Hello, and welcome. My name is Shannon Kemp and I'm the Chief Digital Officer of Data Diversity. We'd like to thank you for doing the current installment of the monthly Data Diversity Webinar series, Real World Data Governance with Bob Siner. Today Bob will discuss rules for becoming a data steward. Just a couple of points to get us started due to the large number of people that attend these sessions, you will be muted during the webinar. If you'd like to chat with us or with each other, we certainly encourage you to do so and just to note Zoom defaults the chat to send to just the panelists, but you may absolutely switch that to network with everyone. As soon as we will be collecting them by the Q&A section and to find the chat and the Q&A panels, you may click those icons in the bottom middle of your screen to activate those features. And as always, we will send a follow-up email within two business days containing links to the slides, the recording of the session, and any additional information requested throughout the webinar. I'm going to introduce to you our speaker for the series, Bob Siner. Bob is the President and Principal of KIK Consulting and Educational Services and the publisher of the data administration newsletter, tdan.com. Bob specializes in non-invasive data governance, data stewardship, and metadata management solutions. And with that, I'll give the floor to Bob to start his presentation. Hello and welcome. Hi, Shannon. Hi, everybody. Thank you, everybody. Like I do all the time for taking time out of your really busy schedules. I am certain to to sit through the webinar either live or if you're listening to a recording of this. This is one of my favorite subjects. I know I talk about a lot of different subjects and I say that a lot of them are my favorite subjects. But if you're implementing a data governance program, and most likely you are or you're related to working with somebody who is implementing a data governance program, data stewardship is something that's really near and dear to you. And I came up with a series of rules that I use to help people, to help organizations to associate people to become data stewards. So I'm looking forward to addressing this subject with you. Data stewardship is near and dear probably to a lot of people that are on this on this webinar today because people know that the stewards are basically the heartbeat of a successful data governance program. So we'll talk a lot about what those rules are, why the rules are necessary, how to create rules specifically to your specific to your organization. Before I get started, I just want to go through a couple of things that I am presently working on. As you know with this webinar series every month, the topic we're going to address next month is also one that's being a question that's being asked all the time. I'm seeing it in LinkedIn chat groups and more in groups as well, where people want to differentiate between data management and data governance. I'm going to talk about specifically how they overlap also how they're different in the webinar next month. And then we're going to be speaking at the upcoming event in San Diego, the data diversity event of data governance and information quality West, the DJI Q West in June. I have a bit of news about the noninvasive data governance book actually the second book noninvasive data governance strikes again will now we know as of yesterday that the release date for that is going to be June 1. So for that that's a great thing. I have a couple of online learning plans available through data diversity. So go, please take a look at those one on noninvasive data governance, one on noninvasive metadata governance, and then one that focuses specifically on business glossaries and catalogs. Then there's my kayak a consulting business and I'd be happy to talk to you about that. My monthly twice monthly publication, and I also work on in the time that I have with Carnegie Mellon University as an adjunct faculty member, working with them. What are we going to talk about today. The first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to outline for you eight rules for people to become data stewards, or how to associate people or recognize people in the organization as being data stewards. I'm going to talk about why those rules are specifically the rules and why, you know, maybe how you can then figure out when you're determining who your stewards are, how to create some custom rules for yourself and for your organization. We'll talk about how to apply the stewardship rules across the organization, and how the rules and value. So let's, let's start by. Because I typically would start in these webinars, but by talking with about some definitions that I typically use. And the three terms that I like to define specifically for this webinar is data governance because again it's a data governance webinar, but specifically what I mean by stewardship, because I think that's going to have a lot to do with how you understand some of the rules that I'm going to talk about here on the next slide. I refer to data governance as being the execution and enforcement of authority over data. I know that's worded very strongly, but at the end of the day, when it comes to regulatory control when it comes to improving the quality of the data, you need to be able to execute and enforce authority. It doesn't mean that you have to be invasive in your approach, it just means at the end of the day there are certain rules, if we're going to improve our data situation that we need to execute and enforce authority over. Then when it comes to stewardship and I talk about stewardship as being like I said before, the heartbeat of your data governance program, really the backbone of your program. I define stewardship as being formal accountability for data. And in many organizations there's already people that are formally accountable, or there's already people that are accountable for data. And that's formally than you need. And that's one of the core tenets of the concept of noninvasive data governance is let's formalize existing levels of accountability wherever we can identify this. And so stewardship is the formalization of the accountability for data. And I refer to a data steward as being a person in the organization that's being held formally accountable for what they do with the data. So if they define data, and they're being held formally accountable for putting together a good definition of the data. They're steward, if they're producing data and they're being held formally accountable for the quality of the data they produce, they're steward of the data production if they use data, and a lot of people use data. People need to be held accountable for how they use that data too. And typically, and you've probably heard me say before, that everybody is a data steward. And that's really the only way that we can cover the entire organization, because most people either define and or produce and or use data as part of their job. And if we can hold them formally accountable for how they define produce and use data than their stewards and so potentially everybody in the organization is a steward. I'm sure you'll hear me say that again, at least once during this webinar. Just wanted to throw out a couple more definitions a definition of metadata being it's the data about the data basically that improves both the business and technical understanding of the data. And that's a thing as metadata governance I mean the fact is that the metadata is not going to define produce and use itself, that there need to be people that are accountable for the metadata as well. So, when I'm talking about data stewards throughout today's webinar. We can also think of it in terms of the metadata stewards because metadata stewards, somebody has to put a good definition to the data it's not going to happen magically. Somebody's got to produce the metadata. It's not going to happen magically. So when I say the data will not govern itself. I also say the metadata will not govern itself. There needs to be a concentrated effort on working on these things. So what are we here to talk about today we're going to talk about eight specific rules that I have identified and maybe you didn't know that there were rules associated with becoming a data steward. And maybe these do these rules will be helpful to you. But I think it's a good way of looking at well how do we determine who the stewards of the data are within our organization. And there's been some debates online through LinkedIn this week about the term stewardship versus the term ownership. The term stewardship is becoming more prevalent and more use because the definition of a steward is somebody that takes care of something for somebody else, instead of owning it. There's people that are stewarding the data. And so, I figured it's good. It's a good timing right now to talk about some some rules associated with making certain that we are recognizing the right people as being data stewards in the organization. Here's the eight rules. We'll just share these rules and then we'll move on. Actually, no, this is not the entire webinar. We're not just going to show these eight rules here. We're going to go through each one of them in details and talk about why the rules are the rules when it comes to recognizing people as being data stewards. I've seen a lot of conversation recently about people not wanting wanting to become the owners of the data, because they don't really understand what it means to be the owners of the data. And I typically suggest that organizations shy away from using the term owner, and they start to use the term steward. And so the rules that I want to focus on our number one, a steward can be anybody. I want to talk a little bit more about how steward can be basically everybody within the organization and how stewardship. It's not a title it's not a position. It really describes a relationship between people and data.  