doors for the speed of light, a cloud of dust in the hearty high old silver, the lone ranger. Even when the homestead days had passed in the western United States, immigrants still pushed into the new territory from the east. They had no money to buy land and settle wherever they could find water and fertile soil. The ranchers drove them off their property time and time again, but the nesters became desperate and a range war might have developed if it had not been for the mast rather the planes. It was he who found homes for the nesters. It was he who made the ranchers realize that there was room for all. It was his fight for justice, goodwill, and understanding that made the winning of the west possible. Return with us now those thrilling days of yesteryear. From out of the past come the thundering hoofbeats of the great horse silver. The lone ranger rides again. Mustang mag, the lone ranger's old friend, was busy in her kitchen when the door burst open. An old Missouri rushed in. Mag! Wipe your feet!  I got you! Never heard the news that was as important as a clean house. Them boots of yours wiped off good now. Cleaner than there ever been before! Then whatcha knew? Nesters! Huh? Thought that'd get ya? Yes sir, we nesters. Bigger's life and twice as pesky. You're trying to say nesters is figured on moving into this range? Yes, that ain't the half of it. Then what's the other half? They've been chased over three or four places, so now they're moving in on our place. What? As sure as I'm a foot high. Where's my shotgun? Get my horse saddled. Where's that extra buckshot I had? I'll show him. Going after him? What'd you think I'd do? Welcome, miss skunks.  Missouri led the way to a small grove. A half dozen wagons had gone up in the trees, and mustang mag rained in before them. You know folks, permission to camp on my land. That's telling a man! Who's the boss here? Where's your leader? I reckon you must mean me, ma'am. You in charge of these folks? Yes, ma'am. They'll do like you tell them? Yes, ma'am. Then tell them to pack the dubs and get. I got this here shotgun, just a purpose for nesters, and I'm just itching to see if the blame thing shoots through. Ma'am. Well? We, we never meant no harm, ma'am. But we just got to have some place to live. Why do you? Why does nesters have to live at all? Well, folks, reckon we'd better be moving on. Hitch up the wagons, ma'am. Miranda, get the grub that was laid out and... What's that? Huh? Oh, that's just my granddaughter. She ailing? Yes, ma'am. Let me have a look at her. This way, ma'am.   Look in your tongue before I make you one. Uh, who's this? My daughter, please, ma'am. Nellie, this is the kind lady that... I ain't no kind lady. Uh, what's wrong with the young one? She's got a fever. Fever, huh? What's the idea of traipsing all over the country with a young one that's ailing? Begging you a pardon, ma'am. It ain't cause we want to. Then why is it? We, we all had homes, ma'am, but there was dust storms. We couldn't make nothing grow. We had to leave them. And now we don't know what's going to happen to us. We can start anytime now, Josh. Start for where? Well... And for why? But you just now said we had to move on. Never said anything of the kind. If I did, it was just Josh and you. Can't you take a joke? I knew it, ma'am. I knew it.  You, you mean we can stay here? The others can, but you and the young unkind. You're coming home with me, Missouri. Help these folks move over closer to the waterholes. It's nicer there. Find out what drugs they need and see that they get it or turn your eyes. Ma'am. Mustang mags, ma'am. Mag. If there was only some way we could thank you. Go on, thanks. Too much of that in the world now is not enough reason for it. Now make yourselves at home and the Vandibaldi tries to bother you. Just let me know. Honest to gosh, Mag. You're all the time making out to be a hard-hearted...  Yes, sir. Three weeks passed. Resentment grew among the ranches in the territory that Mustang mags should tolerate the nesters. She was warned several times, but she paid no attention. One afternoon, Nelly Madden was sitting at a window in Mustang mags' parlor. Her baby in her lap fanned.  Oh, I'm sorry. What for? I should have been out in the kitchen helping you. But I got to playing with the baby. You say right where you are. Does me more good to see you in the young and chipper again than all the help in the kitchen you could give me in a year. You've been so kind. Kind. All I ever aim to be is human. That means being kind too, then it's just sort of incidental. Dennis! Nice man, I don't care what you say. I won't go to the Dennis.  You don't know what I'm talking about anyway. Yeah, but I heard you say it. Close your trap. Look here, Missouri. You dug on shore, you seen the masked men. I did, Mag. I missed I did. Kind of expected them before this. Well... Say, Missouri, you look me in the eye. What are you keeping back? Nothing. Spit it out. Well, I did kind of mention I want no great hurry.  But, Mag, even you didn't figure then that the ranchers would get as mean as they'd done. I knew they wouldn't just back down. We've caused you so much trouble. No such thing. I like a good fight. And before I get through these bull-headed cowmen around these parts to go to learn they can't tell me what to do, I'll teach them. Kind of looks like you can start teaching them right now. Huh? Oh, back again, huh? Lave Kent and Rick Sweeney and old Burgess. Three biggest ranchers in the county. They all look the same size to me.  Oh, boys. And I don't say another word, Gents, before you listen to me. There's always. All I was gonna say is that if they get tough with you, they got me to deal with. And that ain't much. Well, out with it. Mag, there's some of us that's been here to talk to you before. I know it. We said you'd have to tell them, Nessers, to move on. You ain't paid no attention. Ain't it my land or on? Do you figure you can tell me who can live in my land and who can't? The next thing you'll be telling us to move on. I'll do the talking. Now, just a second, Mag. Ain't just a question of where they live. Why ain't it? Cause Nessers ain't never settled nowhere. But what ranchers started losing cows? And once you leave Ness to settle any place, there's always others that follow us. First thing we know, the whole county will be overrun with you. They ain't stalled under my cows. Sure not. They got you mad at them. They wouldn't have no place to stay. You're just the same as Colm's heave. Mag, the trouble is that Nessers don't think that killing a cow for beef every once in a while is stealing. They get the thing and they got a right to that meat. All right, then. Have you fellas been losing any cows yet? They ain't been here long enough for us to tell, but we will lose them if they stay.  Here's how you talk to Mag Kent. I've been watching you all the time. None of your lip, Missouri. Hold on. I'll talk to Missouri that way, however of a mind, too, but I'll be blasted if anybody else will. What we want to know is what you're going to do. Look, Kent, Mr. Burgess, look at this girl here. Please, Mag. Don't mind them, honey. Look at this girl and her young'un. Three weeks ago, there was both the doggone thing you could almost see through them. The young'un was ailing and them all weren't much better. You fellas, if it had been left up to you, would have drawn them out of here. And maybe the young'un would have died because of it. We ain't responsible for Nessers.  Just so. All right, I'll tell you. I've got more range than I'll ever use. Some of it will make mighty fine farming land. I'm giving each family enough to make a living on. They can pay me when they're able.  Now, put that in your pipe and smoke it. And I hope it chokes you. Well, uh... You tell her, Kent. Tell me what? Mag, me and the rest of the men had talked it over. We come to a decision. That's what we're here to tell you. Go on. Either them Nessers leave, or we're organizing to chase them out. Off my land. You heard it. Try it, and I'll drill the first one of your kit.  Listen, Miss Zuri, don't you try to order surround. Get out before I get my dander out. Why you won't? You heard it, Miss Zuri. Get out. What? Come on, son of... Yippee! Mag, look who's here. I'm so dog-gone, glad to see you too. I can't find words for it. We saw those horses outside, Mag. We didn't let on where we were here until we learned what was going on. There's plenty going on. So it seemed.  