Everyone, thanks so much for coming. I've been looking forward to this for a while. Veni is someone who has a great deal of personal responsibility for building the internet in Bulgaria, and then from there, a lot of responsibility for the shape of the internet in states that were in the former Soviet Union and satellite states. So he's one of the leading experts on internet policy and governance worldwide, with a particular focus on Russia, CIS, Eastern Europe. He is not exactly new to this game. Veni in 1990 founded one of the first phytonet nodes in Bulgaria, the first, I think, and went on to fund the second ISP in the country. And from very, very early on has taken a great deal of involvement and responsibility for the really complicated internet governance issues that I think almost everyone in this room understands are incredibly important, but a lot of us end up totally intimidated and withdrawn from. So I always look forward to having Veni around as sort of a reminder of what's so critical with these issues and what we should be looking at and paying attention to. He is the vice president of stakeholder engagement for Russia, CIS, and Eastern Europe for ICANN. He's a former ICANN board member, former board member of computer professionals for social responsibility. The internet society, more or less, if it affects the governance of the global internet, he's been involved with it at quite senior levels over the last 20-plus years. And so we were trading some email a couple of months ago, and I was very interested in this question of what does internet governance look like post-Snowden? And Veni, in his inevitable way, has sort of come back and said, that's the wrong question, that there are massive, massive changes happening in governance, and Snowden may be the reason that I'm paying attention to it, but it isn't really where these changes are coming from. And so with that provocation, I wanted to hand it over to our friend and get an update. We're thrilled to have you here at the Berkman Center. Thank you, Ethan. I hope that my microphone is working, so that people, yes, I see that... It's working for recording, but it never hurts to be loud. No, but the... Project. I was gonna make a joke that anyway, some microphone somewhere is working, so... But then I don't know the sense of humor I read today in the Wall Street Journal. You should not make jokes, because you never know. That'll work well. You're right. I mean, and by the way, I'm gonna use a lot of abbreviations, and if you don't, somebody doesn't know what an abbreviation means, just raise your hand, and I'll immediately try to remember what it meant. But the whole debate, and we were talking with Susan Crawford with whom we served on the ICANN board together a few years ago, like six, seven years ago, that these good old times, when nobody really cared about ICANN are gone. And ICANN is the Internet Corporation for Assign Names, and numbers, the domain name, and IP address, body. And we kind of felt back then that we're in this little box, which is dealing with domain names. There was nothing on the horizon, like big changes in the industry. There were talks about new generic top-level domains or GTODs, there were talks about introducing internationalized domain names. These are domain names that are written in different scripts than English. And, but that was still a work in progress. And really, nobody knew what ICANN is. And today, for the reasons that you mentioned in our email communication, people suddenly are talking about ICANN in the context of revelations or whatever you call them. And there are many myths around this. And one of the first myths is that ICANN is part of this conversation because of the revelations. The reality is that the ICANN is used because ICANN is kind of the only body that exists as a legal entity somewhere. And I cannot not remember one of my first speeches in Russia when I went there, maybe even still as a board member. And I was talking to people and I said, guys, just think for a moment if the internet was not created in the US by Vint Cerf and Bob Khan, the people who wrote the TCPIP protocol, what if it was created in the Soviet Ministry of Defense in like 1969? Would they ever give this to the Ministry of Commerce? And would the Department of Commerce ever give the control over this domain name system to a non-profit based in Vladivostok? Because if you think about California, it's as far from Washington as Vladivostok is from Moscow. And you know people started laughing, but one guy completely seriously raised his hand and said, when you don't know how right you are, the internet was created in the Soviet Union. Two years before Vint and Bob Khan created their protocol. And the two people who created it, they're still working at the Soviet, I mean at the Russian Ministry of Defense and they're using it. So we, of course, it was a joke, but it looked really serious and people for a moment thought, oh, maybe it's true. So we kind of tend to forget that how the history started. And we forget it because it's kind of not on our radars. You know, what happened 40 years ago, who cares? But there is another example. What if the internet was created in China? What if we had to write our domain names today in Chinese? I could probably remember one domain name in Chinese, which will be my like whatever the Google.com would be the search engine. And for many people around the globe, the internet who don't understand the Latin script, the internet was until recently this kind of Latin Western something. Now things have changed since then. And things have changed in many different ways. One of them is we introduced domain names in different scripts than Latin. There are Arabic, Chinese, Cyrillic, you name it. Even Sylvian, since you're from Sylvia here. But that also exposed ICANN to a bigger scrutiny. And that's not bad. That's actually very healthy for ICANN. We went back, we were kind of asking governments, please join ICANN, join the governmental advisory committee. We beg you, because there were like 30 or maybe 40 governments that would participate in ICANN. Now there are more than 130. And we're still asking other governments who are not members to join and contribute in the dialogue about how the internet is going to be shaped. But in this work that ICANN does, there are people who are constantly unhappy. And the interesting thing is there are different people. So we used to say back in the board times that whatever decision ICANN takes, half of the people will always be unhappy. And it doesn't matter what the decision is. If you introduce a new top level domain, half of the people will be unhappy. If you don't introduce it, another half will be unhappy. So it's really like, that reminds me of Aristotle who said once that the only way to avoid criticism is say nothing, do nothing, or be nothing. And it's in a way what ICANN is not. And it's in a way also the fact that suddenly governments realized, and people realize that the internet is not only sending emails and browsing Facebook or whatever Facebook in local language exists. But it's also about privacy and control over the content that you publish. And of course, I don't know if you know that by the way, do you know which is the fastest reading English nation on the planet? Any guesses? It's not the US reading in English. Just which nation on the planet is fastest reading English? It's not England. It's none of the English speaking countries. Singapore. No, no, it's actually Serbia. Because it takes 0.2 seconds between opening the rules in terms of using Facebook and clicking on the okay. And you know, it's like 20 pages document. So it takes really quick reading. I could have sent some other country obviously, but since my fellow Balkan lady here is from a neighboring country. I'm from Bulgaria originally. So I can use that one.  Like in Bulgarian or in other languages, you cannot say governance because people tend to think of governance as something that the government does. So they don't understand governance as a place where citizens, companies, nonprofits, governments get together, which I can use. On an equal platform, as we used to say, there is another term which by the way is untranslatable and this is multi-stakeholder model. Or equal multi-stakeholder or multi-equal stakeholder model, which is what I can use. So many people are confused when we start to explain how I can work, how the internet works, they say, well, but who controls it? A few years ago, six, seven years ago, and I've seen only one journalist piece by the way, only one, which actually does not ask, they wrote, it's a Russian journalist. He wrote a big story in a magazine called Compute Terra and he said, well, the right question actually is not who controls the internet, but what controls the internet? And he claims that it's not people, it's not organizations, it's actually the standards that are the ones that control how the internet works. And if you, if there are, I didn't hear that many engineers here, but you may agree with that. Even though the lawyers among us will probably say, no, no, no, it's the laws, they control it. But the dialogue that we are trying to, we've been building, not trying, I mean, we've tried for quite a while and now it seems like it's taking the momentum. And I think Snowden was probably the catalyst of all this because, not because of what he said, and I mean, I couldn't care less about the problems that the NSA is facing and stuff like that. But now suddenly the government, the governments and the individuals around the world, they say, well, let's look at the architecture of the internet, let's look at the way it's being built. Why is there only one domain name system? Why are there not many? And this dialogue is healthy for the internet itself. And my goal actually was not only for the people here, but for the people who are on the web, and we'll be watching this, reading the blogs that they start to be interested in this and they say, well, maybe we should go and participate in this, I can think, let's see what it is. We have found throughout the years, and especially in the last couple of years, not related to what you mentioned in the beginning, Ethan, but the people from places which are not very active otherwise, they somehow become very engaged in the development of the internet. And even small countries understand that actually they could make a difference if they join the dialogue, if they contribute with their know-how. And in many cases it's actually the people who are thinking outside of the box, people who are not the usual participants at these meetings that come with some new ideas or new proposals or suggestions. And I'll give you an example. Last year there was a lady from a Bulgarian university who came to an ICANN meeting as an ICANN fellow. We have this program where we help people from developing countries and countries in transition. By, it's a public program, so anyone can go even today on the ICANN.org website and apply he or she's from such a country for a fellowship and come to the next meeting in London in June. And she came, she was looking around, she looks very lost basically, because an ICANN meeting is about, it was the one in Beijing actually. There were like 3,000 people in the middle of China. I have no idea right now 1.5 billion people or whatever. And she seemed lost, but then she came again and then this was in last summer and then two months later she sent me an email saying, well, what do you think, can we start in our university a course in internet governance and cyber security? And I said, sure, why not? I mean, who am I to say no? And then couple of weeks later, she came with a description of the course, an invitation for me to be a lecturer and to bring other lecturers. So