is Christian Buckley. I'm here with Dave. Hello. Hi. Hi. Good evening. Good morning. Good afternoon. Depends where your viewers are. Well, why don't you introduce yourself? Who you are? Where you are? What you do? Absolutely. So my name is Davide. Even though, you know, since I moved to Hong Kong where I live now, I've been called in so many different ways that, you know, as long as I know that you're talking to me, I'm fine with that. I'm Italian. As I said, I moved to Hong Kong about six years ago. And I've been working in IT in general for, I don't know, 20 years, even though I'm not that old, but I started very, very early in my career. I'm focusing initially on developers, but now transition more on application of second management, DevOps, and those good things. I know there's a lot that's happening within the space, and it's kind of evolved the way I just was sharing, you know, so my background way back, you know, that was in the, you know, in the DevOps space. But kind of what was your, what was your path into why DevOps? It just happened at the beginning because my very first job was more on the infrastructure and virtualization, virtualization side when, you know, VMware started coming out. And then, but I always had the passion of developing. I love creating things. And so I transitioned then from the infrastructure job into more development. And, but then I was working on a very small company in which we didn't have many people. So I had to take care of many different things at the same time, apart from developing. And then I started also developing some more skills around people, around organization, around processes. And so it gradually just, just happened when I, when I got promoted like Tech Lead at that company, basically, I was, yeah, doing everything and anything, but focusing also on what now we call DevOps. So since then, my, my passion for, for the discipline just got bigger and bigger. And I made that my career. There was a, I mean, a lot of the people, and I, working for big companies, as well as for startups, a lot of the startups and some I was working for one in Northern California that was very well funded venture capital, a lot of outside investment. And yet the people that were setting up new laptops for new employees were the same people that were managing the code base. And, and so when I thought of DevOps, I thought of those people that were running the scripts at, you know, every evening that were checking servers under desks, as well as increasingly as we brought on new, you know, SaaS platforms and services that they just kind of owned all of those different pieces to keep things running. I mean, did you special, do you specialize in a certain area? Right now, no, I mean, I obviously, as many people do, I started with the tools, even though it's the wrong, it is kind of the wrong way to start, but you had to start somewhere. But, but then I tried to embrace DevOps at 360 degrees, focusing on the three pillars, you know, people, processes and tools. And I think I, one thing I always consider in my roles is the people part, because it's the most challenging part of DevOps and the one that makes the most difference. So I used to work in different capacities before, like DevOps engineer, DevOps architect at Microsoft. But now also in my current role, I have to focus on, again, everything in DevOps, excuse me, because I do, you know, I do manage two teams, one DevOps team, one infra team, we're trying to merge. We were trying to, you know, do everything that DevOps kind of prescribe, even though it's not, it's not a very strict, you know, roadmap, but trying to basically get more value to our users as quick as we can, as more consistent as we can. So, yeah, well, that's always the, look, I, you know, again, I'm not an engineer, that side of things, but I liken it to, you know, I came up through a technical project management program management to that world. And where I had a lot of people where I managed teams, and I was a group manager and would fund people to go and get their like PMP certification. So get the formal project management certification. And I was told that people that would go through that process, you know, that I, it's great that you're learning this, you're learning these methodologies, you're learning these tools, ways of doing it. I never want you to attempt to apply a hundred percent of what you're learning to it. And DevOps, I look at this the same way. It's, it's not, there are methodologies, there are tools, there are systems and things that are in place. But when you start to have those people conversations and understand the culture of the organization and the, and the difference of the nuances of the needs of your company, it's never going to be a hundred percent down any methodology, any, any place that you need to do what fits and what meets the needs of your business. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. It's, you know, DevOps provide you probably like a framework and some set of not even rules, but like guidelines, if you will, in which you need to move between, right, or within, because as you said, the company's cultures are different, objectives of the company's organizations are different. There are some things that you probably need and want to do, like, you know, removing silos and barriers, more communications, you know, adopting some sort of self, self, sorry, continuous improvement and those kind of things are kind of pillars that you want to keep. If not, you're not basically doing DevOps, but within those things then it needs to change and adopt based on your organization, how you work and what you want to achieve. That's absolutely true. And so it's very dynamic and I think a good, a good DevOps person should understand that and it should understand how to apply those macro principles, if you will, to the reality that you're in. Right. Well, that's one of the things that makes it interesting. I mean, that, that space as well. I mean, it's what kind of drew me again as a parallel in the project management is because every project could be very different. Every client engagement, you know, could be, you know, so I can leverage what I've learned and take that into it and you, of course, you develop experience and knowledge and understand about things, but, you know, you have a variety of things that you go sink your teeth into, certainly on the technology side, that's constantly changing. And so, so how do you keep up? I mean, because that's a question, I know that every MVP gets asked that question, but so how do you keep up with the rapid rate of change of innovation that's happening? Well, in different ways, I love consuming content. So I'm a content creator on the side, but I also love consuming content, especially video content and not much reading or, you know, written content for technical aspect, because I find the, like the video content quicker to assimilate and to consume, but apart from that, my main point is I try it out. So whenever something comes out, then I think that's interesting, let's try it out. And either on personal projects or I'm lucky enough to work for, I've been lucky enough to work for companies that let me experiment, if you will. And so I was able to integrate that into my work life as well. So having a chance to experiment to try it out and say, okay, maybe I can apply these to this specific area or maybe not this is not for me or something like that. In general, I think that experimentation and trying out things and practice is the most important thing you should do. You just brought up a great point. This is kind of a side topic. I don't want to go chasing down the rabbit hole here, but for companies that are not supportive, I don't know if you've ever worked for any that are not supportive of community activities and for that level of experimentation, because I certainly have. And I tried to get out of those organizations very quickly once I discovered that they wouldn't support that. Have you ever worked in an organization that was- Yeah, I've been lucky enough to work for a similar organization just once. And that was right before I moved to Hong Kong. Yeah, I had to fight a little bit to try and do what I normally do as an experimentation, but also talking about community. Like I was already MVP at that time. So we talk about events and public speaking and all those kinds of things, either as an attendee or as a speaker. And I had really to fight my way to the city or that was reporting at that time or other people to be able to actually not only join those events, but to create community and to grow basically, because for me, community is growing for everyone. So yeah, then I left. It's amazing to me, though, that this day and age and maybe now, having gone through what we've just gone through globally with the pandemic, that it's getting more organizations to understand that it's business critical to have for us to be connected through the various social networks that are out there. And I'm not talking about the tools themselves, but the broader sense of the networking and be plugged in and be participating and sharing of information. Because it's like doing a pilot on a software deployment. You do a smaller scope, very clearly defined outcomes, but you do it quickly. You fail very quickly. You learn from that. And then you repeat the piloting process and take what you've learned and grow in a depth. That's what we're doing collectively through these community activities is we're learning. We're failing faster. We're learning for the failures of others and so that we're not repeating some of those same mistakes, but we could do more faster together. Absolutely. And I was mentioning before that I am a content creator. So I have this YouTube channel, right? And of course, I try to talk about things I know, right? But most of the time, maybe I know the macro topic or the macro tool, but then I want to showcase a specific feature or a specific service or subservice in that macro area that I really need to go and explore more and try it out because obviously when I make a video, I want to be sure that I'm saying the right things and I want to be sure that I know what I'm talking about.  And then of course, that reflects on the video because yeah, I can make a video that can be useful for people, but also has some reflection on my professional life because then I can go back to my company or to my team and say, you know what? I discovered that tool or that specific feature that I didn't know before. And I think it really can apply to our scenarios or to our day-to-day work life and stuff like that. And I think that's beneficial for everyone. Yeah, well, definitely. I mean, that's some of the best content that's out there. I know that when I take the time and to your point, I mean, it takes time to go through and research, experiment with it to understand kind of the limits of a feature or a new product or solution that's out there and to be able to talk about that, do research, find out what other people have said and written about and created on, and then to go and do like even then to record a walkthrough versus, you know, this is easy. Like we're sitting here, we're talking, have a, we don't have questions printed out, but there's a rough structure to how I run these interviews. And so it's very simple to go and do something like that. And I do productivity. I have not done one in a while, but productivity tips where I've actually gone through and I've demoed some things and talked through these, takes a lot longer. It's like four or five times as long to record and pre and post production on that. Especially for me not being a native speaker, I try to get my English right in the videos. So sometimes it takes me, you know, quite a few takes to get there right. Oh, you sound great. We've never known that you weren't American. Not sure about that. Yeah. No, I'm just kidding. Hey, so what was your, what was your path to becoming an MVP? So I know, especially, I know that people ask that question. Is it like easier to be a former Microsoft person and then to become an MVP? Um, I don't think so. No, apart of, I used to be an MVP also before joining Microsoft. So I got awarded the first time, if I remember correctly in 2015, and I joined Microsoft only, you know, three and a half years ago or four years ago. So that was not connected. So at the beginning, when I, I didn't even know what MVP was back in 2015. And, but I've always been kind of into public speaking or putting more, more, more than anything, putting myself out there, whatever it was. And so I got, I started being part of an awesome community back in Italy called Dotnet Toscana. And we've tried to, you know, to get, you know, to get it first and collaborate within each other. But then we started thinking, well, maybe we can organize some event and participate to bigger events. And then the thing got bigger, bigger and bigger. And one day I received the email, you know, oh, you've been nominated for MVP, for what? And so yeah, and then the process started and I got really into that, even more than I was before. And then yeah, I got re-awarded like in 2016 and 2017. And then, yeah, 2017, I moved to Hong Kong and then I got my offer from Microsoft that I had to, I couldn't refuse. And so obviously