for 20% OFF anything at PhottixUS.com An urbex photographer falls 14 stories to his death in Chicago. (#) My other podcast with Brian Matiash, the No Name Photo Show. Connect With Us Thank you for listening to the PetaPixel Photography Podcast! Connect with me, Sharky James on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook (all @LensShark) as we build this community. We’d love to answer your question on the show. Leave us an audio question through our voicemail widget, comment below or via social media. But audio questions are awesome! You can also cut a show opener for us to play on the show! As an example: “Hi, this is Matt Smith with Double Heart Photography in Chicago, Illinois, and you’re listening to the PetaPixel Photography Podcast with Sharky James!”
Jeff Smith CEO of Piedmont Healthcare sat in on Bryan About Town Weekend and talked about good and bad reasons for missing work. Hear his take on this subject. Thanks Jeff.
Chapter 108: "A Well In-Tensioned Virus" ...as read by Jeff Martin of Lo-Pan See what I did there? I met Jeff Martin at a Zao show in Indianapolis and we hit it off. I asked him onto the show and it's just that easy. Here he is. Jeff is the VERY talented vocalist of the band Lo-Pan and I've really come to love listening to him sing. Jeff was nice enough to take some time out and tell us about his early years and how it has all lead to what he is doing now with Lo-Pan...which includes a tie-in with Ooziest. Not to shabby, Jeff. He also has a new band called Acula and I can't wait to hear what he is doing vocally in a darker band with nine minute songs. Thanks Jeff! http://lopandemic.com https://www.facebook.com/lopandemic Chapter 108 Music: I played all five songs from their latest release "In Tensions" on Aqualamb Records "Go West" "Sink Or Swim" "Long Live The King" "Alexis" "Pathfinder" As The Story Grows links: Help out at Patreon Follow on Twitter See what we're doing at Lavirra Productions ATSG Website ATSG Music and Merch Leave some feedback at iTunes Join the Email List ATSG Facebook Email: asthestorygrows@gmail.com
BrushnSoapnBlade – Wet Shaving Podcast – Where we look forward to shaving every day!
BrushnSoapnBlade Wetshaving Podcast – Where we look forward to shaving every day! BrushnSoapnBlade@gmail.com – Wet Shaving Questions and Feedback always welcome. @BrushnBlade Everything Wet Shaving on Twitter (and other stuff for fun!) (864) 372-6234 on GoogleVoice – The Wet Shaving Hotline, call me anytime. Call from Aaron The Wet Shaver Review SOTD - I have a Strop for my AutoStrop! Thanks Jeff! SOTD - Do you have a "Standard" Razor? Changing out the Leather in my Big Strop SOTD - A Straight Razor shave to go with the New Leather in my Strop Playing with Pens this Week Jinhao X750 - Black Night Sky Stub Nib - 1.5 mm Stub HP Laser Paper SOTD - Stropping the Autostrop Busta Shaves Again! SOTD - How to Ruin a Perfectly Good Blade SOTD - Head to Head
Welcome to episode 100 of Geek Bytes Podcast. I’m Ramon Mejia and I’m Edgardo Acosta Every podcast we bring you the roundup of the week’s best Geek and Tech news, then we discuss that news and anything else we’re interested in that week. In Geek News this week, we’ll talk about the Kingdom Hearts III, Nintendo, Infinity Wars, possible Cable casting, the Movie Trailer showdown and much more. Before we begin we want to give a quick shout out to Jeff Hayes, our newest Patreon Supporter, who’s pledged $10/month to support our podcast. Thanks Jeff. If you want to support us on Patreon you can find us at https://www.patreon.com/geekbytespodcast
Pam: I'm Pamela Wasley, CEO of Cerius Executives, one of the largest North American providers of contract executives for part-time, temporary, interim and consulting assignments. These executives are available to step into companies on short notice, to fill a sudden gap in leadership, to run a key initiative which provides specialized skills and knowledge for temporary period of time. Today we will be discussing advisory boards and boards of directors and why companies, especially today, need them not only to grow but also to survive in this competitive environment. Our first guest is Ginger Silverman. Ginger is a 25 year veteran specializing in marketing and regeneration. After studying her discipline with the leadership of Fortune 1000 companies, she