The Beautiful part about most of this presentation is we're gonna be actually in wordpress Just going through it hammering through it I mean just going through each of the parts that I'm suggesting to you all to really take a look at if you are thinking of starting a New website or you want to refresh your website? These are the fundamentals. These are the basics This is an overview of what I look at Time and time again every time I'm starting with a new website or the fundamentals of how I Love to work with and build websites and I'll kind of give you some of my story or backstory as we go along the presentation I didn't want to be all Cliche with the whole you know My name is Maestro Stevens and I'm from San Antonio, Texas and I moved to Cleveland, Ohio And I will see how I'm going what I'm going with that there Yeah, I don't want to be all cliche with that like I want to get into the beating potatoes Because I feel like y'all would appreciate more of learning what y'all came here for which is these this information the content the goods right the golden nuggets of how You know, maybe you want to look at wordpress in a different way. I am not a developer. So that's a disclaimer right there. So If you need a developer's perspective, I am not your guy. I'm also not a graphic designer. I'm more of a engineer A visionary strategist. I like to connect the dots I think bigger picture I get my hands wet as well too My hands dirty, you know in wordpress a lot But at the same time I'd rather work with people that know a lot more than me Which are probably people right here in this You know presentation In the session today and I'm really curious. Please put in the chat What no what is your relationship with wordpress? Are you a developer? Are you a designer? Are you a content creator? Are you a beginner? You know, are you just somebody who's just getting in it, you know What kind of relationship do you have with wordpress? I'm really curious If everybody wouldn't mind putting in the chat If it's if again if I mess up your name Forgive me. Is it claudette?  Okay. Okay. We got to check that out. We got ronda beginner Okay So we got a lot. Okay. So we have a good amount of beginners some intermediates beginners Digital for okay. Okay. All right. All right. Thank you every single time You all, you know engage participate. That gives me energy One of my favorite Influencers right now is a guy by the name of and he's actually a speaker But guy by the name of et and his name is eric thomas and if you know anything about him He's all about just getting energy from the crowd feedback And I just love that because that just hypes me up and makes me want to just go in More and give you all more so I appreciate every single time you all give me You're either, you know, your response in the chat or just That energy back. Excuse me. All right. So let's get started with everything The three main topics we're going to talk about within this Session today is going to be setting up your WordPress settings Adding your theme and settings and then adding a central plugins and settings. It's a lot of settings, right? Like is it setting in Hold on So these are the main things that we're going to be talking about and really getting into and then on the part two We're going to really dive in on getting into More deeper on plugins and deeper on Gutenberg specifically All right All right So setting up your WordPress settings. Why is this important? And what does this mean? Well Let's dive into it. So in WordPress And I'm not going to get into the whole hosting aspect of things because that's Can be saved for another topic for another session because that can get really deep in there But I'm just going to assume if you know anything about WordPress At all that you understand that you have to have hosting with WordPress and hosting is a big part Of WordPress for the most part. So Depending on your hosting, you know, some of things may different be different But I just set up a Blank WordPress installation and call it sandbox and WordPress for the most part And I want to I'm starting here from the beginning is if I just started a website from scratch for the first time For the most Yeah, for the first time and we're going to just dive in piece by piece from there So in WordPress you have your settings and you have general settings here And typically when you install WordPress, you'll land on your dashboard page So you'll see something like this, which will be the latest version of WordPress But I'm going to go to general And why this is important? I feel that it's because I got tripped up a couple times. You know, I had to go through some troubleshooting scenarios when it came to the WordPress address URL and site address URL I feel like most people will understand because this is pretty obvious, you know site title But what this really attributes to is the name of your website or the name of your company or name of You know your business in some sort of way Most themes for the most part don't Use the tagline and I can't be wrong on that and hey, just know that I'm not perfect So anybody who wants to you know add corrections. I don't mind Taking feedback and being corrected I won't get offended or anything like that, but I'm just going to give you You know what I know in the best way that I know it, but for the most part You can add the tagline, but most time, you know themes don't use it You can add that in other content areas here in WordPress But where the WordPress address URL comes in and the reason why I brought the hosting part is because depending on your hosting Some hosting will give you the ability to do an SSL, which is Basically in the nutshell you're getting that lock Key here at the top left hand corner and you're making your site secure, right? So that way when people go to it, they don't see Any type of like warning sign or anything like that So when you have that happen When you're able to create the add the SSL to your website You typically have to go into your WordPress Website and then add the s which you'll See when you install for the first time and you don't have the SSL It'll just be HTTP Then you add the SSL You should turn you know turn it on from your hosting or some other method I think you can also do it through plugins. There's many ways to add SSL But a lot of people do it through hosting you add that then you want to come back in here and add that s to both of these And then when you do that, it'll kick you out And then when it kicks you out, it'll let you log back in you'll come back in and then you'll see that s there And then you'll be all good to go So that's something that I just wanted to bring up when it comes to your settings and in the general Menu sub menu is to just make sure that you look at that and then you know make sure that you have the correct administrative email address Because this is going to be the one that's like the default that a lot of other Setting areas or plugins will use when it comes to sending messages out of WordPress To whoever is associated with this email. So just keep that in mind as well And then these a lot of these are self-explanatory when it comes to certain things that I feel are self-explanatory unless You have the freedom to ask questions But I'm going to allow you know You to dial in when it comes to certain things because I really want to get into A lot of the meat potatoes Which is the plugins I feel like that people want to know about because that is you know What creates a lot of the functionality within WordPress and lets us really get free It's like a kid at a candy store So I just want to teach you in this presentation that I know that WordPress can be like a kid at the candy store But you can't just be taking everything off the shelf You know what I say because you might get rotten teeth and that's the equivalent of your website crashing All right So for site language whatever site language or whatever language that you particularly speak in I would do the time zone as well Because that's important These will typically trigger or be used for other within other plugins too and then however the week starts For you, you know, it's up to you kind of thing. So let's go to writing So with writing The default post category that's important You typically don't want to have it as uncategorized But it comes to posts and posts what comes to these posts this post menu right here this is For the most part used for the blogging functionality within WordPress that people That people do that it used to be known for You know back in the day now it's just you can do whatever you want with WordPress But when it comes to the post when you create these categories and you have like a certain main category a default category This is what you want right here The rest of the stuff I would just leave as is if I were you unless you have a special case So homepage When it comes to the reading sub menu, you do want to Add your homepage. This is the way this is how you create what's on the front page of WordPress The first thing that people see so when you have it when you create a page here in this menu or the sidebar You want to add it here and then Check which one that you want to be the homepage and then this one will be attributed to the post page Which is the blog Posts right here. So it's kind of like your post roundup page or your archive I try not to get too technical verbiage, you know Terminology wise with things I do strive to be as accurate as possible because I don't want to give you all false information At the same time, you're going to hear me say things very You know Basic in ways because I feel like that's a lot easier for people It's a better way for people to learn than trying to use a whole bunch of jargon. I strive to stay away from jargon I forgot to set it but say if you if you can't explain it simply you simply don't know it So I strive to really stay within that Right there. So blog posts at the most. I don't really touch these I leave that is unless it's a special case. However, if you're just starting off your site and you don't want search engines to index your site You can check this right here and then It's really up to them as they say right here to honor that request But say you don't want to get your website on google or you don't want being to read your website yet Like you don't want them to have it and when people are searching You know online you don't want them to have their website because you're just building it out and One reason why you may not want that is because you know once you're indexed and you have this kind of you know Half-built website already that people are seeing and could give a bad look You know, you might not want to give them an unpolished look for the first look So that's just give you an example of why you might want to do this But hey, it's up to you at the end of the day. Just make sure you save your changes because when you don't Whoo Yeah It's not cool pretty to have it. No bad habit. Let's see and see. All right, so discussion This right here is really preference based discussion sessions. I mean discussion settings. I said just sessions right discussion sessions now say that five times fast But discussion settings Is really based off your preference how you want to Manage how people comment on your posts and those kind of Things so I'm not going to get too deep into this But hey, you have the freedom because you see there are a lot of settings here But you have the freedom. I typically go with the default but you have