I had to give up my MVP title being for independent professionals. But now that I left Microsoft in December last year and I've been doing, you know, all the videos, as I mentioned before, I have a blog or article platform. I tried to do events, but obviously with, in this time and age is difficult to do in person events. So putting together all the stuff, I've been lucky and fortunate enough to be able to be re-awarded as an MVP. I know that there's a couple other instances where people within a couple months of having left Microsoft, you know, got to be, you know, MVPs, for people to understand though, it's not because they were an employee that it was easier, it's because throughout that time, so like you, before you were Microsoft, while you were Microsoft, you were still a content creator doing all these activities because it really is an award for, it's a recognition of the community activities for the year prior. Exactly, exactly. That recognition. And so, yeah, so I did things that were above and beyond, you know, my Microsoft role. I did things that were very different. In fact, my last two years, I was in advertising operations, but I was still writing about, talking about SharePoint and Office 365, which had nothing to do with my day job. And so I kind of continued along that path as well. Well, very cool. Yeah. So, you know, anything else that you, any advice you would give to anybody that is thinking about becoming an MVP? Well, first of all, don't think about becoming an MVP, but do it because you want to, because you want to share your knowledge, because you want to help people, because if you, if your goal is becoming an MVP, maybe you can make it, for sure you will not be re-awarded afterwards, but it's not meaningful, right? I'm an MVP, not because I wanted to be an MVP, but because I wanted to share the things I know, because I wanted to help people. And as a result of that, someone noticed my efforts and I got awarded for that. But the main goal for me was, you know, producing my videos, producing my content, doing my articles, and trying to help people. And for me, even if one person comments in one of my videos saying, oh, that's so good, bro. Thank you very much. That makes my day. That's the thing that should drive you, not I'll become an MVP. And then if you are lucky enough or good enough to be awarded as an MVP, then enjoy it. That's great advice. I've heard from a number of people that, in fact, a good friend of mine who had as a goal to become an MVP. And for a couple of years, I mean, he was putting in the effort and doing the things, but he was with that focus. And he actually said to me, he said, you know what, I've really just kind of given up on becoming, it's just not in the cards for me. It's not going to happen. He says, but you know what, it doesn't matter. Since I've benefited so much, I've enjoyed this. I've built relationships with made friends and contacts and my business is thriving. It's been so rewarding just doing that thing. And about two months later, he got an MVP. So it was surprise for him. And it was very great. But it was gravy on top. He'd already been fed. So it was extra. It was fantastic. But, well, I really appreciate you taking the time to, one, to meet you and to hear about your background. Hopefully I'll get out in your part of the world, maybe this year. It could happen. Yeah. Let's see here, there's a lot of travel restrictions still in situation. It's a little bit, you know, not open up, but yeah. But I think we're, we're, I'm confident we're at the, the backside of this thing. And we're going to, things are starting to open up again. And so hoping to get out in your part of the world. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thanks so much for your time. Time. It's been my, my pleasure, my pleasure. Anytime.


Activity for teaching the present perfect, most deprived. Have your students move their chairs to sit in a circle, one student stands in the middle of the circle and announces something he has never done before. All of the students who have done it, need to stand up and find another chair, and the student from the middle of the circle also needs to find an empty chair. The student that is unable to find an empty chair takes the next turn. Thanks so much for watching! We are ITTT, the leading provider for TEFL and TESOL training courses. If you like this video, please subscribe by clicking the button down here and click on any of the videos here on the left for more interesting teaching tips for getting certified to teach English abroad and online.


Meredith, go ahead and unmute. Hi, DJ, welcome back. Thanks. Can you describe what your experience was like with coronavirus? I mean, didn't really have any symptoms. Very surprised I tested positive. I was lucky I wasn't really in contact with, with hardly anyone, you know, when I got the news. So, but pretty slow. I mean, really didn't do a whole lot. Just kind of hung out and tried to get those negative tests and get back here as soon as I could. Erin Boone mentioned yesterday that you were able to do a little bit of working out. What exactly did you do during that span when you were waiting for the negative test? Yeah, I mean the first couple of weeks since I didn't really have any symptoms, I was kind of like just kind of taking it easy and just making sure I, you know, didn't get symptoms and then kind of the last week, just taking swings off the tee and moving around a little bit. Not a whole lot, but you know, as much as I could do, kind of, you know, close by to the house. How long do you think it will take you to build yourself up to be able to play nine innings and do you think opening day is a possibility for you? I think it's a possibility. You know, I don't know if it's realistic or not. I think that's going to be up to the trainers and to Booney. But I think I'm going to be pretty close. If it's not opening day, it'll definitely be the first few games. But you know, we'll see. We'll see how these few days go. And for me, it's just going to be the live at bats the more I can get the more ready I'll be. Thank you, Jay. Take the next question from Brendan Cutty. Brendan, go ahead. DJ, thanks for taking the time and I'm glad you're well. What is it about the live at bats that really, you know, is important to you? Is it the timing? Is it just making sure you're in game shape? And also, how do you feel about being ready for nine innings? That's why games for a couple of weeks now? Yeah, I think I think I think the live at bats is just kind of getting that mental process going again. Kind of get the mental process, the timing down a little bit. I mean, I've been taking BP for, you know, in Tampa for the previous three months. So physically, I feel pretty good. It's going to be kind of the timing and then, you know, ramping up for nine innings physically, you know, we do have an off day there after opening day and then a couple of sprinkled in. But, you know, that's part of the season. I think everyone's going to be, it's going to be different for everybody. So, you know, for me, it's going to be no different. Thank you. Bruce Beck, good to see you. Go right ahead and unmute. Thank you very much, DJ. Welcome back. Thanks. DJ, how do you balance trying to get ready as quickly as possible with also being focused on staying sharp for the 60 day of season?  So just, you know, for me, just getting to the field early, checking in with our trainers and, you know, just keep pushing the envelope a little bit and get ready as quick as I can. Thank you. Next question from Christy Eckert. Christy, go ahead. To see you back. Hey DJ, just curious what the process of you at home getting ready to come to New York when you tested positive or was it a test that you took on your own or was it an intake test for the league? It was a test on my own. I had been in contact with someone who was positive and so I just got a test just to, you know, my dad is, I wanted to see my dad, but I didn't want to see him until I got tested and, you know, tested positive and got a call four or five days later and obviously really shocked. But yeah, it was on my own.  Have you seen him yet? Yeah, yeah, he came and sat on the porch a few nights and then once I tested negative, got to hang out and my wife tested negative three times and she was fine.  Take the next question from Sweeney Murdy. Sweeney, go ahead. DJ, a lot of your teammates have been talking about just the effort it's going to take to stay disciplined and try to get through the season. Now that you've joined them, what do you think that process is going to be like? They've talked about just having this goal of winning in mind and that's going to help them. Is that your primary thoughts right now? Yeah, you know, I'm glad we're in New York kind of going through the spring training again because we kind of get used to the new rules and the new protocols and, you know, getting used to being kind of different than we're used to.  And, you know, I trust everyone's doing the right things to be healthy and to get through this season. And being around the guys, I can see a lot of positivity, a lot of optimism, a lot of excitement for the season. So really it's been the couple of days I've been here now. It's, you know, I'm really excited to get going with the guys again. DJ, you've averaged almost 150 games a year in the last few years. What do you think it's going to feel like to, you know, 60 or less? Yeah, it's going to be weird. It's definitely a sprint this year. And like I said, there's a lot of excitement. And I know it's going to be different for us. It's going to be different for everybody. So we're really excited. I think this is a special group. I said last year this team is more than talented. There's a special thing here. And I think that's going to really help us in this, you know, weird 60 game year. Thank you, DJ. Yep. Take another. Marlee Rivera, go ahead. Hi, DJ. Very happy to see you healthy. First things first, did testing positive, you just said that it was a huge surprise to you doing it? Did it change your perspective at all and what this virus can do or even in maybe considering playing this season? No, no. No, I was just waiting to get those negatives. It was surprising. It was shocking.  But, you know, it's definitely a scary thing. You know, when you have something that there's no cure for, it's obviously scary. But, you know, after those first few days and feeling fine and, you know, so much support from, you know, teammates and family, just kind of, you know, after a couple of weeks, I was ready to go again and couldn't be more excited to be back. Thank you, DJ. George King, you're up next. Go ahead. Did you test positive in Michigan? Yeah, in Michigan. Yep. Thank you. Jake Siner, go ahead and unmute. You've got the next question. Hey, DJ, I can see you back. You have a couple of teammates who have said that they're going to wear masks on the field and amount of abundance and caution. I want to ask somebody who's had this, what your thoughts are on that and also your thoughts for you personally wearing a mask and what it's like having already had this enters into the population for that? You know, I'm probably not going to wear a mask. You know, for me, I think this game is really, really hard. So to wear a mask, I don't know, I'm, you know, but the guys who are wearing it, I definitely respect. And, you know, I think it's a very safe environment. You know, like I said, being here for a couple of days, I think it's about as safe as it can get. But at the same time, guys are going back to their families and to wear a mask, I got no problem with. And I got no problem with guys opting out either.  And, you know, we always say family first. So if guys are, you know, everyone's going back to their families or loved ones. And I got, you know, I respect those guys that are going above and beyond to stay protected and keep those around healthy. Pete Caldera, go right ahead. You're up next. DJ, what baseball activity are you doing today? And what were you expected to face in life? Today, I'm just going through normal BP practice, doing some running, running the bases. Going to kind of test it out a little bit today, get after it a little bit. And live pitching, I don't know. We'll see. I haven't really talked to Boonee yet today about it. But, you know, Boonee's been great. You know, he wants to, you know, make sure I'm ready, but also ready to play at a high level. So, you know, hopefully another good day today and we'll see where we're at tomorrow. Take a final question from Brian Hoek. Hi DJ, you mentioned that you had to keep taking the test until you got the negative. How many tests did you have to take? How long was that process? I was taking a test almost every other day. So I think I ended up having about 11 or 12 tests. And it was weird because I tested negative and then positive and then negative and then negative and negative. So, you know, it was frustrating because I was feeling 100% normal and still every morning I'd wake up at 7 o'clock to see the result and it was positive. So, you know, yeah, you know, pretty much every other day there for two, three weeks. And do you have any guesses where this all started for you? No, no, I have no idea. You know, I don't know. I'm not sure at all.


