All right, is there something up over here in YouTube? It's blocking it snap man. What's going on live chat? Hmm Okay, all right. I think it's going it's got a hell of a delay guys. It's at least one minute Maybe even pushing two-minute delay. I'm gonna wait for it to catch up to this point and then I'll get going All right, what's up everyone? I guess it's gonna be learning curves You know, I'm new to the whole Live, but we're just gonna do it because I really want to take this opportunity to be able to connect with everyone You know, I was having a discussion with a Friend of mine the other day who's also a web designer, you know, we're talking about, you know doing this the content creation Doing the community, you know building the communities for web creatives things like that versus Working for clients and doing work for clients. I love doing work for clients, you know I've had an amazing career doing this like I'm so blessed to be able to do this kind of work Make a good living out of it, but there's something just so much more rewarding when Doing stuff like this and connecting with web creators And that's because I'm connecting with people just like me Like it's like my type of people like when we talk about web design when we talk about clients when we talk about our Struggles our challenges the things that we're learning. It's just we have that connection So I'm really glad to be doing this. All right. What's up everyone catching up on the chat right now I want to make sure that I Want to make sure I catch all questions and stuff good to see you Pez good to see you Pentola Oh dope dope dope. All right, I'm excited for tonight tonight.  All right, cuz uh You know, I've been looking at trends design trends and well, I'm gonna take it back a little bit more You know when 2022 rolled out I wanted to start off the year with a couple of videos like, you know What are the top design trends to look for? 2022 also where to start as a web designer or a web creator Or somebody who wants to make a living and a business building websites where to start in 2022 and Well, I was just busy running my agency. I didn't get a chance to make them. So now 2023 rolled along. I'm like, okay I've been wanting to make these videos and I feel it's really helpful because I know when I started creating websites in You know when I started creating them it was about six years ago. It was different No, we had to use themes from like theme force, you know how to learn how to do Custom themes and the learning curve was different and the things that focus on was a lot different Versus what a web creator needs to learn today in order to jump start their career and get on the right path So having that kind of updated information is important I just thought instead of just making a video. Let's do some lives because a topic like this, you know, a Topic like Where do I go as a web creator? What should I be learning? What direction should I go in? This is more of a discussion? You know, this is a lot more to it. All right going back to the chat. Let me check it out What's up Charlie, are you in Thailand too? Are you just know I'm out here saying what's up cool cool Hey, and just an update everybody. I do have plans I'm gonna be rolling this out weekly for quite some time I want to roll it out weekly, but I do have some guests as well Some other web designers some agency owners and some other youtubers that you probably also watch But I have some other guests. I'm gonna be bringing on we're gonna start having Conversations and same thing discussions with us They're gonna be able to provide like valuable information and insights and then also just that open Communication with all the view myself and whoever else I bring on. Ah Phuket man, Charlie. I was in Phuket When COVID hit it was perfect. It was like the island was empty. I literally have beaches to myself Yeah, some pros and cons to COVID but definitely being able to spend time on a deserted island was super It's just such a blessing man. That was what web design did Victor. What's up Victor? How you doing man? So good to see you man All right, I'm gonna try to say it Okay, I can't say it I can't say it, but what's up man? What's up all the way to South Africa? That's so dope and Pentola from Italy Man, this is this is amazing.   You never think that you'd be building these kind of connections Uh with like-minded people around the world. You know, this is awesome All right, so check it out. I'm gonna kick it off and I want to kick everything off with uh Looking at some design trends for 2023 uh all right I put some thought into this. All right. I was putting some thought into this and then I was also checking out some other content looking what Other designers and other creatives are looking Excuse me looking at for this coming year in design and web design specifically web design. I only focus on web design really and What I notice is there are two different areas for like web design trends or you know to uh To show web design trends All right, and let me explain real quick So the first one that I saw was you know the cool ones the ones that look super dope to us To us designers designs meant for designers, you know what I mean? And that's things that we would see like on awards.com Got just stuff that I could never you know Things are just like way out of my scope of what I could build like just super dope things where you scroll in all kinds of stuff Is happening 3d stuff turning around all kinds of ill stuff. So There are those trends coming out but I look at those as well as Like those are designs for designers. Those are designs to showcase the best of what designers could do of creatives there is another avenue though. There's another Type of design trends and those are going to be more of the realistic of what kind of designs What us as designers as web creators that are making websites for clients What styles are going to be up to date and going to be practical You know because when you look at a lot of the sites on awards Phenomenal, I mean they're the works of art. I really feel that way. I feel like They're arts You know, but we're not going to create an art like a piece of art For a local company or for even a big brand If something needs to sell we need to get conversions We have a purpose to we got a message and a connection. We got to build with the brand and the client and that Right there. I feel there's a difference between the two types of design Trends and inspirations and things. We got the ones that are just works of art on awards.com We got the more practical now. I want to look at the more practical because I feel Those are going to be what we use. I don't know. What do you guys think? I'm going to open it up as well. I want to make sure we're open up. So that way you got You guys could ask anything And wow, I'm seeing so many people here. I've been just so fortunate enough to build connections with Like the last couple of years. This is awesome. What's up, everyone? Hey vivian claudius All right, I'm going to say victor of brazil. All right Dope dope. All right, check it out everyone. So what I'm going to do right now I'm going to do a screen share. I'm still going to be able to see The chat I got a screen over here. So if you see my head pivoting, I want to make sure I open this up I want this to be big so I can see it All right, let me go ahead and do a screen share real quick All right, I'm going to check my ipad wait for the latency to catch up So that way I know that you guys were actually looking at a screen share It should be Ha ha dope victor awesome, man Yeah, pez. Yeah, same here, man. We're on this. We're on the same track Definitely if we're building a website for local business or really any business, you know, it's not about how How much, you know, trying to make it artistic thing is like You know, and it took me a while to Realize this. I know like for the first few years when I built websites I was doing it to build my portfolio. I wanted to improve my skills. I love being super creative But that was also a mistake that I was making because I was designing for me I was designing for my portfolio and what I found was As a creative that is building a product for a client What we actually should be designing for is the end user. We're not even designing for the client You know, that's why I like to do user personas with all the clients that we do before we even start the design process Uh, that way we have a good idea of who this is for That way we approach the design and the whole process for them Because the things are scrolling around and doing all kinds of stuff. It's cool to us But not for the end user Is the screen share showing? True true true All right, I don't even know what the screen share is showing yet This has got to be either a hella latency or Uh, the screen share isn't showing Let me try to see here. I want to make sure I'm looking at the right thing I'm going to raise my hand so I could kind of like see where I'm at Hey guys, thank you for uh Your patience on this still a bit of a learning curve Uh claudius. Thanks, man. I appreciate that definitely Okay, so the screen share isn't going. Let me try to see why it's not going What are you guys looking at Snap I got like a quite a bit of websites a presentation that I do want to show Last time it worked smoothly. That's not showing it Hey, sorry everyone. I don't know why this is not showing My screen. I think I just figured it out So all right, I'll get this going All right, so I don't know why the screen share isn't showing Could anybody let me know if the screen share has showed for them? Maybe I'm tripping but uh Got my iPad right here to kind of see what you guys are seeing Oh, thanks victor. Appreciate it. You can see the cold sweat, right? What's up, even cam? Come on. Don't let me down I got some I got some dope stuff to show. I want to geek out Oh, thanks charlie. Yeah. All right. Thanks charlie. I It's all set up on the app. It shows us should be doing it Okay, that shouldn't have happened All right, you know what?  