the freedom to get You know really a granular. Hey, that's a word, right? granular Just to get deeper in the whole thing if you want to customize it that's up to you Media I don't really touch this too much either. I leave this as is You know the default settings are just fine. Now permalinks I like that now these days WordPress will start off with post name Before I used to use these I would stay away when it comes to permalinks Which is really just the way that your url is going to be structured So you'll have your website then you'll have the backslash and then bam, you'll have this structure, right? That's all this really is so I would leave it either at post name But if you know what you're doing, you can do a custom structure forward slash, thank you thank you and then privacy Privacy settings you have the Privacy page so you create a privacy page. I like that WordPress already creates one for you and then you can Add it right here. Boom, and you're done. I mean it doesn't get simpler than that But those are things that I think that people just need to kind of get Have a little To brush through and just set your general settings up like that So let's move to adding your theme So adding a theme Is not hard at all for those of you all who are very accustomed to WordPress because they're you know People who are not beginners here you already know about the whole adding a theme aspect of things But for those who do not know much about adding a theme I just want to quickly touch on it because and the reason why I I want to touch on it is because Since my mind is more strategic based Thinking when it comes to building out systems and structures a theme is also, you know A part of that system and structure and I feel like it's important for you to understand Just like with the plugins how to vet or how to qualify or how to choose your theme because there are different theme types Now I ain't gonna get too deep in the theme world because that'll be a theme itself. I'm gonna leave that theme for another day But either way, let me share with you all kind of how I think when it comes to themes all right So we have three themes here, right? And these are the main themes that WordPress starts off with I don't use these themes, but They are good themes, right? They're really good themes But I like a different type of theme because I like a little bit more functionality out of my theme However, specifically with this thing what makes this thing different than these other two themes is this theme is made specifically for full site editing and Basically, it's just another way for you to Do a lot of your theme building like your header and your footer Or template building It's one of my like I have but building templates when it comes to creating Parts of your website that you can use over and over again in other areas A lot of times you do that with the theme. So with this theme It's special because you can do it within Gutenberg the WordPress editor But right now I'm going to go to add new theme here All right, so Searching for a theme and the WordPress repo is what I'm doing right now, right? You can also download a theme from WordPress.org. So I'm gonna go here and go to WordPress.org And go to themes So you can search for themes in both areas, right? It's your choice. The choice is up to you blue pill or red pill It's up to you But either way You can choose your theme from whichever direction you want to choose But when choosing a theme when deciding on your theme, I would typically look for certain criteria, you know our characteristics And One of those things that you can look at is, you know, is the theme flexible? Is it going to meet your needs, you know years down the line? I think that's very important You know looking at How you decide to choose your theme? So first you want to search for a theme in the repo You can download a theme from as I mentioned WordPress.org And then let me share with you on how to upload a theme So for instance, if I wanted to download the theme, you saw how easy that was I just click the button and go with download so I just downloaded One of the themes that I recommend and I'm only going to give you a few things that I would recommend because it's fair to give you No alternatives or variations, but when it comes to the demonstration of things I'm only going to use one one theme or one set of plugins So that way I don't get too cumbersome when it comes to adding all the Alternative ones, but I want to let you know it's your choice when it comes to using the type of technologies and type of Themes and plugins that you use. I just want to demonstrate to you. This is how I would go about Creating a website more in a strategic manner or building your website in a strategic manner so for themes You have a few here and for the most part WordPress tends to put the most popular themes at the top that makes sense Right. I mean that's logical A lot of other platforms and you know situations and companies and things would do that So these are the most popular themes as you can see I I'm going to Utilize, you know in this demonstration a few themes that either I know or have used before or I'm I've Been recommended to you know by High caliber people. So my favorite themes are Astra cadence I've heard a lot of good things about ocean wp And generate press and I always wonder what this enneve and bloxy So any one of these can also be the third Option just for the testing just to show you all but you see how easy it was for me to install a theme Same thing when it comes to uploading if I wanted to upload the theme I could just drag astra up here and install And since it's already there, I think it's going to ask me if I want to replace it. It usually does that with the plugins So when you get in there See and it did so I can just say yes replace active with uploaded You see how easy it was to just upload a theme So the whole theme aspect of it is very easy when it comes to uploading themes or adding or installing themes to your website but as I mentioned before I look at a few things when it comes to themes As far as their settings Because i'm a fan of flexibility And these are free as you can see these are free I think some a lot of themes do have or not going to say a lot of themes some themes do have paid versions Where they'll give you even more functionality out of it But as you can see how free that was I was freely able to add the theme to the website All right, so activating the theme Super simple very easy. You just click the button Activate right And boom the theme is here now with some themes and even plugins. They'll directly take you and sometimes it's annoying Uh of mine where they'll like take you to their dashboard Immediately it's like they're just taking over, you know what I'm trying to do But some don't they'll just leave you where you are So you just have to just kind of go with the flow and see which things do that Or you know what themes or what plugins do that and what plugins don't do that All right, so it's as easy to activate And deactivate as it is to activate. So see how this is activated. I can easily just go over here And activate this and now cadence this theme is activated So you can go back and forth between themes activating themes pretty easily And that's something that I really appreciate about WordPress is You can do that and you want to do that because you want to do testing At certain points when something is failing on your website, you're having issues One of the best ways to start your testing is changing the theme and the fact that you can do it very easily Makes it a lot better, you know in my opinion excuse me all right, so let's go into Turning on auto updates and deleting themes So turning on auto updates and deleting themes is pretty easy If you go to a theme and the reason why this is actually Revolutionary oh, nope. No No, we gotta do a little bit. I will do a revolution No Revolutionary, yeah, baby. Yeah So this is revolutionary because before you couldn't enable auto updates and that easily years ago with WordPress, but then with Was it 5.9 or was it please put in chat if you do know exactly what it was but A recent update gave us the ability to enable auto updates when it comes to plugins and themes. So it just made it easier Before being able to do that And boom you can add just enable auto update now you do have to be careful I'll give you a disclaimer. Okay, because this is and this is where things get sticky I know that we I know especially us wordpressers We can go back and forth for you know, the best practices so Always know that hey question everything, you know, do what you feel you need to do But I recommend that when it comes to auto updates Or when it comes to yeah updating your site and I'm not going to go too deep into it But there's a such thing called child themes that you have your theme and then you can use a child theme and what a child theme is basically a companion of a theme it's an extension of a theme where you can Add certain code do certain things with it. You can do whatever you want with it, right? and When your main theme updates, especially when you add code to the theme when your main theme updates Your child theme holds intact that code, you know, all those different Customizations that you did to your website through the theme so the main theme updates You know, so that way you still have a good fresh theme And then you still have the child theme holding your Customizations of your code intact Some people like to do that because it gives them the flexibility and ability to do what they want to do While actually having those updates to keep their Theme running smoothly.  I think Sally that I hopefully I Helped answer that question kind of in a way. So it's really preferred to you. I recommend doing auto updates But that's all dependent on how, you know, what type of theme that you do choose now Let's go to See let me see. I'm not sure I'm not getting too far ahead of my okay. Boom. Perfect So deleting a theme I'm gonna show that real quick and then we're gonna go to the settings. It's very easy You gotta get this up the windows out the way. I know you guys can't see them right now But I have left these windows away. So, okay, so I wanted to leave the theme I would click on it and just click delete And it's gone just that easy But I'm going to add astra back add astra Wasn't that a movie that that would Brad Pitt? I'm a movie buff y'all. So I'm just gonna let y'all know that right I am A movie buff Yes, I am so Did I add astra? Okay, we are add astra no Brad cadence so we have cadence activated here and Here are a couple of things that I like to look at now There's a couple ways you can get to the customize the customizer you can literally click customize you can click on the theme You can click customize over here Now why would we want to go to the customizer because that's where it's going to give us our theme settings And to me, this is where I really choose A theme, you know, based on what kind of settings this has specifically in the free version and in the pro version If there is a pro version So colors and fonts. This is where you put an ad Your colors and your fonts or your typography Most themes will have something that looks like this So if you're not using full site editing and you're still using the old school customizer I guess it's going to be called the old school now now we old school So it's going to be the old school customizer You add your colors. So with this particular theme they give