So when ink meets the water, right, the pattern as in sort of nature the fractals is different every time just like our life, but the two quickly become completely inseparable, right. And so our practice, our spiritual practice in this example is the ink and everything else we do our work, our family, our relationships is the water. And so the spiritual life makes everything more rich. That was my experience is it took on a different quality. I became different. I showed up different. Boom! What's up everyone? Welcome to Simulation. I'm your host, Alan Sakyan. We are on site at Consciousness Hacking's Awaken Future Summit. We are now going to be speaking to Ying Zhao, Lou. Hello. Hi. Hi Alan. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Very excited to talk to you. Ying is a designer strategist at Converge, also a lecturer at Stanford designing for well-being. Very excited to talk about this. So who are you? What do you represent? I'm an educator. I'm a facilitator. I'm a designer. I bring sort of the creative integrative approach to everything that I do.  But what I do now is sort of to teach students that particular mindset. It's been a very fulfilling journey. How did you accidentally? Yeah. So I, like so many people, I've gone to some Dharma talks in my early 30s. I've also done a lot of traveling, but I never saw myself as a serious spiritual seeker that seemed to be reserved, you know, to certain folks that don't necessarily have like a full on career. But then when I sort of came back to the Bay Area from Seattle for a job at LinkedIn, I was reluctant to come back to the Bay Area and I decided I should look for a place to meditate in order to sort of keep myself sane. Because there's just a lot of hecticness in the Bay Area that sort of runs counter to how I'm wired. And then I found this place called Jikogi, which means Compassion Light Temple in the Santa Cruz Mountains. And I, it's sort of set in nature and have a particular feel of calmness and sort of a energy, like a calm spiritual energy about it. So I kept going back, even though I didn't really step my feet into the Zendo until sort of several visits later. But then the people there started saying, why don't you live here? You seem like a really good fit. You seem really at home here. And I said, no, no, no, no, no. It's too far to my workplace. I have no more time for additional things like meditation or the responsibility of running a Zen Center. But they kept saying it. So I thought, huh, like I take these sort of signals seriously, right? When other people have invitations, and I thought, okay, maybe I should try it because there's a month long trial period anyway. And then when I tried it, something is instantaneously felt that time took on a more spacious quality itself. You know, I did have this free time in the evenings, especially because of the meditation and the longer commute. But it felt much more nourishing and much more rich. And so, so then I kept doing that. And I basically commuted to LinkedIn where I was working via the mountain roads, especially on a motorcycle for a few years from the Zen Center daily. And my life sort of changed from there. And I wouldn't have known that without actually experiencing it without putting myself in that situation where it was just the situation. So that's the accident. But I'm very grateful because it really changed my life on the inside out. Okay, wow. So you felt like a lot of what you are was running counter to what the Bay Area get it done mentality was. And then you took that invitation. And you said, Well, you know, why is it here? Let me explore it a little bit more. And it was a little further commute to work. But you ended up learning a lot and enough to change the trajectory of your life completely. Okay, so yeah, keep teaching us about this. Sure. I started to feel more present. I mean, these are words that I can describe later, not in the not at the time, but I could feel just sort of when my baseline being a little bit more calm. And I was more present with my team, my work, I started to say things differently. You know, now I can describe it as a little bit more vulnerability, a little bit more experimentation, putting myself out there. But at the time, I just was experimenting, you know, I started to use Buddhist language, things like basic goodness. And initially, very tentatively, but it was clear that my team really resonated with it right away. And I started to use more and more of it. I started to teach my team mindfulness skills, you know, the basics, and but also interpersonal communication of the sort of deeper connection, right? That, you know, people never sort of learn right in their education or in the beginning of yourself being professional. But it's such a core skill set, right, for being successful. Um, so that gave me kind of a particular niche at work and the kind of brand that people started to know me by that and started to come to me. And and then, you know, one thing led to another. Yeah. Yeah. So that's how it sort of happened. So people started knowing you as as someone that was maybe tapped in deeper into a sense of vulnerability, compassion. Just you you you actually end up, could it be that you drive more productivity by having these traits? And you so it was a was a lot of what you learn then through the practice of the meditation that you were learning in this Santa Cruz Center, Zen Center. It's called Gikoji Zen Center. Gikoji Zen Center. Okay. Okay. And then so then you were embodying these and presenting them at at LinkedIn when you're working there. Right. Okay, cool. And then from there, then keep us on the journey to converge and to Stanford, how did it end up all working out like that? Absolutely. One of the other important connections I want to bring about is my practice in Native American spirituality. And one of the main sort of signs that I should live at Gikoji was actually there's a sweat lodge on site at the Zen Center, which is highly, highly unusual. These coming together of spiritual traditions. But the founder of that particular Zen Center was very welcoming of sort of the spirit of the land.  It's somewhat controversial there as well. You know, they're purists of the Zen tradition, who doesn't feel like these things should mix. But in any case, I've had a separate Native American practice for maybe eight years or so prior to going to that particular Zen Center. And I learned about the sweat lodge and wanted to participate. And I've been playing phone tag with someone who sort of holds ceremony there. And one New Year's Eve sort of I did a self-retreat. And then the next morning, New Year's Day, I walk outside of the room I was staying in and I see this guy and I instantaneously knew he was a person I was playing phone tag with, even though I had no idea what he looked like. I just knew. And then so moments later, I was able to step from the Zendo into the sweat lodge, borrowing other people's clothes to sweat in. So that was the important sign for me that sort of the different worlds that I participated in actually belong together, kind of like integration, rather than worlds colliding, which is something I used to have a fear about. So those two different practices continue to inform my life a great deal. You know, the Zen being more sort of the intrapersonal, right? The meditation. And then the ceremonies, the Native American spirit ceremonies, more about the interpersonal and also communication with the divine. So I started to basically have different mindsets that I could see how things played out. Instead of going with sort of the more typical like rational and Silicon Valley mindset of being rational and like trying to decide compromises and the best approach forward, I started to have a different mentality, which is basically the contrast between balance or compromise and integration. And I'll describe it a little bit. Yes, please. So balance is, you know, we can see the picture of a balance and it's essentially kind of a zero sum game. If you want more of something, there has to be a list of something else, right? So it's a particular mental model that it's actually a game that we could never win, especially in a world that changes so fast. Even when people have achieved some sort of balance, immediately like it's gone out the window because something has shifted, right? Their work life has shifted, their family life has shifted, they need to move, et cetera, et cetera. But we can't actually potentially, if we have a child or whatever the additional adding thing is to the equation, we do have to take time away from other things. That's right. That's right. That's right. And so it's a particular goal that is actually kind of a fallacy that people talk about all the time, right? Work-life balance. But it's actually like kind of a mental model that is people are set up for failure. So if you love what you do every single day, there is no balance. Correct. Exactly. Exactly. Whereas integration is exactly that. It's like everything we love infuses everything else and give it a kind of a richness and wholeness, right? So then there is no longer this like, I'm not doing enough of something. There is actually everything I do, everything that I touch has meaning and works together, right? Yeah. And the mental picture that I use is kind of inking water. I come from China where calligraphy and painting, et cetera, that's sort of part of the culture. So when ink meets the water, right? The pattern, as in sort of nature, the factos is different every time, just like our life. But the two quickly become completely inseparable, right? And so our practice, our spiritual practice in this example is the ink and everything else we do, our work, our family, our relationships is the water. And so the spiritual life makes everything more rich. That was my experience is it took on a different quality. I became different. I showed up different. Yes. Okay, so it was the training of the ink, the training of the spirituality that makes everything that you touch in life have meaning versus the balance and versus all of the other mental maps that we have of the way that we engage with the world. Interesting. And then what are some of the best, are you then teaching some of the best practices to develop the spirituality in the ink right now? Is that kind of what you're okay? Okay. Yeah. All right, so walk us down that. Sure, sure. Yeah, so I teach these kind of different mindsets, right? And actually students get it like really, really quickly because they understand like this is the only, this is not the only tool, right? And it has a lot of limitations when we try to rationally solve situations. It often, it generally doesn't work, right? Or it can work for a short amount of time, but it's not really how things work out. Nothing works in life by like logically really, like things are emergent, right? So I teach people basically sort of the creative emergent ways of thinking, which actually luckily design thinking is very much about that. So my profession and my spiritual practice comes together to sort of inform my view that I can share with students. Yeah, and I take them through sort of the creative process, right? Just using design thinking to bring about changes they want to see in the world. Offense through prototyping an idea could be a technology product, could be something else. But the idea is that they can connect deeply with their own pain and suffering. And the things that they want to bring about in the world is something that the world actually needs very much. And we're not alone in feeling that and we don't have to solve the problem, right? But actually this is material. This is material for how we are in the world and the things that we create. It's a non-linear