You see that, you pool cats? The Lone Ranger and Tonto are on our side. What we said still goes, Mag. Think it over. I'll thought it over, and you've got the final answer. You'll be sorry for it. So you've got yourself in trouble again, Mag. Friend, they couldn't abide without it. Tonto, plenty glad to see you. I'm sick, Tonto. You're no more glad than I am. I tell you it's worth any trouble I get in just to have you folks around. That night in the camp they had made not far from Mustang Mag's ranch house, the masked man revealed to Tonto that it was more than the trouble between nesters and ranchers, which had brought him to the district. Although the ranchers think that the nesters are their big problem. And them not know. They knew that the healer kid was camping the hills. They'd forget the nesters. You tell them. They know we're on Mag's side. If I told them now, they'd believe it was a trick to cover up for the nesters. Oh. They'd lose cattle. They'd claim we invented the story to protect the people really to blame. That's right. They'd believe us, however, if we could prove the healer kid was in the district. Then what we do? I want you to try to find his camp. How to try? I don't want you to attack them. Don't let yourself be discovered. Just locate their camp and report to me. When me ride. Now, enter the hills at night and you won't be observed. That good idea. I'll keep this camp. Return here as soon as you can. How to do that? While you're gone, Tonto, I'll make sure no harm comes to Mustang Mag or the nesters. That good. Me saddle scouts now. In the meantime, the ranchers told all their friends of Mag's answers to their challenge. Hatred of nesters was deep seated among the cowmen and feeling against Mag's attitude ran high. A meeting was called at Lake Kent's home and each of the ranchers voiced his opinion. So, gents, I say it ain't to be put up with. Them nesters have got to go before we start losing cattle and get so many nesters in here that they'll get too hard to handle. That's right. Looks like they ain't but one opinion on it. You bet there ain't, Kent. Them nesters got to go. Then listen to me. We all want to get rid of them. We should all act together. Ain't no use in our going to butter without being organized. We wouldn't get no place and besides, everybody ought to do his share. Yeah. They're just one thing, Kent. What's that, Rick? The lone range is on Mag's side. Yeah, I know. Now, I don't know how the rest of you fellas feel about it, but I'll be dog-gone if I walk that armory after me. Don't see how it can be helped. Listen, we back down. Sure it can. Yeah, how? That fella don't go for anybody unless he knows the fella he's aiming to get is guilty. Mm-hmm. So what I'd suggest is that when we run them nesters out, we wear hoods. Like vigilantes? Yes, sir. By thunder, Rick, you got it. You think so, Kent? I tell you, fellas, that's the only way we can do it.  I reckon I feel like him does about it. I'm for wearing hoods. I say the same. We can't let him recognize it. There ain't no telling what would happen to us if he did. Then it's agreed? Yes, sir. Good. We'll call our sales vigilantes and run them nesters right out of the country. The curtain falls on the first act of our Lone Ranger story. Before the next exciting scenes, please permit us to pause for just a few moments. Now to continue our story. The half-dozen families of nesters were still camped at the waterhole on Mustang Mag's range, preferring to wait until the trouble was settled before moving to the farmland. It was at night two days later that Mag in Missouri called at the camp to inform the nesters of the talk Missouri had heard in town. Tell Mr. Simmons what you heard, Missouri. Don't hold nothing back. It's better for them to know the worst than they can be on guard against him. Well, Mr. Simmons... I, uh... I'd like it fine if you'd just call me Josh. Well, I sure would. Glad to, Josh. You were saying... Well, get on with it, Missouri. You can talk free enough when you ain't supposed to. Well, let me get on with it, won't ya? It's like I was saying, Josh, before Mag butted in, now them fool ranchers is calling themselves vigilantes. Yeah, they're going on where the hook. That's just it. They ain't satisfied with just picking on folks that can't defend themselves. They gotta hide their faces while they're doing it. We was awful contented here. And you're gonna stay that way. I think it'd be better for everybody if we just were cleared out, ma'am. You're scared? No, ma'am, ain't that. I ain't a fighting man, though I'd always be willing to fight from a home. No, you see, what I was thinking was if we cleared out, it'd be better for you. I've told Mag that a dozen times before, but she won't listen to me. Look here. Yes, ma'am. You just got through saying you was happy here. Yes, ma'am. And it's made me happy to help you. I've got right well acquainted with you folks in the last month, and they never did see anybody. I'd rather be neighbors, too. That's mighty kind of a mum, but...  Now then, what it started to say is this. When I walk my own way, I get it. Ask Missouri if I don't. Well, I should smile. Yes, ma'am. Up to now, you folks have just had their answers again, ya. But if you folks sneak away after I've asked you to stay on, I'll be bound if I don't give each and every one of you to fire upon myself. Oh, Meg, I just hope I can be as fine and square as you. Nonsense. Now, here's another thing. I've told all you folks about the lone ranger and about him being here to help you. And now you have to see the ruckus that man can't handle. But we ain't seen nothing of him, ma'am. Well, that's of his own choosing. But he'll be on hand when he's needed. And that's something you can die to. So don't you folks pull stakes. Stay here. And if you have to, I'm ranchers better than I can give you. Well... Just I'm tired of being pushed around from pillar to post. Meg's give us a chance for homes, and I'm going to fight to keep it. Good for you. Well, if you folks think it's best... Yes, ma'am. No, ma'am. No, ma'am. What's that? It's him, Meg. It's him, the mask man. The mask man? Then that means something's up. You bet it does. He wouldn't be riding here if there wasn't. There he is. Hey! The ranchers are on their way here now. You sure? I've been keeping watch. I've been gathering all evening. They left Rick Sweeney's place an hour ago. You come all that way in just an hour? Thanks to Silver. How soon do you figure they can get here? I'll give them another half hour. Hey, Meg, I'll be getting back to the house for our guns and ammunition. You stay right here. Yeah, but... But we'll be needing something to fight them off with. We brought guns with us and you needn't pretend we didn't. Did we, Meg? You carried them. Guys, ain't that funny how it slipped my mind? Josh, I'll just say it. Wait. I came here to warn you. I'm riding back to meet them. How long? There'll be no fighting here if I can help it.  They aren't murderers. They're just ranchers blinded by prejudice. For sure. A mask man can't ride alone to meet them fellas. If he's going, you're going too. That's just what I want to do. I'd like nothing better in facing them pulled cats and telling them off. And it's just my blasted luck that my horse pulled up lame so I can't do it. When did that happen? Just as we got here. Didn't say nothing to you, Mag, because it didn't want to worry you.  Oh, Mag. I'd rather ride alone anyway. Wait. Listen. Maybe that's them now. No. It's just a single horse. I keep a sabbath. Sando. Sando. Oscar. Oscar. Oscar. Did you find the healer kid? Me find him. The healer kid? Is that sad wonder around these parts? He's camping the hills, Mag. Landsakes. Rangers on the prod. Outlaws in the hills. Missouri in the way. There's trouble in every direction. No, Mag. You wait. What is it, Sando? Healer kid. Ride. Ride now. Ride? Huh? Where? Him, no. Rancher's ride. Him, rob, place, feller, name, Kent. Great day. Kent's with them ranchers riding here. And the healer kid's riding for Kent's place. Don't. Don't you think Mr. Kent ought to be warned?  Well, that is. Sando. Huh? It take maybe hour. And that means Kent can't be warned. The ranchers are approaching from the opposite direction from Rick Sweeney's place. Take time to warn Kent and the healer kid would have struck and gone. That's so. But if we rode it once, we can arrive almost when those outlaws do. What are you getting at? It's up to these people here. The men will join me. Kent's ranch can be saved. The herons above that mean they believe in the women folks behind without nobody to protect them when the vigilantes get here. Mag, you know those men well enough to realize they won't harm the women. I ain't afraid. But the vigilantes direct a camp here. Ma'am. Well? I don't want to cross you, ma'am, but I sort of think it's our duty to go with a masked man. Huh? We were just poor folks. Ain't got much to lose even if the vigilantes does wreck what we got. But if them outlaws was to burn Mr. Kent's place or something like that, why, that would mean quite a sizeable loss. Pa, you go. All right. The rest of you think I'm right? Yes. Well, I'll be switched. Doing favors for folks that are set to do your dirt. George, let me shake your hand. And it ain't only right. And to your horses. How's it here?  The men saddle their horses, then set out across country after the masked man in Tonto. They were within sight of their goal when suddenly a bright beacon of flame burst from the cluster of buildings ahead. The barn! They fired the barn!  Scout! Head to the whole place we'll go! The helik is still there. Take half the men and circle to the left. We'll surround them. How to do it? Half of you, follow me! Free your guns! Make ready the fire! Sweeping forward in two half-circles, the nasters threw a ring of armed men around the buildings. Not until they closed in. Charging down upon the outlaws was their approach discovered. Then, surprised and desperate, the helik hit and his men opened fire. Making from the lone range of saddles, fell on a loop around the helik hit shoulders. The fight was over.   