turned her focus to small to medium family owned businesses with a launch of a private consulting practice Aha! Unlimited. She had served on advisory boards and boards of directors for private, public and non-profit companies including Norco Delivery Services, IVIU technologies, Brain Disease Management, Cutagenesis, Oroscience, Susan G Komen and the South Coast Singers. Our next panelist is Merissa Levin. Merissa is a renowned authour, speaker and expert on boards. Her TED talk 'Women taking their place in the board room’ shares why there's never been a better time to increase the number of women board members. Her most recent book, Built To Scale, discusses how top companies create breakthrough road to exceptional advisory boards. She also writes a monthly column for smart CEO magazines as their board expert. Is ABC's small business expert on the number 1 ranked business show in the DC region: Washington Business Report. Is a board member at SMBC, a technology company located in Fairfax, Virginia. Our third panelist is Jeff Thompson. Jeff served in the board of directors for 10 years at Edelbrock Corporation, publicly traded automotive active market company when the ads back exchange. He was responsible for all financial reporting and served as shareholder liaison. He was also a member of the executive, compensation and audit committees. Alright, let's get to the questions. Merissa, let's start with you. What are the key differences between a board of directors and an advisory board? Merissa: Well there's quite a few but I would say the most important ones are fiduciary responsibilities. So your advisory board members are people that are hand selected and that don’t have any fiduciary liabilities, or fiduciary responsibility to the company. When you have a board of directors, if they advise the CEO or the executive team in the wrong direction, they're actually liable, financially liable for that advice. An advisory board is really just a team of hand selected advisors, you can take their advice, you can decide not to take their advice but definitely the level of fiduciary obligation is much different between the two structures. That's probably the main difference. Pam: Excellent point Merissa. Anybody else have any other difference between a board of director and advisory board? Jeff: Yeah, this is Jeff. I'd like to say that the advisory board is more of an informal type board consisting of a third-party, typically, and probably not that important factor besides the fiduciary responsibilities. The advisory board has no voting rights. It’s the board of directors that will typically make the votes on behalf of the shareholders. Pam: Great. Thanks Jeff.
Episode 103 of the PetaPixel Photography Podcast. Download MP3 - Subscribe via iTunes or RSS! Featured: Jeff Harmon, Photo Taco podcast In This Episode If you subscribe to the PetaPixel Photography Podcast in iTunes, please take a moment to rate and review us and help us move up in the rankings so others interested in photography may find us. Photo Taco podcast host Jeff Harmon opens the show. Thanks Jeff! Me on the Photo Taco podcast August 30, 2016 episode "Sports Photography with Sharky James". Our Think Tank Photo camera bag giveaway! My assessment on how the Nikon D500 handles and performs as well as discussion about settings and my approach in low-light. Sony drops a 50mm f/2.8 Macro lens. Do you shoot macro? (#) A cool device for mounting your cameras to your wall and still being able to use them when you need to. (#) A man in Kentucky sets bombs in trail cameras, but dies before telling authorities where they are and how many. (#) New commercial drone regulations go into effect in the US. (#) Outtakes Connect With Us Thank you for listening to the PetaPixel Photography Podcast! Connect with me, Sharky James on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook (all @LensShark) as we build this community. We’d love to answer your question on the show. Leave us an audio question through our voicemail widget, comment below or via social media. But audio questions are awesome! You can also cut a show opener for us to play on the show! As an example: “Hi, this is Matt Smith with Double Heart Photography in Chicago, Illinois, and you’re listening to the PetaPixel Photography Podcast with Sharky James!”