process, but it's meaningful. So it normalizes it and gives it kind of a positive, right, understanding of the difficulty in students' lives. Okay, all right. So then we apply design thinking strategies to something that we're feeling within our maybe what we want to update the code of civilization with. We want to change something. That's right. And then you say, okay, we're going to apply a design thinking, first principles perspective to this of how we can have a human-centric way of changing the world for the better. And then they either build their idea through technology or whatever it may be. And then that practice itself kind of builds the ink, the spirituality. Absolutely. And it's healing. Yes. This process, like most creative people know this, right? Like the act of creating it from their pain and from their deep connectedness is self-healing. It needs to happen. Our pain is real and it's a part of why we're here. Wow. And there could potentially be when we decide to follow that path of, okay, I have this pain I want to create with it, that we find so much meaning from that, whereas sometimes we have the pain and we try and numb it. Exactly. Or try to partition it, you know? Yeah, it doesn't work. It has to be integrated. It has to be accepted. And creating helps from that. Exactly. Everything is soil. Yeah. Wow. Interesting. So then where do you now find the most part of creating spirituality, creating ink within the students that you work with? Is Converge also doing work outside of students, like with organizations as well as training leadership? Yeah, yeah. Okay, so teach us about that. Sure. Converge is super fascinating. It's an organization that I joined fairly recently, but I think they're doing the coolest work around. Basically, the idea is that in today's complex world, and there are different kinds of problems, right? Organizations and leaders can no longer, with their own efforts, solve these very complicated and complex problems. People have to work across boundaries. They have to work in ecosystems rather than single organisms. So Converge uses facilitation and deep connection and various tools to create those networks that transcend single organizations, but where people aligned the deeper challenges of our time to bring about the emergent possibilities that we want to bring about. So I'm very happy to sort of be coming back into the social impact world, which is something I obviously deeply care about. I think most people on the spiritual journey are, and to use all the tools that I have to bear for people who sort of have the inclination that they can do something, yet they don't feel like they can tackle these huge challenges. But we are all doing it. We're all change makers. And that's something that gives me deep optimism, is that are these skills and these mindsets are so easily teachable. And then what are the boundaries that we're overcoming? Is this like geopolitically how to work together? Sure. And just simply the idea that organizations have their own sort of identity or have their own charters and their bottom lines. So like our paychecks, who are we loyal to? So the idea that we are whole people, we have loyalty or obligations and responsibility to the organizations that we're a part of. But we also have deep responsibility as an engaged human being. To earth, to the ecosystem, to the ecology, to our communities. Exactly. And now we're all leaders in doing that. So it almost as though the corporation has kind of, and the bottom line has kind of taken more of a top priority over. Oh, completely. And that's sort of the linear thinking that we're seeing has very limited use and actually created a lot of problems in the past century. Yeah. Okay. So then Converge is helping with the training of the leadership at organizations to recognize these things. They create networks and facilitate those networks and sort of give people the capability of continuing with these networks for action. You know, they work in New York City on a homelessness problem. They work in the Santa Cruz Mountains on the stewardship of the land, working across lumber companies and preservation organizations, so very conflicting values. Yet it can work. And that's sort of the amazing thing about it is that when you get people in a room and get them to connect to each other in a deep way as human beings through stories, through their journeys, people work together. People are realizing that beyond those sort of bottom lines that make conflict, right, those financial bottom lines, they have deep alignment. So we could potentially get some of the executives at like the oil companies and really, yeah, and they would forfeit some of the company's bottom lines that they're working at. Absolutely. Absolutely. Because we're all, we're not, there are no single metric, right, that determines our success. You know, we are actually all wanting multiple bottom lines, right? Like you said, the community, the ecology, and not just a financial bottom line. That's right. Yeah. And so then the, these processes of kind of slowing down with some of the executives, this is just, there's such a funny thought experiment for me in my head is, you know, because we've been for such a long time trying to envision what it would be like if the, you know, if the UN General Assembly was to just, you know, have some more thoughts of, yeah, that unity and that unbounded love and compassion. Like, what would it, yeah, how would we do that? How would it change, right, if the oil companies were to be like, it's okay, our bottom line can take a hit. We're going to transition to, you know, this type of stuff. It's like, it's almost funny, but it's such so needed. Oh, yeah.  Yeah. I think like any kind of tide change, we're going to see things like that sooner than we may think, right? We will see UN assemblies and like the heads of corporations having these conversations. You know, there are people doing work on that front. Some of my colleagues at Converge and there are others leadership, you know, facilitators and one of them that I'm a fan of is someone called Mark Lesser. He used to be the CEO of a Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute. And he writes about, you know, he was a part of a, he was invited to facilitate at a board meeting that was very much gone awry. People were trying to get to the agenda and the strategic vision very quickly, right? Because obviously that's what people's times are precious. But he got in, he had people like meditate for 15 minutes, which is a really long time for people who've never done that. And then he asked people the questions of, you know, why are you here on this earth? Yes. And what are you doing to sort of bring about your values into the world? And to have people tell stories without interruption for five minutes about that with the others listening on, simply holding the space. And he said like in, you know, 20 minutes the space was completely transformed. The atmosphere was transformed. So the experience of being listened to on a human level. Yeah. Yeah, this, just the idea that, listen, we only have 15 minutes. We need to get to the heart of the conversation. We need to go so fast. But how do you, you know, Exactly. You have to, we have to go slow to go fast. Yeah. Yeah. That's, there's like, there's like so many ideas. There's not enough time sometimes to execute all of them, right? And so, and so it's like also important to like be vigilant with our time. Yeah. Oh yeah. To, to find that way of, of engaging with people on the level that is that meditative, let's slow down. I love you. You love me. Let's have our story time. Let's enjoy that. At the same time, what are our values? Why are we here on this earth, right? To start a board meeting with something like that's great. At the same time, because it can catalyze great results. At the same time, it's important to be vigilant with time and be intentional, be intentional. Sure. Sure. Okay. Okay. All right. I'm, I'm following. Okay. So, so even just dropping in for the short bit at the beginning can be transformational for that. It's necessary. It's necessary. I have that problem as well with time. I have a young child actually under two. So like there's no, I have very little time where I is that is my own basically, which is a very new part of my life and challenge. So I have, you know, part of my challenge right now is like, how do I use the time that I do have? How do I use my limited energy? So, one of the practices that I'm trying to do is to let go of the things I have done, but let also let go of the things I haven't done that I haven't gotten to and simply trust that whatever I do, do with my time is fine. Yeah. Because it's not possible to be like so calculated, right? And so intentional, effective with every minute. And so part of it is just giving us a break as well. We have the problem of abundance. That's very much here in Silicon Valley now, right? Like, you know, we have too many good things to pursue. Opportunity abundance. Yes, that's right, which has opportunity cost, right? Which is a very difficult thing for the mind to grok. Yeah. And it's a it can be a crazy making to try to like weigh all those things. But that's a balanced mindset, right? It's like we cannot logically weigh everything that we could do and what opportunity it might take and what cost it might have, etc. Oh my gosh. So we can only like, yeah. So one of the things I tried to do is like over time, I actually realized I can trust my actions and not spend too much cycles, like trying to weigh things. And I just whatever I do, whatever I vote for with my feet, is fine. There's wisdom in my actions. Yeah. Yeah. So all the variables of all the ideas that we could allocate time to all the people of the and running the opportunity cost calculations and measurements and all this stuff. Yeah. It's also just having some sort of a future authoring like some something that we want to achieve in this long term and knowing our short term stuff. But also being cool with where we move ourselves moment to moment getting there. So there's so many possible ways to get. Okay. Yeah. And hold hold whatever this brain tool holds lightly. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I want to I want to understand. Is that then the the process for designing for well being is this process? I would say yeah. We're overly obsessed with the calculating opportunity costs. Yeah. I mean, we put students into teams. So the idea of their original visions may very well change with the influence of other people, right? And the prototyping process and feedback and so on. So we really try to teach the students to understand the emergence and to embrace that. Right. Yeah. Because future is highly emergent. Yeah. One of the other one of the things I like to say is what could happen is much bigger and much more magical than what you think you want. Whoa. The future is much more bigger and magical than what we think we want. If we look back in our own lives, I have that experience, right? What had happened is actually much bigger and more magical than what I thought I wanted. Like my life now is way more expensive and magical than what I could have thought 10 or 20 years ago, right? So I'm casing point of that emergent possibility. And I think for today's young people is even more so because the future is coming very quickly. Yeah. Yeah. In a very rich way. Okay. So Millennial and Gen Z, huge part of the exponential technology era pushing forth the rapid changes that are happening in our world. And so the sort of it's sort of the the the phenomena, the phenomenons that we may experience of stress or anxiety or overwhelming feeling of all the different opportunities of social and ideas to pursue and all that stuff to kind of become one with all of that and just be guided in this kind of surrender to the direction that our divine path will end up taking. For sure. I love that. And at the same time I realized that like, is it really like surrendering to me wanting to watch Game of Thrones or or is it surrendering to me wanting to not do that and edit the footage instead, right? You know what I mean? What do you do with that thoughts like that? Hmm. The first thought that comes is I think people do need the pleasure in their lives. It might be Game of Thrones. It might be video games. You know, it might be dating. And that's a natural part of human desire that is actually really important because it nourishes all of us. And we if we feel like the sort of the avoid or emptiness, we would always want to fill it with something. But when we have deep pleasure, then that cup is filled. And then the rest of the decision making process become much easier because you're not from acting from a place of deficit. Interesting. So so it could be that the cup could be filled though with either the Game of Thrones or a video game or dating or it could be filled with doing something like absolutely producing content. Yeah. And so okay. So then maybe then one of the things is to kind of have a experience different items at the buffet to see what fills up the cup. Yes. That's right. That's right. And allowing oneself to make mistakes in there because we'll know. We'll know when something's not fulfilling. Interesting. So we taste something at the buffet. Absolutely. You say that wasn't as fulfilling for my cup as when I do this. Exactly. And if we're, if we have some level of awareness, then I think actually we're all very sensitive to how something can be like hollow pressure, pleasure, and when something is real pleasure. Oh, hollow pleasure versus real pleasure. I like that. Yeah. Right. Because there's, you know, there's a lot of stress in life and we want to escape. Like that's human nature. But I think, you know, like FOMO and sort of the strategies to, you know, act on that. So, you know, like basically comparison with other people can take up a lot of time, but it can quickly feel not really satisfying. Like it may like give you a little bit of a hit, right? But I think, I think, you know, like people eventually have enough experiences when things is like too quick of a hit, right? With no longer sustained feeling. Wow. And but, you know, it takes honesty and hopefully good friends around you to like not give you the sort of negative reinforcement, right? Yeah. Yeah. So it's almost as though we have the best innate ability to parse the buffet of options to find what is most fulfilling for us. Occasionally we can be consuming something that is hollowly fulfilling and we need to write environment of parents, community, friends, and seizure to be like, you know, try this, see what you think of this. And then maybe you find more fulfillment than that. I feel like one of the things that's coming up more frequently is that the whole movement towards social, emotional, mental, physical, spiritual well-being, right? Because you are designing for well-being. So the whole movement in that direction is fascinating and I think it's really providing some nutrition for people of fulfillment. Simultaneously, I find myself at times potentially finding a lot of fulfillment and just being alone as well. And I have so many ideas. I just want to like be able to try and synthesize, right? Package it up into multimedia goodness. And so yeah. It's wonderful. Yeah.  And so it's almost as though do we, how well do we know ourselves? Know thyself. That being most important. Knowing where we get fulfillment. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And aloneness is really a necessary practice, I think for everybody, even for the more social, socially oriented people. I think someone said that solitude is only as good as the compassion it creates. And I have the experience in myself and I can see it in other people also that when they spend time alone, they actually feel more connected afterwards because we have become more connected to ourselves. And in that process become more generous or loving. So give yourself that. I love that. The such the rapid pace of just attaching ourselves to this whenever we feel the time of boredom or aloneness, aloneness is bad in so many ways because we don't tap deeper in and then be able to tap deeper to the communities. And this has been such an interesting conversation with you. You're doing some powerful conversations with me and inspiration hopefully for others and to work at Converge and at Stanford is good work. Thank you. Thanks for coming on the show and talking to us. A pleasure. I really appreciate it. Quick question I want to ask you, do you think we're in a simulation? I would say the main answer is no. This is real. Our bodies are real. And how we experience our reality, however, is completely up to our internal states, up to these processes and sort of the metaphysical, you know, combinations of housings are, which are kind of hard to describe. But no, I think we're real and I'm grateful for that. And then what do you think is the most beautiful thing in the world? I want to say right now, since I have a little one, it's sort of the love of young children. Their love is so completely pure and it's heartbreaking. But we are all that, right? We're all young children. We haven't left that. And if we can bring about that, you know, we'll all be much closer to this, closer to our hearts. Where can people find you on the internet? What's Converge's URL? Converge.net. Converge.net is the URL. The link is in the bio for that. Also is LinkedIn. Yeah. LinkedIn is a good place. Okay. Yeah. And Ying Zhao, lose on LinkedIn as well. The link is below. And huge thank you everyone for tuning in. We would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below on the episode. Go and talk to more people, your friends, your family, people on social media, your co-workers, about what it's like to piece together these next conversations for well-being and designing for well-being around our world. And also check out the links below to Consciousness Hacking and to Simulation Sport, the organizations, the entrepreneurs, and the artists around the world that you believe in. And go and build the future, everyone. Manifest your dreams into the world. Thank you so much for tuning in. We will see you soon. Thank you.


What's up, everyone? It's your girl, Kenzie here from Layton Sports Cards, and I'm ripping 21-22, Panini Mosaic Basketball Hobby, 4 bucks, break number 22, pick your team. I've got Alan J. Warriors, Ashley S. with the Wizards, Austin M. Celtics, Bernie S. with the Hornets, Cavs, Mavs, Pacers, and Thunder, Brian C. Bucks, Charles B. Knicks, Chris C. Sixers, Dennis H. Grizzlies, DoD, Pistons, Greg L. Heats, Greg R. Clippers, Holly M. Bowles, Joe P. Lakers, Kevin L. With the Sons and Spurs, Matthew R. Nuggets, T-Wolves, and Kings, Nick P. Blazers, Nico R. Hawks, Pogen K. Rockets, Tim V. Jazz, Victor T. Pelicans, Yahweh T. Nets, Yang F. Magic, and Yusuke O. With the Raptors. Good luck, everyone. Here we go. Let's see what we can get. Let's see. Stained glass time, baby. Let's do it again. And seven left on the next break. Steps right after this one. Let's get that filled up. All right. Mowgli debut. Suggs rookie, Primo rookie. Got Refractor. Mosaic rookie, Quentin Grimes, Red, Joshua Giddy. Nice one, there, Thunder. Lillard, Donovan Mitchell. Seven left on the next break. Moody debut, Grimes rookie. Got Silver, Joellen B. Red, Luke Kennard. Josh Giddy, Interductions. Peace. Subtractalk, hope everyone's having a great day. If you'd like to join, our link is in the bio. Still, spots left for the next one. Still teams available. SGA Mosaic, we've got Red, Deiren Fox. Moments in Time, Magic Johnson, Kyrie, Phantom Rookie, Aldama, Suggs National Pride. Zion, Mosaic. Red, Kyrie. Kyrie, Rising Stars, Mosaic, Sidique Bay. Colum. Tray Murphy, the third. Bones, Highland rookies. Got Silver, Brandon Boston, Junior Rookie Clippers. Blue for the Raptors, Pascal Siakam. That is 3 out of 99. Raptors, Kaminga Rookie, Tray Murphy, the third. Josh Christopher. Derek Rose, Mosaic. We've got Red, Jason Tatum on the 75th anniversary. Sharp-looking card there, Boston. Rising Stars, Sidique Bay, Jason Tatum, JT Thor, Butler, Zaire Williams, Silver, Spencer Dinweddy, Red, Luke Kenner, out of a Mitchell, Swagger, Lamello Ball, Osom, Obamba, and Brogdon. Welcome for our auto here. Brandon Boston, Junior, Isaac Jack, uh, Brent, sorry, Isaiah Jackson, Scotty Barnes, National Pride. We have our auto. It is a spur. How about it, David Robinson? Spurs, one of the last teams taken. Isaiah Jackson, Silver Rookie. We've got White, Dorian Finney-Smith for the Mavs. That's six out of 25. Love the white Mosaic look. Grats on that one, Dallas. Starting five for the Nets, Vivian Mitchell-Rookie, Ron Wagner on the Rookie Base, Mosaic, Moses Moody Debut, Terry Rozier, Red, Kate Cunningham, Introductions, Aaron Gordon, last pack here. Scotty Barnes debut, Josh Giddy, Rookie Base. Got Silver, Gary Trent, Jr., Red, Chris Paul, NBA Base. On to box number two. Get everyone. We've got two more briefs. Same format. Four box. Pick your team style. Got six left in the next one. Six to go. There is the link for you. Six to go. All the teams left are on sale. Let's get that filled up. Marcus DeMarcus Cousins. We've got a red color match here of Danilo Benton for the Raptors. Bradley Beal. What's up, Danny? Link in a bio TikTok if you'd like to hop in. Again, plenty of spots remaining for today. Well, Thailand, Evan Mobley debut. We have Silver, Alfin Shandgun debut. Rockets. Red, Isaac Acoro. Not yet, Kayla. Jalen Green, Rookie, Evan Mobley, both Rookie Bases. Got Silver, PJ Tucker for the Heat. Blue, Rockets, Eric Gordon. That one is 29 of 99. Rockets. Cane Rising Stars. Josh Christopher, JT Thor. Got Austin Reeves, Mosaic. Red, Luke Conner. Moments in Time. Clay Thompson. Butler, Zyra Williams. Benton, Rookie. Silver, Jay Sean Tates. Red, Terry Rosier. Got Overdrive of DeVion Mitchell for the Kings. Those are really nice looking cards. Jane Springer, Evan Mobley, Josh Giddy debut. We've got Fancundo, Campazo, Mosaic Auto for the Nuggets. Denver with the second auto. Campazo. Trey Young, Silver National Pride. Red, Steven Adams. Starting five for the Kings. Sorry, Williams, Moody, Duarte. Danny Green, Mosaic. Red debut of Evan Mobley. Nice one. They're CAFs. Introductions, Mosaic. Jonathan Cumminga, Warriors. Suggs, Rookie. Primo, Rookie. Matisse, Thible. Red, Tobias Harris. DeVion Mitchell, Rising Stars, Mosaic of Tyler Hero. Seth Curry Walker and Porter, Jr. A couple of packs left. Let's see, Gold. Some Gold. Oh, we got Pink. Silver, Gary Harris. Pink for the Kings. A Harrison Barnes. That one is 32 of 49. Kings. Iverson or Bust for you, Wahoos. Well, good luck. Let's pull you AI. Let's see some. Got them in this one or the next one? Garza, Sangoon, Iodosunmu. Mamu, Kellish, Villi on the Mosaic. That was very smooth. That was. It was. Red, Josh Christopher for the Rockets. Rookie, nice on there. Wagner, Chris Middleton, Pace, Mamu, Kellish, Villi. All right. Let's see where we are on this next one. Fortigo, number 23. So the next one, and then Rob's got them in 24. All right, well, good luck to the Sixers. And the next couple boxes there. Got Primo on the debut Mosaic, Spurs. Red, Justin Holiday. Jalyn Green Moments. Montage KD Mosaic. Violin, Evan Mobley debut. Silver, Macau Bridges, Rashawn Holmes, Red. There you go, Wahoos, yeah. Yeah, AI was always fun to watch. Josh Giddy, Ricky Bass, Cumminga. Got Silver, National Pride, Cade Cunningham. Red, Devon Vasell, Rising Stars, Sugs. We have Wi-Fi, Christopher, GT Thor. Got Derek White Mosaic, Red, Devon Mitchell, Rookie. Moments in Time, Blake Griffin.  