It's not something that you can opt into or opt out of because if you are using sensitive data you're expected to protect that data. Typically a steward's not hired to be a data, at least they're not hired, typically, to be a data steward specifically. I'll do a little bit more detail about what I mean by that a data steward does not have to have the title of being a data steward, a steward doesn't have to be told how to do their job and I'll explain what I mean by that. Also, I know that there are organizations that provide public stewardship certification. I just don't believe it's valuable because stewards are just everybody within the organization doing their jobs, understanding how they play a role in how the, how the data is being governed within the organization so I don't like the idea of data steward certification, at least when it comes to public certification. Another one of the rules is that more than one data steward exists for each data type. I know that there's a lot of organizations let's go to Mary when we want to talk about customer data let's go to Joe, when we want to talk about product data. There's obviously a lot more stewards in the organization than just those individuals so another rule is that there's more than one data steward exists for each data type. And the last rule is how data steward training should focus on formalizing accountability for the relationships that people already have with data. Okay, so let's go through each of the rules one by one. I defined before that a data steward is a person that is held formally accountable for what they do with the data for their relationship to the data, and I typically define the relationships as being somebody who defines data produces data and uses data. So, think about everybody in your organization and how potentially everybody has a relationship to the data. We as people who are putting governance programs together need to know who those people are. So we need to know who these stewards are, even if we're not going and tagging them on the shoulder and saying hey you're a data steward, go start doing data steward stuff. We can't expect that to happen. We need to help them to become better stewards, but potentially anybody in the organization or as I say a lot everybody is a data steward, and I tell organizations to get over that fact. And make certain that your program is has the ability to handle that as a complexity. Again, you're not going to engage all of these people every day as a data steward, and there's different levels of data stewards within the organization, but potentially everybody will you know everybody in the organization that uses PII data has to know the rules and protect them, the personally identifiable information. And we keep kind of following that rule forward, potentially everybody in the organization is a steward of the data. And one of the problems is the people right now right out of the gate they don't recognize themselves as being data stewards, and they need some assistance to even understand what it means to be a steward or if you're even going to use that label of steward within your organization. So with the practitioners of data governance, we need to help them, we need to help them to understand that they are stewards, and I want to talk about that a little bit more here in a couple minutes about just getting stewards to recognize that they are the the appropriate people to go to, to involve when you have questions about the data, or in resolving issues around the data. The truth is that out of all eight rules I'm going to talk about today, this rule is the one that really changes the culture when it comes to data stewardship. You'll notice and I've talked before when I compare approaches to data governance that I don't like the idea of assigning people to be data steward the word assign immediately feels like it's over and above what they're doing. I use the term recognizing people as being data stewards, recognizing people has a positive connotation that comes along with it. If we can get people to say okay yes I do use sensitive data and yes I do need to understand the rules that I need to protect that sensitive data, and then help them to acknowledge then you know what they're stewards of the data, and they need to be treated, you know, accordingly, treated as stewards of the data in the organization. Truly, this is the rule that changes the culture of the organization it helps everybody in the organization to start to become data literate. So data stewardship also describes a relationship to data and it's not a position and I know that I'll probably talk about this several times throughout the webinar. There are basically three actions that people can take with data, and in the chat which I can't see right now but feel free to chat about it. You can think of other actions or actions that don't fall under the definition production or usage of data. I'd love to know what they are, because I think analytics or protection of data they fall under usage of data, you know quality could fall under production glossaries and dictionaries could fall under definition of data, but people basically take three actions with data. And if we can recognize who those people are, and who's doing what with data across the organization, then they're stewards of the data. And you know what we don't need to go to them and, and give them the title of being a data steward because then everybody would be a data steward. The relationship as a definer or producer or a user of the data that action really defines what level of steward somebody is. If somebody's looking out for data or has decision making authority over data for the entire organization. That's different than the people that are day to day within the operational unit. So there's different types of stewards and we'll talk about that a little bit more as we move forward here as well. So there's a lot of situations all the time that are looking to hire data stewards. If you fall on in the belief, or if you have the belief that, you know, you're going to recognize stewards based on what they do with the data, you don't need to hire people in to be data stewards you need to hire people in to fill specific roles ROLES and, you know, depending on their relationship to the data, they would instantly become a data steward. So you're not really going to hire a person to do a data steward you might hire people to do data steward type things like build out your dictionary work with your true data stewards to do those things, but you're not going to hire a person to be a data steward. But you're going to hire them into the role that is being expected to follow the task that is expected of them when they become hired. So new hires don't know the data like the people that you already have in the organization.  So being a data steward somewhere else and I know people like to say well I was a data steward at XYZ Corporation. Well that's good that they've had an experience of being a data steward. But do they know the data within ABC organization. So being a steward somewhere else it helps, but it doesn't mean that they know your data. It doesn't mean that they know your process. It doesn't know that they know your people. It takes the culture of the organization. So being a steward somewhere else it helps, but it doesn't mean that they can instantly become a steward of data within your organization. They can help to impact the culture. But again steward being a steward somewhere else can help, but it's not the entirety. You're not again hiring somebody to be a data steward. It's a student or a steward based on their relationship to the data. I guess, you know data stewards are hired in the in the long run, but they're typically just not hired to be data stewards. Okay so that's the third rule. The fourth rule is, we don't need to call a data steward a data steward if everybody in the organization is a steward of the data, based on their relationship to the data. It would be silly to have everybody have the same title of data steward.  We need to know who these people are. We don't need to call them all data stewards. But the fact is that you're going to have a lot of data stewards within your organization. Again, if you're following the idea that anybody who has a relationship to the data, who's being held formally accountable is a steward of the data. You don't have to call them data stewards in order for them to be data stewards. This is the one that I get a lot of questions about. That a steward doesn't have to be told how to do their job. Basically data governance and the data governance function doesn't have the authority over people within the organization, at least not typically. So they don't data governance again doesn't have the authority to tell business people what to do but the function of data governance does provide guidelines and rules around how the people should follow to improve the quality and the value and the confidence and the trust and the understanding of the data. So data governance does play a big role but data governance oftentimes doesn't have the authority to tell people how to do their job. So you might hear a lot about federated models for data governance programs where there's a central group that has the responsibility for setting guidelines and minimal standards, but they don't have the authority to be able to enforce those roles. The management might need to be done by somebody else. But again, a steward doesn't have to be told exactly what they need to do. They just need to know follow these guidelines follow these rules, and you will help us to steward our data better. So data governance shares the guidelines and the rules. It's up to the stewards. Again, being anybody in the organization, their management to instruct them how to do their job. Data governance doesn't really have the authority to do that. But one thing that data governance can do is you can highlight when people are not doing things in standards that have been have been approved successfully within the organization. The public or industry certification is a load of bunk. I'm not going to go into a whole lot of detail on that but people's activities as stewards. They're not stewards first they're holding the role that they hold within the organization. First, they're stewards. Again, because they have a relationship to the data. People's activities are very specific to the way things are being done within their part of the organization within your organization. And so to have somebody be certified and how to do what they already do or what they're being paid to do. I don't think it makes a lot of sense. And the stewards responsibilities aren't exactly the same from organization to organization or from day to day. As I've mentioned before, there's different levels of stewards. There's people that are subject matter experts for domains or subject matters within your organization. And then there's operational stewards that are day to day defining producing and using data. So I'm not sure that you're going to get that out of data stewards certification.  