Here’s episode 86 of the PetaPixel Photography Podcast. You can also download the MP3 directly and subscribe via iTunes or RSS! Leave a comment in this post, or use our voicemail widget for feedback/questions for the show. In This Episode If you subscribe to the PetaPixel Photography Podcast in iTunes, please take a moment to rate and review us and help us move up in the rankings so others interested in photography may find us. Sponsor: FreshBooks. Get your FREE 30 day trial at FreshBooks.com/PetaPixel and enter PetaPixel in the “How Did You Hear About Us?” section. Portrait and fashion photographer Jeff Rojas opens the show. Thanks Jeff! Ted Forbes of "The Art of Photography" talks about how no one cares about our photography and the importance of creating work "that makes a difference". (#) DxOMark rates the Sigma 30mm f/1.4 DN Contemporary tops for Sony E-mount APS-C bodies. (#) Rumors of a Fujifilm mirrorless medium format (MMF) system on the heels of Hasselblad's X1D sparks questions of where this market and the camera business is going. (#) Hasselblad's CEO sets the record straight about their plans for zoom lenses in their new mirrorless medium format system. (#) SanDisk announces the world's fastest 256GB microSD card. (#) DxOMark gives the Canon EOS 1D X Mark II its highest rating among all Canon bodies. (#) Connect With Us Thank you for listening to the PetaPixel Photography Podcast! Connect with me, Sharky James on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook (all @LensShark) as we build this community. We’d love to answer your question on the show. Leave us an audio question through our voicemail widget, comment below or via social media. But audio questions are awesome! You can also cut a show opener for us to play on the show! As an example: “Hi, this is Matt Smith with Double Heart Photography in Chicago, Illinois, and you’re listening to the PetaPixel Photography Podcast with Sharky James!”
Episode 25 - The Guys-Reborn...AgainJust like Heroes, the Guys are Reborn! (Forget that this was recorded before we found out Heroes Reborn was cancelled) Thanks for tuning in or checking the feed, or meeting us for the first time.We start off by talking about (now old) news about an alligator in the Guadalupe and how Mario isn’t really an outdoor kinda guy. We also got to have our biggest fan on the show, Jeff Riley. Jeff is our only confirmed listener of each and every episode so far. Thanks Jeff!We also talk about a topic that we’ve spent plenty of time off mic talking about; TV shows that lasted too long or that started off great and then went to shit. We also talk about what we would do if we could create our own 5-6 Season television show and what TV network we’d prefer to have them on.We’ve got a bunch of shows already completed, so you can feel free to enjoy us again with the safety of knowing that we won’t drop off the planet again in a week or two. Also, this is officially season 2!You can contact us on Google Voicemail @ 210-802-1197, @ www.itsaguythingpodcast.com/contactus, on Twitter: @itsaguythingpod, on Facebook: /itsaguythingpodcast & check out our main site @ www.iagtpod.com Also, check out our Patreon page to assist us in keeping this ship afloat at www.patron.com/itsaguythingwww.itsaguythingpodcast.com www.210LocalMusic.com www.210PodcastNetwork.comMusic by San Antonio musicians, Team Felix - No Women, No Kids
Download Episode 15 Here Audio Feeds: Video Feeds: Sponsors Ocean State Cigars Stogie of the Week J. Grotto Series Reserva Gran Corona Origin: Raices Cubanas Factory in Honduras Wrapper: Honduran Criollo '98 Binder: Honduran Criollo '98 Filler: Honduran & Nicaragua Ligero Strength: Medium/Full Vitola: Gran Corona Size: 5 5/8 x 46 Age: N/A MSRP: $7.75 This week we are drinking Pappy Van Winkle Family Reserve 15 Year Paul's List Montecristo #2 - This one had 3 years of age on it, and was outstanding. Great balance of flavors, wood, earth, sublet spice. Liga Privada Dirty Rat - This was an excellent smoke, loved the flavors coming off this stick, smooth, balanced. However, not worth the $11 price tag. My Father Federal Cigars 91st (Broadleaf) - Some good toasty flavors up front, but then it did nothing for me the rest of the way. Did not enjoy this one unfortunately, could just be my pallet. La Aurora Cien Anos Preferido - This smoke was awesome. The change up in flavors as this thing smoked