No! No, don't shoot! Don't shoot! Come on! I'll take that gun! Shadow! What do you want? Gather the prisoners together. Disarm them. Leave one man to guard them. The others are needed to fight that fire. How to do it? Josh! The rest of you! Help with the fire! Come on! It's likely to send the whole place up in smoke. The barn can't be saved. Just clean that heat. What's about the house? The corrals. The ranch house. Throw water from the well. Wherever Sparks and the barn can start another blaze, put them out. While Tonto stood guard over the prisoners, the nesters fought to control the blaze. Wherever Sparks lit, someone rushed to put them out. The night breeze made their task more difficult. But gradually as the barn burnt itself out, the danger lessened. At last, the masked man called out the danger was over. Much more of that and I just about cave in. Mister, if you see me again, if you see the way I lit that fire... You did good work, Missouri. Let's have a look at our prisoners. Any trouble with them, Tonto? They'll not try to get away. I sure hate to make a break for it without red skin watching me. Me time. Good. Well, Hila, this'll be about your last raid for a while. How'd you fellas know he was here? Tonto learned your plan. I'll take him back. Hey, look at that. The ranchers. No, man. Don't start no trouble with them. Don't do nothing unless they make you. Well, you'll have no trouble with them. Guys, there's Mag with them. These crooks and kept the ranch house from burning. They helped me some.  I am. Here are some prisoners for you. I... Well, I... I should think you would have a hard time thinking of something to say.  Mag, we... we didn't know. We figured nesters were just plain nesters. You ever had no use for them yourself? Well, you fellas were setting to run them out of the county. There was hair saving your property. You needn't keep robbing it in, Mag. I shouldn't die. It's all you've done since we left the water home. And I don't expect you to live to see the day when I won't remind you when I think you're needing it. Men, the nesters didn't stop to think of themselves. When they knew your homes were threatened, they acted. Look here, Mr. Simmons. Here. I reckon I'm speaking for the rest of the ranchers around here when I say I'm doggone sorry for everything that's happened. And from now on, you folks can take your pick of the best farms to be had. That's mighty handsome of you, Mr. Kent. But it took the mask, man, to open his eyes. Me and the mask, man, Mag.   Where you have just heard is a copyrighted feature of the Lone Ranger Incorporated.


All right, all right, all right. What do we have here another running back on our hands from the Chargers? Austin Eckler number 46 on the list of the top 100 NFL players in 2022 Let's get into it. That's like I want to see squats Well, that's 220 like 700 800 pounds.  That's crazy Coming from the man who got four reps in the bench press at at the combine. I get it Appreciate it. Um, all right, let's have a look at the stats then next Monday Boom here we go 27 years of age may 17 1995 five foot eight 200 pounds went to Western Colorado from 13 to 16 undrafted in 2017 he comes in it. Yeah, like I said five foot eight okay Running back not bad.  I'd honestly I'd love to give him another inch. I really would but I feel like I feel like these stats here on the side are actually Inserted by nfl.com for whatever reason whereas his story so to speak Can be edited So, uh, let's get down to his stats 72 games played 2,812 yards total including 911, which is his career high last year 12 touchdowns, which is also his career high by a fucking long shot. It looks as if he's I don't know what's happened, but he had 206 attempts last year As opposed to 116 the year before 132 the year before that 160 the year before that and 47 in his rookie year Still averaging, you know fairly decent yards. I mean, he's he's never gone under 4.2 yards per attempt Doesn't matter how many attempts he's had 21 total touchdowns. Like I said 282 receptions 2726 receiving yards including 647 last year I'm gonna say that he's probably been targeted more so as a receiver than a running back And certainly was in 2019, but what that means guys is that after five years He's almost at 3,000 rushing yards and 3,000 receiving yards So he's certainly a double he's he's he's a threat all over the park He's got more receiving touchdowns than rushing touchdowns 21 rushing 24 receiving And uh, look, I'm just gonna I'm just gonna leave the rest to to the video Um, he's obviously strong 448 for the 40i dash 40.5 inches on the vertical 10 for 8 the broad jump So whatever he lacks in height he certainly makes up In athleticism, let's go Austin Eckler popped onto the scene by posting his workout videos on social media He posted on instagram Maybe like two years ago. He was doing like pull-ups to one on I'm just like, all right Austin like we know you're strong Now he pops off the screen as much for his work on the field as in the gym People see Austin. He's like, oh, he played running back like, oh, man I'm about to go ahead and do x y and z until you turn on the family to actually play against the guy Austin's a very powerfully lucive little guy I'm not saying anything. I'm just listening He's low to the ground big legs. He's like a bowling ball I remember I tried to tackle him one time and it's just It's hard to wrap him up And he's able to manage at least five out of it He's got a lane 35 40 still on his feet 45 still on his feet 50 still on his feet There are three guys all bigger than Austin Eckler and they couldn't bring him down One-on-one in the open space. Uh, it's that's a tough tackle for anybody to make he can make you miss a lot of broken We can certainly make you miss all right to be able to pull through a tackle to finish it off in the end zone Can lower his shoulder just puts his head down You can look like he's He's stopped or y'all should have had him for a loss Is this barry sanders or is this Austin eckler is one missed tackle or one broken tackle And then it's 20 yards later. It's 30 yards later or it's a touchdown Eckler has a man to beat and of course he makes the first man second man miss still on his feet I shouldn't have scored that but that's Bang and again and bang That's what i'm talking about has both the agility and quickness to excel in the open field I like it man. I like it. That's like a rugby step. I do like it I mean, I don't know what a rugby step is constituted as Or by but um, there's a guy called benji marshal that does that kind of thing one Bang two bang three You know these three players how it's a succeed near the goal line Move the pile down to the floor down to the three down to the two down to the one across the well I'll tell you what if I ever did see a team effort. That's it And he is one of the nfl's best receivers out of the backfield. Yeah, no, I I can see that. Yep He got 950 yards one year as a running back All right I think he's one of those guys that you know can easily have 2,000 scrimmage yards, you know I see them how about that romacon history the most touchdown receptions by an Undrafted running back Poyer well guys, I certainly enjoyed that and I think we're going to enjoy this one just as much Jordan Poyer now when I see his face and I see his name. I think Struggle I think coming from Rock bottom to The heights of The nfl and I'll say no more Austin necler best of luck for this year, mate I'm going to absolutely enjoy seeing you play and and I'll tell you what if you're still available in round five six or seven In my fantasy draft, I might actually pick you up. So cheers, mate, and I'll see you guys in the next one peace out


Welcome to Kwak Tuk, I'm Crystal here. So on sensitive women's issues or sensitive gender issues, can't get much more sensitive than today's topic. We're talking about transgenderism and because it's become such a huge political issue out there, we need to talk about this. And there's a supporting film that's just made in Tonga that has all these issues unraveled. We need to kind of engage in this conversation to talk about how we can understand more and be a little more respectful and figure out how we can do things to support their campaign. And just to understand people as people. So on that note, I'm going to introduce two people, guess who are part of the production of Ladies in Waitings, which is a film in Tonga. Now let me introduce my two guests. My first one is the co-producer and co-director of Ladies in Waitings, Joe Wilson. Joe Wilson, welcome. Thank you very much, Crystal. It's great to be here. Thank you, Joe. Tell us a quick something about yourself that we need to know. Well, I'm from small town America for a long time in northwestern Pennsylvania, a small town called Oil City, Pennsylvania. Oil City. Don't get it. Oil City. Okay. Yeah. And I got into filmmaking just by chance. So I was living and working in Washington D.C. for 20 years, focusing on human rights advocacy and grant making, et cetera, when an issue of bullying arose in the small town that I come from. And my partner, Dean Hamer, and I were drawn into that story and decided the best way that we could help is to help tell that story so people could come to understand this on a personal level and think about how we work for change in the context of small town America. Yeah. As much as a small town, I think, our other guest here I'm going to introduce to you is, you know, bullying is not a foreign subject, I'm sure, growing up in Tonga, a very, I would say, masculine place. If you beg to differ, I would love to hear. Let's introduce the star of Ladies in Waiting, who is an advocate, actually the co-founder of the Pacific, what is it called? Sorry, Pacific. Sexual and gender diversity. Sorry. Jolie, Joel, Jolene, Mattael, welcome. Thank you very much, Crystal, and thank you for having us. Thank you. I mentioned bullying. Actually, Joe mentioned bullying. You want to start from there and talk about your position and your experience growing up in Tonga as transgendered? Well, bullying in Tonga was something that was never mentioned, you know, and as you grow up, they thought in the culture that I grew up in, I think they thought that bullying was just something that is used to teach your children how to behave, you know, and sometimes they don't realize that it actually ruins someone's life, you know.  