Maybe they can educate them on what stewardship is and how stewardship is important. I just don't like the idea, obviously, of data stewardship certification. And I don't think it's really valuable but love to debate that with somebody if they were interested in debating about that. The seventh rule out of the eight are that there's more than one steward type or one steward for each data type. So there's going to be, there could be potentially if you talk about having silos of data within your organization, there may be three different people that define the same data differently in different parts of the organization. You want to know who those people are. There are multiple people that could be producing data there could be multiple. There's obviously multiple people that are using the data. And if they're being held accountable for what they do with the data then there's stewards of the data so obviously then the rule this rule applies that there's more than one data steward for each type of data. And if you have multiple people using the same data they all need to follow the rules associated with protecting that data for example. So students are people again help formally accountable for their relationship to the data. There's multiple people that are defining producing and using the same data. As I mentioned before and I've talked about it in other webinars focused on roles and responsibilities. There are multiple levels of data stewards. There are operational level stewards, and then there's the tactical stewards who are looking at the data more as a cross business unit asset to the organization. So operational stewards are very active as I said before within their business unit and the tactical stewards are accountable for data across business units. So what that means is that more than one data steward exists for each data type, and if you are an organization that says well, you know, Mary is the data steward of this data what do you mean by that, do you mean that they're the tactical steward of that data, or, you know, what do they play, you know, certainly understanding that there's a lot of people using customer data, for example. So there should be a lot of people that are have a relationship to that data. And if they're held accountable again they become stewards of the data. And then the final rule is the data steward training should focus on formalizing accountability. And so my first question would be well formalizing accountability for what. I wanted to just share with you formalizing accountability for the actions people take the data, now how people define data when they define data, how they produce data how they use data. All of these things are really critical data stewards need to be trained again as I mentioned before. If everybody is a data steward we can't expect them to just start doing data steward stuff. They need to be educated, they need to be trained on what it means. Why have they been identified and why have they been recognized as being stewards and how can they help to steward the data better for the organization. So that's just the, that's the eight rules and that's I just wanted to go through those quickly. And I think it makes sense that we should talk about why those rules are the rules, and how they kind of came to be the rules. But again, they're not the know all and be all make rules for your organization that makes sense to you, again, depending on the approach that you're taking. If you're taking a more of a command and control approach, you may be assigning specific individuals to be data stewards. So, again, make the rules the way that they need to be for your organization. Okay, so why are the rules, why the rules are the rules. Well, first of all, because they make sense, because this approach to recognizing people in the organization with relationships to the data is truly the only way to cover the entire organization. So the only way to cover the organization is to follow these rules, because it makes it easier to recognize people rather than to assign people as stewards, recognizing the stewards is less invasive. Let's go through each of these questions of why the rules are the rules. Well, first of all, I believe that the rules are practical and doable. And that's one of the things that you should be considering for your best practices to is anything that you define as best practice has to be practical and doable. So when you're defining rules don't define a rule is not achievable within your organization. So it just it makes sense and a lot of these rules make sense I mean that you would think that anybody who uses sensitive data would be held accountable for how they use that data. They're practical and they are doable within an organization it may add a level of complexity to your data governance program. But there's certainly a lot of organizations that are taking this to heart, and are starting to recognize people as stewards, rather than just assigning a handful, or a couple dozen people as being data stewards. The other criteria I use for best practices that you're at risk if it's not achieved. Well, if you take some other type of approach if you're assigned people to be data stewards, and you only have one type of data steward, your organization might be at risk. So you're at risk if you're taking some other action. That's one of the reasons why this rule, these rules are the rules, because I think they make sense. I think of another way of covering the entire organization. Go ahead and try to assign everybody in the organization into a role, it's not going to work, but if you recognize that people that use certain data are stewards. You know it makes it easier for you to cover the entire organization. The probably the most important thing is that because these rules are really non invasive, because again you're not giving people things that they don't already have, and people like the content they like things that don't give them more work.  So, think about how people will respond if you assign people to be data owners, or you assign people to be data stewards. The number one assumption should be that they're already busy more than 100% of the time. So, being assigned something is going to immediately feel as though it's new, and it's going to feel like it's over and above. And the question that they're going to have is well, what am I going to do, what am I not supposed to do when I'm spending my time being a data steward. People don't like being assigned to anything I don't like being assigned to anything being assigned to data steward might not be acceptable to people. Identifying people as data stewards. It also might not be that effective I mean it's nice to be identified, but unless there's any cloud or there's any reasoning behind the identification, it might not be that effective either. But recognizing people for what they do with the data and helping them to do it better. You know that assures that everybody who is active with data. If you can apply accountability for that activity. That's going to cover your entire organization. So back on January 3 2018 in the TN publication, I wrote an article that it was called everybody is a data steward get over it, because it's not until the idea that and I don't mean to be rude by saying get over it. Okay, maybe a little bit, but I'm not trying to be rude. It's just that people need to understand that potentially everybody in this in the organization is a steward of the data. Why are the rules the rules because it makes it easier to recognize people as stewards recognizing people into roles is a natural way of being able to figure out who does what with the data in the organization. There's a positive nature also as well as being recognized for something. So, instead of being assigned instead of just being identified, recognizing somebody into a role makes it a lot easier and it has a positive connotation that comes along with it. It's nice to be recognized for something. You know you're the idea of being non invasive is that you're not giving people accountability that they don't already supposedly have. If they're already accessing data that has rules associated with how they protect it. You're not being expected to follow those rules. So you're not really so formalizing that level of accountability is different than handing it to somebody is something it feels like it's something they didn't already have. So people cannot opt out of being recognized as a steward if you're producing a certain type of data, and you have accountability for the quality of the data that you're producing, you can't say no I'm not going to be a data steward of that data. You're naturally a data steward because you are the one who is is producing that data. And as I said before the recognizing the stewards is less invasive than assigning people to be data stewards. You know what I have seen in organizations that people are a lot more acceptable to being recognized into roles versus being assigned or being identified. Formalizing, you know I had this conversation with the client the other day who was telling me about how in reality they don't have tons of resources that are sitting around waiting to be stewards of the data. They were thinking that data stewardship is going to require a lot of resources and a lot of different parts of the organization. And that that's not necessarily true, because if you're just formalizing accountability where it already exists, you're not adding people. In fact, you're going to be saving them time, hopefully in the long run, and getting them to follow the rules. So, if you focus on formalizing behavior, rather than assigning new responsibility to people and thinking that you're going to need to add more people. The approach of recognizing stewards is it requires less resources in your organization, because you don't need if somebody's assigned something immediately they start thinking. Okay, we're going to need another person to do what I used to do. Well, no, that's not the case we're just going to build it into what you do. So recognizing stewards is less invasive than assigning or identifying people with stewards. And one of the most important things I'm recognizing recently is just getting stewards to recognize themselves as stewards is a really big win to the organization so recognizing the appropriate people into the role of data steward is important and it's great. But getting people to recognize themselves as being stewards is even better. And I wrote an article a little while ago and Tina and I talked about how data stewards should expect a raise. And by raise I don't mean financially yes it would be wonderful if all the stewards would receive a raise, but it's more of a raise in their stature within the organization. If you're recognized as being a knowledgeable person around a certain subject area of data, and that that certainly raises your stature within the organization, because people are going to come to you when they have questions about your data. And, you know, again getting stewards to recognize themselves. It saves you the, the work of going out and tagging them and telling their them that their data stewards. It just, it's natural people when people get to the point where they realize that they themselves are data stewards and you don't even need to tell them that you've kind of won the game of building stewardship into people's daily activities, because they already understand that they're stewards of the data, and getting people getting the stewards to take their role seriously, and to actively engage. That's when you know your program has been successful is when people are starting to engage because they recognize that they are themselves, the subject matter experts, the knowledgeable people about the data. Let's talk about how to create custom rules.  