you three different palettes and you can add your colors here So that way you can use your colors in other areas of your website And so when it comes to this particular one they have a functionality where they call global Like a global functionality where if you add your colors here and anywhere on your website you use A color and it'll have a globe on it when you change your colors It'll change across the board across your whole website And some themes do have that and some themes don't so this is just something to just kind of look out for when it comes to your colors And then typography you can See that this is associated with all the different fonts in the font headings So you want to make sure that your theme also has this as well, obviously, but It's really about how much flexibility they give you within being able to change out your different You know fonts and what type of fonts they're able to use that's the part that I will look at as well Then when it comes to the site logo For this particular one you would put it right here. So you add the site icon a k a the fava con because it's your favorite con No all right So you can add the site title here and the site logo right here as well And that way you have your logo dialed in So let me go back And then the last one is More performance base or optimization base. So in here, I think it's found in The performance area where certain themes will have a and they have different words for them So that's why I you know, I don't want to get too deep on the words are called But this one gives you areas where you can add some performance functionality like adding the Google fonts locally preloading fonts and also enabling css preload Here's the other thing. Here's the caveat that And if you don't know anything about this, it's okay, but when it comes to caching Certain caching plugins on which are used to help optimize your website for speed, you know But for the most part some caching plugins a lot of them have the same functionality So just be careful with using the same first functionality across the board. Don't have the same two things checked or toggled on both You know on the theme and in the plugin just one or the other I think that's a good practice to go by So let's go back And I didn't save this if I wanted to change the settings and then save them I would hit the publish button instead of the it doesn't say save But that's what that means when you hit the publish button now when it comes to astra, let's activate astra And do the same thing I just went to them So with astra, which is a really good theme as well a very flexible theme You can do the same thing here. So let's see Global typography right here. This is where you would add your typography Colors same thing and they also have a global Palette global color palette too as well. This is something in my opinion that It's starting to become necessary Like it should be standard in all themes that have this global because I don't want to change every single color When I you know when I want to change my colors in my page, especially when I have Hundreds of pages in my website I want to be able to dial in from a branding standpoint and have everything changed across the board But this is a great way for you to be able to do that And then when you have multiple color palettes, you can even test out other color palettes for different seasons So say you want to do something for this coming halloween season or Thanksgiving or christmas You can have a christmas color palette for change it for that season and then change it back to your normal one Well, this is just the ways that I think you all when it comes to scaling and think and building a website with wordpress in a very As I said flexible way But strategic way more importantly that also is customized to your brand and gives your brand the ability to breathe While you handle your business and you know utilize the functionalities that wordpress and plugins give you The typography and colors. I'm not going to get into the buttons and anything like that But I just wanted to show you that it's the same thing. Here's what they call performance. So low google fonts locally with astra That's perfect. And then site identity here. We go again. So site icon and then the site logo So just a little areas that I want you to see the dial in And to think about when it comes to the type of theme that you are using with wordpress I'm trying to now we're into the meat and potatoes of the plugin. So I made this table here Because I wanted to you know, show you a visual representation of the plugins that I was going to Demonstrate for you today of ones that I feel are kind of essential Or the categories I would say the pelican categories that are essential to building a new wordpress website Or just having a wordpress website in general now This is not an List that is just you know the perfect list. This is just what I feel with some of the basic ones And everybody's lists will differ. But this is how I think from a categorization or compartmentalization standpoint and I categorize everything. Yes, it's good. Yes, it's bad I'm dealing with it. But I'm using it to my advantage when it comes to wordpress So we're going to go through these real quick and I'm going to show you how to add plugins so Let's go to the where is it plugins right here bone. So when it comes to plugins, as you can see, I have a blank slate here and There's nothing No plugins installed as you can see in order to add a new plugin. You can either click add new Right, or you can do the same thing like with the themes and you can go to the plugins From wordpress.org So you can do it from the repo or you can do it from wordpress.org and repo stands for repository Those of y'all who didn't know reposted for so It's pretty easy to add plugins and this is where Caution people a lot to be careful Because this is where we get in trouble. Okay Now I guess I can kind of get into a little bit of the story About me now that we're along the road and you all, you know, please. I'm feedback is all good Do you have a list of plugins we can save? Absolutely. Like I said, you're gonna get this Slide I'm gonna make sure everybody gets a slide I don't have it in google drive and ready for you all right now But I'm gonna make sure when I upload it to wordpress.tv and this time I'm gonna do a better job of uploading it faster I apologize for you all that when I did it slow last time and I gotta take the video down and re upload it because I didn't edit it whoo sometimes I just I got slowed down, you know, but I'm gonna upload this I'm gonna make sure the slides are with it Everybody's gonna get that as well and I do have a special gift for you all that stay to the end There's 16 people here for those of you all who are and I I shouldn't pre-framed it like that But for those of you all who are in Cleveland or in the northeast Ohio area I have a special gift for you all that It is totally free and I think it's gonna be pretty cool Which you got to stay to the end to actually see it when I say it's pretty cool. I'm talking about I think it's pretty freaking cool So when it comes to plugins you see here, I'm in the repo and As I mentioned, this is kind of where we really get in trouble because we'll just go in here and we'll just add anything to our website and For me like this is where it kind of you know my whole life and thought process really came in So as I mentioned in the beginning, I am from San Antonio, Texas. I moved to Cleveland, Ohio. I started My business in 2015 I started an agency and that really came from a pivot Because I really started off with music and entertainment in my 20s and I guess for the good or bad it did or didn't work out And so I picked up a camera. I learned photography. I learned video and then I took a I was living in Austin, Texas and I left my way into a work for a website development team I said I can do SEO and I really couldn't do SEO and they hired me because I just liked my My skill set of you know, just being very technical Uh, so that caused me to start learning marketing and learning Uh branding and then learning websites and just learning at that right there was The thing that connected the dot that connected the dot to everything else, right? So that's the only reason why I'm even in the WordPress world is because one thing led to another I remember one person told me or I was watching the video and one guy Was demonstrating how to get into business like he was asked the question Well, how do you get into business the way he demonstrated was well, he drew a purple dot and then he Took another Marker and then he drew a red square and he took another marker and he drew a yellow triangle And he drew these different shapes and colors and then he connected them all together And he said one thing leads to another if you want to get in business just Being business is getting business the one thing and I feel like that's parallel to life And that's what kind of made me fall in love with WordPress You know because I felt like the plugins and the function that was like that too I was able to one connecting thing led to another But I had to make sure that thing that connected with that other thing that those things You know really worked well together and they matched And so that way I can connect the next dot in the next dot I never knew I was going to need this next thing a k8 like a plugin I need this new functionality. I'm adding this new skill set So if you all anybody in the chat that can relate to me You know give me a one in the chat if you relate to that but That's just how I felt, you know, I'm saying when it came to life So that's why I'm like we got to be careful what the plug is. It's just kind of Understand that it's a great way. I see a lot of ones. Thank you. Thank you everybody But we just got to see how everything kind of leads to you know together links together We never know where it would have been or where would it came from if we just hadn't gotten that messy situation or So, yeah plugins now I'm back right see how I try to lead the little story of the thing together But plugins the way that I look at plugins or I vet them is in a couple ways So as you can see here, I do it with categories And I look for plugins that have These basic starting off with this basic aspect of things these basic Characteristics or quality. So the first thing I look for is I look at stars. You know, I look at the ratings I'm not necessarily first thing. I look at the ratings. I look at the number of installations I look at the how many updates and has this plugin been tested with my website So for instance The plugin category blocks if you are building or Building within WordPress and you're not using a page builder and this is in the session for page builders today We will have those and if anybody wants to teach one Uh, this feel free anybody that wants to present or you want to do a session like this Contact me and let's get it. Let's get it started. Let's make it happen This is not just about me teaching you all you all can be teaching others and be teaching me as well So please just feel free to let me know if there's a specific topic that you want to talk about in touch with me And we can make it happen But when it comes to blocks if you're using Gutenberg you want to It's easy to add a plugin and I add a plugin through the category So I'll do blocks or more specifically do in Berg blocks, right? And what comes up from here is some options of different blocks that I would you know, you can choose Now as I mentioned when I'm looking at the blocks I'm vetting through the eyes or the lens of a little bit of criteria that came before me Before I actually get my hands on it and start really working with it So I use the rating system. I use the active installs I use you know, has it been updated within the last few weeks or at least a month if it has been updated in Six months or so It could be a bad sign, you know, so you just have to be careful with that because of the fact that You want to get updates, you know, as frequently as possible to keep the plugin from, you know, potentially getting hacked Or breaking or not being compatible with other plugins, you know, not playing well in the sandbox with the other kids, you know You got to do that. So think about updates as well and then make sure it's compatible So with plugins I want to show you all that It's easy to install just like it's easy to install the theme, right? So I'm going to install a couple of the plugins here.  