little did I know when I said, sure, we'll end up talking to like 30 students who were masters in their masters program on internet governance. And now this month, in February, I'm supposed to receive 30 essays, which means I'm gonna spend extra hours reading essays and giving them grades because they get credits for that. So they actually are engaged. So I think this is the beauty of the multi stakeholder model. This is the beauty of what we are doing. I also, by the way, if you feel free to jump in with a question, if you have a question, because by the end of this, you may have forgotten what your question was. And I especially ask Susan Crawford, who I know she's living at one o'clock. So if you have a question about ICANN particular, let me know. But we also have another thing which is related to the internet governance. I mean, you see this table in the back and Daniel can send it later because this is publicly accessible information. So anyone who wants to get it, or you can put it on the website probably for download. And this is all creative comments. So credit to the people who build it written on the files. The dialogue now is so intense that as we speak now here around the world, there are probably dozens of places where people like us are sitting and talking about the way the internet should be governed. And it's not that they don't like the current system. It's some people don't like it. Some people want to improve it. Some people think they should replace it. My favorite one about the replacement is on the ITU, the International Telecommunications Union website. It's a password protected website. So you cannot download this document, but you can see the title. And the title is, and you can Google, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Internet Innovative Technologies. And you will find this document. It's amazing, because suddenly you see two countries which if you read the newspapers don't really talk to each other. Syria and Saudi Arabia, they propose a common joint document to the ITU to create a new internet based on alternative internet based on innovative technologies. I've been at the ITU on the Bulgarian governmental delegation when we were discussing this document, and it was fascinating because what they say is right. They say, well, the current internet has too much spam. It's not secure. We need to build a new internet which is more secure, has no spam and the governments can build it. But it's right when you listen to it if you kind of say, okay, there is nothing like that existing, so let's build something from scratch. But the internet exists. And we actually spent two hours discussing whether it should be new internet with a small i or new internet with a capital i until the British guy came in and said, well, BBC has always used small i. So it really doesn't, it's not a big issue. So in this echo system of internet governance, there are many organizations. I talked about ICANN. There is the Internet Society which Ethan mentioned. There is the W3C, the World Wide Web Consortium. And there is the organization which almost nobody knows about except 1500, 2000 engineers and all the people who actually work with the standards on the internet. The Internet Engineering Task Force or the IETF. This is the group of engineers who are creating the standards. They're even not called standards. They're called requests for comments, RFCs, which run the internet. I mean, the story about creating the RFCs is fascinating. If you haven't read it, take a look. I mean, it's written on the Wikipedia. Take a look at people like Steve Crocker who is currently chairman of the ICANN Board and how they came out with the idea about not setting standards, but RFCs. Sometimes, I mean, I'm a lawyer by education, but sometimes I really appreciate the engineers. Even though I know that they always think they're better than the lawyers, but certain things they did much better than a lawyer would have done, especially way back in the beginning of the internet. So there are, and then there are also international organizations like the ITU, which is an international treaty organization. So governments are members, and they're the ones who actually can take decisions. And in this little table here, and this one shows the meetings last year in 2013, but there are meetings also. If you go down the slide, you will see the meetings for 2014. There are a number of meetings that are taking place this year which have the potential to shape the future of the internet. ICANN has three meetings every year, usually in the fall, the summer, and the spring. The ISOC board meets regularly, the ITF meets regularly. I mean, actually every organization that's on the internet is meeting regularly, usually in public meetings. So anyone can go, or some of those are webcast, the ICANN meetings are, most of them are webcast. In some of our meetings, people can actually participate remotely and ask questions and get answers to their questions. So you don't need to travel. You may still need to wake up at two o'clock in the morning to be able to participate, depending on like the next meeting in March is in Singapore. So clearly for the US audience, it will be not very easy to participate. But in those meetings, we try to hear everyone who has something to say. And you know, in some cases, this may be people who have come for the first time. They go to the microphone and they speak to the ICANN board, which is an international board. And I'm not gonna go into details here, like why I believe that ICANN is an international organization, while it's not legally international treaty organization. But you can find a fellow countryman, no matter where you are coming from at an ICANN meeting. There are people from east and west, south and north, and they're really, it's really exciting to see those people talking to like the fathers and mothers of the internet and thinking, well, you know, maybe this is the next, like this 20-year kid is the next windsurfer. It's the next, I don't know, Larry Page or Sergey Brin. Or maybe who knows, you know, in five years or 10 years, what would exist? Like Facebook just celebrated 10 years today or yesterday, right? So nobody knew what it is 10 years ago. 10 years and one day ago, probably a handful of people knew what it is. Twitter didn't exist at all. Not even blogging, if you think about it. Well, kind of, but it wasn't called blogging, I guess. You were just writing stuff. So in this dialogue, I'm really encouraged to see also that the governments, no matter how little they were interested in what ICANN was doing just a few years ago are now interested, even though not necessarily understanding how the internet works. This is the role where the educational institutions are very helpful. And we reached out, we work, and we reached out and we're developing relationships with different academic institutions around the world. I just mentioned Bulgaria where we're doing some outreach, but there are many other countries where ICANN is involved with academic institutions. Because if we don't educate the people who are the decision makers, if we don't educate the people who work at like national parliaments or other regulatory bodies, we cannot expect them to understand what is at stake and how the internet works. And believe me, some people don't understand how the internet works. And I'm not saying, I'm not telling you trust me on that. I'll give you an example. And I'll save the name of the organization so that it doesn't look like I'm revealing some or making some people feeling unhappy, but they're in a big organization. They wanted to get engaged somehow in this internet thing. And they said, well, we want to deliver, we want to be responsible to give out IP addresses. Like currently the model is that the regional internet registries, these are five regions of the five continents, more or less give IP addresses to whoever wants it. Usually these are internet service providers or big institutions. And they said, well, maybe we can get one trillion IP addresses from the new version six. And we'll distribute them among people and organizations who want to have IP addresses. And they were very committed to get those one trillion IP addresses, except they didn't know they cannot get them. They even had an expert on IPv6 who would give them advice. And I should have put it quotes around expert. And they didn't know that they cannot get them because one trillion IP addresses, even though it sounds like a big number, in the version six of the IP addresses, it's not possible to get it because the smallest segment you can get consists of 18 million blocks. Each of them is one trillion IP addresses. So in other words, you really cannot get one trillion IP addresses to give away. You can get 18 million blocks and each of them has one trillion IP addresses. Now people are kind of confused with the big numbers because currently we use them, I mean, in the majority of the services and probably including here, we are using a version of the IP which is called version four. I'm just trying to see whether, yeah, I'm on version four connected. But I see also that you guys have IPv6 in the network here. So if your device supports IPv6, you can get an IPv6 address. If it doesn't, you still get connected to the IPv4. And the IPv4 has 4.0 something billion addresses, so they're not that many. And when these organizations said we need one trillion addresses, to them they looked a big number. So we need to educate people. We need to, and the problem is also that there are not that many people that can go and educate other people or train the trainers, as we say. So we want to, and through our work in the regions, like I'm responsible for Russia, Eastern Europe, but there are other vice presidents responsible for other regions. We also try to bring our knowledge to the regions, but also bring the interesting knowledge from the regions to ICANN. And one of the most challenging thing is that often people would say, well, but you have from ICANN, of course you will say this. And if you think about it, yes, it has some sense, right? I mean, if we are talking about keeping the multistakeholder, even I was gonna make an error now saying multilateral, which is a different word. The multistakeholder model, they say, yeah, you want to support this model because this is serving ICANN and you are self-serving organization and stuff like that. But at the end of the day, some of the old gurus of the internet and the evangelists, like Vincere, they say, well, they use this term if it ain't broken, don't fix it, right? That's the English. Well, in Russia, they say, and in Eastern Europe, we say, if it's working, don't touch it. It's a little bit different concept because we know that if we touch it, it's gonna stop working. Because everything worked in our system by magic, you know?  