Hello, hello, writers! I'm Kristin Kiefer, author of fantasy fiction and creative writing resources, and you are listening to the Well-Sturried podcast, where I share insights, encouragement, and actionable advice designed to help you craft sensational novels and build your best writing life. Always in 30 minutes or less, so you can get back to writing, of course. Ready for the show? Let's get talking. Grab a cup of coffee or tea or your beverage of choice and come on in, writers! Today is Tuesday, April 20th, 2021, and we are talking about the three P's of successful self-publishing. If you'd like to read along as you listen in, simply head on over to well-sturried.com slash three. Now let's dive in. Many writers dream of becoming full-time authors. But how exactly do successful self-published authors earn their livings? The answer to this question lies in an entrepreneurial spirit. Turning a creative hobby into a career is a business endeavor. Yet many writers hesitate to think of their books as products, their readers as customers, and book marketing as an essential part of what it means to be a full-time author, which is also why so many self-published writers fail to garner more than just a few occasional sales. That said, there's nothing easy about building a small business from the ground up. Most successful self-published authors spend years cultivating their careers before quitting their day jobs. How do they get to the point where they can write full-time? Let's break down the three P's of successful self-publishing writer. First up, production. If you approach self-publishing with an entrepreneurial spirit, then every book you write is a product that your business sells. The better quality the product, the more success you're likely to find as you develop your career as an author. Though much goes into writing an effective and engaging book, there are two key questions that every writer should ask if they plan to publish for profit. First up, who am I writing for? In other words, who is my ideal reader? And secondly, what does my ideal reader consider to be a great story? Successful authors deliver on reader's expectations, even if that expectation is to expect the unexpected. This is what it means to write for market. You don't have to sell out writing only what's most popular at any given time. You need to understand who your ideal reader is and what they love to read, then deliver the best possible product to that particular slice of the market. Writing for market also doesn't mean sticking to the most formulaic version of your genre. Many readers love books that subvert classic tropes or that blend or expand upon genres. Others love knowing exactly what they're getting into, so write the stories you love, figure out who else would love them, and do everything in your power to ensure that those readers will rave about your books for years to come. Now that you know what to write, let's break down the three key phases of story production. First up, gathering raw materials. Many writers have likened the pre-writing and drafting processes to digging up the marble they'll use to sculpt a masterpiece, and rightfully so. Developing the first version of a story is very much like gathering the raw materials one would use to develop a physical product. The only difference? A writer's raw materials are intangible. With a lively imagination, a strong understanding of the craft, and a decent handle on your personal writing process, you can create the faulty prototype that will be the first draft of your story. Phase number two, product design. A first draft is only the beginning of any successful writer's product design process. With a prototype in hand, it's time to analyze and iron out all the kinks in your manuscript. Are your characters well developed? Does your plot make sense? Is the story as engaging as it can be? These are the types of questions that successful authors ask as they revise and refine their manuscripts for publication. And phase number three, early testing. Your ability to iron out your story's issues is limited by your subjectivity. You're simply too close to your work to understand how others will perceive it. That's why early testing in the form of external feedback is so important. Many self-published writers rely on beta readers to provide casual feedback on their stories. Most also invest in some form of professional editing, such as developmental editing, which is an in-depth story-level critique. A manuscript evaluation, which is a more overarching story-level critique. Line editing, which is feedback on your writing style and prose. Or copy editing, which is correcting errors and inconsistencies in the text. An author who doesn't have first-hand experience with the marginalization or trauma they've portrayed in their story may seek feedback from an experienced sensitivity reader. Others may rely upon technical readers to ensure they've nailed the details of a specific topic. For example, rock climbing or EMS work or Victorian-era fashion, with which the author isn't intimately knowledgeable or experienced. Now let's talk about the second pee of successful self-publishing, presentation. When you've produced a book you're proud to share with the world, it's time to consider how you'll position it on the market. Your goal is to ensure that your ideal readers will be the most likely to buy your book. They're the readers who will leave positive ratings and reviews, eagerly await your next release, and rave about your books to friends and family. To ensure the right readers find your book, consider the following facets of the publication process. First, title and cover design. Most modern readers scroll through online book marketplaces looking for their next great read, and they aren't going to click on a listing, let alone purchase the book, if nothing about the preview peaks their interest. This is why an effective title and cover design are so important. These are the two main elements that readers will see as they shop for books. To encourage readers to click on your book's listing, your story's title and cover design should not only indicate its genre, but the general tone, themes, and or tropes in your story that will appeal to your ideal reader. Number two, the blurb or listing description. With a great title and cover design, there's a good chance that your ideal readers will click on your listing to learn more about your book. To cinch the sale, you'll need to grab their attention with an enticing book blurb. Also known as back cover copy or simply your book's listing description, an effective blurb introduces readers to your book's characters, plot, and story world with just enough detail to entice them to click by and dive in. The third element of your book's presentation is its inside look. Many online marketplaces, such as Amazon, allow readers to preview a portion of a book before purchasing. This inside look can play an important role in encouraging readers to buy your book. While a quick dedication won't be off-putting, stuffing the first few pages of your book with unnecessary front matter will eat into your ability to hook readers with your story's opening chapters. Move your acknowledgements and about the author page to the end of your manuscript and you'll be good to go. Up next we have distribution channels. Where you choose to distribute your book online will directly impact the scope of its presentation, especially as concerns the all-important decision of going wide or staying exclusive. Authors who stay exclusive distribute their work solely through Amazon to take advantage of increased royalty rates. Since most indie authors earn the majority of their income through Amazon, this can be a smart approach. However, staying exclusive also limits the number of readers you can reach and locks you into an exclusive partnership with very few guarantees. Many authors prefer to go wide to reach readers who buy via Kobo, Barnes & Noble, and other popular platforms as well as diversify and secure their income streams. The fifth element of a strong presentation is categories and other metadata. When creating a listing with Amazon KDP or other distribution channels, you'll choose the categories and other metadata that will directly impact where your book appears in the marketplace. And by extension, who it appears to. To ensure your book gets in front of the right readers, check out the guest post I've linked for you in today's episode transcript from Amazon KDP expert Dave Cheson on how to choose effective metadata. And finally, the sixth element of presentation is formats and editions. Some readers love paperbacks. Others prefer ebooks, audiobooks, or large print editions. Presenting your book in multiple formats can help you reach a greater number of readers. Some authors even offer foreign language editions in an effort to maximize their sales and readership, though the cost of creating and commissioning each edition must be taken into account. Finally, let's talk about the third P of successful self-publishing, promotion. The way you position your book in online marketplaces is key to reaching your ideal readers, but a strong book marketing strategy will ultimately help you find success as a self-published author. Every successful indie author markets their work in their own way. The strategies that help a thriller writer sell more books may not help a romance