This is another one that I recommend. It's really good And Stackable we'll do this one These ones I have on here. Okay. Oh, yep. Very cool. So I just installed a few different Block based plugins. I mean, I saw some plugins that were block based meaning I can use these to build out my pages in Gutenberg And Gutenberg is going to be what we dive into in the part two series, right? This is just showing you all the plugins And for those of y'all who do have to go directly at 2 p.m. Eastern, it's okay. This is being recorded. So you'll be able to see The rest of the presentation, but you know, we're not too far off from the end anyway So I've installed these right and then I'm going to go to forms. So let's go to forms and I'm going to show you how I would activate these Instead of just kind of activating them one by one. We can do a bulk activation, you know So we'll do a bulk activation. Speaking of bulk activation. I want to make sure everybody is wide awake Everybody's still here. Is everybody still good? Is everybody okay right now? I just want to make sure that we aren't, you know We ain't sleeping on the brother. You know what I mean? I don't make sure we ain't sleeping. I'm talking I don't want to make sure I'm talking. I'm talking to myself Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. All right We up here. We here. So activated We're not going to activate them yet. We're going to keep going with the different categories. So let's go to forms next All right, we hit the forms. That's what I that's what I like. That's what I like Boom-Bam-Bang-Bam-Yow All right. So the forms we're going to install some popular ones here. So and ones I recommend. So let's go with Contact form seven. That's pretty Popular forms. This is one that I definitely Recommend as well. So one of my favorite ones And then which other one that I put on here. Ninja forms. This is a very popular one as well So again, you can look at the active installations. Look at the star ratings And look at how long they have it has been updated We got three of those there. Let's go to the next one security, right? So let's go with security So I just want to show you how easy this is. I'm not gonna We're not going to set up the plugin settings in this one We're going to do that the next one But I just want to show you how I think and how I dive into adding the plugins to create a basis for my WordPress website So get the fundamental foundation because we want to build our website On solid ground, right? Not shaky ground But solid ground, right? Solid ground all right so Where do we want to go here? All right iThemes. I definitely recommend iThemes It's a good security plugin now when it comes to security and let me get into Adding multiple types of plugins within the same category because that's another thing that people I see typically don't really think about like the strategy for that Don't want to always add multiple plugins within the same category. Certain categories. You want one representation, right? Only one person representing that click in this situation Only one plugin is handling that business in this category. You don't want multiple I'm saying this is not a group thing. This is a one thing So when it comes to security, you typically just want one security plugin because a lot of your security going back to the hosting is done On the hosting side, right? So If you have good hosting, which I say don't sleep on your host Put that hosting to use with security best security practices and then on top of that you want to add a Plugin that adds more layers security layers to your WordPress website Now I will tell you right here and anybody can feel free to challenge me. It's okay. I'm okay with that but in my experience, right There is no like perfect way to not get Some type of hack or issue or anything like that with WordPress There's always a way if somebody wants to bad enough to get into your WordPress website So that's what you need to understand what I mean by that is there is no security that will make you 100 impenetrable That's a real word, right? Did I say that do I need a definite? Do I need a dictionary that do I need a left or that? But there's nothing that would allow you to be perfect. You know, you can only do like 90 percent You know, it just makes it really hard for them. Yeah And so yeah, I just want people to understand that because you know people who are just getting into the WordPress world And heard the kind of the WordPress rumors like the juju like oh my god, you know WordPress has gotten hacked No WordPress is pretty safe at its core. It's very safe. There's security measures on WordPress itself There's security measures with your hosting and then security measures within the plugin So you got different layers of security you got a lot of security But the best security is going to be one of the next categories that I show you here in a second But these are the ones that I recommend site ground i themes And a lot of people either use WordPress or all in one seo So I only activated these because I just wanted I mean I only installed these because I just wanted to show you all Again, I'm not going to activate all three of them because that would be me contradicting myself and you know Let's go to the next category here. So we have backup and that's the one that i'm talking about Right there Back up boom all right, so When it comes to backup plugins in my opinion, this is the number one security measure The irony of that right, you know, it's called it's in the backup category because you're backing up your website This is number one security measure now. Why would I say that? Well The reason why I would say that is because You can always go back to a place in time where the issue didn't happen That is going to be the best backup that you I mean the best security measure that you have So you want to go backwards because you can say hey, I can go back in time before my site got hacked Now here's the thing And we'll get into that in the settings aspect How far you can go back is how is based on the settings and the plugin itself uh But You being able to go back that's pretty important And why we want to have a backup plugin on our work on our website is because not all hostings give backups so My favorite backups are updraft WP vivid And what else did I put right here? I think I put word no No, no backup Back WP up.  So And that's not good like I'm a fan of backups like you need as many backups as you can get So you want backup on your hosting because it's just really good to have them back up to their server And then you want to be redundant You want to add some redundancy you want to add some protection because you just can't trust everybody with your old stuff You know, so you want to back up to some type of cloud storage like dropbox or google drive or something like that And I think that's very important for you all To understand because you can back up your website to a place where you deem safe Where you want to be protected, right? So now you got the backup on the hosting and now you got to back up where you want it to be And you can do it to multiple places. Sometimes I back up to google drive and to amazon at the same time, you know So just think about that And that way when things happen on your website and they will happen There is no perfect WordPress website. There is no perfect website at all But when things happen, you can at least revert back to a place Hopefully where that thing didn't happen and then you can go from there Oh As far as and I'm trying to kind of look at the chat at the same time But I'm also like trying to be mindful of the time. So now my mind on my brain's like, you know, trying to back up the information What we're doing but I just saw a question here as far as from sally Backing up. It's a good question. I mean, uh, how often Are you supposed to back up or do I back up? I would suggest them to each their own But I would suggest that you back up Based on your type of website You know, so if you have a website that has a lot of things happening on it like a community base website a marketplace You know, things where there's a lot of engagement. You probably want to back that thing up like, you know Hour, you know every hour type thing But for the most part, I would say for most people 12 every 12 hours every 24 hours is the best and at least have 14 days of backups, you know, two weeks Because I would feel like, you know, if you can't if there's an issue that does happen unless it's a sneaky issue And you don't see it until two weeks later You know, sometimes I would say two weeks to a month. How about that?  So you have to be mindful of those variables as well But I would say two weeks Back up, you know back up to two weeks and every 12 to 24 hours Unless you have a website that is a lot of things happening at it in real time And you don't want to like you need to go back an hour because when you if something happens Your users lose all their information. You got to go back 14 day.   