Yeah. That was crazy. There you go. Butler, Williams, Spanton, Stuff Curry. Got Shaggy Lays, Alexander Silver, Blue for the Kings, Rookie, Devon Mitchell on the National Pride, 38 of 99. Kings, down to four. Down to four on the next one. Introductions, Jalyn Green, Stinglass, Luca Donchich. Dallas is Bernie S. There you go, Bernie. Nice, Luca. We'll mag this one for you. We're missing a couple. We're missing McComb, Siamk, and Zubak. I'll have to look at the checklist, which ones. I haven't told LeBron. It was a Jalyn Green, I think. Yeah, it was Green, LeBron, Curry, and Luca. We pulled Curry. Did we pull Curry? We pulled seven, so this would have, yeah. Okay. Got a Mark Price Mosaic Auto for the Caps. Caps, take of that one. Some throwback autos here. Desmond Bain Silver. We've got Red Franz Vacher debut. Nice. Jal, Straight Fire, Yannis on to the Koonpaugh, Holmes, Luca, and Hayes. A Bragg Denry con, Metasphere. Yeah, I like those, the different spheres that were in that product. Out of, what was that? That was Flux. Wagner Rookie Base, Scotty Barnes debut. Steven Adams. We've got Trey Young on the, how they match their cocks. Introductions Mosaic, Scotty Barnes, Rafters, Suggs debut, Harrison Barnes, Red Ayodo Sun Moon. Nice color match there for the bowls. Rising Stars Mosaic of Lamella Ball. Little Clarkson, Moody Grimes, Butler McBride. Got Silver Rookie for the Hawks of Jalyn Johnson, Red Bobon. Last pack, box three. Garza Rookie, Shango, Ayodo Sun Moon. Cam Reddish Mosaic. We've got a Luka Donchich Red. Edwards and Base. Let's refresh here. Last box here. Next one is down to two. Mavs and Spurs, left in the next one. Mavs and Spurs. Cunningham National Pride, Wagner debut. We've got a Luke Longley on the Mosaic auto bowls. I'll throw back autos here. I'm in the Compaso as current, but no rookie autos out of this mixer. RJ Barrett Silver, Red, James Wiseman, Steph Curry, Straight Fire, Cade Cunningham. Nice one there. Pistons. And if you're watching on TikTok, Link, and Bio, still a couple teams left for the next one. Yannis, Shangoon, Kispert, Green debut. Rosier Mosaic. We've got Red, Cole, Anthony. Magic. Montage, Fox, Cade Cunningham rookie base. Darren Thomas. Silver, Luka, Garza Rookie. Pistons. Red, Scotty Barnes debut. Rafter. It's a nice color match. Mowgli rising stars base. Kispert, Garuba, Bassie, Mitchell. We've got Red, Gordon Hayward. Garland moments in time. Deandre Aitin, Wiggins, Hyland, Robinson Earl. Got Silver, Jordan Poole, Blue, Rookie, Davion Mitchell for the Kings. That is 39 of 99. The Sack Town. Swagger, Josh Giddy. Tyree. Let's see, Gold. Jalen Green debut. Suggs debut. Mosaic debut. Herbert Jones. Red, Kevin Herter. Scotty Barnes introductions. Rising stars. Mosaic. Tyrese Maxey. Hope everyone's having a fantastic day. Thank you so much for hanging out with us. Cunningham debut. Reggie Jackson. Silver. Red, Scotty Barnes debut. Raptors. Scotty Barnes rookie base. Book Nights. We've got Mitchell. Tramont Green Mosaic. Red, CP3. Sons. Rising stars. Montage Mosaic. Zach Levine. Base. Primo, Jones, Beale, Reeves. We have Silver, Rookie, Miles, McBride, Red, Cole Anthony. And last pack here, we'll do a quick recap. Jones, Clay Thompson Mosaic. Red, Rookie, Isaiah Jackson, Pacers. Got Chris Paul, Stairmasters. And Crowder. All right, let's do a recap here. All right, we had some color and our autos. Blue, Davion Mitchell. Kings. Kings, Davion Mitchell. Rookie base. Eric Gordon and Siako. Pink Harrison Barn Kings. White Mosaic. Finney Smith with the Mavs. Our autos. David Robinson Spurs. Van Kundo Compaso. Nuggets. The Luke Longley. Bowls. And Mark Price. 40 calves. And then we had our stained glass of Lucadonchich for the Mavs. That'll do it for number 22, everyone. We've got number 23 coming up shortly. Thank you.


from Cornell University, and we'll get started. I think it's probably right on time. Yeah, a few minutes early, but that's fine. Yeah, okay, so Shannon Osburn and I, Rebecca Jaffrey, we're from Cornell University, and we about three, two years ago, embarked on a project that actually started out as a Salesforce project. So we had a mandate from the provost to improve the student experience, and lots of our colleges were using Salesforce as a way to orchestrate experiences with our students. And so we set out on this project, and then we realized we needed an elegant front end, and so we approached the custom development team, which Shannon runs, and she can talk about what happened then. Sure, thank you. Becky came to me and said, I'm working on a Salesforce project. I think it might have started as, I need some design work or some help with design. And then quickly, once we said, well, we like to start with discovery, we like to do UX first, and we started digging in with users, we started uncovering, you need more than a little bit of design, and then it quickly dove into, well, maybe we need to just look at what technologies we're using for everything. So the first thing I'm gonna show you is kind of the problem. So if you are a student coming to Cornell, thinking about Cornell, or like the example I always like to share with everybody is my oldest daughter, when she was looking for colleges, she was doing it the wrong way, the way you're not supposed to do. She was Googling, where can this college send me? Can I go to Costa Rica with this college? Can I go to this cool place? Yeah, exactly not what you're supposed to do, but that's what she was doing as a student. So when she came to the Cornell website or any of the sites she was looking at, her, this web space, as you know, being in universities is so, so distributed in some cases. So we'll watch this real quick. So we find with all of our UX, most of our students or potential students start with Google. Even if they know our main site, they always go to Google and start there for the most part. They kind of come to our homepage. They peruse the navigation a little bit, although you see how slow the person who did the video for us is going. When I watched my oldest daughter do this, it was like click, click, click and just jumping all over the place. And so what she's looking for coming here in this example is Becky's talking about the student experience. Part of that was finding your programs, your opportunities to study abroad. So they didn't find what they were looking for on the homepage, so then they went to search study abroad. Well, the first site is a disability services site. That's not what they're looking for. So what this is demonstrating as she clicks through is the Cornell web space, we have like hundreds of thousands of websites. We pretty much have a website for everything, every unit, anything you could ever imagine.  What kind of opportunities can Cornell open up for me? It's very hard or was very hard to find these. This example has shown you they've gone from Google to the homepage to now a page not found. They ended up on a disability services site. It's kind of all over the map for students to try to find and figure out where they want to be to get this kind of information. So when we did a UX phase to talk to students, focus groups, interviews, what have you, before kind of diving in on the technology side on how are we gonna solve this, things we heard was currently to find things I have to go to many internal and external websites, like we just saw a minute ago. Most people don't even hear about these opportunities until three days before the event. And then in most cases what they're saying is they can't even go. And then right now, this was my favorite quote, Cornell is like a treasure hunt because we're talking about opportunities here but there's many other examples across our university web spaces you could apply this to. And so basically the student meant you're really lucky if you find something at Cornell, but that's not how we want our students to find things. We don't want them to find it based on luck. And so what we ended up with is we need a website that helps students pull things together across campus, aggregates them, and then partner that with Salesforce in the backend. We needed it to be open to the public. We needed it to be help that discovery they need to do. And so as we started doing comps for what this website would look like, things we started hearing and then also as it's moved to launch, very easy to find things like the style, it's organized, super helpful. Everything's bringing it together in one place so much I could have done. Somebody reflecting back now that they see this site, oh, I could have done so much more here in my time. And so I'll give you a quick preview and we'll talk through this a little bit. All right, so this is the case that someone knows the URL. So find your opportunity. They come to the website. They can quickly filter into their opportunities via the Drupal website. They're gonna go in for global. And then as they click, they get a pre-filtered view of the global opportunity. So this is now in Drupal. I think we have 800 opportunities or north of that. And so Drupal was really important here for content. There's a lot of content here. We didn't wanna use Salesforce for all this content storing. And Drupal using a content type, a really big content type for this, was really good for let's get as consistent as we can in the view of the opportunities. So now we're clicking over to the application. So the student clicked apply. I'm gonna go back to that real quick. So this is kind of where we kick over to Salesforce. You see that apply button there? And they'll click on that in just a minute. It stays with them no matter what page they're on and the opportunity. This page has a lot more content. But when they get down and they click apply, this is where we do the handshake between Drupal and Salesforce. So we styled Salesforce to kind of make it not quite so jarring as you go between the two. And then I'll turn it over to Becky to talk a little bit about that. And so Shannon's team, I mean the user experience research showed us that students can't find things at Cornell. And so the goal of the project became to help students find and apply to opportunities, not just study abroad but research and immersive learning and all kinds of things. And so the important thing is, is if all they do is find it, you don't know what they're doing. We had no way of tracking that a student was actually going to France unless we called the study abroad office and they had their own little applications tool and students would apply. So they could report and then we could go to the research office, but which is like faculty all over campus. There is no office and find out, oh, then the student did a research project. And so by linking it to this application tool, built in Salesforce, now we can track what our students are doing. And that to me is the important marriage of content and CRM which is tracking people and their activities and our ability then in this tool when they're applying we can then start to orchestrate their process. So we could see if a student started an application and stopped, you could send them a prompt in three days. Once they apply and they're in the system you can add them to a community group to meet the other students who have applied. You can do all kinds of process orchestration. And so that's the rich marriage I think between the two systems. And so when we first started talking and I'll pause this just for a second before the handoff goes back to Drupal. When we first started talking about what she need leading a web group, our answer was you don't need Salesforce. You just will build it all custom. We were not sold. Why do you even need that? It's just one more thing to