I was like, ah, okay, whatever, I lived 21 years in a state which was while tapping everyone. We knew it. So what's the big deal? But the reality is that the internet is working and it has a lot of glitches, but there are a lot of people engaged in making it better. At this point, I haven't seen anyone who has come with a proposal really accept this one at the ITU about building a new internet based on whatever technology is innovative or alternative. And it's not a coincidence. It's not by accident that there is not, the reality is that not only that it's working, it has allowed people around the globe, and that I think is the ultimate benefit of the internet. It has allowed people from around the world to exchange ideas, views, and information which otherwise they would have never been able to. And you said 20 plus years. I still remember, actually, it was September 3rd, 1990 when I was sitting in front of this brand new 386 machine, 25 megahertz with 120 megabyte hard drive and the enormous four megabyte of RAM. And it was connected with a 1200 BPS modem to the internet. Now, such speeds don't exist today. I mean, such low speeds. And I was understanding I can sit in the middle of nowhere in Bulgaria, like a country which has just ended communism a few months earlier and be part of the world and share views and ideas and gain experience from around the world. Now, today it's even, it's obviously much easier and it's much faster except for the US where the internet is still slow and expensive. That's another topic. Susan is laughing because she remembers probably a few years ago there was a study of the, was it the FTC? I think there was an internet task force group, something like that. And they came to the conclusion that the internet in the US is, I was actually interviewed by them because I have just moved to the US and I was shocked in New York City to find out that you only have two internet service providers for 10 million people population. In Bulgaria, we have 2,000 for seven million people. And we pay $15 a month for one gigabit connection and I was like, really? This is the US, the creme de la creme of the internet. Anyway, so going back to, and I'm sorry, I'm kind of jumping on and off, but I'll spend another probably four minutes talking and then I hope we can start into a Q&A session. Yeah, going back to these meetings and why are they important? And each of them is important. Whether we are talking about the coming ITU, planning potentially meeting at the end of the year when there will be elections and new secretary general will be elected, but also the ITU may decide to change its constitution to include dealing not only with telecommunications, but with internet related issues. Or we are talking about the internet governance forum, which is a meeting that takes place every year and this year is gonna be in September in Istanbul and where about 1500 people from all over meet and talk about like a huge variety of topics from legal framework to promote the internet to legal framework to not promote the internet.  So you go to another meeting which is taking place in April in Dubai, the World Telecommunications Development Conference where organizations, I mean governments and companies will meet together to talk on a topic called broadband for sustainable development. Now the term broadband has different meaning in different countries. In some countries it's a telephone connection or ADSL connection. In some countries they use mobile connectivity. In countries like Bulgaria I said it's like the digital divide is between the people who are connected at one gigabit and the people who are connected at 100 megabits. And in other countries it's whether you are at all connected. And institutions like the European Commissions are allocating hundreds or even billions of dollars every year to kind of bring the internet to the people because they understand and in Africa they don't even have the money to bring the internet to the people. But everybody understands that it's important to be connected. And it's important also because currently only about 2.5 billion people are connected. So another 5 billion are not connected. And they are not connected which means they don't know what they can gain from the world but we also don't know what they can bring to the world. So in this global dialogue, in this global discussion about how the internet works, I can have basically one goal which is that when you type your domain name somewhere when you connect to the internet you will be connected to this united internet around the world. And when you put down whatever domain name you put down you will actually go to that website. Now I can go into details about the security and stability of the internet although I don't think that's interesting for some of the lawyers at least. But also it's important to know that every once in a while there are young or not so young but anyway there are bright people who come with a discovery like a few years ago a guy who was young back then. Kaminsky came with an idea that the domain name system actually can be tricked into not working quite well and the technical community got together and came with an extension, a security extension of the domain name system so that now it's implemented more and more widely around the world so that you will be sure that when you write Google.com you will actually go to Google.com and not to somebody who pretends it's Google.com and collect your data. So, and this is only part of what we do and another part of what we do is just to give you an idea of how you can get engaged and people can get engaged. A few years ago there was a computer virus which was supposed to start operating at a certain date and it was called Conficker and it was supposed to start working on that particular date all around the country called top level domains. So then organizations from around the world I can including got together and started working on a protocol which would eliminate or at least lower the damage from this virus and it worked. People probably even didn't notice that there was something like that. Now we don't deal with other issues which kind of make the headlines like stealing 50 or 70 million accounts from Target which if you think about the name of the shop it's really a Target. But what happened there actually what made the headlines and what makes the headlines around the world is bringing the people closer to the understanding why the internet is important.  Nobody wanted to be our lawyer. They said you're gonna lose the case this is the first case against the government forget it.  So we started the case 10 months later at the last session of the court when it was already clear that we are winning we had like a line of waiting lawyers outside of our office. Everybody wanted to be our lawyer. We reached out of court agreement with the prime minister of Bulgaria and they got rid of the licenses but what it helped actually in these 10 months there were more than 300 publications in the Bulgarian media about the case and about the internet. The result was staggering. Like suddenly people started to realize there is something called the internet and there is a case and the government is against it is trying to control it so probably it's not that bad. You know usually the European mentality is if the government wants to get control over something then you know you have to react and it's based again. I mean we've lived for 45 years under a communist system which was trying to kind of oppress everything so our reaction was instinctively to fight with it. And my own understanding is that if we don't communicate, if we don't talk to each other if we don't engage things are only gonna get worse. Now in a dialogue especially online it's very difficult to and we had earlier before we started this conversation a dialogue here with about the fact that if you enter a conversation with an opinion already it's very difficult to change it. Try it, try it somewhere online especially. Engaging a conversation with somebody who already has an opinion. I gave the example if you're talking about the browsers and somebody enters a conversation with the opinion that a browser is better than another browser. It's impossible to change his or her opinion. But if somebody enters a conversation asking a question say hey which browser is better? A, B or C then you can actually start answering questions and depending on the person's requirements he may say oh okay, so for let's say on my iPhone or on my whatever smartphone if I'm watching if I'm using Gmail, Chrome maybe better but if I'm doing something else Opera maybe better or Safari maybe better. So in other words then you can form an opinion. But I think we should not be afraid by entering conversation with people who already have an opinion because otherwise you may sit down and say well my opinion is this and your opponent or your partner says my opinion is that and then you never reach an agreement. But if we don't talk about those issues if we don't talk about the way the internet is working and the way the internet is governed and we don't try to participate in all these meetings I'm gonna say we I don't mean me, you or anyone should go to every and each of those meetings it's impossible I'm telling you. I tried it couple of years ago that's not possible. Like you cannot fly Brazil and then for two days and then fly out to Geneva because the meetings are taking place at the same time. And mentioning Brazil and that's the, oh I miss my time but anyway mentioning Brazil that's one of the hot topics now. There is a meeting coming in Brazil at the end of April which was introduced initially by the ICANN president Hadi Sheikhadi and the Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff who her father was Bulgarian just to claim some credit for that not because her father was Bulgarian but actually because if she was born in Bulgaria she would have never become president of Brazilia so she was really happy to be born in Brazil. But this meeting in Brazil is actually going to be a very important one talking about the different importance of meeting. Because it's the first time when government at such high level actually engage with the non-governmental sector and said you guys let's sit down and talk about these issues. Let's see what we can agree on maybe let's see what we can disagree on but it's still a dialogue. So that's why I believe it's very important. There is a website and I will give it later the links so that they can be published on the web page of the Berkman Center so people can go and take a look. So let me first thank you and let me take maybe the right of the first question to maybe put a bit of a pointed question to you which is the point you've been making throughout is that you want more people involved with internet governance. At the same time you've been making the point whether directly or indirectly that it's a vast field a huge number of organizations. You have to spend a lot of time on airplanes and not all of these meetings are actually open to you they're often open to engineers they're often open to different groups of people. So here's the question. What do you want people to do? First for ordinary people who are gonna see a link to Nathan's coverage of this on Reddit today and are a 25 year old recent university graduate what should that person who cares about the internet do? And second what should I as someone who's on the board of directors of a major international foundation that might get very involved with internet governance but so far has very consciously chosen not to get involved with international governance what would you want us to do? Okay so they're actually very similar things that each of us can do. First of all you don't need to travel I said already you can participate remotely but secondly there are mailing lists and now I know that there are annoying people on every mailing list or internet trolls or you name it but it's very easy to filter those. And in a dialogue on a mailing list like for example right now there is a huge dialogue going on a mailing list at one net.org one with a number. And it's good to be part of this dialogue because these are people with 20 plus year knowledge who are talking between each other talking to everyone on the list and in this conversation you not only have history of how the internet was developed but you also have some visions about what the internet could be. And really the dialogue is what the internet could be not this year, not in two years but let's say in 10 years. Now if you have talked to someone 10 years ago and you have said well I think the internet would be a huge website where everyone will be sharing