was so great, loved it. Tatuaje Cojonu 2012 (Broadleaf) - Love this smoke, awesome Tatuaje classic flavors, this one is going to age extremely well. CAIN F Daytona - What a great smoke! Came in that sampler box, and produced excellent flavors, somewhat sweet, hints of wood. Tatuaje Cojonu 2012 (Sumatra) - Great stick, however, this one had TOO LOOSE of a draw. I think the flavors suffered some as a result, can't wait to try more. Jamie Garcia Connecticut - Was not a fan, lots of pepper, and other flavors that just really never came together for me. Liga Privada #9 - Again, this one started out AMAZING, then got weird, and "fizzled out". Opus X Shark (2009) - This stick started out AMAZING, then was just meh. Padron 1964 Anniversary - Great cocao-like deep flavors. Stronger than I remember, smoked this one right before I went to Magic Kingdom, and was a little sick from it. Then went on the tea cups, not recommended. CAO Sapranos (Soldier) - Great smoke, nice flavors, by far my favorite from CAO. Thanks Jeff! My Father Federal Cigars 91st - I had high hopes for this, but had huge construction issues. The flavors were good, but uncharacteristic construction problem for this brand did not allow me to give it a fair review. Ashton VSG Eclipse - I absolutely love this smoke. The box I have is a bit young, needs time. I smoked one from the new box, and gave one to a friend. We both seemed to agree its a bit unbalanced and needs time to age. Can't wait til' these are covered in plume! Davidoff Colorado Claro Special T (2012) - Nice flavors, a tad grassy, very smooth. Needs more time to live up to the ones from 2008, but very happy with my box (10 count) purchase. Partagas Serie P Torpedo - This one was good, but lacked some of the flavors you find in lots of other Partagas smokes. I would say try one or two and see what you think. Viaje Skull & Bones Mystery ? - This was a fantastic smoke, I wish I had more. Box worthy for sure! La Flor Dominicana Factory Press II - These were OUTSTANDING a couple of years ago. I had one covered in plume. This one was good, but lost flavor, big time. If you have these, smoke em'. Tatuaje Cojonu 2003http://www.stogiegeeks.com/stogies/2012/4/6/tatuaje-cojonu-2003.html - Still my favorite from the Cojonu size, though I think this one had some construction issues. Padron 1926 #1 - One word: YUM. Tim's List Viaje Friends and Family - Beautiful cigar that offered a rich and earthy flavor profile that was extremely balanced. Flavors included espresso, dark chocolate, leather, and pepper. I would love to have tried more than one but considering many shops only received a single fifteen count box, I consider myself lucky to have received this one as a gift. Room 101 One Shot One Kill (OSOK) Filero.html - Interesting flavor profile of earth, leather, wood, and an occasional floral note. Full flavored but medium/full in strength. Construction was perfect. When I revisit, it will be after dinner with a bourbon. Viaje WLP Winter Classic - This stick was a pleasure to smoke and I think it went unnoticed by many since it was released at the same time as the Viaje Super Shot. Medium in body and strength, it offered a nice balance of mocha, pepper, and malt. It didn't change up for me much but found it enjoyable and satisfying after lunch. A definite "Fiver" or two. Montecristo Petit Edmundo - Box date on these is April 2011. After a few weeks of rest I decided to see how they were burning at lunch this week. Good burn and draw. Nice wood core but I found the flavors slightly harsh and unbalanced compared to the Grand Edmundo we smoked on the show a few months back. I think another year will do these good. Now to be patient! Olivares Aging Room M356 Rondo - Nice smoke! Dominican puro with a nice balance of cedar and spice and some sweetness on the finish. Great construction and burn. I would certainly recommend a "Fiver" to check it out. EP Carillo New Wave CT Short Run Exquisitos - What a great stick! These just landed and I have to say the addition of the Broadleaf as the binder adds just the right amount of spice to the already creamy, nutty profile. A 4 7/8 x 50 Robusto, it is the perfect size for an early Am or lunch time smoke. "Box Worthy" Viaje Super Shot 12 Gauge - Andre hit it out of the park with this release! Two weeks ago I smoked the Viaje Super Shot 10 Gauge and was blown away by that stick. So when