But when you go out of your comfort zone from your home to school and your other relatives and because of your gender, that's when the other bullying, you know, that nobody noticed. They all think that it's a good thing, like when my brother had to force me to speak in a man's voice and act like a man and all that. That was the bullying that hurts me personally. From people from loved ones? Yes. And they didn't realize that, that it was actually ruining my life at the same time. What age do you think that your family, I don't want to say officially, but when did they really kind of acknowledge that your identity is what you are and how they had to kind of approach it from a different way and accept you for who you are? I think it came in a later year, but when I grew up, I was the way I am.  And everybody knew that there was something different about me, you know, even my grandmother who raised me. But until I grew up a bit older, when I started wearing a dress, you know, when I was 14 years old, to church, that's when everything started banging on me. That's quite bold of you yet, 14 to do that. Especially to a Catholic church. Ah. I was more or less the star of the day. I'm sure, in so many ways. I mean, how did the priest react? He's a small town, right?  Well, he couldn't do anything. He had to continue preaching. But that was the actual talk of the town that day. But I was taking my grandmother to where she always sits at the church. And then I just sit next to her and nobody said anything. But of course, after, you know, we're like... That's the problem all over the world. Now, to take it onto a bigger cultural context, do you think these issues are similar in different places? I mean, what are the similarities and why your film actually is applicable to a lot of other places who are experiencing the same kind of issues? I think so. I mean, just briefly what the film is about is what it is like to be transgender or any kind of gender or sexual minority in a community anywhere, really. But through Jolene's experience, who was based on her pioneering efforts to raise visibility, just based on who she is, she was one of the co-founders of the Tongan Ladies' Association, which is a community group that came together to provide support to young people who were being kicked out of their homes, bullied and abused by family and other people in society. So the film really follows a year in the life of Jolene and several other ladies in the community there just to show what it's like and ultimately something really important happened during the year that we were filming that it took their advocacy work to a whole other level. What happened? Well, it started in 1992, but the thought of starting the association started from 1987 when our first AIDS person came to Tonga, was brought by the family to die in Tonga. And then after that, just because that person was a gay or trans person, then they started calling us names.  And that's how everything started. So when we formed the association, it was to not only just to challenge the people, but to actually taught the HIV awareness to all our community, our trans, our LGBT community, and of course to educate the people that we are not the cause of this disease. We had to fight for the rights of our trans community that were at the forefront of doing the work. So something in you kind of just motivated you to have to do something about this? Yes. I was always a fighter, even though I had the abuse and the stigma and discrimination when I was a kid, but I was always standing up to fight, fight back. I was not much of a swearing person, you know, someone would say the F word and all those things back, you know. I don't do that. I fight. I get up and fight, you know. And I'm talking about fist fight. I'm glad you clarified that. I thought you were going to say, I'm going to fight with my words.  This is really a common story that, you know, communities everywhere that are under attack, LGBT communities in particular in the US, Tonga, wherever, have had to rally together to protect themselves, to advocate for themselves, to provide services in cases when, you know, in the 80s and 90s, when HIV and AIDS was ravaging our communities, hospitals, health care providers weren't treating us, et cetera. So the Tonga Ladies Association is a great example of how do we rally to support and protect our own community. And then, as Jolene was talking about, eventually, how are we going to advocate for ourselves? Because we need to address protections, rights, access to education, all of these things that everybody else takes for granted. It seems like you're on a very strong path because you got the support from the royalty, right? Can you want to talk a little bit about how even your first premier was for the royal family? So Jolene is probably too modest and humble to say. Yeah, please. Sharon. Yes. One of the reasons she's such an important pioneer in this work in Tonga is because she grew up in a relatively prominent family in Tonga. Her father was a parliamentary and her mother was a very loved and respected musician. The singer in you and the political activist in you was already there. So she grew up in quite an amazing environment. Her family was friends with the royal family and close friends with Queen Salote, one of the most beloved figures in Tonga. We have a photo, I believe, with you and the, tell me who that is. That's the Princess Royal in the Princess Region of Tonga. Her name is Princess Royal. And this was at the premiere of your film? That was at the premiere of a film in Tonga at the International Tanua Hotel. But that's interesting. So you have the support of the royal family, obviously, because of your connections. But still, it's not something light to support an issue like this on behalf of the government. And yet, you have all this adversity with the religious movement within your culture. So how do you balance that? I mean, I'm sure you have your respect for the church and yet you have the challenge of them going against who you are. Well, instead of, you know, as I said, I was a fighter, but I was, you know, I changed my way of fighting now. You know, as the year goes by, we intend to learn other things from just not just by talking on Facebook and all those things. We decided to change our method of doing things to bring in our oppositions to sit down on the same table and start talking. And when we say start talking, we use the methodology, the talanua methodology.  So using the talanua methodology is like, it's a more peaceful way of doing things, you know? Instead of rallying banners. Yes, rallying posters. Rallying posters, you know, and shouting and all that, and fistfights. But this is really interesting, would you call this a specific way of approaching? Because indigenous theory, you know, a lot of times, they're advocating, you know, peace, advocating through peace and healing processes, which for the Western kind of way of doing it is just kind of going out there and fighting, very binary. And so is that, because when I first met you at the HIF, you said, I want to do this for my people, and it was interesting that you wanted to focus on that first and why that differentiates from a different approach. It was more, I think it was a more peaceful way of doing it, not only that, but it gave us a piece of space, you know, and at the same time, at the end of the day, you don't get tired, you don't get frustrated out of, you know, after talking to them in a consultation for eight hours right throughout the day, you know? Of course there'll be arguments, but at the same time, at the end of the day, there's something that's been solved on the table, right there and then, you know, and not only that, but even if you don't disagree, if you still disagree with, you know, both parties, parties will both disagree, but we shake hands afterwards and we say good greetings to you, you know? And it makes you feel good, feel proud that you're able to bring your opposition to face to face. And you know, with that note on peace, I would like to maybe take this opportunity to show the trailer because we've been talking it up and it's like, what is this about? Why don't we go and watch the trailer and we'll come back and we'll continue and I'd love to hear more about Joe and the filmmaking process of entering this world and how you were included or, you know, how this family all came to be. So let's watch the trailer of Ladies and Waiters. Tonga is the last remaining Kingdom in the Pacific and we're very proud of who we are. Joe in Matale is a man, even if he changed the way he dressed, even if he changed the way he speaks. They shouldn't be arrested because it's illegal here in Tonga. One of my eldest brothers put a rope on