It's going to break it all up Oh, this shouldn't be happening. You know what? I guess we're going to have to save it for The next time Hey, there we go. It's showing. Okay. I could see it All right Snap All right. Now you can see the craziness that I'm looking at right over here. All right, dude Let's go ahead and do this. Let me get some of my mushroom tea really quick Hmm I got some stuff here to show. All right. Cool. So I Have been looking at styles and now First, I think it's important for me to let you know how I come up with and how I look for current trends I'm looking at what the big guys are doing. You know, I'm looking what the apples are doing I'm looking what the slacks are doing with the drop boxes I'm looking at what the really big companies that continuously refresh their design styles or their brands I'm looking at them because They have the research. They have the talent pool. They got some of the best talent in the world They're investing some of the most money For their designs and to keep updating it and keeping it fresh. So for me, I like to look at those I don't really go to dribble anymore Uh awards. I like going there for fun and inspiration I still go to dribble for a little bit of inspiration But I'm looking at the new apps coming out the new software coming out. I'm looking at who Can't invest In the top design So that's where I found this at now the first one. I see this coming out a lot That's going to be creative grids and blocks and let me show a few of them So The grids and we're talking about like css grids something like that like let me see something like this right here You can see the creative grids. It's not A basic one two three one two three It's a grid It's completely in line, but it's got different sizing in there. So I really see this trend Starting to come out a lot more this year. All right, cool. I can still see the screen share Now in Elementor might be you know in Elementor, this is more than possible with containers I know now with bricks now that bricks has a css grid in it I can't wait to experiment more with that But this right here, I'm really looking out for and I plan on using this a lot of my design style Let's take a look at a few more So this one you can see also right here a use of the grids even though you got like three even right here You know, you still have another extra grid you having these more creative grids and it's still in this block like You could just change the sizes of the blocks to make one full block I'm just going to go ahead and keep pulling things up because I got tons of websites. I was geeking out All right, here's another one fathom. This one's pretty cool up over here. Let me see You know, you can see another example right here of a creative grid and let me know what you guys think as well I gotta Find out where that I got to keep that chat up here. All right, cool That's right. How's wise the light? Boom. We got it. All right, cool Yeah, let me know as well as what do you think about these these styles as I'm pulling them up All right, another one would be framer now again, this is where I'm finding my design inspiration You know when you see a design company that's building design tools that That like framer they revamp their designs quite often You know, they got some of the best designers doing this right here All right, we could see more of the grid styles right here All right, we don't need to see my emails right here. All right See these creative grids right here. They create one full block So I think this is something to look out for you could see the details in it Uh, it's very pleasing to the eye, but it's a symmetry the symmetry It has something of that subconscious Way that just like makes it easy for us to consume So when you're doing a style like this, I could totally see Having each one of these blocks as something important in each and grabbing the attention from the user While not just pummeling them with information, especially information that is scattered It's really pleasing for the eye Let me see and then we got ionic and you know what my window keeps getting blocked here Okay, uh pentolo. Okay. I like the way that you put that card mosaic style Uh, I like that way that sounds right there I just made up creative grids But mosaic definitely sounds good and then same here. This is a very clean Side here, we can see it used again over here And I like how it's being used in this way because it's being used where we have the main call to action right here But the call to action is surrounded with a couple other cards that all fit within that block That gives those details. So Yeah, this is definitely one of those styles to look at Now another one is just blocks in general You know, I do think generate blocks and the default WordPress I want to see a lot more of that going forward and with these kind of block styles It's really, you know, like someone else said it inside the chat, you know, who said it, uh Yeah, pentola. Definitely. Uh, it's the easy the simple First off, I don't like to say the word simple and easy when describing the the our work I do because making something look simple and easy is actually quite difficult and takes a lot of time to learn But making it look minimal making it look clean Uh, definitely is going to perform very well. So having just block styles Just styles inside blocks. I see this coming up a lot Along with the mosaic ones as well. So I definitely would be playing with those and looking with those more now Here's a website. I'm sure many of you have seen it. I love this one right here. I've also got motion page I'm testing it out right now Uh, but here is a really clean one as well. They just use blocks. It's minimal It's really easy to take in And definitely block styles are something to look forward to coming up inside this year. This is still ahead of the curve All right, I got to make sure this is in the front Elegance with minimalism for sure claudius for sure All right, so that was design style number one that I'm looking at is one of the ones that I'm going to be using a lot coming up I think that we have, uh A lot of really creative ways we could play with it, but we could also keep it minimalistic And elegant like claudius said now, let's go on to another type of style and this is going to be Let me see here Oh man, I jumped ahead. It's going to be grotesque fonts Now this is a different font style and one that i'm actually using right here Uh, let's go ahead and pull something up for grotesque fonts now grotesque fonts. They're They're a sans serif on they're a sans serif on but they're more Crazy, I guess you could say uh, they're more, uh, they got more of these uh These indents they got more of these curves happening on it So we could see like we're going to see a lot more of these you might already be noticing this trend But having these grotesque font these more creative Type fonts some of them are going to be more wide like this. Some of them are going to be thin But we're going to start seeing a lot more of these Let me pull up some more. Here's one sco press pro Uh, this is one of my this is my go-to, uh, sco plugin, but they did an awesome job I love their font right here and this is really grotesque right here. You see like that are What we have happening over there. So there's some mild grotesque and then there's some Extreme grotesque. This one is more on the extreme side But it's super dope. It's creative and we're seeing this come up a whole lot more And I'll just go ahead and pull up a few more of them You know, we can see it happening over here. This is a really again. This is a dope style right here It just stands out when you use a font like this and then you can see here with gumroad as well Huge bold grotesque fonts All right, this one might not be the best for ui and ux But it's just an example of my grotesque fonts. Let me see. I got a few more And I'm going to wrap this one up with draw box draw box is now using a grotesque font as their main font They have a wide one right here So they're breaking away, you know from your traditional google fonts for sure your robotos or helvetica Or just like the clean safe fonts And getting more edgy with these grotesque fonts So this is a style and a trend to look for. Yo, what's up, michael? Good to see you here, man Yeah, that's true. That's true. Yeah, pentola. I do see it in neo brutalism as well Uh with neo brutalism, we could see it in ways like, you know, like right here at gumroad what they did Uh, this is pretty dope right over here. This is definitely got the neo brutalistic style So we could see it used here, but then we could also see it used in more, you know Sass or elegant style websites. I could see this being used in fashion websites. I could see this being used in uh Like bakery websites or you know things where there's some creativity going on I feel that this is this kind of stands for something creative now if it's a lawyer website a legal office I might go with something more Either serif or something more traditional like a traditional sans serif So it all depends on the type of project, but definitely going to see this popping up a lot more All right, so going on to the next style that we're going to be seeing a lot of and that's going to be large type Now we already know that when seeing things too small You can't really read it. It's hard to read and having tons of texts on the web page Tests and studies have shown the more texts you have the worse it's going to do because people's attention spans have Have been trained to just not be there anymore. You got to capture people right away To have good ui and good ux somebody should be able to jump to a website And understand it right away like what they did right here Understand your ranking and your traffic big and bold easy to see Even the subtext right underneath this You know, we can see from the subtext. It's right there. It's not hard to read. It's not a bunch of texts Let me pull up a few more So we can see more right here. It's it's not just the titles that are big But it's also the regular text. That's a lot bigger like this one. Let me see how big is this one So this is 24 pixels right here You know, we're normally we would be using like 16 or 18 Heck back in the days people used to use 14 pixels Uh, but right here, you know, see look at how a big title like this or just big text It stands out and then And you can see like they're pairing it up with some of the other design trends I was already talking about with the mosaic and the creative blocks You know, we could see more of um You know, here we go webflow. This is where I get my inspiration when I want to see where the market is at What is, you know trending I look at the big dogs You know, I want to see what are they doing? So if you see webflow doing something Then you could be safe to bet that this is a current design trend Because these guys have everything You know in the world to invest into super dope design But then you got like big texts like this Instead of a small paragraph It's just really big really easy to read and the highlights everything instead of having tons of texts Learning what maha. Yeah, definitely too. I think moving pictures Is also there or just like having items move on scroll moving products Oh, no, this isn't made by me maha for sure. I wish uh, no, not this one This is a web though what we're doing right now is we're looking at uh We're just looking at other websites that are setting the trends right now All right, another one sell x right here Again really big And this is the text right here. So I see a lot of this Large text being used. Uh, it just works really well And then now too we could always use like calculated in different Uh different ways to set our font sizes. I still use rem But in some occasions I have been playing around with using calc in order to make say Large texts like this just be completely responsive Hey jackie. Yeah for sure. I'll go ahead and list all these sites right here I'm going to list everything In here inside the description so that way afterwards you guys can copy and paste them By the way, I've been using this tool right here. Let me pull it up I've been using this tool raindrop to start to organize all of my links because I used to use book markers Now if you guys have another tool to manage your bookmarks, that is like easy to use and like really clean Let me know drop them aside the comments because I am looking at another tool uh For some other reasons, but right now, you know, like when I see a really dope sass design You know, I put it inside here So that way I could always go through and use it for my inspiration So I used to use dribble and behance and those for my design inspirations But then everything started looking the same So what I started doing was collecting really dope websites And using live websites as my inspirations All right, so next up Let me get back over here. What's next up? Grading and text title. Oh, I got that wrong title text. Okay. I'll add a t over there But yeah gradient title text. So we've already seen those in some of the uh Some of the some of the websites I need some mushroom to you guys Yeah, if anybody hasn't ever tried to be in a room by yourself talking for an hour You got to give it a try you start to question your sanity for sure But it's awesome. You know what? This is dope. I'm really grateful. I'm really I'm just grateful to be connecting with everyone here. That's super cool. Uh Ocarim, let me see It's raindrop That's for ocarim