A leader is somebody who is supposed to show people direction, a leader is somebody who acts like a motivational speaker, a leader is somebody who brings hope to a society. Now having that in mind, when we look at our constitution chapter 6, let's say article 75 where it talks of conduct of the state officers, it is very very evident that most of our leaders nowadays have lost control whereby they just throw words not minding whom they are affecting. Now coming to us as youths, we are facing the issue of lack of support from these big politicians, we are also looking at the issue of lack of proper guidance. Now over what has happened in the recent past is very shameful and we can't emulate that. We as youths we are gearing up for the success of this country. If we look at the promulgation of the constitution 10 years ago, it has been ages, I mean it has been stage after stage, stage after stage. And with the current regime we thank the Honorable Huru Kenyatta who is trying his level best to make sure that the big four are generally achieved. Only that sometimes we face those leaders who have more personal interest than public interest. And from my own opinion I would say that I think the youths hold the betterment of this future, the future of this country. So I believe the proper chance will be able to change this Kenya. Now on the issue of youths and in the upcoming youth leadership I would say is that first I would also want to challenge these youths and tell them that it is high time we wake up from the issue, I mean from an era of those big promises from this big politician, then delivering nothing at the end of the day. It is we, it is our responsibility to wake up in the morning and face the day that it comes and say to ourselves that no, tomorrow is our day. So I am also challenging these our fellow youths to stand up because if you look carefully you realize that they are the ones encouraging this because somebody will come today, promise you I'll give you, I mean let me just use a very common example. We are going to go into a dispensation of campaign, let's say God bless that this corona ends. We should be saying it has started because we've seen the campaigns. Well of course the president has not officially launched it because constitutionally first of all the parliament has to be dissolved for us to move into that dispensation of campaign. But what I'm saying is I'm saying that we are moving into that dispensation and now that's where we'll see people coming up with different interests, different interests. Now let me take you back a bit in the subsequent constitution of chapter 6 where we are discussing about leadership and integrity. We have that chapter 6 article 73 where it talks about the role of leadership. You see when we look at the role of leadership it narrows down to we as individual because we as people we act as leaders in the various capacity. But most of the time we kind of drift away from what we elected then we start throwing once in public. Another issue that I also love to mention is that we've lucked to call moral support in terms of now raising these youths. And the moral support as I was saying that we're moving into the dispensation of campaign. You realize that a very prominent politician will come up, may say a remote village. Then he's been living in Nairobi, he comes, he goes to a remote village with an intention of buying either an MCA position, MP position, Senator Women Rep all the way to the governorship position. But if you look at his manifesto you realize that he will only be blabbing on the promises that have been there all along but nothing so far has developed. Where now we lose focus and now he realize that these people he can exploit them with let's say handouts for 50 bob or 100 bob, people to be chanting and screaming his name for now that is showing leadership. I would like to say that is not leadership. I think that is misleading of the general public where they tend to believe that we are headed for the right direction which we are not. But you see for some time I've seen the electorates being blamed for the kind of leaders they choose or they elect into office. But these are the same leaders who will speak. They have a good PR, they will promise, they will tell us this is what we will do for you. And by what they say we believe them but apparently when they get into that office they change. How then do we get to blame the electorates? I wouldn't really say that we should blame the electorates but the point should be what we as leaders as we are elected, what are we doing? If for example I have an intention to buy for an MCA Mountain View Westland constituency come 2022, I need to understand what is it that my people are facing that I need to go to the county assembly of Nairobi and address. If it's a problem of poor sewer line, if it's a problem of poor governance, if it's a problem of poor education, if there is no enough schools in the area first of all is to understand our role as leaders. It is very key and mandatory to know where we belong. I would say this that in most cases people are attracted by the benefits of an office but not the inner service of leadership. Because my brother will realize that as a leader you become like a servant and as a servant you need to express and understand your people in a manner that they need to feel that active representation wherever you are. Because as I said as I was starting that as leaders you need not first number one is that you are like a moral support to this many that are looking up to you. You are that role model that they are saying like for example where you come from you hear somebody saying ndako mwishimewa, go to mwishimewa he will help you.  