pictures and statuses and explaining what they are doing and using 140 characters to say something substantive people would have probably laughed and say no way you know you need to sit down and write a blog or you need to send a huge email to a mailing list that's the only way to do it. Now however and that's one thing which we have to be all aware of. There are, I wouldn't name countries cause I'm not a president of a country although I can point to a speech by the Estonian president and Estonia is a country which is always given as an example at least in the European Union as sometimes they joke is Estonia because it's so modern and advanced and using technologies they vote by the way for the last more than 10 years they vote online. And when the elections in the US were taking place few years ago and you know they were counting the votes in Florida and George Bush became president nobody knows how and what were the exact number of the vote people were nothing you know cause you can just vote online put your digital signature and the results come immediately. So the president of Estonia has a speech on June 8th, 2012 and it's on president.ee you can find it in the archives. Well he talks about the future of the internet with regards to the coming back then conference in Dubai which took place in December 2012. There are many places around the world where not everyone can participate you're right. The ITU conferences are one of those places like the ITU planning potential conference only governmental delegations and so-called sector members these are companies that pay huge amount of money to be part of the ITU but even they cannot speak unless they are asked to. So in our ecosystem in the ICANN world everyone can speak on equal footing like whether you're Jordan Plummer or the president of a country you all can go to the same microphone and you all can speak to the board in the same way. And the board will listen to you because you are equal in this other kind of discussion which is going on a governmental level and I can speak on that because for 10 years I was chairing the Bulgarian president's IT advisory committee and I could see the difference not any longer since last year but I could see it two years ago. The difference when you go and say I'm you know here's my president.bg card and here is my let's say internet society card and they say oh then you can speak here or you can not speak here. So I think the really important thing is that people don't see that far away. You mentioned the organization which is not engaged or could be engaged but there are so many organizations that don't understand they should be engaged in this dialogue because they don't see beyond the next quarter like in a way or the next year. I mean nobody long term thinking in our kind of Western world is basically one two years. If you start thinking about five years, 10 years it's people say I don't know who's going to be there. I don't think that's a reasonable response Fanny. I mean this the organization which you and I both know invests in human rights issues that have 20 or 30 year frameworks on them. The question I'm really asking is where would you start and what you said is it's great that anyone can speak to. I would start actually by engaging nationally like I would ask anyone who is from any country to go back to that country find the organizations or the individuals. In some countries you don't need to have an organization individuals who are kind of enthusiastic about it and who want to be part of this dialogue and say look let's go and talk to our parliament expert in the telecommunications committee which are dealing with the legislation that is defining the future of the internet. Or let's go and talk to the people who represent our country at the ITU and try to explain to them what's the importance about for example such a proposal that I quoted a little while ago about building new internet. Whether it's actually achievable whether that means spending tens of billions of local currency for something that may never happen. I think also important is that and I'm here I have to take off my eye can hat for a moment because I've been an advocate for such things in Bulgaria for many years. Many times people don't believe that somebody would listen to them. They say ah what's the point in going and talking to a government if they're not gonna, who am I? The reality is that governments have changed. The latest, the last few years show that especially in Eastern Europe but also in other places of the world.  Whether you may argue what the final result of this was like people quote the Arab Spring or whatever but there are many other places where people who got together online for quick action or quick decision making they could achieve a change in a governmental policy very quickly. In Bulgaria there was a situation last year on June I think 14th the government took a decision to appoint a head of the Bulgarian National Security Agency. That same afternoon people went out the next day he resigned. I mean this could have not been achieved without the internet. So I think there and I don't say that necessarily it should be a pressure for that but also if we don't understand the importance of the internet keeping the internet free and open and built really bottom up in a bottom up process then in a few years we may end up in an internet which is built on a top down process in which people will not be able to share what they think. And in certain countries, in certain cultures I would say even not countries. And I may give some delicate examples here so excuse me if it sounds wrong. But in certain countries, oh I can give an example with Bulgaria cause that's more safe for me. If there is a certain attitude towards gay people. So if I'm an activist and I actually have signed letters supporting gay activists in Bulgaria when they were fighting for their rights. That's kind of dangerous. There was a guy, a young guy who was killed in the park downtown Sofia because and I quote he looked like a gay. That's the two guys who beat him to death said. So if you're searching online and suddenly what you're searching online comes through some kind of a governmental new system you may be actually exposed to serious issues. So I think there are many, many ways where you may start doing something today and the outcome of what you're doing today may be in a few years but you may not understand it. So I would encourage everyone to really engage into get involving in this dialogue about the governance of the internet locally. So let's take some other questions too. So I guess I'm less hopeful about the chance for people to get engaged. You mentioned remote participation at ICANN. I've been very involved in remote participation at the IGF where many years into these structures and remote participation is still not equal participation.  And it feels that we've shifted from early internet governance structures where there was a better balance between government private sector and civil society to this structure now meaning civil society simply can't afford to get involved to keep track to be sustained. The governance mailing lists are a few actors now, a few people who've got the time and resource to follow everything that's going on and we've not taken advantage of the internet of transcripts of text to build new ways of doing governing and new ways of making governance possible to follow in this complex environment. And I'm just wondering if you see we're heading in good directions with making this place more legible, more easy to understand, more possible to say I'm interested in this issue, where do I fit? Or is it just becoming more and more confusing?  You can ask a question or two but you cannot be substantive part of the dialogue unless you have somebody there. However, I mean, ICANN is a good example because every time we meet we meet on a different continent so we basically go around the world to be closer to people but in the Brazil meeting which is forming as we speak there was just yesterday actually they published the minutes from the last meeting of the committee that's fine tuning the meeting and they said that there is a broad view about the need and I quote, the need of continue evolving the multi-stakeholder internet governance ecosystem to energize discussion and to achieve greater consensus of the community including a broader range of stakeholders and provide possible means to develop responses to specific problems faced by government stakeholders. So people really understand that there are certain constraints and you cannot engage everyone but we do try the role of organization that can support participation in debates that are taking place around the world is important. That's why ICANN is trying to bring people from developing countries. Also important is that we, and it's a whole new culture it's we need to build somehow the, to make the people believe that actually their opinion is important for us and for us I don't mean for ICANN per se just for the global internet ecosystem but it's important for the people who are defining how the internet is developing because if we don't have people, I mean the thing is that it's very easy. I can take decisions every month almost on certain issues like new generic top level domains whatever. If you're not part of this dialogue how to frame this these decisions are still gonna be taken we just are not gonna hear your voice. So we really need to hear voices from around the world otherwise these decisions may not be necessarily taking into consideration all the cultural aspects or all the traditional aspects of countries from our cultures from around the world. So really I mean I think it's not a panacea it's not a pain killer that can solve all the problems but indeed participation is crucial. Bruce? So what do we make of the status of the attempts at internet balkanization? Whether it's Brazil's talking about a nationalization Germany, Great Four Hawaii, firewall of China a lot of this is post-Snowden I mean do we have to worry about national borders? And where are they gonna come from? The term internet balkanization actually was used many years ago and it's on the public records it's one of the ICANN minutes and I said that and using your presence here I said that I can agree with this term if we're talking about the music of Goran Bregovic famous Balkan composer who steals music from everywhere and mixes it and makes it really gypsy music, right? So I was, I don't like the term balkanization in the terms of separation and division because I think it's not right. The reality is that this term doesn't came didn't come after Snowden it was there before that and people still believe that there is balkanization of the internet but there are different cultures and in some cultures you cannot really the worst possible thing is to try to infuse somehow a model and say this is the way it should be and that's why it should be around the world like that it's much better to ask people and to say tell us how is in your part of the world and I don't want to name countries because I think, I mean first of all who am I to name countries but secondly there are different cultures even within a single country I mean if you take as an example there are almost no countries where you can say this is one unified nation no other nations you know it's like this is it so to hear all this kind of broader it's actually beauty it's not bad to have all these voices coming together I don't see this as a balkanization in the sense of your thing Sure, just to take that question a bit further if the voices decide that they don't want to come together and kind of have this global discussion anymore but rather decide to fragment use a different word and kind of set their own