They, they must also be operationalized by you. So it's important to make certain that the rules that you define are operational. They must be communicated and sold by you. And I suggest that if this is the way that you're going to go about recognizing, or getting people to be stewards. If you're going to buy into the construct of the fact that everybody is a data steward. Do you need to take that to your leadership. Maybe it's so it would be an education for them that there's different levels of people as stewards. So, first of all, they must be defined by you. The rules for becoming a data steward are defined by the program administration. They're typically then approved by the program leadership. Oftentimes they will they have to be shared with the program participants, and that they have to be enforced by the program execution. So when you're defining the rules, you need to make certain that they're going to be practical and doable in your organization, and that people are accepting the idea that they're stewards of the data. And it takes effort it takes a communication plan takes effort to get people in the organization to start to recognize themselves as being data stewards. But again, maybe this is a change of direction for your program where you already have people that you've assigned to be data stewards. So what are some of the ways that you can operationalize the figuring out who the stewards are, you can build it in, you can build the stewardship into your existing projects. You can build it into existing programs information security programs are a level of governance within your organization. It's going to help you to know who does what with the data and help you to recognize who some of your users are, or who's even defining the rules associated with the protection of the data, just kind of building it into other existing governance like programs will help you to operationalize those rules for becoming or for determining who the data stewards are within your organization. And I would also suggest to organizations when they're looking to define return on investment for data governance, that they don't actually look at data governance. I suggest that oftentimes, since there's oftentimes a lot more investment being made in new technologies within the organization the creation of an analytical platform creation of a data lake, or a data warehouse just to use a few. financial investment in those. And if the data isn't trusted and the data is not governed and is not of high quality, then they should expect that the return on investment in those investments is going to suffer. So building the in the operas operates operationalization of data governance. Hard to say that word. How you building it into these new and existing investments in these initiatives is important as well. And that's one way that you're going to find naturally who they're talking to within the organization. If you're involving within the organization from a data definition, production and usage perspective. It's going to help you to figure out who your data stewards are, build it into project management. I typically suggest that the project management and the PMO is a partner to your data governance program. If we can build governance into the projects. We can build the recognition of who the stewards are in the organization into the projects to. If you're starting from scratch, or you're you start to believe that potentially everybody is a steward. Figure out who are the people that we're engaging within these projects. They're most likely the most knowledgeable people about the data. Maybe these are the people who are the stewards of the data. Again, it's a natural fit, just to recognize people in the organization for what they do. And I have several organizations I'm working with right now that their idea is to take some of the, the onus the the responsibility of the data governance manager take some of their responsibilities and hand it to the data stewards and get the stewards to do their quote unquote dirty work. So the more that they could engage these people that have now been recognized or recognize themselves as being data stewards, and we can get them engaged in building a glossary building a data dictionary, determining what data resources they use, what reports they're creating. Get them to work cataloging some of this information. They're actually doing some of the dirty work of the administration of the program. Just like anything with data governance data garden, the rules associated with becoming a data steward they need to be sold to the organization. So again the theory of everybody being a data steward must be defined it must be explained. It must be done consistently across the organization. And that doesn't mean that it's you're going to cover the entire organization, all at once, but you want to be consistent in the way that you're the whole theory or idea of everybody being a data steward. Get people to sign on as data stewards through the through as you're executing the program. If people reject the idea of them being a data steward. So one of my good friends when Thomas I'm sure you've seen her at a data diversity event before she shared something with me that has stuck with me said if people don't want to be data stewards, say that's okay. We'll make decisions around your data without you. And they will say no no no you can't do that you need to involve me. Well that's why we came to you in the first place. So if people say they don't want to be or they reject the idea of being recognized as a steward say okay well then we won't involve you in the conversations around your data and see how they respond. Oftentimes they're going to come back and say you know what, you need to engage me. And that that is a good way to start the conversation. And most people will agree that they are stewards until until they find that you're being asked to do things that they don't want to do. So keep that in mind while you're communicating data stewardship and the rules for becoming a data steward to people across your organization. And the, the last idea of how to create custom rules is remember that these rules have to be approved by your leadership, because again if they may help you to identify who your tactical level stewards are to get them to understand what if we want to change the culture of the organization, if we want to become more literate, there's a potential that we need to really embrace and change the culture of the entire organization. And we need to govern data as an asset that means we need to recognize the people who define the data, we need to recognize the people who are producing the data, and the people that use the data and help them to define produce and use the data better. As I said, anybody in your organization that defines produces and uses data as part of their job, if they're being held formally accountable for those actions that they take with the data, their data stewards. It's not it really an option for them to opt in or opt out. So as I said everybody is approved as a data steward, you know you want to make certain that people recognize themselves, and that you at least are building into your program the idea that everybody is a data steward. All right, let's quickly to talk about how to apply the data stewardship roles. Recognize people as stewards as I said before, get people to recognize themselves, recording who the stewards are on boarding those people as stewards to help them to understand, you know why they are data stewards engage people as data stewards as well. You know what it is or recognize people as data stewards, pick an issue or an opportunity. If there's a use case that you're working on or something and you know who the people are that are involved in the resolution of that issue. Potentially they're the stewards of the data you're naturally recognizing them because they're the people that the organization will go to to solve a problem. Use any issue or any opportunity, or even think of any question that you might receive through an email today. Who are you going to go to to get that question answered. Is that person the subject matter expert for that data is that person an operational steward, you can start to recognize people as stewards, just in any opportunity or any issue that comes. Same thing holds true for a project. For a project you're going to engage the right people at the right time. I talk about it as being the data governance bill of rights, getting the right people involved in the right time, the right way, and the right step. So pick a project start to apply it, you'll start very quickly to recognize the people that are the stewards of the data, because they're the people you're already involving in these projects, pick a subject area. Okay, when we talk about customer data we always bring Mary into the conversation, you could very naturally recognize who your stewards are, or pick a part of the organization and say, who do we go to within this part of the organization. And about this type of data. Again, very easy for you to begin to recognize who the stewards are and pick a champion or two or five or six within your organization and recognize them as being stewards as well. Again, it's not difficult to recognize people as stewards, get people to recognize themselves as stewards, use everyday business and technical meetings as an opportunity, you know, conversations with these people lead to data that they know about, and get them to recognize that, well, is it okay if I come back to you when I have question about this data and if they answer yes, and say you know what, you're a steward of the data because you're the person that we want people to be directed to when they have a question about the data. And oftentimes people will then acknowledge and say, well, yes, I guess I am a data steward or I am a steward of the data. So get people to recognize themselves as stewards is one way to apply the data stewardship rules, and then through those natural processes that I just talked about is another way to go about doing it. It's important once you start to recognize who the stewards are that you record who the stewards are. In fact, I have a client recently that is not even referring to them as business data stewards anymore at the tactical level. They're just referring to them as business stewards, because they are the stewards of the process they are stewards of the communications they are the stewards of the data at the tactical level. They're just referring to the word data from their title and just refer to them as business stewards. You know, knowing who your stewards are at some point somebody's going to ask who do I go to when I have a question about this, you know, formally document the people that define produce and use data. Use something like a common data matrix and I've shared this tool and I'm not going to go through it in a lot of detail because we're going to run out of time here real quickly and I want to kick it back to Shannon. But, you know, you start to record this information at some point in time you're going to want to know who all the people are that define producing use data from different sources, different resources within your organization. You want to onboard people as data stewards is another way of applying data stewardship roles. Don't expect that people are going to know how to do quote unquote data stewards stuff as I mentioned earlier. You know, being a steward is a new concept to a lot of people so make sure that they understand what you're talking about, look for ways to engage them. I wrote an article on T Dan it's actually on the pages of T Dan now called empower your stewards with a data governance toolkit. So go look that provide them with tools that will help them to become better stewards and be there to answer their questions about what it means to be a data steward, provide them with formal education and training as well. And as I mentioned engage people in meetings and programs and projects through the intake process. And if we can help people to recognize, not only what they steward but who they are responsible for stewarding, where they steward when they steward why they steward, all these types of things. You can start to apply stewardship right where these stewards of the data within your organization are being most active. The last thing I want to talk about then Shannon I'm going to kick it back to you is, you know how do these rules add value within the organization. First thing is they cover the entire organization I'd love to