writer. Just as certain methods will work better for introverts rather than extroverts or those with larger budgets rather than a smaller one. Regardless of where you stand, let's take a look at some of the most common ways that successful indie authors grow their readerships, market their books, and rake in sustainable sales. First up, the author website. An author's website is their online hub, the place that interested readers can visit to learn everything they need to know about who you are, what you write, and where they can buy your books online. Most authors also use their websites to host a blog or an email list that allows readers to share in their journey and gain access to exclusive perks, such as sneak peaks of upcoming releases and discounts on published books. The second way that authors promote their books, newsletters. No one signs up for more email unless they're genuinely excited for what they'll receive, which makes an email list and author's direct line to their biggest fans. Many authors use automated email sequences to introduce new subscribers to their work. Most also send occasional newsletters, typically once or twice a month, to cultivate a strong relationship with their ideal readers. An author's newsletter may contain a sneak peak or update on their latest work in progress, information about upcoming interviews, author events or book launches, and exclusive sales or content. Up next we have social media. Readers like to buy books from authors they know and love. With social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram proving such powerful tools for connection, it's no wonder many authors benefit from using social media to engage with their readers. Readers are also more likely to buy books they feel familiar with. There's a reason hyped books sell, after all. Repeated exposure on social media can encourage readers to give a book a chance. If you aren't sure what to post as an author on social media, then check out some of the great ideas from Book Marketing Pro, Jen DePaula, that I've linked for you in today's episode transcript. The fourth way that an author can promote their book is through ads. Many authors successfully grow their reach and their sales by running paid ads on sites like Amazon, Facebook, Instagram, and Bookbub. You can find my step-by-step guide to setting up your first Amazon ad over on author Christina K's Write Your Best Book blog, which I've also linked for you in today's episode transcript. Up next, number five, we have events. Many self-published authors enjoy engaging with readers by participating in both in-person and online author events, such as podcast interviews, Instagram live chats, launch party webinars, and book signings at local venues. Number six, we have permafree stories. Authors can use permafree, that is permanently free stories, as book marketing tools in several ways. Many authors incentivize readers to sign up for their email lists by offering a free exclusive short story or novella. Another neat strategy? Some authors make the first installment in their book series permanently free as a way to hook readers into the series as a whole, theoretically increasing their sales and revenue. And finally, number seven, we have a strong backlist. One of an author's most underrated marketing tools is their backlist, that is, their range of published books available for sale. A backlist of numerous well-rated books lends an author credibility among potential readers. In fact, a strong backlist is so valuable that many self-published authors revise, retitle, and or commission new covers for their early books to ensure their catalog is as credible as can be. Between production, presentation, and promotion, there's a lot to consider when striving to find success as a self-published author. Admittedly, it can be a bit overwhelming. That's why I like to think of perseverance as an essential fourth addition to this list. If you're willing to treat publishing like a business, putting in the hard work to produce, present, and promote your stories to the best of your ability, then there's very little standing between you and the possibility of earning a living as an author. So tell me, writer, what are you waiting for? Thank you for listening to today's episode of The Podcast Writer. I hope you found it helpful to your writing journey. If so, make sure to subscribe to the podcast so you never miss a new episode, and to give the podcast a quick rating or review. Doing so goes a long way toward helping the podcast reach new writers and lets me know that you're enjoying what I'm creating. You can also give me a shout out directly on Instagram at christen underscore keeper. For additional guidance as you work to craft sensational novels and build your best writing life, be sure to head on over to www.well-storied.com where I share blog posts, workbooks, e-courses, and other helpful resources for writers. Again, that's www.well-storied.com. Thank you again for tuning into today's episode, my friend. Until next time, happy writing!


So it's nothing that you just do once. It's something that you need to repeat, not rinse and repeat, but repeat and do differently. Hello and welcome to Top of Mind. Today we are in the LinkedIn headquarters. We are here with Monique Nelson, who is the chair and CEO of UniWorld Group. So Monique, hi and welcome, thank you for joining us. Thank you so much for having me, I really appreciate you. Tell me, what three things or four things or 10 things? We probably don't have time for 10, but what three things at least are you working on? That are making me super excited. So right now, our 50th, right? We're celebrating our 50th anniversary. We were founded in 1969. So to be 50 years in this game, doing multicultural marketing and advertising is just really special. The second is my team. I'm just so excited about their evolution of what we're doing here. Uniculture is kind of our new strategy and moniker that really does preach a total inclusive strategy that we think a lot of people are excited to hear about and it's easy for people to grasp. So we're excited about that. And then lastly is we have launched probably two years ago our DNI practice, which we call Global Reflections, which really does give a sense of we just want to make sure that we are looking at the world the way it really is. And being thoughtful about proximity and fluidity and where people are and how exciting it is to look at difference in a common goal. You have all these wonderful initiatives that you're working on. When it comes to your world, explain us a little bit about what you know world does and then the innovation that you are most excited about that will impact your business. Sure. I mean, our sole job is to make sure that we are represented as we are in the world. So brands have to do that, right? If you are going to engage these communities, we wanna make sure that these communities know that you care. And how does that work? What does that look like? How does that work through the entire funnel, right? And we now know that the funnel is cyclical, right? So it's nothing that you just do once. It's something that you need to repeat. Not rinse and repeat, but repeat and do differently. And now the things that I'm super excited about now in technology is AI. I'm so concerned about making sure that we have a true representation of stories and that the stories are being told and as broad a way as humanly possible, right? I still get very concerned when I go on Google and I can put in professional women and unprofessional women and my picture shows up in the unprofessional section, right? That means that the wrong information is still being fed, right? So we have to work really, really hard to make sure that the Google is right, because people go there that's a trusted source. So if that's what they believe and that's what's out there and that's what's being given back, we have to work very, very hard on making sure that people of color, women, differently abled, LGBTQ are represented in a way that allows them to be the complete selves in everywhere that they are and everything that they do and not to be judged based on just the outside. That then presents a challenge in and of itself because there's a lot to overcome but what do you think is the biggest boundary or challenge that we need to overcome to get to where we wanna go? It's inclusion, right? I know it's really like, it's that inclusion. It is adding more voices to the table. How do we bring more perspectives and allow people to tell those stories? And with technology, we're allowed to do that. You can do that any time of day, you can record any type of engagement and we want that. We want more and more people to show how a brand can be used in a way that they didn't even know.  What would it be? One is do something even if it's wrong because you'll learn something. The second is learn what you don't like. Very easy to go for what you do but really and truly, I'm always really thoughtful around, you know what, I don't enjoy that. Doesn't make me happy. Doesn't make me my best self. I'm gonna do the best job but I don't wanna stay in that.  You spend more time at work than you do anywhere else. Wow, really good advice. I'm gonna think about that later tonight. So thank you so much for joining us today. Absolutely, I appreciate it. Absolutely and thank you so much for joining us on Top of Mind.