terms for their own internets and have kind of the international restrictions that we are now facing whether they existed before or after how do you think that we should be dealing with that? The question is about whether there might be some international I'm repeating it on the mic for some international restrictions but I think that's also part of the dangers confronting the internet that's part of the dialogue where we are engaging with the ITU to make sure that the ITU does not make their own agenda to have some control functions over the internet which by the way three years ago was revealed without revelations without leaking just by reading the Russian government website where there are transcripts of the conversations between Mr Putin and the Secretary General of the ITU where in their dialogue which was transcribed there they discussed an idea by the ITU how to increase the oversight functions of the ITU over the internet so I think first of all we should not be afraid that somebody will say no I don't want to be part of it, that's fine you know you cannot force by force you can never give anything to anyone you can only take we don't want to we cannot force and I don't think anyone wants to force something I mean we have seen at least in my country's history when forcefully they were trying to give us communism we see what happened in the end it was introduced to Bulgaria did not originate from Bulgaria so I think we have to be really cool and take it easy on people or countries or organization that come and say no we want our own thing fine it's okay you know if you want it if you can build it if your users or if your people are using it I still believe that sharing information is around the world is some kind of a forceful very forceful thing so it could be hardly avoided so if Brazil and China both build their own rival DNS systems that are not interconnected with ICANN they're run by different authorities that have different root servers your opinion as a long time ICANN member and a current ICANN staffer is that that's fine well no my opinion is that we ICANN as an organization cannot prevent that from happening and neither why I mean it's if so here is the thing national internet has always been prerogative has always been within the control of the nation when the Bulgarian government introduced licenses over the internet service providers eventually they would have made their own internet if we have allowed that because that's very easy to do when you have licenses you can just say well our license requires that you do not use this DNS and will give you IP addresses or for better control they were saying that it's actually for better quality that's the reason for the licenses but I think really each country decides this separately now when you put together the balance do you want to be part of the global world commerce do you want your products to be sold online around the world or do you want them to be sold within the country some country may say I wanna my you know I want this particular product to be sold only here you can still do it even within the current internet other questions please being discussed right now which is quite different from Balkanization is internationalization globalization of ICANN and I think it's highly related to the Brazil meeting and the question is about the term internationalization of ICANN and I love this term because as I mentioned earlier ICANN is indeed an international organization by its staff members by its board composition by the hub offices that it has built in Los Angeles, Istanbul and Singapore and engagement offices in Brussels, Geneva, Montevideo, Beijing maybe I'm missing already one or two now certain governments will say well but you're not an international organization as the ITU or the Red Cross or others yes we are not but it's historical ICANN was founded in California because not only the internet was created in the US but also John Postel who was supposed to be the first ICANN chief technical officer was in Marino del Rey and he was actually before ICANN was created he was the Ayanna Tzar so to speak he was dealing with all these side the other allocation and country called domain name management issues but could ICANN develop further? I'm sure it can is ICANN changing? Yes I mean the board is discussing and the other thing is the board is actually discussing ICANN is not changing because ICANN as a staff you know or as a legal body wants to change because ICANN is built on supporting organizations where anyone can participate ICANN changes its bylaws and based on input from the community so it's a very unique model by the way I was not familiar with another model of this type before I can before I started working with ICANN because it sounds really awkward and in many cases when I was with my governmental head before I joined the ICANN board I was like wondering also how is it working you know how is it possible it's possible it's an experiment in the making but it's a very very good experiment because here you mentioned the Brazil meeting also this is an example if ICANN was not this type of organization it probably would have not it would have not ended up with a high level meeting in Brazil and being discussed around the world it would have been one of the usual organizations which everybody knows what it is and we have more rights like governments have more rights and actually even within ICANN there is a dialogue and people say well why are the governments equal to the others you know please just follow up on that question you I mean the young ITU there are a lot of industry consortia's and forums that engage in standards related to the internet for instance like IETF they do a lot of things in this regard the IETF or the ICANN they open to anyone who is interested in their work but have you ever been aware that the government really like sends somebody or some government officials engage in this like bottom up internet government governance structure well first of all I said earlier there are more than a hundred and thirty governments which are members of the governmental advisory committee of ICANN they sent people to participate at ICANN meetings as far as I know because this is their own they have their own mailing list they have support and stuff like that they discuss issues which are relevant to the government they issue the structure is so that they issue advice to the board but the board cannot just turn away the advice they have if they actually vote against an advice they have to give a very good reasoning for that and the board is usually very careful in listening to the GAC the governmental advisory committee also the GAC chair sits on the board so she is now in I mean she's in or he or she right now it's a it's a lady from Canada they're all informed about what all the discussions that are taking at the board level and that's how you keep the government informed also many governments are actually happy with this model and they contribute and they wanna contribute to the development of this model even governments who publicly may say we don't understand why ICANN is dealing with those issues even they are active members of the ICANN governmental advisory committee and I'm particularly careful with making sure that we don't mix attitude of governments towards the US foreign policy with attitude of governments towards what ICANN does in some cases they may use it as an excuse but in many cases they're actually they understand it's very different and there is also a perception of course that ICANN is controlled by the US government which to me is the most amazing story because I haven't seen any attempt by the US government to control what ICANN does and even in situations where you may argue but couldn't the US government have done something they don't because it's also ICANN is so public there is no way for having some hidden agenda you know which it will be so clear that there is no way to do it so I think we have time for a final question I'm director of information security office here at School of Engineering I'm from Balkan of course from Bosnia there is a no break of it anyway the question is by moving from IPv4 then we use network understanding and now moving to IPv6 that people expect to use more routable IP addresses security will be and privacy will be significantly affected do you have any working group or your global approach towards information security problems introduced by IPv6 yeah there is a I will put you in touch there the question was about security on IPv6 and I will ask actually again I will put a link on the website and put you in touch with the people at ICANN for dealing with that because we have a whole department which is dealing with security stability and resiliency of the internet and it's a whole other area where again and sometimes I say that ICANN is like the phone company like how many of you I'm sure nobody but that's just a funny question how many of you ever call the phone company to say hey my phone is working today nobody does right people don't know that I can exist because ICANN is actually doing his job and I think as long as we try to I mean a few years ago just to give you an idea and I think that goes into what you asked me few years ago there was an attack on the root servers many years ago ten years ago and they put down about sixty percent of the root servers that manage all the domain names and it was after that that we that the technical community realized that actually that's an you know there needs to be root servers around the world and now there are hundreds of root servers there were thirteen back then now there are hundreds in probably every country I mean there are several in Bulgaria many I mean I wouldn't be surprised there is one in Serbia for sure I know I don't know about Bosnia but really and that means that if there is an attack on root servers today it cannot succeed because the speed at which the root servers copies are spread around the world is so fast and ICANN is part of this effort but not the only organization that's dealing with it that it surpasses the attempts of bad guys to put them down and I think that's the way to deal with it you deal with threats by addressing them you don't deal with that by avoiding them I was saying this is not going to happen to me to start thinking this way then it's definitely going to happen well let's wrap it up there thanks very much many thanks for coming thanks everybody for questions thanks for having me absolutely we'll have the talk online soon and look around for notes that I know that Nathan and others are publishing and you'll be hanging around for a little bit yes I'm here for another hour or so so any questions