hear from somebody, if they found another way, other than just recognizing people for what they do to cover the entire organization. They assign people anything they formalize accountability. We'll just go into just thinking about the idea of assigning somebody versus identifying versus recognizing somebody as being a data steward. I truly believe that the only way to cover the entire organization is to recognize those people that have a relationship to the data and help them just do what the data better. So that's one way that it adds value is it makes certain that it covers the entire organization, not just those 18 data stewards that you've named so far within your organization. In this approach, these people are not being assigned anything. People already have day jobs they're already overburdened and stretched extremely thin and what they do. And oftentimes the reason why they're overburdened and the reason why they're stretched extremely thin is because of how much time they take wrangling the data it's oftentimes because of the data that people feel overtaxed and overburdened. If you make their life more challenging people are going to resist the idea, they're going to rebel back against data governance. So again, don't assign people to be data stewards. It really doesn't work people don't like to be assigned anything. But do formalize their accountability and recognize what their actions are that they're already taking with data and do the things that you need to do to help to hold them formally accountable for how they define data. How they how they produce data and how they use data. I always use as my definition of data governance that data governance is the execution and enforcement of authority. I was thinking just even part of this webinar, changing it to data governance is the execution and enforcement of accountability. Because if it comes down to your data stewards doing the right thing and being held accountable, data governance is certainly the execution and enforcement of accountability. And so the aim as I mentioned before I talk often about what I refer to as the data governance bill of rights and the word rights is within quotes, because it's getting the right person at the right time to the right reason with the right data to make the right decision, you can write your own bill of rights. I refer to it as the data governance bill of rights. It is truly what data governance is all about is getting the right people to do the right thing in the right way, and those right people are the stewards. I say you've won data governance, you've won the game of data governance when you build it into what people do. So the stewards of the data with that you build it into what they do, rather than handing it to them as something that's brand new to them. You've won the data governance game. So hopefully these rules will help you as you move forward with recognizing who the stewards are within your organization. As I always say, everybody is a data steward get over it.  So what did we talk about today I shared with you those eight rules for becoming a data steward, why the rules are the rules, how to create your own. I hope this was helpful to you through the session. And at this point, I am going to kick it back to Shannon to see if there's any questions. Thank you so much for another great presentation. And if you have any questions for Bob feel free to submit them in the Q&A portion of the screen and lots of questions coming in here so diving in. And just to answer the most commonly asked question just a reminder I will send a follow up email for this webinar by end of day Monday with links to the slides and links to the recording along with anything else requested here. Bob, why do we need to differentiate data governance from metadata governance. You know what that's a great question I'm not sure that you really need to, but people need to understand that the metadata is not on its own, going to improve. So there needs to be specific, you don't have to have something called master data governance either or big data governance or BI data governance. So you're right, you don't really need to differentiate between the two if you can apply the same rules that you apply to data governance to your metadata. And it does really start with the definers the producers and the users of the data, the definers producers and users of the metadata. So I only differentiate between the two, because I think it's important for people to recognize that the metadata will not govern itself. Good question. Thank you. Agreed. So, I'm interested to hear what your opinion is about the dama dnbock, the data body, data management body of knowledge. I think I've seen it once or twice. Now, what do I think about it. I think it is a, a good framework or at least it highlights the most important knowledge areas that need to be addressed by data management practitioners. I see as the dnbock goes from version one to two that there's some of those knowledge areas in the in the dama wheel per se are changing. You know, they change they're updated with the times. The one thing that doesn't change is what smack in the middle of the framework, which is data governance. There needs to be applied through all of those things. I think it's an excellent framework for using to evaluate maturity within an organization if you want to focus on specific knowledge areas. So if that's what you're looking for that's my thoughts on the dnbock. How can we really assign the data steward role to people. How can we enforce the critical authority being emphasized here. Well, so you're saying that if you don't go and assign somebody to be a data steward, who uses your executives financial data their salary information, you know, people need to be held accountable for just their relationship to the data they need to be assigned that I think it's a matter of accountability within the organization. It's the question of how do we hold somebody formally accountable for something. You don't have to assign them that they probably already have that. And even were trained or were on boarded with the company to know that they, if they use sensitive data here's the rules associated with how you need to protect that data. So I think that the, you don't need to assign people you can recognize people, but you need to help them then to be held formally accountable for that relationship. That's another good, really good question. But think about you being on the receiving end of being assigned something and how you feel about it. It doesn't change. If you don't want to go around assigning people to protect sensitive data. Because I mean you have to assign everybody who uses sensitive data to protect it was a good question. Shannon we can do a webinar on that. We could it's true. So, but common problems that people not following data governance rules is because the consequences are lenient or non existent so what are some examples of consequences that motivate people to follow the rules being enforced. I think you've hit on why I define data governance as the execution and enforcement of authority, because somebody needs to enforce the rules you're right. If the rule in the United States was that you're supposed to drive on the right side of the road and you don't drive on the right side of the road, you drive on the left side of the road if you don't kill somebody, you're going to get a ticket for that. So, you've got to follow the rules and you know, I forget what was the second half of the question 10 and Shannon about how do you enforce them. So what are examples of some consequences that motivate people. Yeah. Well, financial consequences, losing your job, being reprimanded for doing things that don't follow the rules. There are typical kind of consequences. I mean, giving people warning when they're sharing data that they shouldn't be sharing is fine until somebody in the news catches that and it becomes front page news that, you know, data is being shared by this company in a way it's supposed to be. So, you know, people need accountability is what it all comes down to right and holding people formally accountable has to do with the execution and enforcement of authority. So if there are no repercussions for not behaving properly, people are going to go on doing whatever they want to do. And these are some good questions today, Shannon. Great questions. Yeah, so um, um, this. I think I know the answer to this question but does the steward also quote unquote on the data. No. Data Stewart and I'm sorry my my next door neighbors lawn guys just came so I don't know if you can hear that through the through my microphone here. But no they don't own the data owning the organization owns the data. The term steward if you look it up in the definition is by definition, somebody who takes care of something for somebody else. So it doesn't mean that they they own it. First of all, people are going to be willing more willing to steward the data than they are to own the data and the consequences associated with the data. I don't think I think the word steward is is maybe softer. And ultimately somebody has to have the decision making authority. Maybe you call them the owner. But again I like the idea of stewarding better than I like the idea of owning the data. And what, and but what is a data custodian. It's just a different name somebody has given to the role of the data steward. I mean, I guess it can be defined specifically within an organization. It's not a it's not a roll name that I use often at all if ever. But it is, you know, sometimes the custodian is somebody who's just making certain that the data is clean. Think of it in terms of like a custodian within your within your company, the person that's coming to clean up afterwards. I really want to view a custodian as being that way I don't like the term custodian, but that's how I interpret it. Oh, with a common data matrix be shared along with slides and yes, we have that, unless you have an updated version but we have that to leave. Anybody, anybody who has questions about it can feel free to feel free to reach out and ask questions about it. Well, there's so many other great questions but I'm afraid that is all the time that we have for this webinar. I will get these questions over to Bob will get the answers to you in the follow up email which again will go out by entity Monday with links to the slides and links to the recording as well. Thank you everybody for hanging out there with us and being such great attendees and being so engaged in everything we do we just love it and Bob thank you so much as always for another great presentation. And thanks everybody thanks for the great questions today. Thanks y'all. Have a good day.