right there Uh, so I use raindrop and I use just the free version right now for for now. It's been a while Ah learning with maha. That's cool So cool so cool And this is what it's for I want to connect with those learning web design Because I remember when I was learning web design. I was doing it all on my own for years I was fortunate enough to have a mentor to help me along the way But still it gets pretty lonely when you're learning by ourselves That's the reason why we're going to do this and why I'm going to keep doing this All right. Cool. Cool. So yeah, let's go back to the trends. So gradient text is still there And yeah, apple again is one of those websites that could go to and be safe to see that Hey, this is a current trend. They're only going to be using Things that are current and I'm sure we could go back to probably Most of the websites and we could see a lot of this being used Let me pull up some I have a few others right here All right, here's a dope website. I really dig this one right here All right, this is from mont spark and we could see all right. They're using their gradient text They got their blocks going on their creative grids going on And then using these gradient titles and an inline, you know, the gradient in lines in here These are still something that we could utilize definitely for this year. This is a trend that we should be looking at Tab extended. Okay, cool. I'm going to check that out. Eddie. Thanks It's okay. Cool. Cool Let's see. I got a couple other ones. Here's another one right here All right, here's a really dope website as well Now they didn't put the gradient in the large text here But they put it in a smaller like for the call to actions, which I thought was really Creative but also stood out The way that they use this and then they're using inside their sub headers right here This is a technique that I like to use as well I like to use small sub headers. I do this for seo, but I also do this for Just for my topography styles and to get you know, to be able to break up To be able to break up content So one of my strategies for seo is The big titles These are for The user The small titles are for google So like right here, you know, if I were to do products products would be like an h2 But then if I were to do like we have this highly unique It's a longer title, but it's like meant to connect with the user It wouldn't have the keywords in it because I wouldn't really care about the keywords I'm trying to connect to the user with the big title So that would probably be the h3 just one of my tricks that I use All right, there's more tools. All right, so there's a really good bookmarker Oh pez, which one is it? I'm a absumo junkie. I I didn't see any of them If I would have saw a bookmark told an absumo, I definitely would have picked it up Yeah, drop that in the comments pez for sure and marbly. I'm gonna check that out. All right dope dope All right. Cool. So we got a few more just a couple more actually The next one is going to be minimal graphics All right, so I think it was just what was your month spark right here. Check out the graphics on this one Now creating graphics like this Is something that we don't need to be like graphic designers to do Like just having these minimal graphics right here Really sets it apart. We can see it with lines those vertical lines Just something minimal in it could really make the designs look dope And here's another one. Oh, yeah, by the way, this is a tool that I recently just started using This is to track productivity. I'm doing the free trial on it right now I'm going to see how it does after a week. I got two more days, but I've been testing it out And I do have to say that this week I have gone a lot more done than I did next week So I might just go ahead and get the license for this It was also an absumo deal that I'm installed on I wish I would have got it because that would have been a good absumo vibe But see check out here now if you could take a look in the background They got these light graphics right here just these minimal Graphics now we could create these with svg's I mean, we could do something like open up figma could create a circle We could create an outline of that circle You know remove the inside of it export it as an svg. That's a graphic right there And we could put that in the background You know, it's not taking any space. It's very light. So that way we could keep the website loading fast And you know look at this graphic right here. It's very minimal, but it stands out So this is a style I'll also be looking out for And then the last one. All right, we got one more style and I have a feeling Wait, do we got one more? Do we got two more? Oh, I duplicated that. All right I did this pretty quick right here, but I prepared And look for the right sites for you know for all afternoon It was fun. It was fun. I love geeking out on them. But all right This style right here. I have a feeling I have a feeling it's going to take us uh A few months at least to start seeing some good websites using them I'm already seeing websites starting to get creative and using images from like mid-journey and starting to use them but I think that Using the ai arts and images say from like mid-journey I think it's going to take more than just taking an image and just placing it on the website it's going to take a Kind of way to get creative but a kind of way to make that image work right and to find the right image Now I've seen uh, I've seen you know videos and stuff like I can make a mock-up like 50 mock-ups in a couple minutes Uh, that's not my experience my experience so far with mid-journey and with Coming up a graphics to use for a website It's been a lot of learning a lot of time invested in learning figuring out First how to use these tools and get the best results But how do I use these tools to get consistent graphics? Say for an example We're going to create a website and the website we don't need a bunch of you know graphics that look like a gaming website We might not even be building a gaming website. It might be you know, maybe for an app. It might be for a local business How could we get a set of images that are all aligned? And including like the icons things like that making it so it doesn't Be too much but still utilizing those graphics. So I see this coming up and I see this happening But it's going to be something that I do not think that you could just take really quick from there and slap on a website It's going to take learning. So this is a reason why I haven't made any videos yet I'm in the process of working on it, but I first want to Figure out how to make a proper website a proper functional website You know, not an artistic website, but a website that could be delivered to a client Using this tool right here. So I believe that many many of us web creators are doing the same right now And the the youtube videos coming out are cool I think it's dope for the youtube videos coming out showing us some possibilities because they're giving us a segue This is a great entry and we're kind of like at that entry point right now but With that entry point now we got this learning curve and now also Like I've noticed recently on mid-journey I noticed like other people watching the feeds come up a lot of people are like putting in mock-ups and stuff like that And that's great. That means that the ai is going to learn this All right It's going to learn so right now. We're just trying to teach it how to Create graphics for mock-ups and it's on version four right now I think it's going to come up a version five version six version seven And it's just going to keep learning because that's what ai does So I see that the trend is going to Definitely kick in. I see it kicking in the more mid-year and the end year where we're going to see More of like the high-end website starting to utilize it It's it's just a matter of figuring out how to use the ai generated art and graphics in a way that could work Work in a sustainable way with a website that is practical All right. I know that was a lot All right pez, it's all good. I'm going to go geek out on uh, I'll go take a look on absumo later I'm sure I could probably put in the search bookmarks I probably should have opened up with ai. I think that would have kept a lot of people watching Because you know it is like the hot topic, but it's all good. Uh All right pentola ask related to ai do I think that prompt designer Will be a thing in the following years Huh, that is a really interesting question. I haven't even thought of that You know somebody that could look at a prompt. I think a prompt specialist I think that might happen You know because learning prompts is quite it's challenging. It's why it's taken me a while No, it's not why I'm trying to just create some images. I mean I'm playing with them And using them and certain things like posts but to like really use it To really create prompts. Yeah, I I could see that happening. I could see that as a possibility Like a prompt specialist Because that's what it really is You know, it's how are we going to train it? How are we going to communicate with it and then As quickly as it's growing it's going to keep changing and evolving. So you know like Right now the time like for example the time I'm putting in on it I could put in a bunch of time for like the next few weeks get really good at it start creating some really dope images But if I stop for like six months and try to jump back in Chances are things are going to change so much So when it comes back to like a prompt, you know designer a prompt specialist It might need somebody who's just like in it continuously. So that way, you know, I know and I I could see that happening I could see that Yeah, Jared, I know man. I know that is uh It's You know when it comes to like the images on mid-journey or the con you know the content on On chat gpt. It's like You know, it's really not clear about the trademarks. I mean, I've gone through the legal details On mid-journey and I couldn't really see anything clear. I couldn't see anything saying you can't use it I couldn't see anything about intellectual property It's something that just isn't clear right now because it's so new I kind of like Think of this as a crypto when it came out. It was so new. There are no regulations. There is nothing, you know, no regulations and You know all the legal infrastructure is kind of like scrambled for a while to like get control because You know, I don't want to get all illuminati, but you know, they're they want to control us for sure Somebody wants to control us. They got to control us. So it's not really controlled yet. We got to see what happens for it Really, I I didn't see that I got to look that up I didn't see people are gonna sue Jared. Was that with uh mid-journey? And thanks pez super dense. Okay. I'm gonna get that right after this Hope everybody caught that bookmark tool. Check out super dense. I'm gonna check it out right after Oh, thanks, Jared. Appreciate it. Appreciate it. I'm glad you're here See, this is the kind of stuff right here and like your your feedback and like this kind of discussion really helps out This is good for all of us. I mean like me. I didn't even know that companies are gonna sued yet I try to stay out of the news and I try to stay, you know, not on social media About what's going on and that's just to keep my heart and you know, my peace of mind But you know, I need to hear from you guys about this kind of stuff as well Yeah, I can see chat happening. I can see chat gpt uh Having more issues. I know google wants to go to war with them I heard something about that google was like they're going to war with ai text writers But yeah, yeah, it's a matter of time for sure I think it's going to be a scramble for a while.  