Welcome, thanks for joining us today. We are thrilled that you're here for another episode of the non-profit show. If you joined us in the green room chatter, you heard that I am super excited for today's conversation. I had the great privilege of meeting our guest, Muhi Kwaja, CFRE, Fundraising Academy Trainer at the recent AFP icon conference in Las Vegas. At that time, Muhi was there on the showroom floor. We pulled him into the live episode as we were broadcasting there on the floor. But you mentioned very briefly in this live episode in Vegas, Muhi about Ikigai, and we're going to talk about what this is and understanding the purpose of life. So thrilled to have you here. Let's get moving into, again, Julia Patrick. Thank you for creating this fantastic platform, and thanks for being the CEO of the American non-profit. You and your company bring so many great resources to our sector. I'm honored and privileged to serve alongside Julia as the co-host here of the non-profit show.  I'm also the CEO of the Raven Group, and Julia and I are graciously honored to have the presenting sponsors that we have for these episodes. Today is episode 565, so we are moving and grooving right along thanks to Bloomerang, American Non-profit Academy, Fundraising Academy, Non-profit Nerd, your part-time controller, Staffing Boutique, and the non-profit thought leader. So we, again, just want to say thank you to our presenting sponsors. You keep these conversations going. Again, 565, marching towards 600. You can find us on Roku, YouTube, Fire TV, Vimeo, as well as podcasts.  So Fundraising Academy is not new to us, Muhy, but I do believe you are somewhat new to Fundraising Academy. You're not new to our sector, but let me first welcome you, again, Muhy Kwaja, CFRE trainer, of course, with Fundraising Academy, but you shared with me earlier, Muhy, that you are also the co-founder of the American Muslim Community Foundation. So I want to welcome you. I want to say thank you for all that you do for our world globally, and just a warm welcome here to the episode. Oh, thank you so much, Jared. It's a real pleasure to be here today and really excited to just have a conversation with you about things that I have learned in my career and could be helpful to other people. I'm always a big proponent of continuously learning in my life. And I joined the Fundraising Academy for that very reason. Back in April, I joined as a trainer, and I've been in this industry right out of college. I had an internship at the University of Michigan. It was called the Development Summer Internship Program, and they took seniors graduating and they put them in the development office and they taught them for a whole semester. We worked 30 hours a week. It was paid, and then we also had a class on Fridays. So it was really fascinating to just be dipped into this career and seeing the opportunity. So I'm very fortunate to have been in fundraising for 13 years already, and it's crazy to say that, but I've been everything from associate development officer, a one-person development team to a chief development officer. And also, as you mentioned, starting a nonprofit, the American Muslim Community Foundation. So I love sharing these best practices and Fundraising Academy give me that opportunity to continuously teach and facilitate conversations around major gifts, around fundraising, best practices. So it's a really great partnership. Yeah, absolutely. I kind of sat up straighter when you said 13. We're both teenagers. I just want to acknowledge that because I started my business, the Raven Group 13 years ago. And so I've been playing with the teenager vernacular as well. So thanks for sharing that. And again, thanks for all that you do. So again, back in Vegas, we had this conversation, it was very casual and it was brief. And you were like, I'd really like to come on the show and talk about Iki Guy. First of all, I had no idea how to say it. I had no idea how to spell it. So would you please walk us through the defining concept of this? Where does it come from? What does it mean? And how do you live it? Yeah, that is a huge question. And we only have so much time, but I will do my best to summarize for you what this concept means. And Iki Guy is a Japanese concept. Iki comes from the word ikuru, which means to live. And guy is a suffix that means like worth or value. So the whole idea of practicing Iki Guy means finding value in your day-to-day life. It's supposed to bring you closer to your family and community. And it's really like, think of like a Venn diagram. It is what you love, what the world needs, what you're good at, and what you can get paid for. So if you combine all of those things, that is in a nutshell, Iki Guy. And the reason why that's so cool is because if you think of like something you love and something you're good at, if you overlap those two things, that's gonna be like what passion is. But if you think of like what you can be paid for and what you're good at, that's like what your profession is. And if you think of like what the world needs and what you can be paid for, that's like what your vocation is. But then if you think of like what you, the world needs and what you love, that's like your mission in life, right? So like if you healthfully or happily combine all of those things, then you can get satisfaction, delight, comfort, and excitement. And that is what Iki Guy is all about. Go on, I'm listening. I could just sit here and just like take all of this in. I recently did a presentation for one of our partner agencies, Bloomerang, about finding and living in your zone of genius. And so as you define the concept of Iki Guy, it makes me think very similarly of that. I too provided a Venn diagram, right? And I was like, if you can find that thing that you love to do and it doesn't feel like work, like you found it. It's clearly, it takes a little bit more than that. But if someone had told me in elementary school that getting in trouble for talking was gonna become my profession, I of course would have laughed, right? Here we are in conversation. I get paid to talk. We get paid to ask for money. We get paid to have coffee, lunch, dinner, cocktails with donors like, come on, we saw this talent early, early in our life. So that's the concept of Iki Guy. Well, let's move in, Muhee, to how this is impacting our sector, our nonprofit professionals. And I'd like to just throw it out there and say, where are you right now? Yeah, so right before we jump into that, I wanna share a little bit more on Iki Guy. And you mentioned about early on in your life or things that you were passionate about. Iki Guy is supposed to be what's found intrinsically in you. Each of us have a natural inclination towards something, but then adulthood came and you have responsibilities and all of these things, right? So if you think of what it was you were truly passionate about, I remember being like fascinated with the cosmos and astronomy, but I also remember like having traits of like being a natural leader in my community youth group and like all of these things. So that's like what I leaned into and all throughout my like high school, college, I was president of this, president of that, like so hyper-involved. And those were the things that I believed I could do, but maybe my parents didn't see it as a natural career path, but then luckily this internship came around, right? So think of all the things like what type of income you want, what type of standards of living you want, all of those things factor in, but it really comes down to some of these five pillars of Iki Guy. And the first pillar is like starting small, right? You wanna make sure that whatever it is you do, you do what you do best. You know how to say no. How important is that, right? Like also taking care of your energy, like not feeling drained. So then the second pillar is releasing yourself. It's about just like really allowing yourself to fall into the fold of life and like bring things in naturally. The third is harmony and sustainability. The fourth is the joy of the little things and the fifth pillar is being in the here and now. So like presence. So all of these things plays such a critical role and we can jump into how these things are relatable to the nonprofit life as well. You asked where I am and I am in Lima, Peru for the entire month of June. I'm gonna be traveling over the next four months.  We'll see how I feel in October. But I've been giving myself these four months to travel. I'm doing it through a program called Remote Ear for anybody who works remotely. It's a fantastic travel work program. They take care of your accommodations in terms of a place to stay, a workspace and they curate experiences for you. Last weekend I was in the Amazon jungle. How crazy is that? It's amazing. You too. So really taking this moment to live my life and really live by my own terms. I have gone through a lot of transitions in the last year that allowed me the affordability to do something like this. So now I'm just really leaning into doing the things that I've always loved. And I think if we relate that back to like the nonprofit world, we wanna make sure that our employees, our colleagues avoid burnout, right? We wanna make sure that they're passionate about our missions. These are people who are marketing and fundraising and helping the organization accomplish its mission. Are they really there for that purpose? Are they happy in their job? Are you somebody who's making somebody else's job miserable, right? Let's talk real. Like what are you doing to make the workplace an amazing atmosphere?  Yeah, hand-tint, wink, wink. But honestly, like there's nothing more important than your talent on your team, right? At American Muslim Community Foundation, I'm so grateful for the team that we have. I was full-time at AMCF for two years. After I left the Red Cross in 2019, I did AMCF full-time until 2021. I took a step back. We hired a full-time executive director. They also hired a nonprofit manager, a donor manager, part-time.  And there's a lot of things that needed to be done better and that's why I needed to bring in the help because I'm not much of a process person. I'm a very big vision, get an idea, accomplish it. But somewhere along the way, a lot of steps were missed and it's just like he has this idea and he can do anything, but internally, we needed an executive director to be more process-oriented and work with the board of directors and do a lot of things. And I realized that and I accepted that. And as a founder, that was a challenge for me to step away from something that I love, that I created on a piece of paper and brought into fruition. So it was a long journey to get to that point but now I get to work 10 hours a week there and just do big vision strategy, fundraising, the things that I love and the other people get to right-size the ship and help the organization scale and grow and we're better for it. So what I'm hearing and thank you for all of this and sharing so transparently where you are today, where you'll be through October, this to me, it's so exciting. I know that over the last couple of years, pandemic's plural, not just COVID-19, right? But we're talking social injustice, environmental crisis, political divide. There's really so many of us have really taken the time as I close my eyes and thank so many of us have taken the time to assess what's important. And this IkiGuy concept is so important. You shared the five principles earlier, thanks for that. I know I need to go back and listen to each and everyone. I'm sure we could Google it and find it as well. But is this, I can't help but think because I shared with you, I have a son, we're very rooted to his school schedule. So how do we implement IkiGuy if we don't have the ability to live a more nomadic lifestyle? And IkiGuy does not mean nomadic, like it's not synonymous, but how are we able, because I can only imagine, Muhe, that we probably have some viewers and listeners that are saying, if I were young again, I would do this. Or if I, you know, wasn't married or had kids and other family commitments, I would absolutely do this. Many of us too are in the season of parenting our parents. And so that keeps you in another kind of rooted space.  What about donors? And I mean, I just said a lot in that. And so if you can kind of like sift and filter through that, but my next level is thinking, okay, those of us of nonprofit professionals that aren't spring chickens as we once used to be and the impact on donors, can you just address all of that? Again, I threw out everything in the kitchen sink, but I'm gonna let you sift through it. I know, no worries.  