Hello, I'm Stacy. I'm a GIS analyst with a natural capital project and I'm glad that you've joined me to learn some techniques for working with the geospatial data that is used by the Invest Ecosystem Services modeling toolkit. This episode provides an introduction to working with digital elevation models. To get the most out of this tutorial, I highly recommend following along in your own GIS session. In this video, we will demonstrate techniques in ArcGIS and we'll be working with some sample data, which is linked to on the web page for this video. And in several previous episodes, we worked with data in Nepal. So we will continue with that location in this video. If you happen to have an ArcGIS session saved from those earlier episodes, then you can use it again now. If you don't, that's totally fine too, just open up a new session. So if you haven't already, now is a good time to pause this video, download the sample data, unzip it, and bring up an ArcGIS session before continuing. The digital elevation model or DEM is a raster with an elevation value for each pixel. A DEM is required by the freshwater models NDR or nutrient, SDR or sediment, and seasonal water yield. And for these models, it's important that the DEM represent the areas hydrology correctly. Coastal vulnerability also requires a DEM, but it's not as important to get the hydrology correct for that model. A DEM can be obtained from many different sources, and often these sources have global coverage like NASA or hydro sheds. And if you compare multiple DEMs in the same place, you'll find that each one is different, some more accurate than others in that particular location. Then if you look at a different location, you may find that some other DEM is more accurate. So they are highly variable, but one thing that's pretty much guaranteed is that none are perfect. I have never found a DEM that perfectly matches a real-world stream network, and many don't even come close. So be aware that you may need to try several before finding one that works well enough for your purposes. Regardless of the DEM that you decide on, you'll probably need to do several steps of preparation before it's ready to be used with an investment model. These steps include merging raw DEM tiles into a mosaic, checking for missing data in that mosaic, projecting to whatever coordinate system you're using for your analysis, filling sinks, verifying the stream network that's created from that DEM, and creating watersheds that will be the area of interest that you use for your modeling. Now in this tutorial, we will work through the first four of these steps, and to keep each episode from being too long, we'll cover the next steps like creating the stream network and watersheds in separate videos. Along with this video, the Invest User Guide has a section called Working with the DEM, which provides an overview of the different steps involved, as well as the methods and GIS tools that can be used. A link to that User Guide chapter is included in this video's webpage. Alright, let's go to a GIS session now and work through some of these steps. Open a file explorer window to the folder containing our sample data. The sample data folder is called Preparing the DEM data. Inside of this folder are five rasters with Aster G DEM data, along with a paper describing the dataset. I downloaded these tiles from NASA, the US Spacia Agency, which provides several global DEM products. Now let's drag and drop all five of these two layers into our GIS. The DEM data can be pretty large. It is broken up into smaller tiles. And so we often need to download multiple tiles to cover our entire study area. In this case, for the area that we're modeling in Nepal, we need five tiles to cover the whole watershed that we're interested in. Well, because the invest models require just a single DEM raster as input, we will need to combine these tiles into one raster. To do this, we'll use the mosaic to new raster tool. So let's go to data management tools, and then raster, and then raster dataset. And then we're going to open up the tool that's called mosaic to new raster. The first input are the input rasters. So we're going to drag all five of these rasters into the tool. Now, in this case, the output location only refers to the folder where you want to save the output raster. It does not refer to the raster itself, and this can be a little confusing. So let's navigate to whatever wherever you want to save your data. I'm going to save it in the same place that I have my sample data. And I'm going to create a new folder. That's called DEM underscore output. Now, of course, you can name it something different, but this is what I'll name it. And we'll just single click on that folder and then say add. Next is the actual raster file name. Often I am a big fan of giving very explanatory file names, but let's keep it short for right now and I'm going to call it just DEM underscore mosaic. Now, we're going to save this as a TIFF file. Now the spatial reference is the coordinate system that we want the output to be in. And for now we won't set that. We'll do the reprojection step separately, and we have a good reason for doing that. All right, for pixel type, we need to choose the same type that the input rasters have. And for some reason, by default, ArcGIS does not pick up on this. So let's just right click on one of these tiles. Any one of them is fine and go down to the properties. And if we click on the source tab, we can look at the pixel type, which is signed integer, and the pixel depth, which is 16 bit. All right, so now we know that the data type is a 16 bit signed integer. All right, we can cancel this. And under the pixel type, let's choose 16 bit signed. All right, for the cell size, we don't need to specify this. It's optional because the tool will detect it automatically. For number of bands, we will type in a value of one. And since this raster, the rasters only have one band, and that band contains the elevation data. For the last two entries, I usually leave them as the defaults. Sometimes it's useful to choose a different mosaic operator, especially if you run the tool and the output maps have problems along the edges, where the tiles are stitched together. Now, usually this is not a problem. So we're going to leave them as the default. Let's click OK to run the tool. And then we can close this window. Now we have a stitched together DEM raster. One thing that it's worth doing at this point is to make sure that there are no holes or areas of missing data in the map. One quick way to do this is through symbology. So let's open up the properties window and click on the symbology tab. And there's an option in this window called display no data as. And we can pick a color. And if you set this to a very bright, very obvious color, it will let us see if any pixels have a value of no data within our study area. This is a color that works well for you. I'm going to choose this very bright pink color and say OK. Now we can take a quick scan around the map. The first thing we can see is that there are areas of no data right along the edges of the map. And of course, in this big area where we have no DEM data. And that's perfectly fine. What we're concerned about is if there are any no datas within the area where we have elevation data. So we can zoom in a little bit, and we can do a quick pan around, and we can verify that it looks like we aren't missing any data within our area of interest. So that's great. Now if we did find no data within the study area, then we'd need to consider how to fill them, since having holes can cause lots of problems with hydrology models. Sometimes it causes them to throw an error. And even if there is not an error, the missing data will interrupt the flow path in that part of the watershed, which will lead to incorrect results. Now learning how to fill holes in DEM data is a whole other world that we won't get into right now, since it's not required very often. But you can get ideas for how to deal with them by reading the user guide section, working with the DEM. Now that we have our mosaic tiles, the next step is to re-project this DEM to have the same projected coordinate system that we are using for our analysis. So let's open up the re-project tool by going to the toolbox, projections and transformations, raster. Now we're going to open up the tool, project raster. Our input raster is the mosaic DEM that we just created. And I called this DEM mosaic.tif. So I'm going to drag that into the interface. To do that, the tool will automatically populate the input coordinate system for us. And we can see that currently it has this very standard geographic coordinate system of WGS 1984. All right, next we'll define the output data set. So again, let's navigate to the folder where we're storing our tutorial data. I'm going to keep using the folder that I just created called DEM underscore output. And I'm going to call this output raster DEM underscore projected.tif. All right, so DEM underscore projected.tif. And hit save. So we talked about coordinate systems in a previous episode. Suffice to say now that it is up to you to choose the coordinate system that you will use for your project. And you need to make sure that all of your spatial data uses it. The data models and invest require that all layers have the same projected coordinate system, not a geographic coordinate system. And one very standard projected coordinate system is UTM. And that's what we'll use now. So over here next to output coordinate system, click on this box. This area in Nepal is in UTM zone 45 north. So the easy way to do this is to type this in at the search bar at the top of the window. So type in UTM zone 45 N. And then hit your enter key. All right, so it will provide you with whatever options you have that it has that fit your search string. So we'll expand this projected coordinate system tab. Then we'll expand UTM and WGS 1984. Northern Hemisphere and there we go. We have UTM zone 45 north. Now let's click okay. We don't need to supply a geographic transformation. So in this case, it is very important to select a different resampling technique, even though it says that it's optional. Because by default, the tool use nearest neighbor resampling. And that works great for categorical data like land use, and it can be used in many cases, but it should not be used for resampling DEM data. So in this example DEM data with nearest neighbor, the hydrology layers that are derived from the DEM like flow direction and flow accumulation will probably have this weird grid pattern to them that is very incorrect. And that leads to the creation of bad flow patterns, bad streams and bad model output. So I usually use bilinear. So in this case, let's just select bilinear. Next is the output cell size. From reading the Aster G DEM documentation, which is included in the tutorial sample data, I know that the data resolution is 30 meters. Now the tool automatically populates with a value that is very close to 30, but not quite. Similarly, I prefer my data resolution to be in nice round numbers. So I'm going to type in 30 for the X cell size and 30 for the Y. It's a good time to note that the freshwater models that use a DEM, which is SDR and ER and seasonal water yield. For example, all of your other spatial inputs to match the resolution of the DEM. And your output rasters will have the same resolution as your DEM. So just remember that. Now finally we do not need to set a registration point. So we can just click OK. Right, I'm going to turn off some of these other layers. Now one thing to note is that the output raster has slightly different high and low values than the input mosaic did. That's a result of the bilinear resampling that's done during reprojection, and that's generally okay. Now the last thing we'll do in this tutorial is fill sinks in the DEM. These are errors in the DEM data where one pixel is much higher or much lower in elevation than the pixels around it, and