Okay all right, so And again, I'm going to answer all the questions you all at the end I'm just going to get through the last couple categories here too And then for the people who want to stay we'll call it the after party, you know, I mean, we'll just do that We'll just call it the after party But at the after party All right, all right, so e-commerce now this is where I Really wanted to share with you all kind of like the meat and potatoes things Within this meat and potatoes like wait, there's meat and potatoes within the meat and potatoes Thanksgiving's coming up. You know, I'm thinking of that that the turkey that meat the potato with that gravy The yams and I'm thinking all that all that okay So when it comes to e-commerce We want to look at a couple things But some of the most one of the big mecca and some of the most I almost lost my mind there I almost lost my mind the mecca the 800 pound gorilla in the room for those of you all who don't know is going to be Ding ding ding Woo commerce so Woo commerce is the biggest, you know one here When it comes to e-commerce, you know, it's what most people build their stores on in wordpress but There are There's another popular plugin and then there's one other special one that some of y'all might not know of That I feel like is revolutionary evolutionary All the aries and the canaries of the varies that varies It's going to just take over You know after a while and this is not, you know, me What do they say like just like the thing when they're youtube videos and they're like i'm not getting sponsored There's not a sponsor anything that it's just a new plugin that I feel is going to take some market shares from Woo commerce And another one and I think y'all gotta know about if y'all don't know about it because if you try to get that money It's going to help you get that money So easy digital downloads is more for As they say digital downloads so Woo commerce allows you to build a whole store a whole shop where you have products Variables and skews and all those things and then easy digital downloads came in the game and said hey We're just going to focus on the digital downloads. So You typically would only have one or the other. This is another category where you don't want to have multiple ones, but The older one that I'll recommend that y'all check out and it's free and it's new It's the new kid on the block like the new kid on the block It's called shortcut and the reason why you want to check this one out is because it has a lot of kind of like It's like if these two got together and had Like if these two got together You know, it's coming in as it it's it was built for a digital But they're moving into the physical very soon here However, they add a lot of functionality that when it comes to Woo commerce the thing that Woo commerce is that in order to get the real deal out of it, right? You have to add more plugins like to have a I just keep it real y'all. I mean again anybody that wants to say different you have The ability the freedom to do so, you know, this is You know, but you hold nobody down here But typically you got to have at least five to ten plugins to really do what you need to do when it comes to Woo commerce so I just want to let y'all know that if you're going to use a Woo commerce store You got to add more plugins with it or more extensions to add more functionalities And two of those functionalities that shortcut adds out the box without having more plugins is subscriptions and What was the other one subscriptions? and I forgot what the other one was it's going it's going to come to mind and digital downloads No, no subscriptions and something else But either way it does digital downloads is doing physical you can do subscriptions with it Licensing is coming as well. You typically would need another plugin for licensing split payments To type of things so those are things that typically you would have to do with multiple functionalities multiple other plugins when it comes to Woo commerce and even a payment processing aspect of it as well too So let's move to the next one video so people don't always look at video as a category And I do the reason why I do is because video is very important And video is here to stay it's not going anywhere Another plugin that I recommend that you all check out if you haven't already checked out Is this one called presto player, right? So video is kind of I don't have a lot of video Plug-in recommendations because you can do a lot of video You can use the video blocks within Gutenberg or within your page builder but specifically Gutenberg they have the youtube block and they have the Video block which is just they're the same thing. I don't know why they make them look different But it only gives you certain functionality when it comes to using a tool like this a plugin like this You create a video marketing experience that you can deliver to your users See your customers in a way that really stands you out from all your competition and all the crowd And this is the only plugin right now that I know of that has the type of functionality Within WordPress and it's free. It does have a pro version which gives you more functionality But you can really turn into a video marketing suite Okay, and I think that's sweet really sweet All right, so SEO we're almost done here Forgive me y'all. I'm not 10 minutes late. Okay, so SEO is very important, right This is the best way for us to get on google the reason why I say get on google is because Google owns like 86 percent of the market share of the internet The search engine market shares. So most people aren't doing SEO for being I mean, I know some of y'all I don't mean to being you all over the heads but that but I know that being Still use I still use being in sometimes Yahoo, but typically when you're doing you know SEO you're trying to get on google You still can get on other platforms with these tools as well. But this is how you actually get on there And there are other search engines too. So I'm not taking no shots and it's not saying there's no other search engines It's your preference. I just want to let y'all know that It is pop of that, you know, google is the typical one that most people are trying to get on with SEO plugins now my favorite one is rank math, but the 800 pound gorilla in the room like Woo commerce is yos. This is the one that most people know open is the most popular one 5 million active installs as you can see and Five stars in this now. Here's the thing And I'm not gonna and this is not me taking any shots at yos Yos is kind of how like Woo commerce is where you need a lot you need to have other extensions and other Add-ons to get the functionalities of it that rank math gives you for free out the box So really it's preference based to a degree But also I feel like if you do pound for pound of the what the free versions give I think most people would say that rank math has more features However, that does not mean that yos doesn't have xyz and can do xyz I just think most people would say if you do pound for pound when it comes to the SEO world Of plugin and the free version rank math has more features And then the other one I also recommend to is SEO press And this is another category that you only want one. You don't want more than one in this category Just one Code snippets so codes are all about getting putting code, you know on your website and It's important to understand this to a degree.  You just need to know that code Will give you the ability adding like Customized code will give you the ability add functionality to your website whereas you don't need For the most part like for example I think php if i'm not mistaken You know, you don't need certain plugins, you know to give you certain functionalities It also gives you the ability to add Code like css or html or coding languages to certain areas in your website or certain parts of your website That you don't want to add on your theme So this is a alternative of adding and this is the way that I recommend Adding code to your website is doing it from the actual plugin and not on your theme Other people would argue and say different and that's okay This is just my preference and just my suggestion But the ones that I recommend that you check out and look at is wp code and code snippets You know, you don't need multiple of these as well too You can only I would recommend just use one but use one or the other And that way you can try it and add code to your website and then you can have less plugins Because plugins will bloat down your website. So we want to build a lean machine, right a lean Machine That's how we start off a great word WordPress website And the last but not least We're going to get into analytics and there's one poking its head down at the bottom right hand bottom It's already like hey, I'm here and you put in code And its name is google analytics So if you are a user of google analytics site kit by google or google site kit Is a great tool to use when it comes to seeing analytics in your WordPress Dashboard like in your WordPress area And it's the new this newer version now there used to be issues because it used to be buggy I'm telling you I'm keeping it real all the way funky with y'all And let you know that it was annoying how it did used to be buggy, but they got a lot of it together, right? And they've have updated it a lot recently. So it is in my opinion. It's a beauty I love being able to help people Set this up for them And they can see google analytics and the google search console and all that information right within wordpress They don't have to go like I would go and go to analytics Google analytics itself. You can see it right within wordpress alternative is monster And this also allows you to see google analytics too in your dashboard difference between these two or there's a lot of differences But the main thing is this is the official that this is made by google. This is made by A company and you know, that's not google that's getting into google, you know, that's utilizing google's api system xyz abilities But those are the main ones that I would recommend categories the main categories that I recommend that you look into When it comes to building out your wordpress website


Welcome everyone, my name is Mahil Gaz, I'm based in Turkey, I'm also one of the resident climate science and policy wonks at 350, we do have a few of those. One aspect of closely following climate science and policy is often the anxiety that brings it's not uncommon to see scientists, activists or even people only casually following the developments in those two spaces lose their grip and burn out and drop out of the movement. Today we're going to delve into these issues in our panel called grounding ourselves science updates and our mental health. We have four illustrious panelists to help us navigate through this conversation. And I'd like to briefly present our panel members to you. This is in no particular order, by the way. Co Barrett is the Deputy Assistant Administrator for Research at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration NOAA. You might have also seen her name in relation with IPCC because in 2015 she became one of the first women elected to serve as a Vice Chair of IPCC. George Marshall has in excess of 30 years of experience at all levels of communications and advocacy. He had senior positions in many international NGOs, active advisory roles for governments, businesses and international agencies. And his book from 2014 was called Don't Even Think About It, Why Our Brains Are White Ignore Climate Change. Louisa Newbier is a German climate activist. She is one of the main organizers of the school strikes for the climate movement in Germany, among her many engagements with multiple NGOs and many accomplishments. And Renee Lersmann is a pioneer and leader at the intersection of psychology, climate and environment. She translates psychology and social science best practices into tools that unleash the potential for creativity and courage. Renee is also regularly commissioned to teach, present and produce research and produce research for a range of institutions and agencies. So thank you so much for agreeing to be here today on this panel. We are going through difficult times. Our climate anxiety, which had been climbing for many years now, has been compounded by the pandemic last year. We lost many of our usual coping mechanisms. And in this panel, we're going to be talking about what's the latest, both in terms of science and discovery and how well and also how we can take all of that in stride and stay active in the climate struggle. So welcome once again. I do have a warm up question though, before we jump in. It's a very short one. And I can start by answering mine. It's, is there a piece of music that boasters your courage? I'm a huge listener. Mine is is a not very well known Bodilin song. It's called Let Me Die in My Footsteps, which I like. George, do you have one yourself? I'm a huge fan of old jazz. And I actually have a wind