my neck and pulled it to try and get me to speak in a man's voice. It got to the point that I almost took my life away. My brother told me, how many year now you were joining the Virgin? How many year now you're joining together with the Tonga Ladies Association? You should change now. We're known as chefs, decorators, do the dirty errands, clean up the house, help the mothers. And they don't know that it's her, right? Because of the feeling like I'm a lady, I had to stand and tell the people who am I? I will never bend my life to anyone's policy. I will be somebody. Wow, you have to see this film. Ladies and Waitings in Tonga, starring our guest today, Joey and our co-producer and director, Joe Wilson here. Thank you again for joining us on Quok Talk. Now we're talking about transgender and the challenges of it in a place like Tonga and how it's relevant to the world. In the film, you approach so many sensitive issues. The concept of how religion has played its role in kind of suppressing and really making it an ugly issue. Do you want to talk a little bit about that and how that's come? Because, traditionally, this gender issue wasn't even an issue, was it? Well, it's often said that in the Pacific there has been a more welcoming and accepting, you know, cultural approach to these issues. But as we see in more modern times now, there are many different forces that are at play. People who use LGBT people and other marginalized communities as political wedges. What has been happening in Tonga as elsewhere and what happened during the year of our filming was those who are using religion, evangelical, fundamentalist types, particularly televangelists who use that platform to preach against certain people in the community, in Tonga, this televangelist, Pastor Barry Talcolo, by the Trinity Broadcasting Network, which is an international televangelism conglomerate based in California. He was targeting and essentially harassing and bullying transgender people in Tonga on the air and creating a real air of terror, I would have to say. How did that work during the filming process? I mean, he knew your position on this issue. So why this was essential during the year we were filming is as Jolene and the Tonga Ladies Association for years had an annual event called the Miss Galaxy Pageant, which is a big community event that raised money for their work and also served as a way to entertain the community but also to advocate and educate people. But during the year that we were filming this right-wing religious agitation was getting so extreme that Joey and her colleagues decided to cancel the annual Miss Galaxy Pageant and hold a national consultation on these issues. And it really, I think, changed the dynamic. And you covered that in the film? Yes. Okay. Right. Joey, I wanted to ask you as a filmmaker, going into a culture that's not your own and in a very close-knit community, how did that affect, I mean, how did you work together or how did the community embrace Joe and Dean? Do you want to share anything? How do you get into, because it's a very personal, lots of issues they have to trust you to be able to tell their stories. Well, we were introduced to Jolene and her colleagues by a close mutual friend of ours, Kumuhina Le Mwantawangkulu, who we made a film about here in Hawaii. And I think it was initially that introduction, which created opportunities for us to get to know each other. And then, for Dean and I, our style is we're just two people with cameras that try to gain that kind of trust that allows the people who are inviting us into their lives and their homes to tell their stories to just allow us to be there and to capture their real lives in real time. And your friends and family were comfortable doing that with the cameras in your faces? I think they were. Well, at first, but especially when we're dealing with the church leaders, one of them would say, well, I got them off guard. They weren't sure what it was all about and all that. But then it did really... But because of the relationship that I have with some of these church leaders, it made things a lot easier. And I just had to explain to them exactly what the document is all about. And then I lead the rest for Joe and Dean to do the interview. And I was never there. I was never there during all those interviews with the church leaders. It's really all based on your relationships with people. I mean, Joey is one of the most highly respected people in Tonga. So that made it easier for us. And we didn't even go to Tonga thinking we're going to make a film. We went to show Kumohina. But when we met Joe Lean, and I think when she got to know us a little bit, she said, you know, it's actually been a long dream of mine to tell our story so that we can advance our cause. I think if you had the funding and support, I think you should do a feature film on Joe Lean's story because she, at a meeting at the school, was talking about her life and how she stole the mic while she was working in the custodian. You have so many stories. I mean, it is movie material. I'm serious. You are just drama queen by nature, I guess. That's why you have the power. Right. But you need that to be able to be an activist in a way. You need to have the power to attract attention to proceed with this campaign. So with this campaign, what type of impact do you both hope to attain with this film?  Well, we have already started this petition that it's online and it's on our website that everybody can go in and... Yeah. Yes. With this map, what does that mean? You want to tell us a little bit about that? Those are the seven countries that still criminalize homosexuality. In the Asia-Pacific region. When you say criminalize, what is the extent of that?  In public.  The law doesn't really stand or doesn't really describe the actual activity as for social partner activity. But it really directs on rape cases, you know? Many of these laws actually hold over colonial-era laws. There were anti-sotomy laws, same-sex relations. Sometimes cross-dressing. Yeah. But the cross-dressing, definitely. It's illegal in certain countries. It can be. And, you know, these have largely gone unenforced. But the problem that's arising now and what we witnessed and we were working with the community during the year of filming was these people now who have these strong religious, very conservative religious ways. It's not the mainline churches at Tonga that have historically been quite welcoming and accepting. And these more radical churches are now using the existence of these old laws to say, see, these people don't belong here. Yeah, but that's what I meant, you know? Because they're using that. They're using that law to actually put us into jail, you know? Put us to jail. Or justification for discrimination and all kinds of things.  And especially when AIDS came into the, you know, as a topic during parliament, sorry. Someone just turned around and said, oh, maybe we should send those people to one of the islands called Makonai or Makonai or whatever. Well, it's excluded here. They think that by isolating you, you might change and go back to what you're supposed to be. But the idea behind the campaign is like a film, as you know, it gives people like personal stories. You can see people as human beings, as family, as relatives, as people. And so the idea behind the campaign, Jolene and her colleagues are saying, let's use this film to go to islands across the Pacific to bring people together, to see the stories, to feel the emotions, to challenge people's hearts and minds, and then tell a know-it-together, as Jolene said. You know, like how are we going to work together to overcome the stigma and the discrimination and the threats that these laws pose to people's lives. But that takes a lot of advocacy, a lot of outreach and individual talks with small groups. I mean, Joey, you haven't, I don't know how much you mentioned about your personal life. I believe you said you have three children, three adopted children. As a mother, how do you feel about educating the younger generation about the inclusivity and the importance of understanding and respecting people for who they are? I think it will really start from home, because I, when the kids, when I raised them, I never hid anything from them.  And even my condom campaign, I never hid that from them. They grew up in my house seeing all the, you know, because our office was, yeah. I mean, especially when we do campaigns, we'll have dispensers of condoms everywhere to be distributed to all the hotels, the bars, you know, and everything.  That's the thing, we need to ask questions. So people have questions, we have a very limited time left. How can people ask questions of how to learn more about the film and advocacy? We would love it if people would go to the website ladiesandwaiting.com and in particular to look at the petition that Jolene and a number of her colleagues have started to get support to challenge these laws and even more support to advocate for the protection and the promotion of basic human rights for LGBTI people. So schools, organizations, everybody can go and take this film and use it as a form of discussion to further your campaign. Well thank you so much and I'm so sorry that we don't have enough time. I would love to talk to you for hours and hours on end. But thank you so much for your time and good luck with the film and the movement. Thank you very much.