Well, this is actually not the first time I'm talking on the webcon so in the last time it was a really large room and now we have a smaller familiar room but I think it's quite fit for this topic. The format of both was about the technical thing, how you can become Damian Manitel or so. I would like to talk about my ideas, how we can be more self-confident to join us and to stay in touch with us and what we are doing in the team I'm mostly based on the Damian Manitel team to get more people. First I would like to say something about the motivation but all the teams inside and then I have three methods which is one is called mentoring of the months one is sponsoring of plans and the third one is that we are doing plans which means in person meetings of Damian. So in general in Damian we have two types of people with some mix between you find very strong teams I will show you some proofs why I think they are strong and we have some lone fighters who are absolutely convinced that only this person can serve the program and nobody else and in most cases to my observation the results are better if the packages are team maintained but there is a good chance that the team suddenly vanished so the team might consist of two or three persons one gets a new child one gets a new job and all have valid reason to stop their work at Damian and then the packages are not maintained anymore without notice so the point is we need to reach some critical mass that sudden vanish is not possible anymore and for me it's kind of a judgement called should I write the code myself like the lone defilement train a newcomer which usually takes longer time to train a newcomer I have done the job in five minutes but it takes me maybe half an hour to explain how it's done and so I need to make sure that this spend of time of half an hour is in the long run more efficient I will do it myself it's very important to keep enthusiastic newcomers and I try to explain how we can do this in my opinion it's very important that we get new newcomers because otherwise the project will somehow die I don't think that Damian will die but some subgroups inside Damian might die and so please everybody preserve some of your work time and train newcomers for the future we generally have a problem because in a paid job you can say if you don't do your job the salary is dropped we don't have any salary so we have a problem to attract people who remain in Damian or no interest anymore than they could leave and they could leave without any notice people tell you that I'm not a child or so but which is the best reason to leave but it's happening sometimes without notice and we also have people who write their finger I would like to do something I would like to be part of a team but we do not really know are they doing something are they just silent are they working or not so what we are seeking is some compensation for this motivation which is given by a paid job which we don't have in my opinion we could do it in three ways we could make our project more attractive by attractive technique Damian has a lot of very attractive technique which is quite sophisticated by attractive results if you see there is some system evolving which I can really use and some attractive work environment by friendly people supporting each other and providing help wherever it is possible so what do I think is an inviting environment as I said I'm frequently doing talks at different conferences and I was frequently told that it's really hard to get involved in Damian that you don't get good help but that's not the root tool in part times it is true but if you find a team which fits your needs as I said I'm from the Damian male team so if you are a biologist or if you are involved in medicine you can't help in our team so if I write to everybody who is writing his finger in our wedding list he gets clearly close to immediate response and I think this responsiveness is quite important so I have found my personal definition what I think it's a team and for me it's waking up in the morning and realizing somebody else has solved your problem from yesterday and well you think it's quite idealistic but I experienced it it's Olivier who is the other man here you see I had a problem at Saturday night after midnight and before I was waking up I got on Sunday sorry I will look for this and then I got progress more progress and then we needed to discuss something well finally on Monday the problem was solved and I uploaded it I had basically nothing done except some discussion yes nice that you are doing it so this is kind of a support which is volunteer driven and way more efficient than commercial service I think if you want to call it a service line at this time somebody will hang up so after the weekend you start maybe on Monday at 10 or so and we solved the problem four hours later before you have picked up even your phone so this is what I call support and this is what I call a team and this team was basically built because we formally created this Avian Made project I later present to you a list confirmed that they are only in Debian because this Debian Made project exists and will be back to us in a sprint in person meeting you will see it later here is an example of what I consider a good team this graph shows the following this is the number of version control commits inside packages a package which is only maintained by one person and not not more person providing any commits it's very low then you have a lot of packages which is maintained by at least two persons and the majority of packages have at least three committers so you don't find the single person, I have to count the examples the graph is done in the so called team matrix effort which I was starting in the Google Summer of Code and this is counting the commits per package and I did ignore something if a package has only less than five commits I think it's not relevant for our statistics or it's not maintained or if a package has less than maintainer has less than two commits a single commit this could be a non-mental upload or something like this it's also not relevant for the team so I even stripped some data from this graph to make it more realistic in the deviant main team we are not that good but I think it's quite a few that the majority of packages is maintained by more than one persons I would like to get this bar down to here but you are working on this you are invited to do more commits on our packages everything is free and then we have one maintainer teams this is actually not really a team we have one maintainer which is super busy we choose a very good truck but yes he is more or less this known fighter and this is an open stack team I notice this person he is great he is very helpful but he has not he puts not enough effort into getting new people involved this is what I want to change so how could you make your team more attractive the first thing is write good documentation I am in the lucky position that somebody else wrote documentation for our team I didn't need to do it and he did it by deriving from the documentation from the curl team so we are using the resources inside avian by looking at other teams are doing the curl team was a very good team in the beginning then you should write good documentation what do you mean by that documentation is how the team works where is version control system but are the mailing lists what workflow is used it is called team policy if you google for team policy you will find an example of documentation and in my opinion it is important to not let potential newcomers wait longer than 24 hours I try to be better than 8 hours so if somebody writes on the mailing list this is an important step because newcomers usually are shy and reading the mailing list and don't write anything so and if somebody writes on the mailing list I answer fast if I only answer I am sorry you get a detailed answer later you are busy with something but not responding is one of the biggest failures I think we can do if you want to get rid of the newcomers then we should not respond this is a method and you should be patient because every newcomer might be different patient in the sense of we had one newcomer we had some very leaf package of medical imaging and I am not a medical person I cannot really evaluate it but it sounded to me like if you wouldn't have this it would be not a common thing if this person is working on it it's technically okay and then recently it happened that a lot of medical imaging packages had these critical bugs and we had real problems and then this person who made the leaf package was in need of these packages and he fixed it so this newcomer not a great thing finally did really good things for the team so in so far for two years also where you have not seen a lot of contributions turned out later as really worthwhile thing and what I am doing is I insist in open discussion new covers are frequently shy and write your private email is this a sensible question yes every question is sensible because obviously it has a problem and I am famous for violating the netiquette and just if it's only technical stuff in the mail answer in public quoting this person I know this is spend but most people get a warning before that I am just doing it this is some kind of training we want to do some open discussion specifically if other people on the list have the same question they get the answer automatically in public then you should write a good