up record player, which I when I get sick of my endless zoom calls, I go and I wind it up and I put on a record and I have a set of Louis Armstrong's Hot Fives from 1928. And I put those on and that always gives me life. Good choice. And Renee. Gosh, that's George, I can, I think we just got a preview of you on Desert Islandist. So good warm up for that. I've been preparing for it for years. I can tell you've got it down. Gosh, you know, for me, it's, I turned to Kirtan, actually. And I really love putting on like Neva Primal, or some Krishnadas, when the going gets tough and it brings some wind into my sails. What are with you, Ko? Oh boy, you're diving right into the differences between us in a very interesting way. All right, True Confessions, I'm a big jam band fan, like grateful dead music, and there's a whole genre of bands that kind of have followed in those same footsteps. And what I love about it is the true improvisational nature of the way that they approach either some, some jam in the middle of a song, but often the jam between songs, and how as a participant and listening to that music, you're just taken along. Where are we going with this? And where is it going to pick up? And I just find that to be a fascinating way to engage with music as a listener. Perfect. And, Luisa? Talking of differences, in those moments, I make music, I guess. So that's when I get out my ukulele or my guitar, or when I have a piano nearby, I play that. And that is so softened everything in me. And I start relaxing this really, you know, this thing here that you usually cramp so much. And I realize how much there was on my face and so on. And that's one thing. And for that, it's mostly classical music. And besides the couple of my friends in these, just to talk about some stereotypes here, a couple of my friends are playing in some indie pop rock bands. And I love listening to their music because I see their smiles when I want to listen to their songs. And sometimes I move them when they make music. And I remember what they were thinking about it. And I think it's a beautiful idea of people to produce something that is, you know, existing only in a moment, always, inherently. So yeah. Well put, well put. All right.  We're done. And we can end the panel here. That's a joke. So, but let's start with Yuko, because you are also holding that side of the things with your work both in NOAA and IPCC. So what's your take on the role of science in just recovery? What are some, can it be considered one of the tools to in our quest for just recovery, maybe? Yeah, thanks for that question. I guess it makes sense for me to feel the question like that as a scientist among the others on this panel. I mean, obviously science is, has been a key to this whole issue of climate change. You know, over 30 years ago, climate scientists put the issue, you know, in the forefront of our minds.  Yes. And now to what does this mean for me in my backyard, you know, in my neighborhood? And so, so science is obviously a big part of the picture. But recently, as I've been kind of thinking about it, especially in terms of what we were going to talk about today, I realized that it's just a piece of the puzzle, right? It's an important piece. And groups like the one that Louise is working with, and the youth movement have really taken up the issue of science, and they lead with science, but they add something really, really important to the conversation. And that is kind of the human aspect of it. Sometimes the science can be very logical and kind of a thinking approach to the problem. But what I find with the youth movement and with other approaches to solving our climate challenges is that it brings us into the feeling world. It brings us into kind of, you know, needing to work in solidarity with one another. And I recently saw, I guess it was the Secretary General of the UN talking about the response to COVID and what do we need. And he was saying we need science and we need solidarity. And I thought, we need that same exact approach in a climate sense. We need the science, but we also need to be working kind of empathetically together on solutions. We need to be putting the human face on this issue and realizing that we kind of all need to go together if we're going to get as far as we need to on solutions. And it's an interesting thing to think about because often there's a little bit of a, we know the science kind of, there's a little bit of friction between folks who are not actively working hard on climate and those who are. And almost a sense sometime that if only you believed in the science, you would know how challenging, you know, how important it is to act. But in fact, if you look at the research, some of the people who are not actively working on climate solutions, it's not because they're ignorant of the issue. In fact, some of them are very well versed in the climate science. It's more that people act on these issues from a value place, a place in the community. And they have their own interests that they bring to the table that they need addressed. And so, you know, I think it's important for us to be compassionate and understanding and to be working, not kind of in an antagonistic way, but how do we bring people together to work on parts of this that actually are solving the problem from the perspective that each sees it? And I think, you know, a focus on solidarity and really how we need to work together is kind of a part of that. So maybe that's where I'll stop for now. I hope we get to, you know, have some conversation on these types of topics. Thanks, Mahir. Speaking of science, what do you think about our tendency to ignore that science which you talked about in your book that came out in 2014? Why are our brains wired to ignore that information? And how can we change that? Or indeed, in the seven years since your book came out, did your take on this evolve maybe based on some of the latest happenings, as Ko also mentioned? I really liked what you were saying, Ko. And I'm drawing out these ideas of approaches which are based in the social and the cultural, as well as the data-driven science. I mean, we need the science, but I guess the point which I made in my book, and I think still holds very strongly, is that actually people's primary source of information is the social realm, and that you can say that they're scientific facts, but there's also social facts. And I think the primary reasons why climate, well, climate change is inherently hard to accept. I mean, we're actually very good at ignoring things as humans. We try and ignore things which are challenging to us, which creates a sense of internal conflict. What brings them into play is that they become important for our social identity. So if something is part and parcel of who we are and the world around us and the society and the identity that we have, and we take them on board. If they're presented to us as simply facts, we tend to ignore them. I mean, a classic case of this is as a lifelong on and off cigarette smoker and nicotine addict. I hope, thankfully not at the moment, is I know very well how it is possible to completely ignore all of the data about the dangers of smoking if you are in with a group of friends who smoke. And so we can do that very well with climate change. We actively seek to avoid it, and it's challenging and uncomfortable to us. And I think it's important, therefore, to recognize these social facts, that there is a wider sense of belonging and identity, which is what drives us. And therefore, one of the reasons why I think climate change feels so uncomfortable to us is if it has a negative or disturbing or a challenging social narrative. And similarly, the solutions for making it feel positive and something we can engage with lie in having a positive and involving sense of identity. I'll come back to that. But I think the first thing for us in terms of dealing with it is to recognize the mechanisms by which we distance ourselves from this. And it's interesting, Co, I'd be very interested to hear what you think about this. My observation of professional scientists is that they often have a lot of internal conflicts and challenges of dealing with this emotionally and that many of the ways they behave are about distancing it. And I've sat through these long presentations by scientists where they present the most appalling and challenging material with its extraordinary degree of distancing, where it's presented in these very dry abstract terms, data graphs without exploring what it feels like or what it's going to be or the impacts of it. I think professional science has a distance in culture. And also, I know very well that scientists, when you speak to them, are often very reluctant to talk about how they feel about it. That's a generalization I know that many often do. So I think we need to recognize that we have a tendency to distance, we have a tendency to say, this isn't now, this isn't here, this is something in the future, this is something we don't need to think about. And we still see from the data, although many people accept climate change, that they have this tendency to distance. And we tend not to talk about it. Again, this is changing since I wrote my book, but it's still disturbing to me how there are large sections of a population who really don't talk about or engage with this issue from year to year. And of course, that means if you don't talk about it and it's not out there in the social sphere, it doesn't have a social identity. Therefore, it becomes, again, this frightening thing down the line, a bit like our own deaths, like something we do not think about down the line. And I guess the solutions all involve engaging with that and accepting it and bringing it back into the social sphere. So saying this is something we need to talk about, this is something that is important to me, sharing it with your friends and your family. I mean, I often say that a single most important climate action that anybody can have is to talk about it. Far more than, indeed, I think that your own emissions of your own behaviors is talk about it with the people around you, especially the people who are not themselves activists, family, friends, neighbors, and get out there and talk about it. And I guess as I kind of like put a whole lot of stuff out on the table, I guess I'd like to say, and I'd like to invite the other people on the panel to share your own experiences of dealing with this internal conflict and pain that this issue causes us. My own way of dealing with it is actually through a sense of joy in the social aspects of my work. So I love the people I work with. I love my work. I feel empowered and excited through both my activism, but also having a sense of purpose in my life. And that's what gives me the drive to keep going with something that could otherwise feel overwhelming. And again, it's that positive social narrative of coming together and feeling the sense of collective purpose is ultimately the only way of overcoming the sense of despair of the overwhelmingness of it. And again, I welcome you all to share your feelings on this, but the last thought I'd leave you with is this sense that we have a responsibility as change activists for how we present ourselves to the outside world.  