Alright, 30 more seconds, we haven't quite got all the tasks listed out yet, we need more time. Alright, so, did you find out some new things that you weren't expecting as I tear this pen apart? Uh oh, equipment malfunction. So, what are some of the ideas that you came up with? What are some things that product owners do? Go ahead and shout them out and while we're getting the pen replaced. Yes, define the product roadmap. What need? Okay, indicate what needs to be done for the product. Sorry? Provide clarity on requirements. Prioritize! Okay, we have roadmap, we got prioritize, we have backlog, grooming, refinement. Lead user. Okay. Responsibility. What is the right product? Build the right product. Did I hear business vision back there? Okay. Sorry? Define what? Define what and why. Feedback from user. Okay. One more. Sorry? Translate! Value. Okay. The definition of one more must be different here than it is back in Iowa in the States. Okay, thank you very much. Great list. So, I did a little bit of anticipation about what my people might come up with. And this list is fairly consistent with what I usually hear. I like to condense it down into three general things. Because I'm a simple guy and I can't remember too much. So, the first one is that they're really focused on making sure, focused on that the entire team is looking at outcome over output. How many of you were here on Tuesday? How many of you came to my session? Well, thank you for coming back. We talked about this on Tuesday as well as far as looking at effectiveness versus efficiency. And a lot of times what you have when you have a focus on efficiency is you're worried about how much of this we can pump out. Right? Measuring things based on story points, looking at velocity, things of that nature. Output are the products we produce, the code we write, the deliverables we create. Good. But what we really want to be making sure we're focusing on is what change are we trying to create in our world? What problem are we trying to solve? And it really comes to that product owner to be constantly reminding the team of what that outcome is. So that as the team is making decisions, they keep that in mind. They're not always focused on what's the next thing we got to pump out the door. But we're really worried about what is their ultimate problem we're trying to solve. And it goes into even figuring out how are we going to measure success, not measure it based on this, story points, velocity, things of that nature. But how are we doing towards our objectives? So outcome versus outputs, the first thing. The next thing, building and maintaining a shared understanding. And what the shared understanding is of is what outcome are we trying to produce. And this is where I really like to think about, so I've spent a lot of time in the business analysis world and there's a lot of talk there of requirements. And I really try to bring that discussion up a level to say, this is what we're really trying to accomplish. We want to make sure that everyone has an agreement as far as what is it we're trying to do. So once we've identified that problem we're trying to solve, let's make sure that everybody that's working on something has that same understanding. And I mentioned, notice I said build and maintain. It's one thing to get the agreement to begin with. It's another thing to make sure six months down the line when a bunch of stuff has happened that we're all still lined up in the same direction. Make sense? All right. The third one is make sure decisions happen. And I worded it this way very specifically. Ideally the person who is doing product ownership is in a position where they can make decisions. In real life that's not always the case. So in those situations what you really at least need to be doing is making sure that we've identified who are the appropriate decision makers. Make sure they have the appropriate information to make informed and timely decisions and then actually do that. And then stick with it. So again as I mentioned I spent a lot of time in the business analysis community and as business analysts are starting to be brought into agile settings. Oftentimes they're being asked to play product owner roles. But they aren't necessarily situated as such in the organization where they can be the ones making the decisions. Right wrong or indifferent they still are in a position where they at least have to make sure that they're getting those decisions made. And oftentimes as we'll talk about here in the models coming up what they're really doing is they're coordinating decision making a bunch of different stakeholders. Especially in IT organizations working on internal products which is where I spend most of my time. So again the three things that product owners are really focused on is outcome over output, building a shared understanding and making sure decisions are made. And generally speaking all of the things that you've listed up there fall into one of those three buckets. Sometimes they fall into more than one. The reason I like to kind of group these things together is it brings it up from just a standpoint of that these are specific tasks that product owners are doing. So these are the things that you always need to keep at top of mind. Any questions so far? Yes. How do you define what? So the question was how do you define the Scrum Master role in decision making? And I would suggest that they're making sure that the product owner is making sure that decisions are getting made. Huh? They're the enablers. They're the enablers. Thank you. Yes they're the enablers to make sure that decision making happens. The other thing where Scrum Masters are really important is to make sure that the product owner and the team are working together such that when a decision does get made it actually gets carried out appropriately. Does that answer your question? Yes. Who is accountable for the delivery? D.D.D. I love crowd sourced answers. Alright. Including the product owner. Including the product owner. So it is, I will be honest with you, this is the bad thing about having a phone as your clicker. When I look at, when I describe a team, I'm including the Scrum Master and the product owner in that. So it is the team that owns those things. Because if you start having, splitting that responsibility up, then that starts causing dysfunctions that don't help anybody out. Any other questions? Yes. How much is the dependency on the product owner and the product manager? So the question was, is how much of a dependency does the product owner have on the product manager for decisions? And I'm going to ask if I can defer that question, because most of the rest of the presentation is going to tackle that. I will say right now, though, my main answer is, it depends. Okay. Well, that's always a good fallback answer. Yes. How do we prioritize backlogs? Value. I heard value up here. Any other thoughts? Outcome risk. All of those things are kind of baked in together to do that. And that is also another, it depends question. Is there more of a follow up on that as far as why you ask that particular question? So the general point is that it goes back a lot to this. Okay. So, and I'm going to speak from my own experience as far as working with the Agile Alliance website and submission system. When I'm looking at what things I want to get done, one of the main things I consider is which of the items on the backlog are going to get us the biggest lift towards that outcome fastest. If we're early on, the deciding factor might be what's going to help us learn the most, the fastest. Sorry, my grammar is not too good this morning. Another thing is, do we have some very high risks that we need to work through? So we might do those things first. So those are all factors that can work into prioritization. And which ones you use really depends on where you're at along the whole line. Does that help? Can you say the risk, the high risk you would have to advertise? So the question was, why on earth did you say risk? And would you do high risk? And so there are some cases where I would actually want to tackle high risk items first. Or if there are assumptions we have out there that are extremely key to our solution working that we're not sure about, I'm going to want to tackle those things first because I'd hate to do a bunch of work and then find out a lot later that one of the assumptions we made was incorrect and then all of this other work was for naught. So that's why that thought process goes into that. Okay, last question I'm going to keep going. Should product owner be part of the development team or the business team? I'm going to defer that question too because the models are going to talk about that as well. Okay? All right, great questions. And I can tell that people are wanting to get into this next one. So where do product owners fit? And by this I'm really meaning where in the organization do they exist? And the truth is there isn't one single answer. There's actually several. I've come up, well, I know of at least four that I'm going to share with you and we're going to walk through each one. So here's a model. And again as I mentioned the slides are available online. They're also in the app as well. This model was originally put forth by Todd Little. He's sitting in the back of the room. He's actually paying attention right now. I was going to call him out when he was otherwise occupied. But Todd put this model together at least mostly in order to have some discussions inside a company that he used to work at because they were having some of the same discussions as the questions that came up here. Should we have the product owner in IT? Should we have the product owner in business? And what he put this together for is to say there's a lot of different ways to do it. And it depends on the situation in which you're working. So I thought it would be helpful to kind of walk through what these models look like so you can get a feel and then also think about, okay, what model are we using right now and is that the right one for our situation? Sound good? All right. Let's look at the first one. So this is where kind of going to the almost but not quite going to the product manager question we had. This is where you've got a product manager and a product owner is the same person. There are some in, especially in the product management community that say this is the ideal and the best way to go. Notice I said that they were in the product management community, right? And there are definitely benefits to that. And so for each of these models, I'm going to talk about some pros and cons and also kind of who does what when things are split up. And so I kind of took the three ideas that I just had and put a little bit more granularity to them. Before I do that though, I just want to point out that this diagram does have customers in it. So this right here is basically the business side of things. I have product managers listed here, which is usually what you see in a product development type situation. So if you're selling products outside, software products, if you are an internal IT situation, such as the financial services, insurance, things of that nature, that product manager, there may be someone that's actually a product manager, but they also might be kind of the leader in the business area that you're doing the work for.  