documentation did I say so point newcomers to this documentation because they will not find it automatically and establish methods to involve newcomers that is the point of this talk because we have this established method to get people involved something formal we have a rate of one developer per year it becomes deviant developer which means just short introduction we are packaging for biologists doctors like medical imaging and practice management this is a very small usage case of deviant this is a real niche I think if the project deviant would not be in deviant nobody would really miss it it's nice that it's there but nobody would really miss it but the project exists for 12 years and so we got 12 new developers for deviant this is more than 1% of deviant developers so if we could settle more of this nice project we have a lot of them for plans we have deviant this we have deviant astronomy we have deviant science which could be also split in deviant maths in deviant physics and each of these projects would get one developer per year we could have a lot of more developers which are doing also general deviant stuff because 12 days as I said some days we are before in the deviant but 8 of these 12 deviant developers we gathered via deviant maths extends their action inside deviant to something else and even 2 of them, 10 are remaining in deviant maths team but 2 of them went to totally different fields in deviant and writing all the policy stuff so we are kind of sucking developers from the outer space move them into deviant and they are doing nice stuff this is the idea and we could do similar projects even more according to the same principle which we have called planser which I am close to preaching about since 2003 inside deviant conferences as I said we have a problem to get a motivation for newcomers and so somehow we need the level to move people in we have this mentoring of the month which is where I offer my time for the education of somebody so people want education I trade my time for your education to have a competent developer and there is a sponsoring of plans which I am doing for the other plans like deviant is deviant science and so and here I offer my sponsoring service as you might have heard in the form of a deviant mentor a deviant maintainer is needed to do at least a first upload or if somebody has not the deviant maintainer status for any upload so the person who is working on a package needs me as a deviant maintainer to upload it so I provide some service and I said I provide the service only then if you have understood the concept of the plan and how to understand this is documented we have also written some documentation this is what I wrote myself and we found some formalism to make some structure and packages of these plans so I can show you quickly and later if you have time and we are doing sprints that means face to face meetings and it just creates a fruitful environment where you can meet those people which you like to work together with mentoring of the months how does it work the mentor me provides some spare time to a newcomer and guides kindly took any question which might come up I am really enforcing to write any question or simply it might be write it to the mailing list in public and take it with MOM in the subject line so if people are bored by this they can filter it out and read it and the thing is I could train you packaging with any random package there are these hello world examples but hello world is totally uninteresting everybody has done hello world but you want to package your own package your own software inside the you want to know how in fact we are working very closely together about 50% of the students which are taking part in the mentoring of the months are upstream developers they are upstream developers of some biological medical software and would like to get it into the you have no idea how and I tell them how the motivation is clear they want to package in Debian I want to make them a proper job and so we are quite a good team in principle the student is free to pick the package he is interested in but I might take some veto because it's too complex we had this in the past that the package was too complex for the beginner but this is some experience I have the goal is that the package in question is finished and uploaded after one month and the students is not able to build a package but also knows the communication channels knows the workflow we have some mailing lists we have a version control system everything which is documented in policy should be known to the students so this is to deal with the tools we are using should be this knowledge should be provided because there are some details and some problems in specific packages and these should be solved the rules are responsiveness so I want the student to respond soon if there is some some new thing I tell them please you have done this and this commit I would like you to consider this and that and somehow respond the response could be I don't understand please explain but any answer and he should confirm if he understood anything or not and he should confirm whether he is at status that package builds I enforce open communication as I said I want the indicator right in public and the best thing would be if I get a daily report sometimes not necessary but some students did really daily reports I did this and this and this and that this is the most efficient summary I can say mentoring automatic yes very good question I will show you in the next slide how frequently I did it I would like to see the previous slide yes open communication this is online all the slides this mentoring of the month is work but work is also fun because you always learn to know new people and it's just always interesting so I shared my spare time for the work of the students and I also tried I have the hope that people who are just reading the list are reading this very detail and learn I have the hope and the focus is not only on the technical details but communication channels and so on it's not the next slide it's one in between two years ago in the concert in Switzerland there was a discussion also this talk not this talk but in the same manner and there was an idea because normally there was a women's talk and we had very few women and so I decided I skipped the requirement that it's a women's made package but if the student is a woman I would do the training in any team inside the area so the interesting thing was I got one response personally from a woman from Iran which is very well that women are very proud so preconditions aside she was very very gifted and I had good hope that we could do any team with the OpenStack team which was totally new to me and I had no idea about the technique and no idea about the workflow and we fight it longer than one month I do not respect it to one month if it's the 13th of the month we continue and we continue as well but finally it turned out it's not right it seems to begin with and it's one man kind of the team to go and finish it but now we are working on a Debian made package and she is nearly done with it so it works yes it was interesting for me because only one woman came and got one further response via Enrico that some woman said that it's not the right kind to discuss you should not regard that woman was me yes the text of the message was really somehow at least for me as a woman so focused on not like including women but yeah it really sounded like a text of something and animal and bring her in and so at least for me it was very offensive not really offensive but off-putting that I would feel that I get run over by a steam truck if I apply to that but of course I don't know you or they didn't know you then so I just told him about my reaction to the email because my trolly thoroughly dropped when I read it so it might be a good idea to have an English-speaking woman to incorporate the text to make sure that it's more digestible yeah it's really good that you speak up I really like this and I would like to sit down with you on this text to understand it better because on one hand yes I am hunting newcomers not only women yes I'm hunting you want you and yes I'm a technical person and somehow not so sophisticated about birding please assume good intentions if you would mind it this is I would really it's good to say we sit down and try to understand to make it next time better yeah I'm interested that's really cool but I said well from this response I was not convinced that we would make a good team match anyway right but we will see okay so this it's really interesting but it's there only two responses but luckily enough also in the room we had some other not officially mentoring of the month but for women but regular one with a woman this is even better actually I do not really like to treat women special I would like to say would come full grown developers it's even better it's actually also my opinion on this deviant women project I'm really happy that the deviant women project exists but I would love is there would not even a need anymore that this project exists because we are equally so for the designs because this answers your question I had four month is in 2012 two in 2013 four in 2014 and this year I was quite busy six and I have some statistics the first one was actually a really hard one and has taken half a year but it was a really complex one this student was connected to upstream and without this project we