On paper, it feels like I, you know, should be doing a lot of things in my life that maybe the status quo, but the reality of my situation as well is that I'm exiting a 13 year relationship. I'm now independent. I, you know, don't have dependents that I feel like I need to provide for. So a lot of transitions in my life allow me to be a little more nomadic. And I was ready to live that RV van life. Like I was gonna tour across the country when I got back in October. I bought an RV, Jared, I kid you not, it was stolen. So like the universe was telling me like, maybe put some pause on that, right? Now, if that's not a sign. I thought I had my life figured out how hilarious, right? This was just the universe. God saying like, I'm actually in control. Like you just sit back and do your thing. And luckily it was insured and like still figuring that out with insurance.  So I feel like that is my picky guy. But for somebody else, it may be more pulling them towards their profession or pulling them towards a mission and things like that. So really it's what is inside of you and that's gonna be your purpose of life. Icky guy, when it comes to donors, when I think of that, it's like people give away their money, not only to feel good about making the world a better place and maybe their religion calls them to do that in some aspect, but really I think it's for their own Icky guy. It's for their own purpose in life. It's like the issue that they wanna solve. Maybe they're super passionate about education or maybe they're super passionate about food and security in their zip code. And when they donate, even if it's a hundred bucks, everyone's a philanthropist. Let's list that, right? Thank you. And you don't need to be of a certain socioeconomic status to be able to give money away. Maybe you give from your time, maybe you give from your talent. There are other means to philanthropy than just money. So we need to redefine what that means for us. But when it comes to a donor seeking their purpose and really I think of myself as a philanthropic advisor, right? What can I help this family accomplish with their charitable giving, even if it's only $500, even if it's $500,000, but maybe to them that's a drop in the bucket, right?  What's the purpose of them supporting your organization? Why do they support the organization? What other organizations do they support? This is really getting into the psyche of the donor and talking to them about this concept of Iggy Guy and how it aligns with their charitable giving. Sure, why not? It may be an entry to a conversation. Have you heard about this concept of Iggy Guy? I found it really fascinating and it talks about the purpose of life. I'd love to hear more about your purpose in life and what you try to accomplish when you donate your charitable giving. So I think these are all inroads and things that will get your donors thinking and appreciate your insight in the conversation. So there's a lot of ways in which you can bring this concept into the donor atmosphere. So a few other things about donor relationship management, like always I love talking about lapsed donors and just being able to put a different strategy and spin on things for those donors. So this might actually be a good aspect of reengaging the donors by asking a question, right? Like yeah, the small talk of like, hey, have you been or hey, I noticed you didn't give last year or this that the other, but really something that will get them to pause, get them to think, get them to reflect on why they gave to your organization in the first place.  So those are the best opportunities to get people into your donor network again. And it's far easier each of you know to retain a donor than it is to acquire a donor. So going back to that pool of people who have lapsed, even if it's been three years, five years, still dig deep, have hope, be persistent. I feel like I'm giving myself dating advice, but... So it's called... Call me if you need more. Call me, because I've been there too. We can give you advice. You know, as you're talking about icky guy with the donors and pulling that into the cause selling education model that fundraising academy provides.  Included, I'm already thinking, Muhy, like what's my next email that's going out that mentions icky guy, right? That shares this episode that literally takes us from, tell us what got you involved with this organization to what is your icky guy, you know? Like what drives you, what makes you passionate? I, you know, again, talk about my son. For me, the icky guy for me is also as a family, what are our core values? Where do we want to give as a legacy? And I love, gave you snaps for everyone's a philanthropist. Everyone has the ability to give time, talent, treasure. We all have this innate ability to make a difference. I believe, and I hear you say that you believe as well. So I, as you're talking, I'm already thinking of that email communication that elevates, you know, icky guy. And first of all, you know, all of us need to Google and learn how to spell it and say it. I practiced and literally was very phonetic when I wrote it out, I-C-K-Y-G-U-Y, icky guy. So that's how I was able to learn it. But I just love all of this. I feel like there's so much more that we could talk about. We talked about, you know, truly looking at this from the nonprofit professional perspective.  And then we talked about how it impacts our donors. And our very few minutes left, Muhy, I would love for you. And we touched on this, but how more might we share the concept of this? Yeah, I think, you know, the thing that I love doing is like strategic planning for like nonprofit organizations, for people who want to start their businesses, for just like brainstorming of like the potential possibilities, right? And we do this all the time in our profession, but how often do we do it in our personal lives? So that's what I feel Ikegaya is, is like, it's our strategic plan, it's our roadmap, it's our journey to happiness, right? So really, if you think of it in that way, yeah, we should be putting a lot of self development time here, right? Do you have, you know, coming back to the workplace, like is there trust between coworkers and leaders? Is there pride in the role that you perform? Is there camaraderie in the workplace? All of these things are so important. And whether you have this conversation with colleagues or loved ones, family, friends, everyone in between, I think there's something that people can do in their life to make that shift from, you know, everybody's been burnt out. Whether you realize it or not, you've been burnt out. So the way that I see it is, how can you avoid that? How can you build in systems in place to that the quality of your life?  So I'm here to help remind myself first and foremost and each and every one of you that there's so much that we as individuals have to offer the world and ourselves, right? We control our own happiness. And if we can't figure out what our purpose in life is, we need to make the time to do it because you wanna wake up with that sense of fulfillment. Yeah, the coffee needs to get you there. But if you can wake up, have that positive attitude, find that happiness and joy, there's something really special in life. We talked about in the Green Room Chatter, you know, our conversation today provides the modeling for others.   I can take those hikes. I can, you know, kind of find respite in nature. And so that's a way for us to share the concept of icky guy, this conversation, sharing this episode with other people, you know, sharing the concept with your donors, with your development team, with your staff, also learning, which I'm not gonna let you miss this because you said it and I'm gonna repeat it. Where are you pissing people off to where you're kind of snuffing their icky guy, right? Like, where are we snuffing other people's icky guy? I'm guilty, right? I get into this drive mode of solutions and process. And I'm sure I'm snuffing someone's icky guy. And just to have that awareness, I appreciate and honor that you brought that up, Muhy, because it's so, that self-awareness is interesting. So as we share the concept, living the concept, implementing the concept, no matter the size, I think it's really important. My big question to you as we wrap up is, are you writing a book? Oh man. You know, I'd rather talk about things than write. I don't know. That's just me and my personal preference. There's so many good resources and things that I've benefited from reading. I don't think I have anything additional to add that is that much of value. I feel like everything that I've shared is like just regurgitated things that I have accomplished, right? It's not like my own concept. It's not like anything like that. However, maybe for my journeys in life. Yes. A memoir, like a published all, like I don't know if I can even do that because I live such a wild life, Jared. You could. I can't publish a book. You could have a plastic sleeve over it. And behind the counter. But I love that. I've been listening to you. It has inspired me. It's motivated me. I just want to honor and appreciate who you are as a person, who you are as a spirit. Thank you so very much.  Loves to, yeah, there you go. Loves to raise money. He's also a trainer with Fundraising Academy. Please check out fundraising-academy.org.  He's co-founder of the American Muslim Community Foundation. Thank you for sharing that co-founder story. Thank you for sharing how you stepped away, hired an executive that brought talents that maybe weren't your greatest skillset and allowed the organization to flourish under new leadership, different leadership in a way that you saw was really beneficial to the organization. So I appreciate all of that. Of course. Yeah. Really happy to be here. Thank you. And thanks to Julia again for being the CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy, allowing me to serve alongside as the co-host and have these fantastic conversations that are my love language. They fill up my cup and they just make me, they make me so happy and proud to be in the sector. I'm also extremely happy and proud to have the ongoing support from many of our presenting sponsors. Those of you watching, you can see their logo on the screen. And I encourage you to check them out.  So thank you so very much to Bloomerang American Nonprofit Academy, fundraising academy, non-profit nerd, your part-time controller, staffing boutique and the non-profit thought leader. Well, if we haven't plugged it enough, this episode can be found on so many of our channels, Roku, YouTube, Vimeo, Fire TV, as well as podcasting. I hope I hit all those. If not, our executive producer will remind me. But this is an episode you will want to share. You'll probably want to listen to it again. I know I will. And just thank you. Thank you, thank you, Muihi, for all that you are, all that you offer. I wish you the very best safe travels and journey. Thank you so much. Looking forward to seeing all the other episodes. Yes, thank you. For all of you that have joined us, we're gonna end today's show as we do every single day. Again, today is 565, if you're counting, some of us are. But again, please, please stay well so we can all continue to do well. Thank you so much.