I'm going to generate it myself No, I'll be lying. I have played around with other people's art. I don't want to lie Uh, yeah, for sure. Google does not like ai chat, uh, but google is ai in itself in a way, you know, it's uh Uh, yeah Either way what's happening though, like I don't know what's, you know, there what's going to happen with it But one thing I am 100 percent certain on is that us as creatives Uh, we got to know this and we should start learning it and we should start seeing how we could utilize this Of course, it's going to help out, you know, down the road when more rules and regulations are established And for us to know how those rules and regulations are so that way we could work within them That way ourselves or clients aren't getting sued or something like that But uh, we definitely need to be in the loop on this and stay ahead because you know, it's like it's uh, it's a new thing That's coming and it's it's really coming Yeah, pass You know, a lot of a lot of powerful people like google don't like what they can't control And that's right Jared. It'll all adapt So really quick before we sign off. I want to ask you guys now. I uh I showed the design styles that I see trending this year. Are there any design styles that you see Trending something to look forward to something you're interested in Uh, something that you might want to be playing around with this year drop them inside the chat Ah, thanks Pintola. So this is a stable grotesque and the creators of it are amazing font designers Let me go ahead and drop that inside the chat It's not cheap though gotta buy it and uh, yeah, it definitely Was not cheap, but the font is dope. I really like these guys right here. So All right, there's a link to the font This is by cometta who created a stable grotesque. They have some other really nice fonts If you guys are interested in the fonts, let me know too. I'm kind of a font junkie Like these are all the fonts that I got right here. Like I am constantly looking for like super dope fonts I really love the grotesque fonts. I like what's happening with them. But like things like this I'm just always looking for new typography new fonts To use That's right. Jared 100 agree with you. All right, everybody Thank you for being here and being part of this and for keeping the discussion going I'm going to be back next week. I'm going to try to bring on a guest next week If you have any topics or anything, uh, make sure to hit me up. Let me know You can go ahead and join our facebook group the building businesses with elements or on facebook You could also reach out to me on instagram with lightbox underscore.co It might change i'm about to revamp my instagram account and actually Use it But that's probably the best way for you to communicate me one on one unless if we're connected on facebook All right pez. Thank you everyone. Oh Pentola said 3d clay illustrations will be in for a while. Yeah, 3d clay is super dope And jared take care of that client Ha ha ha Same day same time next week. We're going to keep this consistent. We're going to keep it rolling All right, everybody, thank you so much for joining and have a great rest of the week Have fun be creative be productive All right, talk to you all soon And keep designing pet says awesome. Awesome


Welcome back to ITW Extra, powered by JSA. We are here live at ITW 2023, and this is the official broadcast of ITW. And joining me today is Bruce Garrison. He is the CEO of Bandwidth IG. Bruce, welcome. Thank you, I appreciate it. Looking forward to our brief discussion. Yeah, I mean, the floor is still buzzing here at ITW, even though it's the final day. Coffee lines are still long. We see suitcases going by. People are getting ready to leave, but it's been an amazing, amazing three days here at ITW. So let's talk a little bit about Bandwidth IG. And for those that are unfamiliar with Bandwidth IG, why don't you give us a little more insight about the company? Yeah, sure will. Bandwidth IG, and it's Bandwidth IG's infrastructure group. We build and operate purpose-built infrastructure to the most connected internet destinations in our markets. And what I mean by purpose-built, a lot of the legacy networks, fiber networks, were built 15, 20 years ago. They've been acquired by a couple of different companies. There's less fiber availability. Bandwidth IG saw an opportunity with the explosion of internet traffic, cloud. Now there's machine learning and AI that these platforms were going to run into challenges without much more dense fiber. So purpose-built to us means 100% underground, same fiber type, very high duct packages, and a long runway, and it's just a critical asset that's now, it's turning into utility. Well, thanks for giving us that information. And you've had a number of announcements over this past year, including one big one with your appointment of the CEO of this company. So why don't you give us a little bit more information about your role and some of the additional leadership team members that you have added? Yeah, sure. Yeah, I was fortunate enough to get the opportunity to join Bandwidth IG in December of last year. So I'm making around the six-month mark. The business is around three years old, a little over three years old, so the founding team outside of the CEO who helped start the business and stand up but wanted to step away. Majority of the founding teams there are, our next few years is really about commercial execution. So I had added a Chief Revenue Officer, a gentleman named Patton Lockridge, who joined us about six weeks ago. And to kinda, yeah, welcome Patton. Congrats. And to round out the team and for the foreseeable future, I think we have a good group intact to go execute on our mission. So in addition to the announcement of your appointment as the CEO and we have a new CRO, there's been other exciting news coming out of Bandwidth IG, including some expansions in the San Francisco Bay Area. So why don't you chat a little bit about that to our viewers? Yeah, well, that's a great question. So we have recent announcements that happened in the Bay, so the San Francisco Bay Area. We also operate in the Hillsborough and Portland area in Atlanta, but specific to the San Francisco Bay. So San Jose is, if not the most, one of the most connected internet traffic locations on the West Coast, Silicon Valley in the Bay Area continues to be a hub for data center activity. So going back to that purpose built statement that I had said, we built three, now have three new routes. Again, all underground, all multiple duck packages, so a long runway of fiber, unique to all of those legacy networks. So we are super excited about that, really giving network optionality in the Bay Area. Again, all up the Bay down through Santa Clara down to San Jose. And we actually have more exciting news to talk about towards the end of the year. Something super unique also in the Bay Area, but we'll hold that for a little bit longer. Oh yes, we'll definitely hold that for a little bit longer. And maybe we'll be talking about that at some of the fall events that are coming up. Is there anything else you want to add? As far as from an expansion perspective, we're doing more in Hillsborough area. Again, another data center market. So we'll continue to invest and add more route miles in Oregon. And we're also probably most excited about Atlanta's, seeing a lot of activity. Again, on the data center, progressive efforts on power and availability there. So we will continue to invest a lot in Atlanta and our network in Atlanta we expect to almost triple. So that's another time where we're spending a lot of capital but also a lot of time and resources to serve our existing customers and future ones. All exciting news coming up for BAM with IG. And is there anything else you wanted to add today? Nope, yep, just appreciate the opportunity, excited. It is a super unique business. You mentioned the point about all the buzz. You know, it's a lot of the telecom world. We're doing something, it's really mission critical infrastructure that's making AI and cloud possible. And it's a niche business with a lot of our customers here. So it's been a great event and thanks for, letting me join your interviews. Yes, thanks for joining us. It's been a pleasure having you here on ITW Extra powered by JSA, live from ITW. Where can viewers go if they wanna learn more? The website, BAMwithIG.com is a good place. LinkedIn is another one. And then on our website we have an event section so the teams are going out to the other industry events. You can connect with us there as well. All right, great, BAMwithIG.com. Bruce, thank you again for joining us and thank you viewers for tuning in to another episode of ITW Extra powered by JSA, live from ITW 2023. Happy networking.


By the year 2020, 60% of the populations will be millennials. They use technology in every aspect of their life. And they are very particular in the way that they wonder the things and when they want it. So we decided to implement a new cloud-based solution that allows us to continue the innovation for the smallest thing to work on a microservices level. And this led us into creating a cluster computing methodology within our data centers. So the heart of Verizon's platform is Linux at the bottom. We chose to use Docker containerization. And on top of that, we deploy everything through Apache Mesos. The way Microsoft is helping us with the transition by taking the .NET Core and ASP.NET 5 technologies into a cross-platform world. This allows us to combine all the development's efforts for both for Windows and Linux. Visual Studio give us great flexibility across the board and all the development. This allows our developers to maintain their existing tool set and maintain the knowledge they've built up over years in helping to deliver these applications into our cluster. We were highly excited on writing our first code. And it just ran seamlessly. A system on IT data center takes months. But here it's going to be minutes. We get our application into the container. And we are out to the world. Now that .NET Core is open source, our developers are going to contribute and help and feel excited that they are helping others. We're now being viewed as a much more and simpler, quicker company able to deliver the solutions that people demand.


Hey everyone, Dylan Schumacher, Citadel Defense, and here's another tech tip.  The problem with that is if you ever need to get out of the car in an emerging situation, even after I click the seatbelt with my right hand, which might be carrying my gun, and that's a problem, then I'm still stuck in the seatbelt if I try to bail out of the car right here, and I can get wrapped around this because it's so wrapped around my arm and swing my face into the back window. So what I would recommend, and what I learned in the class and I've been doing ever since, is every time you take your seatbelt off for the rest of your life, use your left hand, sweep in through the seatbelt, come over, and disconnect the seatbelt. And that way you're automatically out of the seatbelt as soon as it disconnects. There's no need at that point to click and then swim out. Rather, if you were in a bad environment and things were going on, you already had your gun out and you were doing that kind of thing, you can swim through, click, and now I'm out of the car and out of the seatbelt, and there's nothing to get hung up on. Hope that's helpful. Do brave deeds and endure.


I'm sorry if we kept you waiting, but the big Army Navy game is coming up and there's a lot to talk about. Are you guys ready to go? Hey, sound off. Sound off if you're on the line. Hello? Are you there? Hello? Blackjack? Sound off, Blackjack. I don't know, Mark. Sometimes these things just glitch.


Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States. We've got to stop meeting like this. Well, as most of you know, President Gorbachev has had to return to the Soviet Union due to the enormity of the tragedy in Armenia. And in a phone conversation this morning, I conveyed to him the deep sympathy of the American people and our anxiousness to provide any humanitarian assistance we possibly can. The nature of President Gorbachev's departure is unfortunate and provides a sad, final note to what has been otherwise successful, and I use the next words advisedly happy and historic visit to the United States. It was in this spirit that yesterday at lunch I presented Mr. Gorbachev a memento of our first meeting, an inscribed photo of the walk we took together in Geneva in 1985. The inscription read simply, we have walked a long way together to clear a path for peace. And so we have. It was exactly one year ago today that an event here in this room spoke to the epoch-making nature of what has been achieved, the signing of the First Treaty to eliminate an entire class of U.S. and Soviet nuclear missiles. Even in the short years since then, we've had the Moscow summit and Mr. Gorbachev's visit here. In our negotiating agenda of regional conflicts, human rights, bilateral exchanges, and arms reductions, we've seen a serious movement and even some breakthroughs. And yesterday's address to the United Nations by President Gorbachev was not only a part of this process, it was the result of this process. And I congratulate him on it. On a personal note, Nancy and I were delighted that the Gorbachev's extended an invitation for us to visit Moscow. And as we have done before, each of us expressed the hope that they would visit us in California. So the path remains open and the pace of peace continues. As I said yesterday, this means our responsibilities have grown not less but more serious. We must remain resolute and without illusion. We must speak candidly about fundamental points of difference. We must especially maintain our military strength. But we must also continue our course of vigorous diplomatic engagement. I cannot tonight attempt to put all these events in perspective or still less to claim credit for any person or administration. Let it be enough to say this, that since 1985, extraordinary things have happened and nothing more extraordinary than the site yesterday of a president of the United States and a future president of the United States and a president of the Soviet Union standing together in New York Harbor under the protective gaze of the Statue of Liberty. Our hope, our prayer remains the same as that heard in the lips of so many millions who looked up once as we did yesterday to see the outstretched lamp of liberty and who felt for the first time its warmth and glow. A prayer that someday freedom will light the world and become the blessing and birthright of every people everywhere. Helen, you had the first question. President, the world is applauding the initiative that the new detente that you and President Gorbachev have initiated. But on the debit side, as you leave office, the nation is saddled with the $2.6 trillion debt, enormous deficit caused perhaps by the tripling of military spending tax cuts. How does all this jibe with the goals that you set eight years ago and I'd like to follow up? Helen, I have to tell you, it is incorrect to say that all of this happened because we cut taxes and the things that have happened in these last few years. I've said many times and pointed out that over 58 years in which the opposing party held the House of Representatives, 54 of those 58 years, and in those years there were only eight scattered years in which there was a balanced budget. And I was among a great chorus out on the hustings speaking out against this consistent and constant deficit spending. And each time the answer came back that it was necessary to maintain prosperity, and the other part of the answer was, and it's meaningless because we owe it to ourselves. Now, beginning in 1965, in the middle 60s, when President Johnson's program of the war on poverty was put in place, in the 15 years from then until 1980, the budget increased to just about five times what it had been 15 years before, and the deficit increased to 58 times what it had been. So we came in inheriting literally deficit spending built into the structure of government. Now, with regard to the tax cuts, yes, the rates were cut. But since 1981, our revenue from those taxes has increased by $375 billion, and our projection, and we've been very accurate on our projections, our projection for 1990 and the budget we're working on now calls for another $80 billion increase in our revenues with the rates as they presently are. If you look back beyond us to Coolidge and his tax cuts, if you look to the Kennedy tax cut in his administration, which was very similar to the one that then we later put in, in every case it did not reduce the government revenues, it raised them. So it is maintaining this and continuing to get back to a reduced spending because the spending increase, while the revenue was increasing $375 billion, the spending increase was close to $100 billion more than that increase in revenues. Some of your former associates claim that you deliberately created a larger deficit in order to dismantle the compassionate social programs for the poor, the sick, the needy, the handicapped, the elderly, which you didn't like. Is that true? No, Helen, it is not true. And that is, I guess, political propaganda also. Actually, the reductions that we have made have not been made in the actual basic spending. I have cut the increases that were asked for, but also we have taken action to vastly improve the business management of government. When I came here, there was a program, one program. I found out about it when I was governor. A program in which the administrative overhead was so great that it cost $2 to deliver $1 to a needy person. Now, this is the thing, one of the things we've been trying to correct. But actually, there has been an ongoing increase in college, the age of college students. There has been an ongoing increase in housing with all of the talk about the need for housing. That has been increased. And I could go on about all the other programs that they have. We've simply tried to keep the increase from being as much as was being asked for. And actually, our defense spending and what we asked for, regardless of the cuts that were then made in it, the ones that I asked for, the annual budgets for defense, were less than the projected budgets necessary for defense. For five years, the five years that President Carter had projected ahead of what was going to be needed for defense, and he projected more than we asked for. Mr. President, Mr. Gorbachev yesterday announced a major cutback in Soviet troop strength. We talked generally about nations relying less on military might. Do you think that Mr. Gorbachev is trying to remake the Soviet Union into a less threatening country? Yes, I do. And I think he recognizes that their massive buildup has been responsible for the great economic crisis that he faces there in the Soviet Union. And yes, he has proposed this, but even so, there still will be room for some negotiations on arms because this still leaves them with a superiority in the amount of conventional weapons that they have. Mr. President, let me follow up on the time from the conventional forces where the Soviets do retain this advantage. Is there an area where the United States might be able to make a unilateral cutback in arms itself? Well, we're still way below them in that. But we have announced our willingness to continue into, well, before he ever made this move. And we're very grateful for this. I appreciate it very much. But we have proposed that the next negotiations with regard to military and between us should be in the area of conventional weapons. George Bush has been receiving advice on all fronts, it seems, to raise taxes. I wondered if you think he can hold the line and not raise taxes for a full four years. And if you should cave in and raise them, would you be deeply disappointed in him? Yeah, I would be deeply disappointed. And I don't think it's going to happen, because I think he is aware, as I am, that rates reduced actually increase the economic growth of the country and provide an incentive for more earnings. Today, the top 5% of earners, when I hear these people start talking about the upper levels of income, the top 5% of earners in this country at this much lower rate of taxation are paying a bigger share of the total revenue from the income tax than they were paying before at the higher rates. Because there's now an incentive to go out and not look for tax shelters and so forth. Sir, if I could follow up, do you really feel it's possible simply to grow out of the deficit or is it necessary, if you're not going to raise taxes, to cut social security benefits and Medicare benefits? We don't have to touch social security and we don't have to have taxes. We have, as I've said, we are on a line right now that is bringing the deficit down. There was no way anyone could ever pull a rug out and have the deficit solved in one year. But the deficit will be reduced down to the Graham-Rudman scale that we're following to $100 billion. And by 1993, the budget will be balanced if we continue observing this thing. Andrea? Mr. President, this is your final news conference with us today.  Now tonight, you are celebrating your joint progress with President Gorbachev and celebrating a speech in which he renounced the use of force by the Soviet Union to achieve foreign policy goals. Do you think that he has really changed? And to the extent that he has changed, have you changed? What have you learned over these eight years that may have changed your view of the Soviet system? I know so many of you've quoted this in that first press conference of mine and Sam. I think it was your question. Yes. But none of you ever thought to give the complete answer. I said in their own words, this was their philosophy and it was in writing that there was no crime. All of these things were not a crime if they advanced the cause of socialism. Now, I didn't make that up. That's what they said. I think there's been a change. That was four leaders back before this one. And I think there have been some changes. One we just talked about earlier of his cut in armaments. Sam. What about the changes in your own thinking? Brandon, that they have changed and that Mr. Gorbachev is a very different kind of Soviet leader. But do you think in any way that your previous views might have been rigid or poorly formed? Well, Andrea, there were differences in these leaders. And there is a situation now where many of the things that they preached have been proven unsound. And that's why their economy is in such great trouble. But I must say I have never met with one of those leaders that was comparable to this man or had the approach that he has. But he knows that I feel that, well, we put it this way. And as I've said, my philosophy is trust everybody, but cut the cards. I was going to ask that, but let me just now ask you, what's the toughest thing that you've had in your job? What's been the toughest part of these eight years? Then I have a follow-up. You realize how much time you're stealing with these follow-ups away from others that want to ask a question? Well, I think there have been many tough things. I don't think there's anything any tougher than to have to order these magnificent young men and women in our military today. And I think I'm prouder of them than of anything that has happened to have to send them into danger, to order them to go someplace where their lives are threatened and their lives are taken. That's got to be something that any president would hesitate on and have to say was the greatest burden. All right, let me ask the other side then. What have you enjoyed most? What is the thing you're going to miss the most? Well, there are a number of things to miss, but I don't want to get into a lecture here. Let me just simply say I enjoyed the most is the economic recovery. When I came here for almost half a century, the debate on the Hill and the Congress had always been between more big-spending programs, more power for the federal government, more intervention in private affairs of the federal government, as against those who were preaching less. Well, now today and for a long time, the very question that was asked here about the deficit, the argument on the Hill today is not more spending. The argument is, how best can we reduce the deficit? Personally, sir. I mean, personally as president. Well, I appreciate very much the fact of being a party to this economic recovery. We were in a disastrous situation when we came here. Judy? Until recently, the United States has been reluctant to return the union to play a significant role in the Middle East. But now, with Mr. Fordichok's new cooperation or openness, how do you suppose you could use him to expedite the peace process? Well, I think that once again, here we're going to have to see whether this is still acceptable to the parties that are to be involved in the direct negotiations. Actually, we talk in international gathering or something, but the Middle East, which is still