So I think people are forgetting what they elected to do in the office and now drifting to their own personal interests. Now that's where we now come and say that people are forgetting their duties and attending to their personal needs. Ok, I want you to hold on that point of power and responsibility. Thank you there for joining us. Speaking of leadership and integrity, we've had cases in courts. We have rumas, allegations, embezement of fund on funds rather. Right now we have cases of our governors in courts. The kind of leadership that we voted in office this time and even the previous time and even yesterday years. Does it mean this country or we as a people we are not disciplined enough to be responsible or to be true to our calling of leadership and being responsible or being good stewards of what the people have voted as in for? Ok, that's an interesting question. Thank you. First my name is Widera Ranjiru. Mothers like to call me Beatrice. I'm also Nyerariya Mumbi and I have many hearts. I would like to say that I'm from the red vest movement of Kenya and we talk about corruption. We thrash grafting always. The question on is it the problem of the electorate or is it the problem of the law or is it the problem of who is approaching the electorate? I would like to say it's a problem of first of all lack of identity as the people of Kenya. Lack of identity in what sense? That first we must realize and acknowledge that democracy is a concept that is as new in Kenya and it started working in Kenya probably two decades ago. That is in the 80s and 90s where we had the second liberation and that's why names like Rayla Odinga such big names in Kenya. Democracy itself is not really well embraced but would not understand the constructs of democracy. I'm not here as a lawyer but well I could be quite vast and I have also interacted in spaces, political spaces as a socialist. I would like to say that in 2013 I was I think, is it 19 I'm not sure but I remember being a chief campaigner of a very, he was he's an engineer and he's someone who sounded as visionary for the people of Kayole that is Mbakasi central constituency. But what people told me is that why there we understand what you're talking about but the thing is at the moment you do not want this. So that explains that elections or politics or the electioneering period in Kenya is all about popularity and populism. So if popularity and populism is winning against democracy and the constructs of democracy then we are not going to go anywhere. We are going to keep on doing the same thing expecting a ballot revolution in Kenya and that is not entirely possible. The other problem I would like to say is the issue on identity besides not suffering things that happened with democracy and of course heroic persons coming out of it. There is a transition where we are coming from an old constitution into a new constitution we mark exactly ten years after we promagated our constitution on August of 2010 and definitely there is something or an independent commission we must talk about and that is the IEC and now the IEBC. The transition between those two periods. Someone would not do their job. So before we can even talk about devolution in its role there are also the local government, I know the local government but the county government and there are also the national government we need to talk about the discrepancies. Why did civic education not work and why do we have a lot of monies in our county budgets going back to the treasury because they are not getting used and which monies are those public participation which again Kenyans have left or community based organizations have left the masses of the government of the day the national government to come and articulate issues. So why should a commission like Ngek call for a public participation forum in Kenya Monetary or whatever school of studies and the people in Machinani cannot be able to get this information fast hand either through a poster somewhere either through information or someone sent by the chief to actually tell these people you need to appear on this and this date or actually send you elected or nominated or community organizers all these key community youth persons and elderly persons in the community to go and participate so there is a fraction of people who understand constitutionalism and the essence of constitutionalism the essence of what the preamble for instance talks about or advocates for and definitely passing on the ideals of this constitution to the next generation and there is another generation of people that actually not even care, they do not even know and who are the youth, the children belonging to the middle class you have said there is public participation that is called for but these people do not go but if a politician says or if a politician is said to be at a certain place you will see people but when something has been called which is of paramount to them they will not show up who is to blame, is it the leader or the people? I will say it's the transition the transitional process that did not work Isaac Hassan Kru did not do the right thing in Kenya and that is to instill the values or the ethics of this constitution to the people so it's not the people and it's not the politician the politician knows and he represents a fraction of people that are 100% aware of what these things are of what these laws are, of what these functions are but whoever he approaches by the end of the day he will appear heroic or like our savior which is a problem in Kenya again because this person is telling them what they need to hear not necessarily what they are going to do especially if they have money can I go to a famous line? hold on to that point Eric we were speaking about the responsibility of these leaders they have been voted in you promised you will build this road you will give us jobs you have this kind of money like she has mentioned money will move to the counties but we have no discipline as leaders to be good stewards you know one thing that amuses me so much is the fact that we as let me say politician rather leaders they will quote the constitution very well whenever they have a problem they will quote the constitution very well and they say as per the constitution this and this is supposed to be done but very unfortunate that the same people who quote the constitution they don't follow it and we see what is happening online everywhere you realize that people are misusing the constitution now on the next point she has talked about the issue of public participation and she has also talked about the issue of you know the leader going to he approaches 100% fraction who understands who the leader is I would have to interject on her point by saying this many people lack what we call civic education now on this civic education is now where we come and say public enlightenment and public can I call awareness now how I wish the government could invest so much in public awareness in the key matters of the country so as people also to know where they belong and where the constitution has placed them because most of the time a mamboga somewhere in mountain of the westlands will not understand what chapter 6 talks about will only see Eric then say Eric tells her mama I'll boost your business and then I'll go home saying I've won that woman not knowing that what I've created in that woman is a promise so it is my responsibility as a leader to keep that promise how I wish as I said earlier in the coming