Stogie Santa texted that the 12 Gauge had arrived, I immediately had him send me some. This little 3.5 x 52 shot gun shell is rich in flavor including; earth, espresso, dark chocolate, leather, and red pepper. The flavor profile is full as is the strength. "Box Worthy" if you can find any left. Viaje WLP Candela 2012 - The 2012 release has a bright green wrapper and is a slightly larger (5 x 52). Much like the 2011, the wrapper is razor thin and I did have some cracking occur. Regardless, this stick performed well and offered up some great flavor on Saint Patrick's day. Medium in body and strength. The wrapper offered some nice grassy undertones but did not overpower the cigar. Worth a try when you want something different. Le Hoyo du Roi - Gifted to me by Bill Berris of The Cigar Snapshot, this twelve year old Corona from the land of forbidden fruit had superb balance and smoothness. It was the perfect way to end the weekend. Nub'd it! “Box Worthy” or maybe I should say “Cab Worthy”. Jaime Garcia Reserva Especial Connecticut Shade New England Exclusive - Thus far these has been shipped to about fifteen shops in the New England area. Available in four sizes, I smoked both the Short Robusto and Belicoso. It had a nice balance of almonds and graham crackers with a faint sweetness and an occasional appearance of mild pepper. Burn and draw were perfect. It is a great medium bodied smoke which was the perfect size and strength to enjoy at lunch or after breakfast. Well balanced and smooth but flavorful and satisfying. “Box Worthy”. CroMagnon Anthropology - One of the cigars included was a CroMagnon Anthropology from RoMa Craft Tobac. This Grand Corona was well constructed and burned perfectly. Great draw, lots of smoke, and some good dark flavors while never becoming harsh. A solid medium/full in strength, I will be looking to grab a “Fiver” or two of these to enjoy again. Tatuaje Cojuno 2012 - Great performance and great flavor. Typical Pete Johnson flavors. I did enjoy this more than the Sumatra. "Box Worthy" Stogie Tech: Cigar Smoking Tips for the Traveler I spent more time on the road in March than I did at home. This is a rare thing for me, but it worked out that I had three events to do this month. I learned a lot about smoking when traveling: Bring Cigars - Always bring your own cigars! Sometimes I bring too many, sometimes not enough. Wait, there is no such thing as too many! I used the hard case traveling cases with Boveda packs. Never put cigars in your checked luggage, always take them with you on the plane (gets too cold in the luggage). Cigars in tubes and cellophane travel extremely well. Bring Matches and Cheap Cutters - I always put matches in my bag along with a cheap cutter. Matches are a-okay with TSA. Cutters have mixed success. Rarely do they question it, however once this month they pulled it from my bag and looked at, then sent me on my way (with my cutter). I never bring an expensive one, just in case. NEVER Pack a Torch lighterr - I've been toying with bringing a Bic lighter with a soft flame. Anything that is a torch will be taken by TSA, even if you check it. Xicar makes one with a soft flame, but TSA will inspect it almost every time, which is annoying. Find a local place - I always try to find a local cigar shop, look around, meet people, and find smokes that you may never find anywhere else! Also, don't buy cigars from the hotel, Marriott wanted $50 for a Padron! Share your cigars - When I go to teach there is always at least one person who loves cigars. Its a great way to meet people and make friends, so invite people to smoke cigars. Some hotels are better than others. Marriott in downtown Charlotte NC has a lounge, most other places let you smoke outside, in Orlando we could smoke on the balcony, so you never know. Stogie Tech: Keeping a Digital Cigar Journal Why Keep a Cigar Journal? I first started keeping a cigar journal because I wanted to track what smoked I had tried and enjoyed. I quickly learned, however, of some trends in the origin and types of tobacco I preferred in different situations. It also helped me gain experience in detecting different flavors and aromas that different blends had to offer. I would often find myself referring back to notes on a specific flavor or aroma I detected in the past to compare the origin or type of tobacco used. Types of Digital Journals I have come across