technically in a state of war, that must be resolved between the nations of the Middle East in direct negotiations. And if we can help bring that about, then I would welcome anyone who wants to help. And might of his speech yesterday at the UN, are there any new steps that we can take to reduce the, to continue the arms reduction process? Oh, yes. We have long said that as soon as we once settled this issue of the START agreement, I have said that I think our next goal must be to now engage in negotiations on reducing conventional weapons. Mr. President, one question and no follow-ups. This man deserves a hand. Now that you're leading the White House or Wilson, what is going to become of the Contas, the resistance forces in Nicaragua, without you here as their champion? And do you have a commitment from President Elect Bush to carry on the same policy line that you have for supporting the Nicaraguan resistance? Obviously, I do not try to pin him down. He is the president-elect, and he will be the president when he takes over. But I do believe knowing him and our association together for all these years, I believe that he agrees with me that the Contas are freedom fighters and they are trying to achieve democracy in their country, which is now a communist totalitarian government. Mr. President, you've made a career lately of using an old Russian proverb, trust, but verify. But given that verification can never be 100% science, given that there are always a few percentage points where you just can't be sure, do you trust General Secretary Gorbachev for those few points? Well, as I said, right now, with regard to the INF Treaty, we have worked out verification provisions that are greater than anything that has ever been done before between us. And I think that there is a reasonable chance, a very reasonable chance, that we can continue to have that kind of verification. One of the first things that I talked over with Mr. Gorbachev in Geneva when we first met was that I said to him, we both didn't have great military. Well, how did I say it? I put it that we didn't mistrust each other because of our great military. We had our military because we mistrusted each other and that our negotiations should be aimed at removing the causes of mistrust. And I have to say it's pretty much followed that pattern. Well, what I want to know is do you trust Gorbachev? He hasn't shown me any reason yet that I shouldn't. But again, as I've said, that's why I kept referring to Dovrii no Provii. Trust but verify. And he knows that. And there's neither one of us. I don't think that he would gamble on believing that he shouldn't protect his own interests also. I'll come back over to you. President, at your meeting with Mr. Gorbachev yesterday, you toasted the things that he and Vice President Bush will accomplish. You spoke this evening about the grave economic crises that Mr. Gorbachev faces. What is the US assessment of his long-term chances for political survival? Well, I realize, and I think we all should, that he is battling a bureaucracy because whether it's a Russian bureaucracy or one of our own, the first rule of bureaucracy is protect the bureaucracy. And it would mean some great changes for some of the nomenclature, as they call their bureaucracy there, if he institutes the reforms that he's talking about. But on the plus side for him, it's very evident that the people of the Soviet Union are on his side. And they want this perestroika and this glasnost that he has talked about very much. And I have to believe that the nomenclature is going to have to think twice with regard to how far they would go in trying to block him when the man on the street over there wants the things that have been seen. Let me go over here for a minute. I've been kind of one-sided. Mr. President, you could help Mr. Gorbachev if it appears that that's a political problem. That is, Afghanistan, out of there, with honor. He suggested at the U.S. yesterday an in-place ceasefire, a cessation of outside military aid. So people think this would leave you a partition of Afghanistan. What's wrong with that? It would save lives if it were helping Mr. Gorbachev. But there's one thing. If we're talking about disarming the Mujahideen, remember that there is still a military force in Afghanistan that was organized by the puppet government established by the Soviet Union. And they are a force that has been fighting along with the Soviet side by side against the Mujahideen. If you want to get around to disarming both sides, you can't suddenly disarm the Mujahideen and leave them at the mercy of this already military management. Mr. Gorbachev, I've heard that the UN yesterday is sending in a UN peacekeeping force just to do this. Well, you'd have to take up with the UN. This is something rather exceptional that he's asking on that. And I'm not sure that the UN would like that or that the UN is prepared to do such a thing. I think that we've got to recognize that if the Afghan people are going to be able to state and create the government they want, then that puppet government has got to be ready and willing to step down and not have some kind of a compromise thing in which it remains as a government with compromising with the others. Let's let them start from scratch and build the government they want. Mr. President, let me bring you back to the Middle East. You've got very little time left. And Mr. Arapat of the PLO seems to be inching towards the kind of conditions you and Mr. Schulz had said he should. Is this perhaps not time to go the inch in his direction and start some kind of talks with Mr. Arapat rather than as Mr. Schulz closed the door on him? No, we've been watching very closely. And for example, we've thought in the last few days that there was a statement that came out of that meeting in Sweden that appeared to be clean cut and not with the things around the edge that then diffused what seemed to be a pledge. But we had to wait until his press conference and what he said. And I have to say that, again, he has left openings for himself where he can deny that he meant this or meant that that sounded so clean cut. It's up to him. We are willing to meet with him and talk with him. And I'm sure the Israelis would be when once and for all it is clear cut that he is ready to recognize Israel's right to be a nation, that he is ready to negotiate on behalf of the Palestinian people for a homeland for them, and so forth. And this is all. Now, the thing about George Schulz's decision, I'd like to call to your attention, there is a law passed by the Congress with regard to the conditions for granting a waiver to someone to come in and meet with the United Nations or participate in what they're doing. And there is no way under that law that Mr. Arafat qualifies as yet. And the day that he does, and it is clear cut, then we could grant that visa. But as I say, he is barred by the terms of that law. And the only way that the Secretary of State has full power under that law, it's his decision to make. And he can only grant a waiver if an individual meets certain requirements, and Arafat doesn't. Well, to follow up and be just as clear cut, did he not in his statement say that he accepts the UN articles and that he recognizes Israel? What is the fine line that he hasn't crossed? What we're still analyzing is then, as he went on, other things in which it's a case, and this has happened before, certainly with the same individual. You could quote to him, oh, you said this. But he's still in a position where he can say, well, yes, but wait a minute, I also said this. And then you find that the second this kind of reduces or nullifies the first this. Mr. President, can I ask a question? In your opening statement, you made reference to our military strength. Sir, a principal element of this nation's strength is our nuclear deterrent. And during your administration, sir, numerous nuclear production plants have been allowed to decay, including plants that would produce plutonium and tritium. Sir, what have you directed your aides to do about the problem and how serious is the threat? Particularly since there are plants now in Colorado and South Carolina, which have not been allowed to reopen due to safety problems. And we have made it very plain that we will not allow those plants to reopen until they meet the requirements and constitute no danger to the citizens of this country. And it just has to be that cold turkey. Now, I don't think that we can be blamed for the deterioration that certainly began long before we were here. I'd like to follow up. Isn't it true that you have left President-elect Bush a tremendous financial and national security challenge, not only in giving these plants back and operating order, but also in devising ways that we can dispose of our nuclear waste? No, we are working on that. And we have been. And we've made more progress than I think we're given credit for on that. And he'll have to continue with doing those things. And I don't think that the problems are all money. Bill? Mr. President, do you have any reason to believe that the American hostages who are still being held in the Middle East will be released after you leave office? I don't think that anyone that takes over this office is going to give in, nor did I. That is, again, one of those things I should have said to your question, Bill, that you go to bed with every night. And we are hopeful that there can be avenues that would open. We cannot enter into negotiating in the sense of what kind of ransom to pay, or you're just encouraging more hostage taking. But there are other channels. We're not advocating that any individual, as some have, take it upon themselves to try to get them out. But we're looking at every channel that we can find to try and get them. And I imagine that the ultimate is going to have to be. Somehow, a negotiation with Iran because they have control of those people. You would be willing to do this negotiation with Iran, sir. Is that right? Either now or before you leave office or after Mr. Bush takes over, you're willing to negotiate with Iran? There have got to be some changes there, too. We were not negotiating with them on the so-called Iran Contra Affair at all. We were heeding a plea from some individuals. At that time, all of you were kind of heralding the day in the media that was going to come within a week that the Ayatollah would no longer be the head of government because of his health. And these people were among those who were planning ahead to have a government. What? You're going to do it now, sir. There are things, conditions, that have to be met also there. Any time that they are ready to come forward on an open basis, we would be ready to talk to them. The United States and the Soviet Union were once allies during World War II. Do you see that the beginning that had been made here with you and Mr. Gorbachev resulting in a situation where we would once more count the Soviet Union as an ally and have a free and open trade with them on a large scale basis? I think that is all dependent on them if it can be definitely established that they no longer are following the expansionist policy that was instituted in the communist revolution, that their goal must be a one-world communist state. Now, if that has definitely been given up, and certainly there are indications that we could see that we can anticipate bringing such a thing about, then I do think that there is evidence that they don't like being the pariah, that they might want to join the family of nations and join them with the idea of bringing about or establishing peace. Is that something you want, sir? Yes. The one of the first things that I ever told him when we met. I said, there are two of us here in this room, just two men. And I said, we, it's a unique situation. Between us, we have the power to start World War III. Or between us, we have the power to bring peace to the world, a lasting peace. And apparently, we've been working in that direction. Mr. President, the Soviet Union makes good and does reduce the US troop strength. There's talk on Capitol Hill that perhaps the US can follow suit.  Do you foresee that as a realistic possibility? Now, if I guess I wasn't switching signals here fast enough at the very beginning of this, are you suggesting that the defense spending is... Soviet troop cuts could lead to some cuts on our own, and that this would help to reduce the deficit. People are already looking, some Democrats, thinking that this may help us to reduce the deficit. Well, once again, I must repeat. That can't happen with our defense spending until we have reached a parity, and in which then both sides can continue the reduction of weapons and keeping it at a parity. But that is not true today. The dropping of 500,000 military personnel still leaves them with 5 million under arms. They still outnumber us in tanks and artillery weapons after they make these cuts. So we haven't achieved parity, but at least if he goes through with that and succeeds in that, he is going to bring it down to a range where I think that he would see that we could proceed and continue then mutually reducing arms between each other. Thank you. Merry Christmas to you all. Thank you. Do you wish you'd had more of these? Do you wish you'd had more of these? We'll do one next month. Good to see you all together. That's it!