Well, in a way, we are the poster children, right? We are the face of this issue for most people. And so if we present a face of despair or, or, you know, despair or grief to the outside world, people are going to look at us and they're going to say, well, whatever it is, whether what they're saying is correct or not, I don't want to part of it. But if we can present a face to the world, which is one of positivity and hope and drive and excitement, people say, yeah, I want to be with them. I want to be part of what they are doing. And I think ultimately, it's it's that lesson of how we project ourselves to the outside world, I think is what makes all of the difference for building our movement. Rene, you have a new project actually, which launched in 2020 and late 2020, if I remember correctly, which ties into what George was talking about. Do you mind speaking about that briefly? Sure. Thank you. Thanks for having me. There's so much to respond to and what's been shared already that build on what co kicked us off with and what George has built on, which is just picking up on we have a responsibility as change agents to be exceptionally mindful and intentional about how we show up and how we communicate. And I'm 100% in alignment with George that the single most powerful thing we can do is to talk to engage. I would I would actually reframe it slightly less about how we communicate and message and talk to engagement, which is much more about the relationship and the dynamics and the interactivity that we as no matter who you are as a change agent, whether you're a scientist or a communicator or a student activist, a board member, CEO, that if you are actually seeking to be driving change that we now have a remit to level ourselves up and to skill ourselves up so that we can actually truly be effective at bringing people into this conversation. And I don't say that lightly because it's actually a very high. It's a high bar. It's almost like the ultimate human challenge, which is how do you how do you navigate extraordinarily high stakes that raise our temperature in many many ways. How do you navigate the high stakes and remain present and integrated and as a neuroscientist may say regulated how do we keep ourselves in regulation meaning that we're not taking our anxiety, our fear and just simply triggering and and and and spreading that around so that we're unintentionally having an impact. It's like, I heard Rosemary Randall say years ago, the founder of carbon conversations a pioneer in this work, she talked about the hot potato, where our emotional relationship with these issues can be almost like a hot potato where it's like, I'm so I'm having trouble tolerating what's what I'm seeing happening that I can't help but just sort of spread it around. And that makes total sense, but it actually undermines our efforts. And so the project that you mentioned project inside out, which is you can find it at project inside out net is a very new initiative that's an experiment funded by the KR foundation to see if we can turn a lot of these best practices that co is referenced that George has mentioned into tools and frame frameworks that anyone, especially activists can can use. And the essence of the project inside out leveling up that I'm talking about is how do we be more guides and think of ourselves as guides versus trying to make people change and trying to motivate people that that's an old way it's old it's old way of thinking about I have to motivate someone I have to get them to care they don't care enough. How do I make them care so I'm going to have to be either inspiring and hopeful, or I'm going to have to be really, really clarify how real this is and break through the trance. And a guide is based on the work in the public health sector that George just referenced with, you know, whether it's smoking or diet or whatever where we, you know, people have to make hard changes. How do clinicians navigate that and how do we take that and apply it to the climate context.  I'm in this with you together. I'm feeling scared, you know, but I'm also feeling hopeful. How are you feeling. And what that means behaviorally is there's a lot more listening. There's a lot more asking questions. There's a lot more, would you like to know more, you know, as an expert or a scientist because the thing is, is a lot of people working in the space know a lot, we have a lot of information that we're holding. And it's a lot to hold that. It's a lot. And so we want to figure out how do we skillfully share what we know rather than kind of, you know, not the opposite of mindful approach to that which is to give a PowerPoint to give a talk it doesn't reference the emotional dimensions of this work. So it's really exciting right now. Very exciting moment we're in right now which I just, I never thought I'd see this happening as quickly as it is, is that we're starting to recognize that there's no separation between the content and the emotional tenor that that's that's also old, old, you know, that's like so 1015 20 years ago, you know, I'm looking at all my books here on the neuroscience of learning and how we process information. You can't, you know, it's never neutral. It's always affectively charged. And so how do we just kind of accept that and then think about not well do we tell people how bad it is do we tell people how hard it is like how hard this is going to be. And that's not the right question. The right question is how do we do it. Not if we do it, but how do we do it in a way that actually lowers our, our make to low response that keeps us in that window of tolerance. And that has a lot to do with what both co and George have already mentioned, which is, you know, feeling like you're part of something bigger feeling like you're not alone. But the key thing here to just end with is, it's really important that we normalize whatever experiences we may be having, and that we normalize it, it makes sense to feel anxious, and it makes sense to feel scared. And that doesn't mean you're not hopeful or optimistic or, you know, that, that it's no longer about hope or despair. It's actually, you know what, we're in a human moment right now, an existential change management moment. And that's my nickname for it. It's, it's changed at an existential level.  But it's also a huge opportunity for us as humans to level up and do things, you know, in ways we never thought possible before. So it's a moment of more skillful, nuanced ways of working with ourselves and our own experience with our colleagues and our partners and with broader communities and groups. Thank you. That was great. And I'm going to turn to Louisa and ask if you've had the opportunity to use some of those two, some of those approaches and better underground you have time to think that in depth and how do you deal also with the frustration of what George said, but people still not talking about it as much as they should maybe. Yeah, thank you so much. And I'm really moved by your wonderful words. And it's obviously talking now as a young, girish person. And it's obviously a very difficult situation to be there. I started, I started climate activism, essentially, because I looked at my life. And I couldn't bear the idea that for my entire life, I would have to deal with that catastrophe. And I just, and for me, you know, I'm 24. So, you know, just thinking like five years ahead, for me, it seems like a lifetime almost. And so I found it so deeply, I found it unfair. I found it too much. And also, of course, given that at some point you, as a climate activist, understand the complexity of the issue and also that it's basically happening everywhere at every single moment in time, whatever you do, very, very easily puts you into the spot where nothing makes sense anymore. For us, the Fridays makes sense because on Fridays we behave like we're in a crisis in a sense. But usually, whatever we do, it doesn't add up. And that is a very, very difficult situation to be in. And I think, you know, I do believe that has something to do with age as well, that we think about the impossible much more, we think about it in the good ways, but we also think about it in the bad ways. And we don't have to, you know, we don't think about the 21st century in relation to the 20th century, it's just there and we have to make the most out of it. And we don't have any boundaries, except that we see catastrophes everywhere. And I feel, and I think that's why many people turn to be climate activists, that obviously the most helpful thing to do for me, at least, was to get active about this and don't take this as something that I don't matter. So I chose or decided that I would make a difference, that I would make a difference whether I wouldn't do anything or whether I would do something. And that's a very important part to understand, because staying silent in this also makes a difference. And the more people do that, the easier it is to keep pealing and well, doing all this stuff that feels a crisis. So and that is, and that again brings you to the spot that you as a young person, you know, once you decide that you matter, that you make a difference, that you are important in this, that, you know, can be very freeing, but it can be incredibly scary as well. And we live in times where they tell you, you can be everything you want, you know, at least when you when you grow up in somewhat of a privileged context. They tell you that, you know, go to the world, see what is there, you know, they send young people out to travel after school and all those things. And no one tells you that you might matter in this in this bigger human moment. And so we're not trained to think about it that way and not trained to think about us this way that we matter in the broader context. And I feel we heard so much about, you know, getting around this and this are acknowledging this, acknowledging us in this, without being buried by the by the thoughts of, you know, what might happen and what might not happen, what might not happen. And I feel, though, maybe just to, to boil it down to three aspects, which I find really important this in this. One is, we talk so much about natural sciences. And I feel, you know, we often say we have to talk about science. And then, you know, you talked about science solidarity, which I find beautiful. I do believe as well, though, that it has to do with understanding that science isn't just natural science. It's social science as well.  And people don't teach us what this means for society is how to stay human in this how to stay together and strong and then solidarity in this. And that is often, you know, overseen. And when we teach people about the public rights, we teach them about stuff that for us matters the least. And because obviously it kind of starts with the human connection in this. That is one thing, I think, which I am really, which I try to mainstream, which I try to make more famous in my work, and try to understand more about how how do we cope with this as societies. Secondly, I think the most important conversation about the climate crisis starts with us and our feelings. In Madrid at the climate conference last year and co where we met as well. And Johan Rockström was giving a talk at the summer assembly and he said loads of things, really important things about all the incredible things that he finds out. And the one sentence that I remember from his talk was him saying, hello, I'm Johan Rockström, I'm a father and I'm scared. And then, you know, it's clear it's all out there. What what what do we talk about? And and I feel, you know, teaching ourselves and to talk about the climate crisis in that way, starting with an eye, starting with ourselves. What do we feel? What do we wish? What do we hope? What do we fear? Those things, finding those spaces, creating those spaces where these messages have, you know, can can be and can be acknowledged in those things. I feel that as part of the climate movement, where much too rare, but hugely important. And then I feel finally, this is maybe some lessons, some lesson I take away from the corona pandemic is given that we have brought the planet to the state it is. Every moment in history, every moment in the future will be some sort of, you know, crisis moment.  