integrate, one more point of failure. However, I'd say leaping two years forward. A lot of what Becky just described is that like the marketing automation and pushing, we're just one website, the experience website but there's a lot of websites that can connect to Salesforce. So for the student record we're starting to build this repository. So then it kind of came to light even for the web team on, okay, Drupal's gonna do all of this but there is a little niche that makes sense to connect over to Salesforce. We did that with the Drupal Salesforce suite. We partnered with Marcus at Message Agency and they were a great partner to help us figuring out how to use that suite to connect Drupal to Salesforce. I think that was really important because we had many endless conversations and figuring out what data do we send over? What data do we just keep in Drupal? How are we sending it over? What are we pulling back? And so there was a lot of once we got through the UX phase really just digging in to figure out how do we bring these two technologies together? So for the end user, it feels seamless. So they kind of bounced out here. Students will never know they're in Salesforce when they're filling this out. But once they get to the end of their application what it's gonna show is they can submit their application here in just a minute and then they're gonna be able to come back to Drupal because all the student knows is experience.cornell. They don't know whatever this URL is and they're not going to go check their status over in Salesforce, at least not for this. I think after they click save, they go back. All right, so the submit application it kind of tracks down the side all the steps they have to do before they go back. So they're good. It tells them click on your dashboard. Can tell you the single sign on handoff between Drupal and Salesforce was probably where we spent a lot of time. I like to say one of my devs worked kind of Drupal magic figuring that out. That'd be a whole different session but getting Samuel to work with both Drupal and Salesforce was quite a bit. So here's the dashboard. So they came back here. So this is the site they recognize and this is the site they can go back to. So what we're doing is we're polling. Okay, I'm a student. I came back to my dashboard. Here's my Salesforce applications. Again, they don't know their Salesforce. We're masking that. We're kind of created like a teaser page for the students so they can track. We're also pulling more data back from Salesforce here later on as the application is processed. So as something is approved or waiting for review or whatever the status is, the student can eventually then withdraw or confirm here right from the website that they're used to. So this is an example of a more robust student who has a whole bunch of applications going on the one we looked at was just two. Okay, I think I want to add something. Yeah, and so here we used, again, sort of the process orchestration idea of not just letting a student reply but helping them through it so they can see the status of their application. If they, and then in the backend in Salesforce, there's a person who's admitting them to the program. Once they're admitted, it then kicks them up to that top section where they can commit or withdraw and then we can move them to an onboarding checklist and so all that process orchestration makes it a richer experience than other independent form tools or things that schools often use for students to apply to things. And this section over here to the right became really important data to pull back over into Drupal from Salesforce. What we heard through a lot of the UX testing was these applications, I mean you saw kind of a light process going through the applications, they're huge, they're long, it takes them forever to fill out and then once they've even filled it out, there's a whole slew of checklist items they have to go do to really have Cornell send them abroad to be able to study abroad. And so here it tracks for them in their dashboard, we pull data points back from Salesforce, okay out of seven, have they filled out three, have they filled out four? Instead of making the students maybe traditionally what we would have done five years ago, you go here for this and then here's a whole nother place you go to to go figure out all this information. We do that a lot, we have separated systems for a lot of things. So this was a nice marriage to bring those two things together. And so the formula that we've discovered in trying to blend CRM and CMS, like Shannon said earlier, I think what her team might have been doing in the past was using Drupal to build CRM type functionality and then the CRM Salesforce team was using Salesforce to build content functionality and so merging these two, the formula for us has become discovery. If students need to find or discover something that is content and that should be built in Drupal, but when they need to engage where you need to understand a person and how they're moving through a process, that is Salesforce. And so the blend of those two tools and then once you have that engagement data, you can feed that into your CRM platform, which is the student record and that's the data that you can report on and do a whole bunch of things with and you can track the students activity not just for these applications but for lots of other things as well. Do you wanna go to the next slide? I think it shows. I'll add one thing too. I think what Becky just said also, it took me a while to come around too because I would keep saying, but no, you can do that too. You can build those things in Drupal. What finally kind of really helped understand that is how does a student move around the university because they become point solutions. And so I think really we're contributing to that student record just like the next website that connects to Salesforce is gonna add to the student record. So it really, I think it took us a while to get there, but then it kind of came around using everything for their best fit. And so in this student record, this is what advisors see about student activity. And so here in this space is the applications. These are all the things that a student has applied to, but we don't just see that piece of their experience. We also see the meetings they've had with an office, the appointments they've scheduled in their office and other offices across campus. So by building those engagement modules, we're able to get a full view of student activity across Cornell, the applications, but other things as well. Salesforce, yeah. And this is just native Salesforce. It's what a CRM is. Is it's a 360 degree view of a constituent? Yes, in our case, PeopleSoft. Yeah, but that's over here. That's our system of record data. And then the difference between an ERP and Salesforce is you're not just capturing system of record data, but engagement data. And so the question is, how do you get the engagement data? And it's through these engagement tools. Because we did the front end in Drupal and not in Salesforce, we could do really other great things. And so connecting sites across campus, consistent content was also what we heard from students. I might find the opportunity to describe to this way on this website, this way on this website, and barely at all on this website. So what we did is we created a feed from our experience site, so that all the different colleges or units across campus could consume that data and render it on their websites. So this did two really great things. One, the video I'm gonna show in a second, it saved them a huge chunk of budget. When they were gonna redesign their site, they had all this functionality written up to do exactly what we built on experience for opportunities. And so we got involved and said, okay, don't do that, let us build it. And then you guys just consume the feed from us and render your opportunities however you want to. So they had a big win from that. And then as we roll this out across campus, the idea is the college sites will start highlighting the opportunities that they have on their websites too to keep that consistent voice for the opportunities. So in this use case, the students going to global.cornell.edu or Education Abroad. So they might have met with an advisor and their advisor said, here, go here. And so they go to discover programs and they pick college administrative or administered. So here you see each one of these sort of cards. This is all coming over the teaser content from our site and then they're linking to it. They have two options. One, they can link to our details page or there's some that are really important for them. This is their cornell sponsored ones. And so when you click on them, they're taking our content and they're putting their design wrapper around it. They're taking the fields and they're saying, these are so important. I actually want to render these on my own site and I want to put a little more around them. So that's working really well. It's keeping things consistent. It saved them time. They didn't have to write content for one website, write content for another website because we're knocking on their doors too saying, we need content for our website. So it's streamlining it a lot for them. So in addition to the content experience across campus, we also have an engagement tracking experience across campus. So we can track student engagement with a 360 degree view. So examples of other engagement modules that we have either integrated with Salesforce or built are appointment scheduling. We use Microsoft bookings. Students can make online appointments. Their appointments go into the student records so we can see if they met with the transfer student office or different units across campus. There's a check-in module. So when a student comes into an office, they check in. Ultimately, we'll extend this to other things across campus, the gym, the tutoring center, the advising center. And so we'll get to start to understand the student where they're getting services that we're providing and email tracking. This is not to track every email that goes out to a student, but if an advisor wants to keep a record of a conversation, this is an Outlook plug-in that goes into Salesforce and you just CC Salesforce and it goes into the student record as well. So it just makes it, you're not having to cut and paste and do all that. So this, I think, tracking their engagement is important and I know there's all kinds of privacy issues about this, like do we have the right to do that? We will have a student consent process where they sign off, they sign it when they arrive, but we're trying to be more deliberate when they actually enter the system that they check it off. But I think it's, you know, Cornell invests a lot in resources and if we don't understand if students are using them, we can't improve them and we can't, you know, if there's a tutoring center, are we staffing at the right hours when students really need it? Things like that. So we'll have data now that we can use to answer those kinds of important questions. So looking ahead, back to kind of the 360 degree view and tracking engagement. We're starting to, we've got the experience design. Well, maybe we should go look at the front desk check-in that's here and try to align that a little better. Or if we have a student support community website, that should align. So we're trying to take things that are in the student experience and align them better with the family designs looking ahead. Experience.cornell itself, more features. Obviously, if you launch something, that always gets a lot of eyes on it and then everybody wants something added to it. So we've got a whole JIRA list of things people would like. We question ourselves a lot. You know, could we have done it different? Should we have done it different? Should we have done Drupal in the back end to manage the content in a React front end so that we could have done the front end a little differently? Resource library. Much like we have a whole library of opportunities, next idea for campus would be if you're a student and you wanna find resources across campus, how do you find them? Well, right now, I think you do the same thing to the way you use to find the opportunities. You hunt and you search and you try to find them. A few others. You wanna talk about digital signage marketing automation? Yeah, and so in the find your resource, so we have experience.cornell.edu. The long-term vision is find your opportunity, find your resource, find your event, find your courses. We can kind of go down the line with that. And then for each content type, there's an engagement type, right? When you find an opportunity, you apply. When you find a resource, you check in. And that allows us to have that kind of data that we need. One of the biggest values I think is what Shannon said is that we have a system of record for all our opportunities across campus now. And we've never known that. If a dean asked how many research programs are out there, we would have no ability to answer that question. And now that we have this content repository or a system of record for our opportunities, we can push it not just into other websites, but into digital signage across campus. So now our content can be geolocated based on interest. So if we wanna push out certain programs to computer science students, we can go to the cafeteria where they hang out and put the content there. We're also trying to do more with a mobile experience.  