would not have this really important package it is some basis for some hospital information system hospital information system are really complex and this is only a database which is frequently used and without upstream there would be tons of packages so this was really important so it was finally uploaded not after months and I am in the last column you see if these people are visible after one year which is important by how to train somebody then you manage so this has changed the job but he handed over this he trained somebody else and so he survives and something was nothing we have some people which are remain active this student is not really involved in uploading but he cares inside Debian for Google some of codes which is also good some people somehow are not active anymore I took over their packages because they are not in here and what is has also quite a complicated package it is also a hospital management system this is too hard for mentoring us and he is working from time to time a little bit yes I don't know if we forget this anymore but we have also people who are where I really write very active even now he started in May but he is so active I don't know I was here in the room Malia is this mentoring of the month for women and we have another package nearly finished also in July so you see I don't know I didn't see that it is becoming more but I can definitely say that we would not have all these packages inside Debian some of them are leaf packages but some of them are quite interesting ones and I think this this table is for me kind of a proof that it was there for if you would estimate how much time on average for these people of your time I think this is the wrong question the question is how much time would it take for me to maintain all these packages myself true I was not curious so it takes time yes there is an investment I for myself have decided that the investment is worth the effort but what I mean is is the mentoring part I know what you mean in your concept it is also very different the very first one very complex one it was a lot of time and I think for this I feel I did nearly nothing he just asked a few questions and I said yes yes so even this is hard to answer maybe five hours per month one or two hours per week maybe never count it we are almost done it is fun do you not know different men so you meet different people yes it is fun so this is the answer to the question I think it is worse spending the time and since there is not every month the students the workload is beautiful somehow maybe after this talk even people want to even two or three people are coming one month I might refuse something but currently not and very important I became a deviant developer in 1998 there was not this process with all these tricky questions I just got a phone call that I am really Andreas Tiller and I am not sure if I am so good in the documentation as the people who recently have read all the documentation in deviant and they sometimes know things I don't know and I learn from them this is also quite important and the important thing is also that we train have seen developers who are very deep in the software itself some software just make install and ready but some other software has complex install rule times and these people know them because they invented them and so this is kind of advantage so about 50% of the students have connections to upstream it's wondering of Blenz who knows what Blenz are who knows what Blenz are who don't know what Blenz are who hasn't raised his finger I learnt this is cool Blenz is very short you build groups of interest which are packaging software of a certain field for instance I am a physicist but I am working in a medical institute my motivation was what software would be needed in our institute and how can I provide this with one finger and so I invented a system which is based on meta packages so called meta packages so if I am a biologist I install mid-bio and I get all biological software inside avian with this one command and this is quite practical so on one hand we are adding this software to the pool and on the other hand we are making it available quickly and this exists for geographical information system this exists for education this exists for science in general this exists for different topics they are probably growing I wished it would be growing even more because as I said by this Blenz we covered 1% of the devian material it could do more in this direction so this is Blenz in short so it has a technical side but it has also kind of team building side because you are hunting in the right direction you are looking where are the experts which has the same interest like me you meet them at conferences or wherever and talk to them this is kind of interesting to get more people so in this Blenz effort there is some technical stuff around in principle you create a list of packages which belong to a certain topic and the topic might be for instance to not speak also always to this deviant stuff if you have in geographical information system you have an open street map task so if you want to have open street map software install PIS minus OSM then you have everything and if somebody comes to me and say I have written or I have a package which is relevant for open street map I said yes I will respond to it but you need to make sure that it is listed in this open street map task and people will see what you have done otherwise the deviant package school has 30,000 even more packages you will not find it if it's just in the pool but you will find it and you will find it on websites which I can show in the end and for me I try to kill two birds with one stone on the one hand the sponsor he gets a package sponsored and on the other hand he has understood the plans principle and will rise his hand the next time in the right moment yes I know what the plans are and I have understood the principle and maybe I create one myself and I had the last talk the last step comes one long standing deviant developer rise his hand and say well this plans concept that's cool you should run around and tell people did you created a new plan today and I said well this is what I am doing since 10 years and people think well this is stuff with middle packages and whatever okay it's a little bit more so the sponsoring plans rules are the company had to confirm that he has understand the plans concept and have read the documentation the package should be maintained in the version control system of the plans team usually get these days we also allow SVN and the package is just listed on the web page where all these packages are assembled and he should also have tried to find the sponsor in the team because we have teams and these people should integrate the person if he is not able to find the sponsor I will do it and I will show you later some proofs how it works for instance in the deviant gist team deviant gist team wait a minute I will show you some graph before was started in 2004 people were so active that it goes into legend sorry for this then the activity dropped because people found other stuff to do and in 2013 I started the sponsoring of plans accidentally at the same time Sebastian Kohnberg started working and needed the sponsor he was no deviant maintainer no deviant developer and I sponsored for him lots of packages and he really was able to take over the activity in this team because I just helped him a bit some kind of kick starting I did nothing more than just sponsoring his packages and answering these mails and this is back a little bit I'm just watching a biggie page and try to be fast this is important fast when you come a request I read my mail not every time but if I read the mail and see some requests for sponsoring I'm doing it quickly and I'm also working on mailing lists and deviant science and deviant mentors if people are seeking for sponsoring and I see well this package could fit into some certain field I say would you like to consider sponsoring a plant what are plants and then I point to the documentation that this is a chance and then some people do it and some people wait and wait and find no sponsor and come back to me for sponsoring for somebody who might be a good candidate to sponsor a package feel free to redirect so as I showed you this is basically a discussion which was done on the deviant guest mailing list and the discussion increases usually also with work on the packages and this is actually the commits the technical commits to the version control system and you see the Boston Coneberg has overrun the main drive of the deviant guest in three years and this was also the guy where I said I have sponsored 50 packages and this guy was not sure if he's good enough to become a deviant mentor do you have a question? yes I'm trying to be Dutch yes and Dutch you're also Dutch you're also Dutch you're also Dutch you're also Dutch this is a second person I'm also sponsoring these packages I think you would not be in contact with this but he cares for new people he cares for Olivier and Olivier is doing a lot more stuff than Stefan so we have different tasks in the team it works quite good we do yearly sprints we should be on the coastline generally because there is a peak so we found two times hotels in Germany two times in the UK one time in France next year we are probably in Denmark and we are maybe 15 to 20 people meeting one weekend Friday so we doing this since 2011 this is the number of