Re-reading the Little Death after its publication reminds me that I never intended to begin a series. It was meant as a one-off, a way to teach myself how to write fiction and an inversion of the noir fiction of the tough guy writers of the 30s, 40s and 50s, particularly Raymond Chandler. Chandler loomed large in my mind for a number of reasons. Like countless other readers, I was captivated by his inimitable style, a style as distinctive as William Faulkner's and a lot more fun to read. Then, too, Philip Marlowe was not only an outsider, but an outsider with whom he gave way could I particularly identify. Marlowe, for all his tough talk, was an honorable man who embodied the virtues that society purported to honor, but rarely displayed, loyalty, courage, integrity. And because of his status as a private eye was the object of society's contempt. Nonetheless, despite their contempt for him, he was the person to whom the hente desente turned to in their times of trouble and to whom they revealed the squalid secrets that lay beneath the surface of respectable society. This gave him a ringside seat to society's hypocrisies. Gee, I thought, who does that remind me of? Oh, right, me. Like Marlowe, my inner experience of myself as a decent person was wildly at odds with society's characterization of gay men and the contempt in which it held us. This very contempt fueled my determination to be productive, honest, and ethical. I would not give in to society's hatreds of gay men by fulfilling its stereotypes.   But as a prosecutor, I knew that the vast majority of sexual predators, child molesters, rapists, were heterosexual men. Gay men were said to hate women, but the battered women who showed up in my courtrooms had been beaten by their husbands and boyfriends.  Thus, I saw that the private eye in noir fiction could work as a metaphor for the position gay men occupied in straight culture. That's the end of the lecture. Now we get to the pulp. So I'm reading from chapter one. I'm going to start at the bottom of page five.  So this is my version of that. My detective is a gay Latino criminal defense lawyer named Henry Rios, who as we meet him in chapter one has been expelled from felony trials because he had a meltdown during a death penalty trial and has been banished to a small public defender's office in a university town that very much resembles Palo Alto. So Rios has shown up at the jail in the morning. His job is to interview people who've been arrested the night before to determine whether they meet the criteria for public defender services and just to get a general idea of what their crimes were. So he meets the blonde whose name is Hugh Paris. So that's I think all the introduction I need. So he's initially handed by the sheriff's deputy whose name is Novak, he's handed the arrest report. The suspect's name was Hugh Paris, five foot eight, blonde hair, blue eyes, 26 years old, New York license. He declined to give a local address or answer questions about his employment or his family, no rap sheet. I studied his booking photo. His hair was like a cox comb, his eyes were dazed and he was ghostly white. Blonde white boys are not my usual type, but Hugh Paris was beautiful. I closed the file before Novak could notice how intently I was looking at the photo.  I asked.  I nodded. The bar was called The Office and its match books were inscribed. If anyone asks, tell them you are at The Office. It drew a mixed crowd of gay guys but was more preppy than anything else. Not the kind of place where you'd expect to find someone high on a poor folks drug like PCP. In order to Hugh Paris look like a typical PCP user, I'd have guessed white wine and maybe a little pot on the weekend. The deputy brought him into my office in handcuffs and a pair of oversized jail blues that fell from his shoulders and covered the tops of his bare feet. My first thought was five, eight, not likely. He was five, six, maybe five, seven in shoes.  The deputy shoved him into a chair across from me and left the room. Mr. Paris, I said, I'm Henry Rios from the Public Defender's Office. How are you feeling this morning? He frowned as if how he felt should be obvious. He raised his cuffed hands. Are these really necessary? His voice was soft and slightly sibilant. Security measures, the deputies insist. Oh, you're bigger than me, he pointed out. I couldn't hurt you if I wanted to, which he added with a small smile, I don't. I just wanna get out of here. I summoned the deputy and told him to remove the cuffs. Better, I asked after the deputy left us. Much, he said. He rubbed his wrists and smoothed his hair, buttoned the top buttons of his jail jumpsuit and pulled himself up in the chair. He smiled, revealing a set of expensively maintained teeth. The small gestures restored his dignity and turned him back into a person instead of a prisoner, a really attractive person. What am I doing here? He asked conversationally. You were arrested last night at the office, I replied. I read him the charges. Gee, I had some kind of night, didn't I? He said, too bad I don't remember any of it. I can tell you though, Henry, I didn't do any drugs. I'd been called many things by the men who'd sat in huge chair but never by my first name as if we were a couple of pals chatting over a drink. That showed a level of self assurance I associated with the rich boys I'd gone to school with. That in his nice teeth made me wonder, who's this guy? You're sure about that? He shrugged. I split a joint in the parking lot with a friend. After that, it all gets kind of cloudy. What's the last thing you do remember? I was at the bar having a drink. He said, I must have gone outside because I remember street lights and then I woke up here. Where are my shoes, by the way? What about the shirms the cops found on you? The what? You don't know what a shirm is? He frowned. If you told me there was going to be a quiz I would have studied. No, I don't know what a shirm is. Sherman is a brand of cigarettes or dipped into PCP. That's usually how it's sold. He shook his head, I don't smoke at all and I've never used PCP. You said you split a joint with someone before you went into the bar. Who was he? He appraised me for a moment before he answered. He was a trick, Henry. He said his name was Brad. Did you meet him at the office? He shook his head. We hooked up at a bathhouse in the city last week and he called me out of the blue and asked me to meet him at the bar. I had a good enough time with him to make the drive. Do you have a way of reaching this guy? I might have his number somewhere, he said, then asked lightly, how much trouble am I in? You're looking at a misdemeanor use and possession charge. Not too serious unless you've got a record somewhere else, do you? Opiate possession in New York, he said. Oh, and a couple of solicitation arrests, but no convictions. Don't look so shocked, Henry. I can't be your first junkie whore. They're usually not white and male, I said. What can I say, darling? He replied with hard-hottingness, I'm an overachiever.  Hugh Parris had me flummoxed. I'm not a current user, Henry, he said, reverting to his soft tone. I've been clean for nine months. That's why I told you no drugs, well, pot, but that doesn't really count, does it? He gave me a dazzling smile. I mean, I bet even upstanding lawyers smoke a joint now and then. And now he was flirting with me. I pushed his booking photo across the table. You were on high on more than pot last night. He studied the photo, God, I look terrible. He raised his head, his blue eyes wide and sincere. Honestly, Henry, I didn't touch anything last night but grass on the glass of bad Chardonnay. The joint could have been dipped in PCP without you knowing, I said. Why would Brad do that, he said. He didn't have to drug me to get laid. I was ready to give it up.  What? Nothing, he said, but it was clear something disturbing had occurred to him. You remember something about last night? What is it? I think I was set up. Are you saying this guy, Brad, drugged you intentionally and planted the PCP on you? I thought he was just a guy you tricked with. He looked scared, then angry, but said nothing. Hugh, what's going on? I need to make a call, he said. When we're done, I replied, are you going to tell me what happened last night? You wouldn't understand, he said, regretfully. If you don't talk to me, you'll sit in jail until they'll reign you this afternoon.  Is that what you want? Oh, don't worry about me, darling, he said lightly. I've been in worse scrapes. I just need to make that call to fix it. Okay, I said. Have it your way, I guess we're done here. Wait, his eyes locked into mine, searching it seemed, and then having found what he was looking for, he said, you're gay. That's not relevant, I replied.  I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable, I said, Abash, he laughed. Uncomfortable, you didn't notice, I'm looking back. If we were anywhere else, I would have jumped you 10 minutes ago. I grinned, good thing the camera in this room doesn't record sound, too.  Are you in the closet at work? I could have ended the interview, but his tone suggested more than mere curiosity. I recognized that tone. It was a signal from one lonely traveler to another. We moved through a world so inescapably and aggressively straight that coming across another gay man in an unexpected circumstance was like stumbling into a refuge where for a moment it was possible to lower our shields and breathe. I'm not to my employer, as I said, but not my clients. Why not tell them? It's not necessary for me to do my job and some of them might have a problem with it. I need for them to trust me, by lying about who you are. I'm sure I don't have to explain to you how complicated being gay can be. You're right, he said, I'm sorry. Do you have anyone, Henry? He asked. You mean like a boyfriend? No. He grinned, that's hard to believe. My job keeps me busy, I said. It was my automatic response. And alone, he said quietly. The words seemed to echo in the little gray walled room. It was just talk, I told myself. He hadn't meant anything much by it. Certainly he couldn't have known how deeply those words cut at the moment. Do you have anyone, Hugh? He shook his head. God know who'd have me. You're from New York. From here originally, he said, I came back to take care of some things, family things. I see, I said, I wish you luck.  You can find guys for sex, that's easy.  Don't get me wrong, Henry, I'm not knocking sex, but it costs so much to come out. You'd think there'd be something more at the end of it than another guy's dick. My problem is I never figured out what that something more is. To be loved, I suggested.  I'm trying to put my life back together. I got off junk, that's a start. Until last night, I said, I told you Henry, that wasn't intentional, I was set up. I'd like to get you out of here if I can. Tell me what happened and let me help you. I appreciate that, he said, I really do, but last night was part of a long, long story. You wouldn't believe me even if I told you. Try me, he shook his head. I wish we hadn't met like this. I took my business card out of my pocket, turned it over, wrote my home phone.  He took the card, looked at it. For legal advice? For whatever you need, I replied. After that, there was nothing left to say, but neither of us moved or looked away. His lips were slightly parted, a blue vein beat in his pale neck. The hard, overhead light picked out darker strands of gold in his pale hair. Something about this soft voice, mysterious, pretty little man, slipped past my defenses and reminded me that desire was the uncomplicated moment when two people look into each other's eyes and each one thinks, yes, you. I saw the ascent in his eyes and I knew he saw it in mine, but we were sitting in the gray room in a jail, on opposite sides of a table that separated the lawyer from inmate. He had refused the only help I could offer and now he was on his own. Still, I could not restrain myself from reaching across the table and taking his hand. He was startled, but then he threaded his delicate fingers into mine and we sat there for a moment holding hands. You're sweet, he said, tightening his grip. Not usually, I replied. Then I remembered the camera in the corner and Novak sitting in the booking office and let go of him. Last chance, I said, let me help you, Hugh. You have, he replied. I shrugged and called the guard and to take him back to his cell and went off to see about getting him his phone call.