And then PO is product owner, BAs are business analysts, and then you have a delivery team. So that's kind of a key to what this chart is saying. So let's look at this first model where the product manager is the product owner. And so they're effectively doing all of these things. They're looking outward to the market. They're understanding their customer's needs. They're talking with customers. They're getting feedback. At the same time, they're expected to do the main things that product owners are expected to do, primarily interact heavily with the team. The upside of this model is that there are, there is, hopefully there are no communication issues between the product manager and the product owner. If you have communication between the product, problems between the product manager and the product owner in this setting, something might be wrong. So there, there, there's much less chance of communication issues. The other thing is, is that the team is likely to have a much closer connection with their end users and customers because the person that's interacting with them is also the same one that's interacting with the customers. Now don't take that to mean that the team themselves shouldn't be interacting with users as well, but you may not always see that. And ultimately you have less confusion because you have fewer rungs in the game of telephone. But there are some downsides.  How many teams are you working with? Does that product manager have a day job aside from being a product manager? And that's especially the case in internal IT settings. How many people in here work, like in a financial services company, what you consider internal IT or internal product scenario? Raise your hands. Are the rest of you in a product development where you're selling software products? Okay. So this one's especially a big concern. The day job issue is when someone is in a business unit, and that's not the only thing they do is being product manager. The other thing is, is it can be difficult to give the team the attention they deserve and expect, and at the same time do an adequate job of talking out to the market. You end up getting a split personality because do I talk outward? Do I talk inward? Do I do both? When do I do which? So where this setting usually exists is when the product tends to be smaller. You see this model a lot in startups. You see it in nonprofits, and this is the setting I'm in right now where I'm not only am I working directly with the teams that are working on the website and the submission system, I'm also the help desk for both, which is a great way of getting customer feedback, especially when you come to conferences and you run into people that know you do that. Hey, I've got a question about the website, or hey, the website's not doing this, or hey, where's that certification statement or things like that. So this is a generally setting where you see it. As the product gets bigger, or the number of customers you have get larger, this model starts to become a little bit unwieldy. How many of you would say that you're currently in this model right here? Not too much. If you remember the survey from this morning, the question that was is the product owner from the business have product and loss responsibility, and then the overall audience 34% said that they were in that model, that would be this model here, where the person that has profit and loss is also acting as the product owner. Now what that question may not have gotten to is that in those situations there may have been some proxies involved, which we'll talk about that model here in a minute, because we only had a handful of hands come up on that one. Let's look at the next model. This is where you have a product manager separate from a product owner, both existing in the business working with the delivery team. So your question is where do product owners fit? This would be an example where they're sitting over on the business side of the house. So here's where things show up with that. The biggest benefit of this model, generally speaking, is that the product manager is usually freed up to focus more externally. Look at the market, talk to customers, talk to users. They can really focus on those things. The product owner is generally focusing internally on the delivery team. So they're giving the delivery team the love, care, and feeding that they need and deserve. That's the benefit. The downside to that is now we start introducing the chance for communication issues. We start introducing the chance for lack of clarity. We start getting potentially into the idea of stepping each other, stepping on each other's toes. Does that phrase ring true? Yes. Because there needs to be clarity as far as what types of decisions do each one of us make. You also see a split up in responsibilities. So generally speaking, the product manager is sitting there trying to set the roadmap and they're prioritizing globally.  They're more guiding those things. What's the thing we're going to be working on next in a large sense? The product owner is doing much more local prioritization. So more focused on a specific team. The other thing that the product owners generally are doing are creating... So they're filling up the backlog. And granted that doesn't mean that they're the only ones doing this. And they're also providing clarity for those stories. Now I've way over generalized some of these tasks here because I really believe that developing a backlog and getting clarity on it is still a team effort. But the product owner is kind of leading the charge on that. Does that make sense? So this is kind of how this is split up. The thing with another con with is that you now have the product owner effectively has, in a sense, two masters. Not only are they serving the product manager, providing information back to them, but they're also serving the team. So they might still get a little bit of a... I'm not sure who I'm working for today. And at the end of the day though, the product manager generally is still responsible for product ownership overall. Because they usually have some sort of profit and loss for the overall product. But they are still working with a product owner. So example of this is I worked with a product organization where there is an engineering side and then there is a product management organization that has both product managers and product owners. And they pretty much follow this particular approach. The interesting thing then becomes is how do you organize and how do you align product managers to the teams and how do you align product owners to the teams? This becomes an even bigger challenge the more teams you have working on it. So the particular example I'm thinking of has about 50 delivery teams. Spread across four different geographic locations. So it's a pretty small team. About 500 people. Yeah. And so the question then becomes is how many teams are the product owners that are aligned with? That's one thing, but then how do we maintain relationships between product owners and product managers? What this particular organization does right now is the product owner tends to go along with the team. But a team may be doing work that one product manager has in one quarter and then may shift over to a different area of work in a different quarter. So you might have product owners working with different product managers potentially even at the same time depending on how many teams they're working with and who those teams are working with. So as you get larger and scale out to multiple product managers, multiple product owners, you then have to start thinking about what's the best way to have that alignment going on so that we don't have a bunch of chickens running around like their heads are cut off. Okay. How many people would say that they're in this model? So a few more. Okay. This would be corresponding potentially to from the keynote the dedicated pool of product owners. Okay. And 39.4% I believe in the keynote said they were in this situation which it actually was the largest by a hair. I mean it pretty much was a third, third, a third. In internal IT scenarios this is often example I've seen as well but I also see the next one or the fourth one I'm going to talk about. And this is a case where business unit needs to have some work done. That individual doesn't have enough time to spend a lot of time with the team so they identify someone on their staff to work with the team who generally speaking tends to be a subject matter expert. May or may not have a lot of experience working on software efforts so they may or may not have the analysis skills would be really helpful for a product owner to have. And so sometimes you'll see IT areas supplement that with business analysts which we'll talk about here in a few minutes. Okay. It does to some extent yes but then the example I was talking about with this model it introduces all new scaling issues. But it resolves some of the things whereas the product managers may not be as overloaded but it induces communication challenges that you then have to start working through. Which at the end of the day you're going to find out that there is no one right model for every situation and every model kind of comes with its own challenges. Sorry? Toe stepping. Toe stepping? So I think the best way to explain it is imagine two people dancing very close together they're not very good dancers. One person steps on the other person's toe. So that's where the phrase comes from. But what it means is two people trying to do the same thing. Yeah. So then the question was so what happens? Well first people's toes start to hurt. And second what it really ends up being is that there's conflict as far as who really needs who owns those decisions. Okay. So the best way to resolve that is to have clarity when you first get started working together as far as what types of decisions are each of us going