that's not how it really is on the landscape. Now sinks cause all sorts of problems when modeling hydrology, but we can usually fix them using the ArcGIS fill tool. So let's go down to spatial analyst and under the hydrology section. We have a tool called fill. Let's open up the fill tool. Now the input surface raster is our projected DEM. And for output surface raster. We'll do the same thing of navigating to our output folder. We're going to call it DEM underscore fill dot TIF. DEM underscore fill dot TIFF. And I've never had a reason to use the Z limit option. So we're just going to leave that blank. Now click okay. The fill tool can take a long time to run, especially if you are using a DEM that's very large, or that's very high resolution. Now I'll just hang out here for a minute while it runs, but feel free to pause the video if yours is taking longer. All right, again, we can look at the high and low elevation values. It now looks like the low value is much different. So the tool seems to have filled the pixels that have those negative elevation values. And that's probably a good thing because we are working in the Himalaya. And so we probably don't have any areas that are below sea level. Now one thing to do is to click on and off the filled layer. When you do that, can you see these dark areas right in here where my mouse is circling. I'm going to zoom in the projected layer, but they're not so visible in the filled layer. Let's zoom into one of those and let's see what's going on. I'm going to zoom into these spots right here, but it doesn't really matter where you zoom into just pick some of these areas that are very dark. And let's use the identify tool to see what the different values are. Right now we're just going to look at the DEM projected layer and I have turned off the filled layer. So let's see what the original value is inside one of these really dark pixels with very low elevation values. The elevation value inside of this for the pixel I clicked on is 568 meters. Now if we click just outside of this area, the elevation value is 5,422 meters. Now that is a really big difference. And even though we're working in the Himalaya, it's probably not what's actually happening on the landscape. So let's close that and turn back on this filled layer. Now if we click inside of this area, we see that the filled value is now around 5100 meters. And that's significantly different than the 568 meters that it was before being filled. Right, so that 5100 meter value seems much more reasonable. But of course we do need to keep in mind that this is the Himalaya. So if you this was a real world project, one thing you could do to verify would be to use a satellite base map to visually inspect this area. Right, but we won't do that now, you can do that on your own for homework. Okay, that's enough for this session. Now that the DEM is prepared, the next steps involve creating a good stream network and delineating the watershed that is your area of interest, and we will cover these in future episodes. If you have any questions or comments about this episode, we'd love to hear from you on our community forum. There's a link to the forum in this video's webpage, where you can search for previous posts and create a new post under the category of training. I and other techies at Nat Cap will see your post, and we'll respond as soon as we can. Thanks for following along.


Welcome to sister to sister. This is a good show. This is an important show We're asking a question like this what someone wrote what do I do if my child seems gender-confused? And I'm confused about something okay Is it okay to spend money on luxuries or should we be giving all of our monies to God and to the needy ah? Stay tuned find out love our sister to sister music I do yes I really do and I'm really glad that you're with us You have joined a panel of five Opinionated women of God and we bring questions that you send to us from our hearts We put it on the table and tell you what we think so this first well first I want to welcome Angela Madden today. Hi Angela sitting in for a float today. We're so glad that you're with us So glad to be here. This is gonna be there's a couple tough questions in here So good luck is all I say okay. Oh as a matter of fact this one I can't believe you wrote this you did you wrote can your virginity be restored? Hmm. How do I deal with regret? Okay, since you're new Well, I love the question because I think that it speaks to God's character. He's the God of restoration He restores all things Jeremiah 30 and 17 for I will restore thee and I will heal thee of that Wounds say at the Lord because they called the an outcast Saying this is the Zion who no man seeketh after and I think a lot of times all throughout the New Testament We see Jesus the number one thing he was doing was showing compassion to restore The person and to heal their body and so I don't think this is any different from anything else that we need Restoration from and in that very place of restoration Not only does he restore our bodies and our minds and heal us from that But he also lists that weight of guilt and shame and so how do you deal with regret?  Yes, where are your accusers? She forgave herself. She did not stone herself and that's what we're doing When we think Jesus can't forgive us. It's unbelief and what does he say? He protects her from the those that stone they all go and he says Go and sin no more. How do we do it? Okay? You made a mistake. We all do we're all sinners Maybe in different places. I didn't make this mistake, but I've made other mistakes So what do we do we go and sin no more? We do our best to please our Lord And if we don't fall back Jesus come to the rescue again. We repent I love how you took the question and made it about all sin. That's so good But do you have something for virginity? There's actually like a movement I don't know there's a term like some people may or not have heard of it in Christianity called secondary virginity So, I mean you're technically, you know never going to be a virgin again, right?  I messed up I I want to you know put this before you I am going to now abstain Okay, so that's an important part of it. I thought the most important part is repentance for sure for sure But this next question is good too in a world of instant gratification How do I teach my children to trust have faith and keep their joy? While they're waiting on god to answer our prayer so so good Roxanne, what do you have? Yeah, and you know the thing about Bringing joy to your life is not fulfilling it with outside things The real key to joy is pleasing the lord So when we're trying to wait for instant gratification, we have to remember this It's not so much about what pleases me, but what is pleasing god Where is his stance on the gratification? Is it prayer? Is it praise? Is it worship? Is it a lifestyle?  You're going to stumble. That's fine. That's a part of learning But hit the mark and don't be distracted From hitting the mark. Well, Amy, what are we doing that? We're they're waiting for an answer. Right. Well, I mean, what are we doing? I'm waiting I mean, I'm in a culture of instant gratification. I can be addicted to my phone I mean, I feel like I'm right in this with them But we're constantly talking to our children about two things self control and sacrifice If you don't sacrifice today, you will not have tomorrow If you've got to wait on the lord, you have to have self control Everything shouldn't be given to you all at once just because you expect it or demand it What we put the demand on is the promises of god for our life And we know when we prayed that he's heard us when we prayed he hears us He's going to answer us and we wait on his perfect timing and there's a million stories to back up Many scriptures on this but those who wait on the lord will renew their strength They will rise up with wings like eagles. They will run and grow.  That's really good. What do you have who has something for me? I literally said the same exact thing as any I was like they need to see it in our lives. That's how our children are going to learn it Is by seeing that we're not doing instant gratification And not just in like, I mean in everything not just in praying about things It's just like in everything like we're not just going out and buying everything We're saving up for things It's just in everything they need to see that example in our lives And you know, maybe we can't afford to like go out and buy something right now Or we can't like they like we need to tell the stories of the times where we prayed and prayed and prayed for something Or they need to see where we saved up and bought like that We need to share those stories of faith and times I prayed for my grandma to get saved for years and years every single day I prayed for her when I was a teenager and right before she died She accepted the lord as her savior. I need to share that story with my children So they can see that I mean we have those stories of faith in the word of god Of all those, you know, the people of faith that has passed down to us We need to pass that down to our children personal story to your kids too. What do you have, Angela? I love that sharing those stories and actually putting it in practice with your children in the little things Like don't give them. Oh, they want the iPad right now. They don't have to have the iPad right now Let's put parameters around that and teach them when you wait for it.   You know, I think that really a lot of times like parenting We have to put it in practice for them in these little places So then when it comes to the big ones those are easy. Well, I love what you said You keep asking because sometimes with the lord I keep asking, you know, perhaps I've asked the same prayer Many many many years, but god knows my heart and hits his time not mine Okay, this last question is really good too This is the one that I talked about in the promo and you sent it to us. We appreciate this What should I do if my child seems gender confused such a hot topic for today? Amy, I'm giving it to you pastor. Amy. No, no, I mean this is just right in our face You know as we're celebrating pride month and we're seeing what's happening at target and we're seeing all the companies pushing Really a sexual preference agenda upon us whether we want it or not So I wanted to bring a book that I want to reference and it's called engendered What was god thinking by patsy camminetti? A phenomenal bible school teacher, you know my bible school very solid in the word And she breaks it all down So I just wanted to read a couple of lines from this new book that might help Actually, it's like within the past five years Okay, so that was written a bit ahead of like where we're at right now So like in the beginning god separated the sexes. Let us make male and female. He separated the sexes, which is important The sex chromosomes you're either xx or xy they're given at conception And how the baby develops before birth determines the sex identified when the baby is born We know that apart from a person's spirit. There is nothing more core to his or her identity than his or her sex This is why it's under such Huge violent attack because satan wants to attack our very Identity in the core of who we are The person's sex Determined by their dna at the time of conception is stamped into