Hello. Thank you for having me back for year three in my dimension. Also, my third hair color at MozCon. It's a real honor to talk email with you for the third year in a row. And I also hope that you're not in that post-lunch slump and not too excited to talk about email with me. So that's me, Justine, two hair colors ago. I've been in email for more than 10 years, but hey, who's counting? As I said, I'm BPO marketing at a SaaS company called Litmus. So we see lots and lots of emails, lots and lots of best practices, and lots and lots of research that I'm going to talk to you about today. I lead brand content research. I also really love cats, by the way. If you've seen my presentations before, I'm sorry I don't have as many cat gifts for you today.  So I am Meladory on Twitter. Bonus points to anyone that can tweet at me and tell me what my Twitter name is in reference to. Or my company is Litmus, and try to keep it nice, you know, so I can come back next year. It's always a good thing. So I'm here to talk to you today about the golden rules of email marketing. But first, I want to tell you a little bit of a story. If you were at MozCon last year, you might remember that I told you the story about one of my very favorite brands. So here's a quick recap, and it's kind of a sad story. Karma is this a Wi-Fi hotspot company, and they sent these wonderful customer-centric emails for the longest time. Their brand voice was so human-centric, talking about all the value that their product brought to me and to my pocket and to my Wi-Fi connection all the time. Their emails were just really human-centric. They were really all about the value, right? But then they went to sending nothing but buzzword-laden emails full of marketing terminology like grandfather program, 20% off, refuel, literally were incomprehensible almost. And to make matters more worse, there was really an abrupt transition. It happened over just a few months or so. They went from sending these really customer-centric messages to sending nothing but transactional and triggered emails about who was joining my network and my billing to sending garbage, honestly, all caps, marketing buzzwords about grandfather terminology and promotions on an almost daily basis. It was heartbreaking. And the difference was totally stark. You could tell that something drastic had shifted internally at Karma. They went from emails to tell me my battery was dying so I could get more use out of my device to basically shouting at me with marketing buzzwords. It didn't make any sense at all. And so it was a really great reminder that this is how marketers see email as, well, a marketing channel as they possibly should. It's all about reports, open rates, delivery rates, click-through rates. By the way, this is like a screenshot from MailChimp from more than a decade ago, but really nothing's changed, right? Email is that old-style work. It's all about the opens and the clicks, baby. Worse yet, sometimes we see email is a cash machine where we press this button that says send this blast and it just prints money and all the metrics come through the front door. And it's a balancing act. Anyone that sends email on top of their regular job doing SEO or any other kind of marketing knows how difficult it is to manage email on top of every other channel and all the expectations that come along with it. Which leads to how consumers see email a little bit differently as humans do, a little bit differently than marketers do. So they see email as, well, just another promotion in their inbox. Or let's be honest, a giant can of spam right in the face. That's because there's a disconnect. Marketers see email as a marketing channel and there's pressure to show this short-term gain which can often destroy long-term loyalty in the process. On one side of the spectrum, we know that sending consumer-centric, subscriber-centric email that builds trust with our audience and adds value, fun, and relevance is exactly what the humans on the other side of the inbox want. But as marketers, we're pressured to show the reports, the opens, the clicks, the sales, which if we do too much of that, it ends up spending trust. When we should be meeting there in the magic, in the middle where all the magic happens, when you can find that blend between when you're meeting your consumer's needs but you're also meeting your business's needs. And so when marketers don't find that magic in the middle, this is what happened, spam. Humans report spam when emails arrive in their inbox that don't meet their expectations. And it's important here to remember that it's not you that defines spam. It's the human with the inbox. They think that anything irrelevant, unpersonalized, just not interesting, is spam. If they can't unsubscribe from you easily, it's spam. If they never signed up to receive it in the first place, it's definitely spam. And this is what's actually really interesting. We talk about wearing a lot of hats as marketers and riding that unicycle and balancing the email on top of your head.  And of course, not working well on a smartphone. That's spam too. I can't read it, I can't understand it, can't make sense of it on a small screen. It must be spam. So my colleague Chad White said in one of our reports, irrelevant and unwanted email is the new spam in both the eyes of consumers and internet service providers. Let's again, just a reminder that we're not the ones who decide what spam is. It's the humans that do. And if they think it's spam, then, well, it's spam. And I also think that Erin Walter, who is over at InVision and also wrote the book Designing for Emotion, really hit the nail on the head when he said that humans want to connect with real people. And when we press send as marketers, it's sometimes hard to forget that, when on the other side of that button, isn't just a list of 10,000 or maybe even 10 million people, they're real humans with real inboxes that have real desires about the kind of messages they receive and real opinions about what makes them spam or not. So let's get to the insights, huh? So to understand all of the emotions and drivers that go into both sides of the equation, both how humans see marketing and how marketers see marketing, Litmus does this massive survey every year. We get 3,000 marketers telling us everything about how they create email to how they send it to how people interact with it to the benchmarks that they report and everything in between. And so all that gets published in a bunch of research that leads to the golden rules of human centric email marketing. So some of that research lends us insight into the priorities and goals and top challenges of email marketers. And so when we asked marketers this year, well, what are your top trends and priorities that you're looking to get? They said, I want to send more personalized email. I want to improve accessibility. I want to get better analytics and insights. We want to build better narratives and tell more stories. We want to be more human. And we want to focus on lifetime value, which all sound like really, really great goals. But if you remember that slide earlier about why humans report marketing as spam, and we compare them to one another, and we say, okay, if one of our top priorities is personalization, but one of the main reasons why humans mark emails as spam is because they're irrelevant, how are we doing there? Or if we say we want to improve accessibility, but I'm marking as spam because my emails look bad on a smartphone. So we can keep going on and on down this list, but you'll see that every point of trends and priorities has a counterpoint to why humans are reporting that maybe those really aren't priorities after all. As marketers, are we really putting our money where our mouth is and we talk about wanting to do human-centric email marketing? Are we really benefiting our consumers? Or are we just saying that because it's benefiting our business? And at least to this question, are marketers and humans really aligned? So there's a disconnect between those challenges and our priorities. So what are the marketing rules about humans? Number one, always collect consent. Cannot emphasize this enough. Email marketing is an opt-in channel, not an opt-out channel. You might be saying, wait, Justine, I'm pretty sure that can spam in the US is an opt-out law, not an opt-in law. And I'm here to say, well, that's really changing. That is the case today. And in fact, the US is the only country on planet Earth for the most part that is an opt-out country that doesn't require consent to send email. Basically, every other country does. And you might have even heard from a little thing called GDPR that rolled out on May 25th this year. And believe it or not, GDPR is more than just a strategy to cram your inbox full of privacy policy and re-opt in emails, ha ha, believe it or not. It's actually a little bit more than that. So GDPR is the General Data Protection Regulation, kind of a mouthful, which is the EU's privacy law. And it basically affects any company that uses personal data from EU citizens. So I've heard a lot of myths about GDPR in the last year or so. And one of them is that if you're not based in the EU or if you don't market to people in the EU, that it doesn't affect you. And that's incorrect. If you collect data from any EU citizen, you need to comply with GDPR because non-compliance can lead to some really hefty fines. And so what does GDPR actually say, at least when it comes to email? GDPR says a lot, but the email specific parts that apply are the fact that, well, you have to have a positive opt-in. And so a positive opt-in is really specific. It means that you cannot pre-check boxes. So if you have ever signed up for or checked out of an e-commerce platform or retailer and bought something from that retailer, and as you're checking out, the box at the bottom says, yeah, I want to receive promotions and ongoing things. Or there's no checkbox at all, and you just automatically start receiving promotions after you buy something. That can't happen anymore under GDPR. Someone has to positively and willingly check that box and say, yes, I agree to receive marketing emails from you. You also can't bury the consent. So if you say, I agree to the terms and conditions, and then somewhere in your terms and conditions is buried something about all the marketing email you send, you can also not do that anymore. You have to explicitly have a checkbox that says, I'm going to market to you. It can't be just a checkbox that says, I agree to the T's and C's. You also have to make it easy to withdraw consent. So it has to be really easy for someone to opt out and say, I don't want to receive communications from you anymore. You have to keep a record. Record keeping is a big part of this. And then you also have to refresh the consents if they don't meet the standard. So that explains all of the re-opten emails that you were getting and those couple weeks leading up to May 25th. It was every company, it's kind of a hidden secret, the dirty secret behind GDPR. All those companies didn't have a proper record of your consent, so they needed to re-record your consent. Just shines a light on the bad data-keeping practices of so many of us in the industry. So lots of stuff about GDPR. If you want to talk about that later, come chat with me. Rule number two is create accessible email, something else that I could spend a whole separate half an hour talking about. So one of the few things that you could really do is just make sure that you have enough color contrast in your email. There's some really great tools. This one is at webaim.org where you can plug in hex codes of colors and just make sure that there's enough contrast. So if someone that has problems with their vision or maybe they have a color deficiency, they're colorblind, this is gonna make sure that there's enough color contrast in your emails so that it's actually readable. You also wanted to make sure that you're sending a plain text version. So emails are sent in little bundles. There's the pretty part that has the HTML with all the graphics and the colors and then there's the really boring part that's just plain text that developers with pine insist on using because they just