to do and have regular touch bases to say is this working or do we need to adjust? Yeah. If I'm ever using any weird Iowa phrases that you need because I don't speak English I speak American. So Midwest American at that. Third model. This is where you have a product manager on the business side. You have a business analyst on the IT side. Effectively what this is is the business analyst is acting as the product owner. Okay. It's very similar to the last model. In fact one of the sets of resources that is on my website that I have listed is an article about blog posts about each of these different models. And then when I was sending out newsletters about them I grouped two and three together because they are very similar. The split of responsibilities about the same. There are a couple unique differences. The business analyst may or may not have subject matter expertise. Generally speaking they are going to have business analysis skills but they may or may not be familiar with the business. I've been in the situation on both cases. So I did a lot of contract work where I was going from one company to the next each time in a new industry, each time in a new company and had the great joy of learning completely new domain really quick. By the time I was done I had pretty good expertise but I sure didn't when I started out. So sometimes the business analyst in this scenario may or may not be able to be providing that subject matter expertise and you still have to work with other folks from the business to get that. The other thing that can run into here is this last issue where I have business slacks and what that means is in some cases you can see if the people on the business side say, oh well IT's got someone that's kind of doing all that nitty gritty prioritization stuff, I don't have to be as engaged. The bad thing is that we're still looking for the business person in this case to be making a lot of decisions at the broader scale so that doesn't quite work so well. So that again otherwise there's a lot of the same pros that the previous model had is fact that the product manager is able to be more outward facing the business analyst or product owner is able to be more inward facing. Chances are that the BA doesn't have as much decision making authority responsibility as say a product over on the business side might so you got to work through those things as well. So the comment here was that most IT organizations tend to work in this fashion and that the BA's oftentimes are folks hired over from the business. Sometimes at least in the States it's because it's a way to get them more money. That wasn't a joke actually. Yes that's true and also a lot of the cases where I was involved this is the situation I was in as well but we still end up having subject matter experts coming from the business. Excuse me? How do you differentiate between the PO and the business analyst? The product owner is a role business analyst often is a title. The other thing is is that product owner or business analyst up until recently has been something you see kind of out there in job markets and things like that although product owner is now starting to be something you see advertised. Product business analysts tend to be fitting into that role on an ongoing basis. Product owners might only be in there given what depending on what we're working on. The big difference I see is so the comment over here was the BA's tend to be more on the technical side. Interestingly enough there's a lot of situations in the states at least where there's BA's on the business side as well. What I was going to say is that product owners generally have more decision making accountability than business analysts do in most organizations. I'm not saying that's across the board but that's the big differentiation I've seen. Say that again? You could but I would also respond with it so that the comment was you could say that a PO could be most of a BA and a BA could be a little bit less of a product owner. And I would say my answer would be, anyone guess it? It depends, thank you. So what I do like to see though is that product owners do have business analysis skill sets. Okay? It's kind of misleading to me because here you are saying that it's a better owner slash PO. Yeah that's a typo. That's what happens when you do slides today before the presentation. Thank you. That should just be product manager. Yes? So the question was if a business analyst has supposed to have more knowledge in the business why do I have business slacks down there? It's because in this model the BA is sitting on the IT part of the organization and often times what happens is business says if there's someone that's representing kind of focusing on that outcome there are some cases where the business where the product manager in this scenario would be sitting there thinking you know this isn't my full-time job so someone over there has it covered so I'm going to go work on other stuff and so they may not be as engaged as they should be because they think someone has it covered. Especially in scenarios where the person on the business side isn't used to working in projects or on products. So the question was how is there a disconnect with the business and it often just happens because they're sitting in different parts of the different organizations. Okay? So for me there might not be disconnection. There will be always disconnection between them. I cannot see the business analyst product owner at all. Okay. So the comment here was he couldn't see a BA being a product owner and keep in mind that this is a model. And what did they say about models? All models are wrong but some can be useful, right? So as a matter of fact, so actually real quick how many people would say that they're actually working in this model? So there's a few. It actually is fairly prevalent in the states and so those organizations a lot of it depends on who's in those positions. It may be different scenario but your point is very well taken. I've got about three minutes left. So if it's okay with everyone we're going to finish this out and then I will be around for the rest of the day. I don't have a flight to catch until 3.30 tomorrow morning. Happy to answer any questions you have. Sound good? All right. So the fourth model I would say is a little bit of a anti-pattern and that's where not only do we have a product manager, not only do we have a product owner, we also have a BA or more. Okay? And so this is where this happens. Generally speaking you see this spring up where the product owner, product manager combination doesn't have the requisite business analysis skills that you'd really like to have. So you feel the need to supplement it on the delivery team side. Okay? This actually, this model I've seen a lot in the internal IT situations that I've run into because we're putting someone in that product owner role that really is a subject matter expert but may or may not have an idea, have a lot of experience even doing this kind of stuff. Or describing effectively the things that we want to do, we want the team to do. Okay? So again, the pros here again are in addition to the idea that you still allow the product manager to be outward facing, the product owner and the business analyst can be inward facing, you're also supplementing the product manager and product owner's analysis skillsets and the team is getting probably a lot more support than they would have otherwise. But that comes with some downsides. It comes with the fact that you have bigger chances for communication issues because you can have even a longer game of telephone where messages are going through three people. Now, the best way to resolve that is to get all the, what I refer to is get all the liars in the same room. So you have everyone talking to each other at the same time. You also face the potential of having a wrong decider. So another stepping on toes situation where the wrong person might be making decisions. You also run a bigger chance of decisions getting overturned. So the B.A. makes a decision in the heat of the moment. Then we find out, oops, that doesn't align with what we were thinking. Makes sense? The other key thing here is this is generally how the kind of the tasks break out. Again, not always the case, but this is what I've seen happen a lot is that the product owner and the B.A.'s work very closely together but the B.A.'s are the ones ending up writing and clarifying the stories. So do we need product owners? What do you think? I've heard yes and it depends. You guys learn quick. That's awesome. I put this question in here because I like to use it to do this point. So depending on your situation, so for example that first model technically doesn't have a specifically identified product owner and in certain circumstances that works great. But regardless of what you're doing, I would suggest that you still need product ownership. And in a lot of cases it's more than just one person. As long as you figure out, okay, who's making this particular decision? That's the key thing. It's also why I suggested that one thing that they do is make sure decisions get made. So you'll often hear me not so much talk about product owners specifically but much more about product ownership and in our given situation who's doing that. So a thing I always like to do to tackle that is let's have that discussion up front who's responsible for these things. So to sum things up, if you remember nothing else from today, aside from the toe stepping, you need to focus on outcome over output. What problem are we trying to solve? You want to find ways to build and maintain that shared understanding between everybody involved with the product. You really want to drive home to making sure decisions are getting made. And it's not so much who's the product owner as much as are we doing product ownership. Real quick, I like to recognize the place where I get the photos from. There's a site called Unsplash. So all of the photos are free rights so you can use those. There's my contact information. Again, all of the slides and additional materials are down there on that web page at the bottom. I also recently wrote a book that has a lot of techniques that product owner analysis techniques that product owners can use. So if you have product owners you're working with, don't have much analysis skills. You can give them this and they'll be experts. They'll have a good book I guess. I want to thank you for all the great interaction. You had great questions. Like I said, I'll be happy to hang around and answer any others you have. Thank you very much. Enjoy the rest of your day.