uploaders always it's the top 10 of uploaders and you see not only you can ignore that I have the highest peak that's not important this is important that we have a full base of people we have 10 active people we have one super busy one but I'm not the only one and we have these 10 active people since we are meeting not before it was quite empty this is about the discussion in the Olivier Meet team also here something happened here with this base since 2011 this is the discussion on the developer mailing list also here you see there is some more vitality of the top most 10 top most posters about bug hunting same you see that we have 10 active people which we are not there before and this commits same pattern so meeting is for me that's the proof that meeting is important to have about a team this is what you definitely can do the last is this is the task concept we have so David Amir is divided in biology, biology, development epidemiology, imaging medical imaging, medical imaging development, physics etc and the strongest movement can be seen here in the biology the explanation is that the biologists are meeting and the other people are not convinced also here is the proof don't mind about this gap we just didn't release meta packages but we have here until 2010 that way and then the growth of the number of packages in these tasks is increasing also if you look here for the development this is the same not for development but the groups are speaking other fields like medical imaging is also quite good cover but you don't have this in the curves so meeting is really important in summary we should care nicely for newcomers we have I just read before this one or before one of the persons we had on the meeting in Edinburgh this is one and a half year ago became today the development one so one and a half year from the first meeting in our team became the development we would not have had this meeting there this person would not be in there definitely take your time to involve newcomers and at least for me I try to rank newcomer issues higher than my own coding so if I am fixing a bug and some newcomer has a problem I try to solve this problem of the newcomer first sometimes really hard but I hope that my talk was convincing enough but you think it is worth it and in person meetings yes I have assembled some links my talk is online I provide the URL and there are some links I have these team matrix graphs which I have shown these colorful bars for several teams it is very interesting I generate them each month and it is interesting to see the development of these graphs there is an instrument ring of months boundary of plans between your main policy or documentation how do you find the views yes perhaps ask me this would be one how to find the teams this is a good question what topic are you interested in I am seeing several teams just wondering if you have a package in mind what you want to package have you something in mind I have a team in mind we have we have language they have language teams like pearl, python, java you can this is a technical team and the plans are more user oriented teams or topics and try to ask on any list you are reading and somebody will point you to me I have some overview about teams I don't know everything web search mathematics will lead you probably to the deviant science team also it is hard to answer there is web page deviant teams but it is not necessarily up to date ask me if you have a detailed question I would like to do this or that so this talk is available here you can also do web search for Andreas Tiller talks you find the slides probably also on the deviant website if you have questions please ask them now and I can also show something it's more a comment than a question just my experience so I first wanted to do some packaging this year I was just first of all starting reading a bit of the information and my first impression is a bit overwhelming because there is so much information that is very hard to find what is relevant and then when I finally find something that might be very interesting I found some dependency with one Andreas so I got in touch with him and it was then when I found out about the deviant team and I didn't know about the question and nothing about the team so I found that it was very good and the other thing is going to Andreas I saw this mentoring idea of the mentoring of the month but again I found it overwhelming because first of all I didn't know anything about the deviant nothing about packaging and then the idea of being one month hard rock for somebody that knows nothing it's it sounds a bit overwhelming and for a while I was thinking if it was a good idea or not to take part of that because so maybe I think it was good it worked very well but in my case I found that it worked well because I had no job and I could dedicate full time to that but my comment is maybe for people who is just doing it that on the free time and has other things to do maybe sponsoring full month it's a bit overwhelming it should be a good idea from my experience I mean in my case it worked very well and I'm very happy I'm very proud and at the beginning it was pushing back a bit of this idea of hard job for a month that's interesting because you still have to mentor the mentor but I think the idea of the mentoring of the month is so nice that you it worked very well it worked very well for my case but I'm just saying that in my case it was great but my comment is I'm not sure if for everybody it works as well as for me because you asked for the time for hour it was very less work for me these are packages are simple yes and she needed only some hints I do not really remember that I did not this mentoring of the month is not meant should work full time every day 20 minutes per day if you are new you don't have to know this 10 minutes you only have time to find a web page where it says information and then really properly and understanding properly it takes much longer time do you need large chunks of time exactly I had a lot of time so that's why it worked very well my compliment for getting through this and I know getting started is difficult on my respect for your persistence and if you could make it easier what we do we will be writing documentation and get it will be overwhelming I'm respectful for what you did and the thing I can say to you if it was easy everybody could do it yes sometimes I found it to be confusing because then I had the devil met as a reference but sometimes I found different information in the mentors side and in the devil general information and sometimes I wasn't sure which was the option I was trying and seeing what was working and so on that's really what you are meant but I want to I want to add something there's no difference from playing the guitar or learning to ski you have to put some effort I'm not saying that when you start on something new it's always overwhelming but at the beginning you are very motivated very exciting I'm going to go skiing with the mountains then you are up in the mountains and you fall down this is hard and you fall down and fall down again if you get some support which is what Andreas is presenting then maybe you catch up faster than if you try to learn by yourself the message I would like to provide I'm at your service for one month and the message is not you should go for one month my comment is that's great and to know that that's the best you can have but one for new people just like I have one month and I have to learn everything that makes personally if you don't have enough time to dedicate I have a question as you mentioned that sometimes the information you would find was seemed almost conflicting so it was hard to use well not completely definitely is but when you have been doing mentoring of the month have you noticed any common points where people kind of tripped or get confused like are any of the problems of the people who are learning the package are they like forward and onward so the documentation can be refined yes I think we need to interrupt at some point maybe we could cut the video and keep on discussing whatever because I think it's important there's no talk in this room can I keep on? sometimes it is hard from my point to write a good documentation I sometimes said to the student please could you propose an enhancement of the documentation of which today added something to the documentation which I was not aware of so I have learned again something from the student because he enhanced the documentation trying to trick how to do records so it's not the one side thing as I said I try to be at your service I do not want to scale, it's interesting that it's also scale wow that's so exciting do I say mentoring of the week or so you can change the mentoring of the minute yeah I would say I just want to lower the barriers to start, this is the thing because I know the barriers are high this is what I've heard always people say it's so hard to enter the area so what can I do if you have better methods also I also thought about guiding some people to fix bugs you have a lot of bugs in our bug tracking system you need a great patch that means you in principle need to apply the patch put it in the version control system and tell me you are done this is a job which is really not hard but you also need to know the workflow we are using and this is we have different documentation my job is to point you to the different places ask more you are mentoring of the month