hate the internet. But when you bundle those two things together, not only is it gonna help make you look not like a spammer, it's gonna help your deliverability, it's also gonna improve accessibility for anyone that can't or doesn't want to read HTML emails. It's something else for them to read. You also wanna use semantic elements. So email gets a really bad rap for having poor support for HTML and CSS. If you've ever heard the phrase code like it's 1999 for email, that's where that comes from. And luckily those days are largely behind us. For the large part, you can use semantic elements in email today. And the reason why semantic elements got a really bad rap with emails is because there'd be all this default styling associated with like H1s and P tags that would just make your email look terrible. So there's resets and different kinds of rules that you can apply to those semantic elements to make sure that your email still looks and reads correctly. You can also use a little trick that's called adding role equals presentation to all of the tables in your email if you're still using table-based layouts. What that basically does is it tells screen readers this is not a data table. So a little walk down memory lane or if you'd not an HTML guru. Tables were initially created to format, well, tabular data, things in columns and rows, things like charts and graphs. And when email came along and especially outlook rendering with Word, marketers started using email, HTML tables to display content in email because there wasn't good support for regular HTML and CSS. And so when screen readers see a table, they suspect it's full of, well, tabular data and they start reading out all of the columns and the rows in the table. So what happens when you don't use this is the screen reader starts to read out all of the empty cells and columns that you're using for spacing in your email. So this can really help improve that experience for people that are using a screen reader. Rule number three is that mobile still matters. So every year we publish this data from email analytics data at Litmus and mobile has been consistently at or above 50%. It's not going away. You guys know this. And responsive design is pretty much the status quo but we still have a little bit of ways to go. So if you haven't yet updated your emails to be responsive or at least fluid or mobile friendly, definitely put that on your to-do list. Our research shows that broadcast and segmented emails are largely mobile optimized but that triggered and transactional emails lag behind. And this goes back to why humans report emails as spam. 43% said they've marked a brand as spam for not looking good on mobile but 51% said that they've unsubscribed. So that's nuts. If you send someone an email that looks bad on a mobile device and they unsubscribe or mark you as spam, you can never email them again. Worse yet, if you get marked as spam, it could affect your ability to send an email at all. So rule four is make it easy to unsubscribe.  Because too many email marketers make unsubscribing really hard. 61% of the people in the survey said that unsubscribing from emails was actually not, was easy. So that means that 40% said that it was hard. And I see this more often than I care to admit where emails have unsubscribed links with white text and a white background making it impossible to unsubscribe. And 50% of consumers said it's actually easier to mark a brand as spam than to unsubscribe at all. So not only is it illegal but it's just annoying as heck. So another white text and a white background mistake here. We don't wanna put these dark patterns in our emails. So somewhat related is inbox controls in rule number five. You want to embrace them and stop freaking out about the promotions tab. Every time I give a talk I have someone ask me, hey Justine, how can I avoid being delivered to the promotions tab in Gmail or how can I trick Gmail to deliver my email directly to the primary tab? And my answer is don't, just don't do it. Just like Gmail likes to punish SEO with different algorithms, Gmail will punish you as an email marketer if you try to circumvent their inbox algorithm to get into the promotions or to get out of the promotions tab. And so the Gmail Promotions tab has lots of different other ways of helping people manage their inbox. There's list unsubscribe in the header in Gmail. There's the bulk in the the focused area in Outlook. Apple Mail on iOS has this wonderful header that asks you to unsubscribe at the very top of your emails. And then Yahoo and Gmail recently roll out new inbox management controls where they look at your behavior over time and they actually proactively ask you if you wanna unsubscribe from emails that you haven't read in a while. So issue a little cautionary tale. These functions exist because of us. They're our fault or we have no one but ourselves to thank because consumers went back and told inbox providers, I'm having a hard time managing my inbox. I'm getting too much email. And so this was their response. If we send better personalized, a better targeted email, these controls might go away. And just remember, the Promotions tab is not the spam folder. People expect to see your emails there. So I also want you to look beyond vanity metrics like opens and clicks because those are just the beginning. I wanna do a little presentation's favorite thing, a little show of hands. This email, the subject line was thanks for your order.  And tell me how you would feel if you got this email in your inbox or if you sent it as an email marketer. So by show of hands, who says this is a creative campaign, brilliantly executed. Know what? One person, maybe. This email was lauded on tech blogs for being like clever and brilliant and everyone should do April Fool's Day emails that look like this email. How many of you are like, what the F? Yeah, okay. So the internet agreed with you. After this email was sent out, Twitter was full of people mentioning this brand online, saying things like, it isn't funny. I thought someone made a fraudulent purchase. It's not a good marketing subject line. It looks like a phishing scam. Nice job jerks. Yikes. So these people obviously opened the email, right? They obviously opened it. They read it. They clicked through. They were trying to figure out what the heck happened. So if you're looking just at opens and clicks and you're saying, yeah, this email was a success, you might need to look a little bit deeper. 54% of subscribers said they've been tricked or deceived by a subject line. So that's not very good. So I also want you to build a better list. And so how do we do that? Here are some great ways that you can actually get blocked and blacklisted as you're building your list and your email marketing list. You can use email list rental. That's a big no-no. You can use co-registration. You can buy an email list or kind of a surprising one, lead generation forms like e-books and reports. And you might be wondering, what the heck, Justine? All this content that you're talking about is actually gated behind e-books and reports. And you're right. So humans might want to read your research and get all that stuff from you, but they might not want to receive emails from you. So recall insight number one, which is always collect consent. And the right way to do this is again to create an unchecked box that asks people if they want to receive emails from you and let them have the content for free, even if you can't market to them afterwards. So in these last few minutes, I want to talk to you about human rules about marketing. So we talk a lot about how we can make email better for our subscribers, but how do we make email better for ourselves or for our teams back home in the office? Our research tells us a lot about how the pain points and the challenges that we have internally at our companies, too. And so one of the rules is that we actually kind of suck at measuring ROI. Just like how we overly rely on opens and clicks, we have a really hard time looking beyond deeper into the funnel and seeing how things like AB testing or open rates and click rates actually translate to our bottom line metrics. And I actually don't have a lot of good advice for you here, because every organization is different, but it's something that you really need to go back home and be aware of. Paying attention to those surface metrics can lead you short-term gains, but kind of destroy your progress in the long term. So 70% of these brands that we surveyed said, we don't actually know how our emails are performing for our business because we can't measure ROI. It's kind of a bummer. We also spend way too much time on reviews and approval processes. So when we asked marketers what their review and approval processes looked like, they said that they work on average with 2.4 other departments and spend almost four hours getting an email reviewed and approved. And then 64% of them said that last minute changes are really, really common. So what takeaway here is that reviews and approvals actually take longer than every other part of your email marketing process. Longer than copywriting, longer than testing, longer than putting together your strategy in the first place. So is this really the best use of our time? I'd say figure out how to streamline our review and approvals process and invest that time elsewhere. And surprise, surprise, organizations that said that people with VP or C in their title usually bog down the process the most. So successful teams also use email briefs and checklists consistently. Our research shows that 81% of the companies that rated their email programs as successful use an email brief most of the time. And so what should your email brief include? Well, it should talk about the five Ws. Who should receive it? What action should they take? Why should they take the action? When should they receive the message? And where are they likely to read it? And when I say when, keep in mind that we're not talking about time of day or day of week. We're talking about when in the life cycle, what is an appropriate place in that subscriber's experience with your brand to send that email. So heighten the conversation above time and day and think broader than that. And so the last rule on the marketer's side is kudos to the heroes among us. So give yourself a pat on the back or go home and tell your team thank you because our research shows that email marketers are basically undervalued, understaffed, and underappreciated. It might have something to do with that ROI metric. The average email professional performs almost five job functions. They're responsible for things like copywriting, email building, development, design, testing, managing your email platform. And 44% actually do all of those activities overseeing their entire email marketing program being the ultimate jacks and jills of all trades. So what are our marketing insights from humans? We wanna collect consent always, create accessible emails. Mobile still matters. Look at that mobile optimization strategy. Don't forget to make it easy to unsubscribe. Embrace the promotions tab. Those inbox controls are really here to stay. And then see beyond subject line success. Look deeper in the funnel. I'm probably doing something weird in Seattle by putting a slide from Amazon on the stage. But I really like this quote from Jeff when he said that when things get complicated we simplify by asking what's best for the customer. And one of my favorite tools to do that is to go back to the subscriber hierarchy of needs that I shared last year and ask myself, am I making emails that are respectful, functional, valuable, and remarkable? And if not, maybe I need to go back to the drawing board and start back over with the bottom of the pyramid. So on the human side of the spectrum, we need to advocate for deeper reporting, streamline the approval process, use briefs and checklists, and ultimately give ourselves a pat on the back because we're doing a lot of hard work and building big impact for our brands and maybe not always getting credit for it. So high fives to all of you and thank you for coming. You can get all of the research that I shared today on our website at litmus.com slash data email.