It's wonderful, but on our mobile experience design, we're thinking about what students are actually needing their phone to do to check in as they move across campus to see their appointments. And so we will coordinate with the Drupal, the custom dev team to build that experience. And then email automation and marketing automation. Those are really powerful out of the box Salesforce tools that I think once we start to have this ability to orchestrate experiences for students, we can then promote other opportunities to them based on a point in time. So maybe, you know, if the resource, find your resource, if a student's grade goes down, we could push out content automatically without somebody having to figure out who those students are, push out content for the tutoring center. If a student's taking Spanish or they enroll in a Spanish class, we could push out content saying, hey, have you considered these study abroad programs? The last thing I'll say is now that we've discovered this magic, it's very much in demand now. And so as we launch other initiatives around different constituents, right, we focused the past two years on students. Next, we're moving to corporate relations and our corporate relationships. And I think we'll repeat the formula of having a content, a discovery platform for so external organizations can understand Cornell and all that we have to offer. And then they will engage somehow through some Salesforce tools and then we'll have that constituent record of that relationship. But the power of Drupal to me is that it's content that draws people in. That's how you present what your institution is about to the outside world. And once they're in, then you can engage them. But if you only, I come from the Salesforce world, if all you do is Salesforce, you're not attracting people to get the engagement that you need to track. That our applications were already in Salesforce? They weren't, no. Yeah, we had point solutions. So some people use Google Forms, some people use Teradata for study abroad, Fluid Review, there's all kinds of tools out there that different offices are using. Yeah, right. And that's the challenge, right? So Teradata is a study abroad portal. More students can apply, but it doesn't work for domestic opportunities. So Cornell and Washington DC wasn't in there. And then that study abroad office, they owned the tool. And what they would find is the other offices that wanted to have an application would be in their tool. And so suddenly the study abroad people are managing a technology platform for offices that aren't their own. So it's a really, it was a crazy ecosystem. So as far as information that you're pulling in from Salesforce, are you actually ever showing, pulling user information into the Drupal site at all? Or is it only just displaying it? Information into the Drupal site. Okay, so then you have user accounts on multiple places? Yes, and actually figuring out that and then who owned the profile between the two. Correct. So for the, it was really easy for the Cornell login side nothing was easy. It was easier on the Cornell login side. On the non Cornell login side, we went back and forth would Salesforce have the user profile? Would Drupal have the user profile? At the end of the day Salesforce creates the profile and just sends the data back to Drupal. And then my second part of the question is kind of off his, so did you already have, so obviously Cornell was heavily invested in the Salesforce. So did you already have like that whole UI? So basically did you have to develop the UI tools that you needed for Salesforce as well? Like basically did you have to develop two things? Yes, and that's I think where the Salesforce team operated pretty independently because we had such a tight timeline but now we're stepping back and we're really gonna use the UX talents of Shannon's team to help us make those better experiences. Okay, thank you. The opportunity data that you have in Drupal are departments all across campus entering that directly in and how do you manage what they can enter and what tags they can use and who has access? I like to say everybody gets tag happy. That's our biggest problem. They did hire somebody who's supposed to start kind of calling through the content and making sure the tags are appropriately. I think there's this idea if I pick all the tags and the content type, my opportunity will get really good marketing which then, as you know, makes the integrity of the site not so good. So there is somebody who's looking at that. We're having them, they have two options, the global folks. One, we had a feed, a one-time feed come over from Teradata to pull in all of their opportunities and then what we did is we kind of put them in a staging spot, let them go clean them up using our content type and then put them on the site. Now they're managing them just on the Drupal side. We did an integration also with our class roster. It's a little weird, but we have opportunities that are also courses. So they're specifically tagged ones in the roster that we're now pulling over, doing the same thing, bringing them to staging, letting them pretty them up and then they get put on the site and then you have all the hand-entered ones. There's some really good use case studies. It's almost like if my friend has something cool now, I want it too. We're seeing some of the communication directors sit in these meetings and if one says I went using this from 50 applicants to now getting 200 and somebody else hears that, then all of a sudden they want to put their stuff here and use it. Do you have a continuing feed from Teradata or does this replace Teradata? Replace. I don't know if this question is on anybody else's mind, but it seems that each student when applying for an opportunity, they require the use of a login to the Salesforce. How did Cornell University manage the licensing for Salesforce in that situation? Because it could be quite expensive if everyone got a license. So Salesforce has a community license and it's a login model, so you just buy enough logins and it's actually not that expensive. I think Salesforce has a reputation of being very expensive. It can be, you have to know how to buy the licenses and how to structure them, but in the end that is not the most expensive part of owning Salesforce. It's much more about hiring vendors to get it stood up and get the data model in place and all that. So the licensing I find pretty reasonable and especially when I look at the cost of all these point solutions that we're now able to retire, the cost of an ERP Salesforce is a lot less than that. So it is a new class of technology and it's an investment, but the community side specifically, that is a reasonable price. Thank you. So we recently implemented a similar system and I'm wondering now if it's something that is a common initiative that a lot of, because I've been hearing about it at other universities too. When we did our UX, we had difficulty because the students and the participants had difficulty kind of wrapping their heads around what was gonna be involved and how they could benefit from it. We kind of took an approach where it was kind of more iterative where we created the interface and then we've been improving it over time. And because of that, we identified one of the motivators for our audience members was that they're looking for, our students in particular, are looking for a way to improve their skill sets with these soft skills that will allow them to have opportunities in their careers. So they wanna have some kind of hard copy, I guess, of what they've completed. So we identified groups of opportunities based on these skill sets. So for example, there's a leadership area and I notice you don't have that and I have sometimes wondered if because we're presenting them as these navigation groups that are based on these soft skills, if we're keeping them from discovering things, I see on your site you have a filtering option where you can allow them to identify. Have you ever thought or do you have any plans to update anything about that filtering? Because it seems very simple to me right now based on what the opportunities are. Yeah, so there's a lot in that, that idea of a sort of a co-curricular transcript is something that we feel now equipped to be able to deliver. On the filter side, I will say that has been the biggest win of this is getting so many people in the university to align around the filters in a very simple way. And so leadership, we have a feature filter and so we could and probably at some point, we'll add leadership as a component of one of the tags. We wouldn't put that as the type because I think we tried to be a little more, like you mentioned, soft skills. We looked to align with the kinds of things that students wanna do, research or study abroad and then or volunteer opportunity and then there's leadership components to it. So we sort of flipped it. I like the simplicity of your interface. Anyways, it'll be interesting for us. I'm thinking, oh, maybe we'll do some comparison testing with our audience groups to see. That's great. It's a live site. So experience.cornell.edu, you can all see it. The filters have changed endlessly since we started. And one interesting tidbit from the students was they don't use all the filters either. And so they really wanted it kept simple in the six big boxes you see on the front. We did testing with three versus six versus nine versus more, six was across the board, like the sweet spot. Thank you. We'll check one more. Two quick questions for you. Are you using Drupal seven or eight? Eight. Okay, that's great. And what single sign-on solution are you implementing? SAML. So it's kind of a custom code written by someone or available in the community? Available, because they're using the module, but I don't know if they customized around that. So thank you, everybody. We're gonna camp out outside the room. So if anybody has more questions, we're happy to chat. Thank you. Thank you.