So I feel this is understanding this, acknowledging this, and I try to think about this in the corona context as well, you know, what do I do? What what who am I in this pandemic?  And we always said it would be hard. And you know, two years ago, when I see my speeches now, I would always tell the people like, Oh, it's going to be hard, and it's going to be tough. I would have never thought that we get a tiny virus to pass on an infectious disease. And that the hardship that I was talking about would at some point be a pandemic, I couldn't imagine that. And I now feel how foolish it was to talk about this hardship in that kind of easy way. And now we learn differently. And I feel, you know, understanding ourselves as and or understanding our humanity or human side as who we are in a crisis is feel, I feel that's a really helpful mechanism to to apply. Well, that was deep and also as an activist touch me. Could I sorry, could I just add one more thing? Because I feel that is one thing that the three of you mentioned. And I feel that is, for me, it defines a lot of my work as the idea that maybe it just doesn't work out. Maybe maybe we will just, you know, mess up hugely and things will just be bad. What life, what time will we look back at? And I want to look back at a time where we fought for everything we had and everything we had lost already and everything we didn't want to lose in solidarity and love and kindness and, you know, being there for each other. And, you know, understanding or acknowledging that maybe it just doesn't work out. I feel that allows us and ideally drives us to a point that how we fight becomes as important as that we fight. Can I can I just respond a little bit? Because I have Louisa, I just I just value your perspective so much. And I thought I think you've kind of put a nice fine point on so many of the things that we've started to talk about here. I just wanted to pick up on your point about the challenge and the opportunity that the coronavirus is kind of putting in front of us, right? I mean, there's so many people who are have been devastated by this. And just the way the entire globe has had to change our way of being our way of interacting with one another.  But it's also I'm finding and I don't have small children running around my house. So I don't bear that stress. And my job continues. So I don't also have that financial stress that so many carry. But I also for the first time in 30 years, have not gotten on an airplane in a year. And I'm a climate, I work on climate, I've spent my entire life on climate. And I, you know, the year before this, I flew over 100,000 miles. And, and that's provided a respite from for my greenhouse gas, my carbon footprint for sure. But it's also provided a respite for me in terms of grounding myself, which is for the the message we were kind of going to talk about here, grounding myself in a different way in the work. And, you know, I found that because we're all working remotely and we're all interacting through zoom calls, etc. I found, especially with the colleagues who I interact with very frequently, that the line between our work lives and our home lives is completely blurry. I love when someone's dog jumps on their lap in the middle of a meeting I love when a toddler walks in and I, all of a sudden, my colleagues are not just people I work with on issues, they are human beings who I care about. And, and the blurring of those lines is so helpful to the way that we come together to work on solutions. So, so I kind of find that it's added to the humanity of, of working together.  This is not the way we would choose to solve the problem. We would go about it in a more, you know, purposeful way. But I think it does open up the ability for us to kind of imagine or reimagine a just future. Because we don't have to go back to working in the same old way. You know, now we're considering it, you know, as just as a part of our working arrangements, more remote work, more work-life balance. In the context of IPCC, when we have our virtual meetings, we are challenged because not everyone has the same level of technological ability in their countries. Developing countries are often really challenged. And we have to deal with that. But we also get to include many more people. You know, it's not just the two people who come to the IPCC meeting. We can have many more people included in the conversation, which is a hugely great thing. So I just want to say, you know, there are opportunities that this presents to us that I hope we grab on to as we reimagine our future. Go ahead, George. Well, I think it's, I'm going to quickly follow up on a few points if I can, but I'm sure it's to be a good lead in few running. I know that I'm here. I know that you were interested in asking about 1.5 degrees. And following up on all of us, I wanted to say this thing about it's okay to feel scared. You said this, Rene. And, Louis, you were talking about this too. I think, I just wanted to say, I think there's a lot of wider evidence to say that the first step towards overcoming or certainly coping with any kind of emotional challenges is to recognize it and to have it there and to look it firmly in the face and to say, this is hard. This is scary. This is difficult. Maybe we have lost a lot. And this is hard. And this is how I feel about it. But together we can, together we can form a community of care. Together we can look after each other. I think from what you're saying, Co, that's also something coming strongly through COVID. I think COVID has produced a step change in public attitudes towards collective solidarity and collective grief, which I think is very, very positive for this. So I wanted to put that out there and say that part of the communications, I know communications engagement, that I have intuitively just years is the very positive, bright side of saying, hey, it's all going to be fine because we're smart and we have immense capacity for enterprise and for initiative and technology. And I don't think that works. And we know it doesn't work because within my organization, Climate Outreach, we've gone out and done a lot of testing with very different groups. And we know that message doesn't work. What works is to say, look, this is hard. This is painful. This is going to be difficult, but together we can do it. And just to leave you with a thought that the reason we know about works is because we've tried out in many different places and we have tried and tested message in focus groups around this in very, very different contexts. We've tried it across Northern India. We've done projects across North Africa. I helped to lead a project in Alberta, in Canada, probably one of the most divided places on earth. And in every single place, this messaging worked and it's initiated a conversation between people about how they could work together, about how it's hard, about how it's painful, about how we could get through. So I think that's the kind of key to be answered. So thank you, George, for that response. Now, let's do a, we are actually nearing the end of our panel, believe it or not. So let's do a quick lightning round maybe. I'll ask and feel free to jump in at any point during this round. So one thing that frustrates me and based on what you have been saying, it's okay to feel scared, but also we have a responsibility in terms of how we give our messages in order to not, you know, paralyze ourselves or others in the movement, so on and so forth. One thing that frustrates me is the whole discussion around 1.5 and whether that's possible, that's not possible, whether we're already at it or over it and what it means for us. And why are we so obsessed with that decimal and isn't, can't we just focus on doing the best we can and ensuring that we have as much of a just recovery as we can in whatever we end up with, be it 1.5, 1.61 or whatever. Why that obsession with that decimal? There's a lot to say. I would just point out again that I'm representing the psychological lens. We all have got our lenses. So through the psychological lens, we want to just keep in mind what works, what we already know works with human beings and how we process information and how we avoid information and what we get fixated on. And so we want to be thoughtful about what are we getting attached to and fixated on that maybe helps us avoid the more messy, complicated, nuanced, ambiguous, uncertain aspects of reality. So when we see an attachment to that, that should be a clue that hopefully makes us curious. Like what is actually going on here? Why are we so fixated on this? And usually what we'll find is that we're wanting to hold on to something. We're wanting to hold on to something that gives us more sense of stability and certainty and that we all know in this conversation that's kind of elusive. So to me, the reframe is to bring curiosity and compassion and empathy to, wow, this is again, keep going back every single day. Like, wow, this is like, this is really intense. And look at us, look at how we're trying to get a handle on what's happening. How do we shift that into a conversation and into an inquiry that moves us in the direction that I feel Louisa really articulated so eloquently and so beautifully, which is actually takes us to a whole different altitude and how we're relating with these issues. One thing I'll just say about 1.5 is, you know, the genesis for 1.5 is that some of the most vulnerable countries in the world were saying in the climate negotiations, two degrees is not low enough for us. You know, we're already at threat. So we've got to be striving for 1.5. When you start talking about 1.5 degrees of warming, you are talking very soon. And all of a sudden, this distant problem is right in your lap. And that's powerful. And I think that is potentially the most powerful thing about taking up, you know, a look at the kind of scientific piece of what goes into 1.5. It is now. It was an absolute honor and a pleasure for me to be with these illustrious panelists here. And it has been an interesting, inspiring conversation. I hope it's useful to everyone as well. And I wish everyone health and courage for the coming times and love to everyone at the Global Jest Recovery Gathering and everyone watching. Thank you.


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The Seed of the Woman, Jesus in Genesis. Welcome to our journey through the Scriptures, where we uncover the whispers of the Messiah's coming long before the New Testament. Today we begin at the very start, in the Garden of Eden. In Genesis 3.15, after the fall of man, God speaks of a seed of the woman who would bruise the head of the serpent. This seed is the first prophecy of the Messiah, a foreshadowing of Jesus' victory over sin and death. And I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and hers.  Genesis 3.15, from the dawn of humanity a Savior was promised, one who would restore what was broken. Join us next time as we uncover more revelations of Jesus in the Old Testament.