a lot of excel sheets and apps but most of them didn't seem to offer the flexibility I wanted or just seemed clunky. Initially I began using TiddlyWiki, which is a small Wiki contained in a single JavaScript enabled HTML file. It was easy and flexible but I couldn't access it from my iPhone or remotely on the web. Also, I wanted to ability to tag notes such as "favorite" or "wish list" and share them with family and friends, particularly around the holidays. What is Evernote? Evernote is a note taking application. According to the Evernote website: Evernote makes it easy to remember things big and small from your everyday life using your computer, phone, tablet and the web. Features: Cross Platform - Windows, OS X, Blackberry, iOS, Android, and Web Sync - All platforms synchronize via Evernote's web servers. Flexibility - You can create text notes, audio notes, video notes, or free hand "ink" notes. Moreover, you can attach files to your notes (i.e. pictures). Finding Notes - You can group notes, tag notes, link notes, and have full search ability of your notes. Sharing - Last, but not least, you can make notes public and share them with the world or just a group of people of your choosing. Free Verse Premium: Evernote is free but does have some limitations. I did not have any issues using the free version but for $4.99 a month you can purchase the premium version if so you choose. The most compelling reason to spend the five dollars is the 60 MB limit a month on uploads. I came nowhere close to hitting this limit but I kept my attachments (pictures) small. The premium version bumps you up to 1 GB. My Journal I tried to keep it simple. I document wrapper, binder, filler, vitola, size, and age along with some of my thoughts on the smoke. I chose four tags to start; favorite, collection, limited, and wish list. If the opportunity presents itself I include a picture. As an example, I shared a dozen or so from my journal here. Tip: The one tip I have is to create a note as a template. There is no template functionality in Evernote yet, but you can use a blank template note and copy it to save some time typing each time you add a new smoke. Diversion of the Week Posted on BOTL.ORG: "Cuba Trip - Lessons Learned" A fascinating post by BOTL member Jim on his recent trip to Cuba with his Dad. Packed full of useful tips for anyone considering such a Pilgrimage. Interesting to anyone who enjoys cigars and the culture associated with them.
Keep your eye on Waukesha, Wisconsin General Electric is planning to move its 115-year-old X-ray division from Waukesha, Wis., to Beijing. In addition to moving the headquarters, the company will invest $2 billion in China and train more than 65 engineers and create six research centers. This is the same GE that made $5.1 billion in the United States last year. but paid no taxes-the same company that employs more people overseas than it does in the united States. So let me get this straight. President Obama appointed GE CEO Chairman Jeff Immelt to head his commission on job creation (job czar). Is this how Obama plans to create American jobs? Keep your eye on Waukesha, Wisconsin......Their biggest employer just moved out. Thanks Jeff, you're a "real" American....give Barrack our Best !!
Greatest Day Ever, Congrats, Dave Attell Is The Greatest, Going Onstage, Backstage, Hanging With Eric, Centralia, Wedding Pictures, KIELEN KING, Geek In The City Awards, Thanks Jeff, Thank Everyone, Lord Of The Races, Food Ban, Locker Rooms, Nutfest, Congrats Pants, Duran Duran
1) The View From Section 17 - A busy month of March continues for Michigan athletics. 2) Guest Segment - Recruiting analyst Jeff Contizano from U Recruit.com breaksdown the 2011 Big 10 Recruiting class for each conference team. 3) Wolverine Quick Hits - The latest news & scores from Hoops, Hockey, Softball & Baseball. Website: http://www.themichiganmanpodcast.com Email: themichiganmanpodcast@yahoo.com Thanks to Jeff Contizano from U Recruit.com for being our guest this week. Get the latest nationwide recruiting news at http://www.recruitforu.com Thanks Jeff! Subscribe to The Michigan Man Podcast at the I-Tunes Store. Click below. http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=349888416 The Michigan Man Podcast Listner Line is open 24/7 for your audio post. Call 313 263-4842. GO BLUE!
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