you are focusing mostly on new packaging or is that is that just what happens it is an original idea but if you pick we have I remember that I got most involved in video actually to work on orphan packages we have a list of packages where some work is done but not finished you can pick any package to finalize it or as I said the new idea is work on bugs I support a new common with anything you want to do it was just an idea for me it is the most scary responsibility in the time flow if I try to adopt some orphan packages package I don't know I will have to die in 2 years where sometimes to use some approach of some packages which is outdated and just it's outdated for 5 months and I don't like that but I don't want to take responsibility like really other 2 packages is it a help? yes it is a help as well one of the reasons why I have so high scores is that I am somehow the husband of most packages so I admit usually updating a package is no real changes upstream are happening 10 minute job this is a lot of added 10 minute jobs sometimes it's hard so if you do some work on a package that's great I would be more happy if you do some more packages but any small contribution worth doing and we will help you for instance this mentoring of the month is not that I cut and save the month we help anybody in the same manner if anybody would ask a question which is typical for mentoring of the month I would answer it as well but I just want to give a newcomer the feeling that he is welcome what is the sense of the project another answer to your question I think maybe that there is also a whole group of packages in union owned by quality assurance team basically if you have a package there and you say ok I don't want to do the commitment for 2 years if you really look into it and you do an update of the package and get a new version then maybe not via Andreas but on the mentors list especially if you market with QA I myself have more feeling for this kind of quality assurance than somebody that just wants to get his path to into the union and so if I find this kind of QA upload indeed I don't want to be the owner of this but I do care for this package right now if you market as such you also likely to see a response or if you currently is this GCC 5 transition is going we have lots of lots of libraries basically need to do the same thing always over and over and if it's done with higher speed everybody will background this it's technical it sounds very challenging library packaging stuff but you need to rename the suffix and are basically done and if you do this in version console system the main tailor can check it and upload it and then some work done which is over and hopefully one or two months if you have time now or this summer at that point well I would like to go back to the documentation stuff and ask how specific is your documentation for Debian Mint I'm a bit afraid that we are duplicating work if you know for good documentation and that for everyone because we are just copying your copy from Zell and we will copy from it and that's a valid point in principle it's only different URL locations where the version control system is it would be great if somebody would say well I write a generic plans policy and we just add some specifics yeah yeah yeah something that could belong in the developer's reference well the developer's reference is very generic we have some we explained more detail how to get import, minecraft, pristine tar and so stuff you just can copy this line and do something it's more special but it's actually we copied it from Perl adapted it all to our needs and the devia gist team and for us and for Debian us to do something similar needs to be written but it's a time where we I would probably say I just wait for some Debian sense stuff to be written and then I would trust really link to it but waiting is usually the wrong strategy doing it, it's very faster that's always we know that time is over we are just discussing when the person would be just about what's done for the main team converted to something else or is there something which would prevent that maybe most teams need to strip the subversion stuff from our policy because we are supporting subversion and other teams don't I leave it because we would lose some supporters who just abuse it like if it fits your workflow the thing is I can only do one thing I have a lot of potential tasks which should be done and I try to pick the most urgent one this is kind of prioritization and I think it's a good idea to write some blend generic text snippets and put them together and maintain these snippets which will work probably quite good I'm not really motivated to do it myself any other questions or dinner? dinner thank you


Welcome to All Hands Update, I'm Petty Officer James Stillepeck. These are your headlines from around the fleet. The USS Macon Island and Phibious Ready Group, or ARG, and 11th Marine Expeditioner Unit, or MEW, returned to San Diego February 25th after their seven-month deployment. During their deployment to the US 5th and 7th Fleet areas of operation, the ARG and MEW conducted airstrikes against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and participated in exercises Cougar Voyage 14 and Red Reef 15 with partner nations. The United States Navy's Supply Corps celebrated their 220th birthday, February 23rd. The Supply Corps was originally established by President George Washington to provide professional logistics for the Navy. Today's supply officers are trained in supply chain management, acquisition management, and operational logistics. There are currently more than 3,500 active duty and reserve supply corps officers providing services that keep the Navy running.


Hi, I'm Jerry Mikulski. I curate Jerry's Brain, which you can go use for free at jerrysbrain.com. So anything I show you here, you can go find. I will leave links in the comments below. I would love to give you a tour of the coronavirus related part of my brain. So I have one big brain file that I've been minding for 22 years. It has a lot of stuff in it. And we're starting here with coronavirus dashboards, which I actually realized right now I don't have connected to dashboards. So let's do just dashboards. So I have a thought called dashboards, which is under measurement instruments and car parts. We won't go back there, but I just realized that. And here I've got the Johns Hopkins University coronavirus dashboard, which uses ArcGIS. And anywhere you see a little icon, these little icons basically represent URLs that are connected to these thoughts. So if I click on the icon, it will launch my browser, in this case Chrome on a Mac, to that website. So these are basically all links kept in context. And here comes the COVID-19 dashboard for by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins, which is going to show us the total number of confirmed cases and a map of incidents around the world. And you can browse and you can do whatever else is taking a long time to paint the screen. But I'll go back. So I have coronavirus dashboards under coronavirus resource sites, because there's a whole bunch of resources. These are not rank ordered. They're just alphabetic, basically. But here are some friends of mine who've been creating resource sites and some groups that have been crowdsourcing. Here's grassroots coronavirus resources. Here is a GitHub repository for coronavirus resources. Here is the New York Times coverage for coronavirus, which they have put outside the paywall. And then also if I go back to coronavirus dashboards, I connected it sideways to tracking the spread of coronavirus because the dashboards are a good way to see what's happening.  This fellow here is John Byrne Murdoch, who works for the Financial Times, who has been doing those really great charts that have made their way around that a lot of people are using for talking about the relative growth and the tapering off the flattening of the curve on coronavirus in country after country. Then I can also go, I've put all of this under, detecting, tracking and treating COVID-19. And here there should also be, I have a thought called the medical side. So realize that everything I'm showing you here is kind of a work in progress. I'm building this as we go and there's no formal taxonomy. I'm responding to the events and the news around coronavirus as they happen. So here's the medical side of coronavirus pandemic, which ought to be connected to detecting, tracking and treating COVID. In fact, maybe I'll put these laterally so that they stand aside a little bit more. And the coronavirus is basically SARS-CoV-2, which is a coronavirus. And so are these others. There's human coronavirus to 229E, Hong Kong University 1, NL63, et cetera, et cetera. There's in fact a coronavirus that I just learned about today called Pacific Salmon Nidovirus, which has been attacking salmon in the Pacific. So this is not the only coronavirus. There are many. It turns out that this one gives us a disease called COVID-19. And this thought right here is kind of the nexus of all the information I've been putting in around this particular pandemic. And as you'll see, there's a Wikipedia page attached to this thought. And if I click here, it'll take us to the Wikipedia page for this incident, which began in Wuhan. So I also call it the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak. And above it, before it kind of turned into anything, are things like warnings that