every cell of their body And remains the same in spite of all modifications And she's talking about in this gender dysphoria gender identity gender confusion And what that looks like and she said there can be a variety of reasons why a person becomes disoriented regarding the sex He or she was conceived and born as many of them are intimate some tragic some a temporary phase But she says this when the body and the soul are at odds with each other there is gender confusion And psalm 119 the entrance of god's word gives light. So if we see our children What we go to is not what we think not how we think it should be Not how we designed it to be not what the world is telling them or what that book said But we got we have to go to an absolute truth source and find out well How did god create you and then we speak those words of value and god's word and god's light into that child We are all dealing with identity issues And we all have to hear what god says about it and the entrance of his word will bring light And expose any darkness or hidden agendas of the enemy. I can't believe that book was written five years ago Because the bruce Jenner thing was that five years ago. So this is relatively new anybody Have something for us To talk to the people their child seems gender confused. I think one thing important though is to say um There's I mean there's really nothing that you can't do as a boy or a girl Except what's limited by biology So, uh, you know, I I just want to you know say to my little boy or my little girl like you can do anything You know what I mean? You're not limited by Like what career you want to go into or what toy you want to play with or you know, there's you know I think that there's You know, they there's this feeling like you're gonna you're so limited by What gender you are and I don't think there's yeah, there's there's not you're not limited On your roles and I think that I think that we need to you know Not limited them on their athletics or their toys or their the roles they want to play I don't think we have to say like okay my little girl You can't play with the legos or you can't play with like I think we need to let them play with nurses Doctors presidents pastors That's awesome, buddy Let me make sure we're keeping those lines of communications open and really listen to our child and make sure we're not shutting them down If they are coming to us with gender confusion and that we're not Being like super hyper like they're only gonna ever wear pinker They're only ever gonna wear blue and we're not gonna let them play with because they're confused I'm gonna be like super hyper to the you know one side or the other because we're so scared About their confusion. I think that we need to really be careful about that I have a question. What do we tell our children who are seeing this every day? That's even different question What do we tell our children? What do you tell your kids? Angela? So I tell them the truth and I say you know It's really sad because a lot of times people just get confused in their mind And we know confusion is not sourced in the father who is peace And when we trust in him his perfect peace comes in and guides and leads us into all goodness And so with this in particular I I apologize for the mom or the father who is really struggling in this space And I know it can be overwhelming and it can leave you distraught And I just want to let you know first and foremost There's always hope in jesus that prayer it by prayer Everything by prayer and so he is our source and just to encourage you there But um, I also think that it's really important. Amy hit on it in the book is that Identity as who we are in christ jesus through the word Let that word flow over them and into them that they may walk in the truth of who's they are first and foremost When you walk in the truth everything else is flooded You know, um, one of the scriptures that I like it says for where envy and self-seeking exists Confusion and every evil thing are there. So when we focus on ourselves so much It can get us completely off track and focusing on oh what's going on I'm so confused in here, but when you focus on the word it's set straight. Yeah, I have nothing to add To that. Thank you. Okay. We'll be right back.  Well your quarry's my bling girl too, but listen to this Is it you said this? Is it wrong to spend money on luxuries such as designer clothes a special nails spas vacations Rather than giving it to god or the truly needy. Oh my gosh pastor. Amy. Okay before I say my opinions The scripture is this seek first the kingdom of god And his righteousness and then all these things are added under you Those things are not what we seek. I I don't live for things. I don't live for stuff That's not the center of my focus. That's not the center of my heart. That is not my purpose however I am a king's kid And my king my father has streets of gold Gates of pearls when I get there He's going to give me crowns and I'm going to lay at his feet that are full of jewels and He created everything in the earth for our enjoyment and our pleasure And so I do believe that When your priority is first the kingdom And god blesses you I think that he wants you to enjoy life as well Some people enjoy it in different ways, whether it's Exquisite trips or a designer belt or shoes I mean when I walk in the shoe section, I feel the angels.  My focus isn't shoes. It's not what I'm dreaming of thinking of I'm thinking kingdom building his kingdom And I am a huge giver that I will say confidently and you know what? I do enjoy nice I wish that your shoes fit me If I need something you're the first person to say come over to closet amy Amazing Yeah, I'd like to say something about this when I look at the scripture There was the self-righteous rich young ruler. Yes. Yes, there was the perfect man and then there was the tax collector So the perfect man comes I've obeyed all the law. So how can I what can I do? I love god and and and jesus says well sell everything you have and follow me He tested him In his self-righteousness He was self-righteous. Jesus doesn't ask everybody to give everything up, but he said he was perfect But you lack one thing you feel yourself righteous So you got to give up these things and follow me He couldn't do it because he held on to them. Amy said you see gods So then there's the tax collector In uh luke 19 He repented. He was rich. What did he do? He gave Everything back.  The man was repentant. It was his own Conviction I need to give everything back. I stole one four times over and I'm gonna have half of what I give to the poor Yep. Oh my gosh. This question literally drives me crazy. I cannot stand This kind of question it even asking this question to me is like self-righteous Honestly, it's like it's like ew. Isn't it wrong to have luxuries? Isn't it wrong like like people that like look at other people People that look at other people and they're like look at their house. Look they just went on that vacation Like look at what she's wearing. Look at her shoes. Look at my shoes. Oh my gosh Everybody look at my shoes write a letter into cornerstone television Like I can't get my leg up there I cannot get my leg up here I just this drives me crazy. You know what the lord calls on us To give with a cheerful heart. He calls on us to do that because it's a personal issue it's not on Help your friend give with a cheerful heart. Okay, it's a personal Giving issue everything we have is the lord's everything I own is the lord's I have nothing without the lord. Okay, and so I give back to the lord with a cheerful heart because That's what i'm called to do and it's a blessing to do so Okay, and so there's always something more we could give there's always something we could literally have nothing We could give it all back to him because he didn't ask for us to give it all back He asked for a certain amount for us to give Give back and with a cheerful heart and that is what we are called to do Okay, miss bling. Okay, but my bling girl I want to ask you about speaking the truth and love though because you are speaking the truth and love with this Very much. Okay, but think about effusions for forces that speak the truth and love So how do you non-judge your rich people? Okay, go ahead. All you rich people out there. I'm gonna speak some truth to you Here's the deal that you don't sacrifice truth For love and you don't sacrifice love for truth. That is how you speak the truth and love You don't sacrifice one for the other Anybody else because i'm not crazy about that this one Only because if somebody okay if someone I don't like their outfit and they ask me how's my outfit. I'm not speaking truth I'm loving them. Do you like this? Yes, I love it and I love your nails. Okay somebody else speaks the truth What about like the characteristics of the holy spirit? Okay that we should be operating in as we are speaking the truth In love and I just wrote a couple of things. He's honest loving loyal. He guides he corrects. He's also your advocate He's an instructor. He's a trusted friend. He's truthful wise Peaceful nurturing so like is there a way we could approach speaking the truth in love with that sort of Holy spirit guidance I think one of the big things like when jesus goes into the temple and that's always where everyone goes Well jesus got upset. He turned over tables. He was in but if you continue to read that passage It also says and after these things he healed in that same temple If when you are sharing truth The end goal is not healing and to lead them to jesus truly and really with the love of christ That says I love you even when you remain in sin If that is not your goal, then you're not doing it in love. Oh my gosh, and I really do love that church I really do and I know that some of you write to us and say, oh my gosh, kori is showing her shoulders again But that's I do love this. I do love I love you so much Okay, and I really love you and we're gonna wrap this show up because this is a heck of a show today Stay there. We'll be right back Well, that was a crazy show today. You were in for a little bit of a wild ride there We talked about a lot of great topics today We talked about secondary virginity and instant gratification gender confusion Luxuries and speaking the truth in love and I am really grateful that my sisters Speak the truth in love. Well, most of them at least And you know, we always end the show with the scripture and today's scripture is in the psalms psalm 25 verse five. This is a psalm of david Guide me in your truth and teach me for you are god my savior and my hope is in you All day long Is your hope in your savior all day long? Or is it only in your hope when you're singing those worship songs on sunday morning? Or maybe only when your keys are lost or when you're just praying that prayer over and over If you want your hope to be in your savior all day long Dig into those scriptures and you will see that hope over and over As it is repeated in god's word And you will find the hope of jesus isn't that the truth that you will find the hope of jesus in the scripture So we always encourage you to check it out and check this one out too as iron sharpens iron So does the countenance of a man or a woman or these sisters? Sharpen the other and then I always add this and it's so true. They make me a better kathy. See you next time