a pandemic would be devastating. So why didn't we listen to pandemic simulations before the coronavirus struck? And Donald Trump was warned many, many times that pandemic was coming. And in the meantime, he basically gutted pandemic research and didn't listen to any advice well before coronavirus hit. So we were kind of naked when this thing happened. And I'm tracking the president's responses to coronavirus here. And as you'll see, it's a thicket of things, right? And in fact, I have that parallel to Trump's reelection campaign post lockdown, because he's holding press conferences. And there are actually more like rallies than press conferences. And all of this gets political pretty quickly. But I don't ignore the political here. I'm actually going into it. So let's go back to the other side and talk about mitigating the coronavirus outbreak. And notice that if I just type something in, I can jump through my brain through these thoughts. Every note is called a thought. And so mitigating is a pretty important one. I've got it under the top one. I have it also under generic pandemic response strategies like social distancing and so forth. And if you look down here, for example, I started trying to bubble up one of the issues. So and I tried to make this thought here kind of simple. So it's cleaner than the other parts that I've just shown you. But for example, I'm trying to word this as neutrally as I can, how do we balance the damage from coronavirus with the damage to the economy and the economy is not just the US, but worldwide. But this is a philosophical, moral, ethical question that governments have had to make in a hurry if they actually haven't thought ahead. And this is a really big deal. So here there's room for other questions like, well, we can't let the cure be worse than the problem itself. So how about herd immunity strategies or other sorts of things. And here's an article by philosophers Peter Singer and Michael Plant about when will the pandemic cure be worse than the disease using a quality adjusted life year analysis method. And here's I had already had in my brain quality adjusted life years as a measure of quality of life in medical research, trying to make ethical decisions of different kinds. So here's key issues. I'm also tracking how different countries Oh, and I had it right there. I'm tracking how different countries are approaching containing the coronavirus pandemic. And so for example, in response to coronavirus most countries are protecting employment, but the US is not. The US is letting companies just lay people off and go seek unemployment insurance. So we're seeing tremendous spikes in unemployment up to 22 million applicants last last said here.  And then I have New York's responses to coronavirus and so forth happening here as well. One of the things under mitigating the coronavirus outbreak that is more positive is resilient responses to COVID. So here you will see that people are offering to help their neighbors. There's a lot of mutual aid during the coronavirus pandemic. You're a series of articles, you know, by gift cards to help keep small merchants in business during the pandemic offered to help your neighbors. A whole series of things here. And there's a lot of articles about mutual aid networks arising, the amazing ways we're adapting locally. Here is a local response group registry. Basically, it's a Google doc that people sit up to try to help. Some of these are very local. Some of them are not here are coronavirus volunteering opportunities. There's another thought for funding opportunities if you wanted to donate to some of these things. I have also a thought on life under lockdown because we've all had to adapt. And my wife and I are in Portland, Oregon. We are under, you know, mandatory self-isolation. Go outside if you need to, but don't go outside too much. And so what happens to parenting during the pandemic? What happens to kids and elders during the coronavirus pandemic?  So look around. I have a thought called silver linings from the coronavirus pandemic, which has things like peace and quiet in urban settings during the pandemic. And here there have been some great drone videos on YouTube, Berkeley and San Francisco and cities in Europe. And also notions that in Delhi, for example, they're taking pictures today and comparing them to the same photo at the same location on a normal day when when pollution was very heavy. So there are some silver linings here, but people are are being affected. So another piece here, if I go back up to the top thought is what are paths to normalcy after the shutdown? So how might we actually find our way to a normal place to back into coming out of lockdown and back into society? So we're trying to figure out how that might work. Finally, here's the current state of the coronavirus pandemic. Kind of where are we right now? And as the pandemic shifts stages, I will change what's here. But right now, most places are or should be on lockdown to prevent coronavirus spread. So social distancing will have to happen repeatedly. There's this whole idea that we have to pump the brakes. One of the SAS call it the hammer and dance. I can find that article just by searching for hammer and the dance. So here's different organizations suggestions for restarting the economy. We're going to have Thomas Pueyo said we're going to have to do the hammer, which is locked down and then the dance, which is letting go letting people come out. And then when things perk when the coronavirus perks its head back up, clamping down again, etc. I have this under best articles during the COVID pandemic, which is an interesting place to look. So that's a tour. I'll be doing a webinar next week with the brain company, the piece of software you're looking at is called the brain at thebrain.com. I'll be doing a webinar for them, where I'll do a shorter version of what I've done right now to show how I'm using the brain to collect resources. I thought this would be a simpler thing to put up front. And I'll put a link to the webinar and the comments for this video as well. As always, this is a work in progress. You can use the comments to send me resources or find me online. I'm all over, you know, Twitter and other social media. So connect with me. And I'm very happy to receive more resources to curate into this. Thanks very much.


Welcome to the Dominic Dolls show presented by Buffalo Wildwings. I'm Sam Murray joined now with Stevenson Men's ice hockey head coach Dominic Dolls and coach let's start with that semi-final series at Wilkes drop the first game team battles back to take the second game You force the mini game Tie go to a fifth period Unfortunately, you drop, you know in that in that extra overtime period Just talk about the resilience and the relentlessness of your team I mean we left out there and that's I think is a coach all you can ask for from the guys You know the first night didn't turn out the way we wanted it to like we were up early, and I thought we ran out of gas late But you know day two we knew we were back sharp against the wall. We knew what we had to do Guys came out and competed. I thought honestly we had one of our best efforts in terms of the 16 minutes of the regular game The year and then I mean the mini game. I thought we played as well as we could have played a lot of chances a lot of opportunities And then when it came to sudden death we lost on goal. That's you know that support so they left it out there They put themselves in a position where you know, we were we were right there and you know, it's what it was I thought you kind of had time to sit back and digest the season a lot of positives a lot of a lot of good things to take Away, what's the one thing that you're gonna take away from this season? I just think we knew we learned a lot. It just wins and losses aside We learned the importance of culture and what what it's gonna take for us to kind of continue to grow as a program You know, we can go back to two years ago a bunch injuries You know all that stuff that kind of snowballed on us and we didn't do as well as we underachieved to this year, you know clean some things up stay unhealthy and The guys, you know putting in the work to put us in a position to be something We've proved my eight wins. I don't know if there's a team in the country that can just took that jump so We've shown that we can play with everybody now. It's it kind of continue to grow and build off of that Yeah, you turn the page now, you know look ahead to the fifth year of the program You do graduate 13 seniors 11 of them or the inaugural class, but you look at who's returning who's coming back You have a lot of young guys, especially, you know those two rookies who really produce points awesome Master Chris Lee, you mean you can go further down this Ryan Patrick Lupinita doesn't go further further But what are these guys have to do to continue the success? I mean they've got obviously take the next steps in terms of their their careers But I mean young guys have always played a key role here as we've kind of built our built our program I think we're pretty excited about the group that we have coming in up to this this point And it's a matter of you know kind of meshing the group Group together and build continuing to build well coach We wish you the best of luck in the off-season and see you back here next year. Thank you for head coach Dominic Dawes I'm Sam Murray, and this has been the Dominic Doll Show