dispensation we now look at the issue of performance and we as as electorals now as leaders under what we call public audit we let you 5 years ago what have you done you promised us we'll build the road have you built the road you promised us that we'll bring water is there any water you promised us this we will do 1 2 3 we are seeing nothing what you normally see is fights every now in the county assembly fights every now wherever you go very harsh utterance wherever you walk around she has talked about the issue of the report that this commission that was formed by Isaac where they did their report I would love to say that let me be clear sometimes when you are in a public office as a state officer you work under a system a system guides you a system guides you and whenever you try to move out of that system you become an enemy so there are 2 things here you have to protect yourself as a person in your office and also at the same time you have to represent your people so depending on who you are now that's where you come out and say are you an activist if you are an activist like let me quote the famous one that I know Muki Omtata whom every time you will hear him in the morning with so much files in court shewing everybody in the country over them is use of funds and everything so I think the only thing that people need right now is a politics of we are doing this give me a chance to do more and let me talk about my case I am an upcoming politician and I know where I come from I present a lot so it's upon my own self to know and discipline myself that hey I need to make sure that I deliver to these people and that's why we now come in talk of the issue of service delivery to your people now in most cases an activist like her will fight a politician to keep the politician on post it's not in a bad way it's not a bad thing but people do go wrong I want also to address the next issue why we face a lot of problem I think it's very very important for electrolytes to elect an educated person in these public offices why am I saying this if for example you elect a four drop out to a public office be rest assured if that person even in mathematics got an E how is he going to manage a budget of 20 million per month but also you could be speaking of the skills someone could be having leadership skills but they never went to school let me be clear there are many schools and schools and they do so well and they have projects and they move but let me ask you at the end of the day where do they lead to and how does the understanding of the law you can't understand the law if you don't know how to read but you don't assume that since I dropped out of form 4 or rather I finished form 4 I was just giving a context whereby for somebody to understand himself and his roles it's not on a bad note but I think it's a better way moving this dispensation for better presentation like for example if I'm elected to the parliament or the county assembly and even to pronounce myself my name is hard how am I even going to sponsor one bill of rights to pass through the county assembly it is not possible that's quite true now a bitries as you respond to my question I kindly ask you to hold your mic well at the middle we were speaking about power and responsibilities because I am famous I have money I can make people vote for me we know a number of people were in office because they were famous maybe for the things they did for the people but when they get there they are unable to balance between power and the responsibilities they are required of what should be the way forward what should be the way forward well I'm not here to give a way forward but I'm here to give my thoughts if you complain so much you will never have the solution maybe you could be having an idea sure two things the other day I responded to irreverent steamo the enjoyer in response to saying that and using that proudly as my identity and I said on my Facebook timeline that you have an ID and you have no ideology and you have no ID and ideology you have no ID and you have no ideology and you have no identity what does that mean that we are so fast to adopt ways, new ways whatever ways compare Kenya to other democracies or other whatever Rwanda or all these fast growing economies but I would like to say something charity begins at home charity begins at home means that and I respond to the illustration you brought in here the issue about who we are as a Kenyan people and the issue about nationalism the issue about patriotism is something that we must come in and draw a clear line for instance we have the Kenya Girl Guides and Scouting Association something that went viral the other day about the celebrated burden power and the ideals and all these things that he tried to instill through a certain system girl guide association and all the systems in our country and we become people that defend certain concepts that we do not understand what these concepts are about we need to start understanding ourselves and actually going beyond the constitution to understand who we are in the fraction of people that we represent and how my role as a person comes in in making a decision that I'm not going to regret about look at this I'm from Eastlands and I will talk about an MP who once said on a national holiday that mimi nili kwa makanga nili chaguliwa but are you a populist in parliament are you a patriot who is defending people some level of psychofancy some political big big up there representing a certain ideal and you are not representing the will of the people down there these two difference there's two different things giving the people a promise and going as per what chapter 6 of the constitution says true if I do not understand my mandate and my commandate as an MP before I go to parliament I will not deliver in fact talking about it gikomba fires these things from Eastlands want to defend and represent and matatu you're not going to be hard if you do not have even the basic understanding of constitution or actually what the people want and actually being able to legitimize and formalize that language in a way that parliament talks in this kind of way people will understand you in parliament it's important that we have education I see the difference when I'm going to Galleria mall and I'm using Langata road and you will see the nicely ever intact these road whatever reserves those areas the roundabouts well kept compared to other sides of the people things change do you know why nyasi kidero is famous nyasi needs to go down within two muds beachroading on some budget needs to maintain that do you understand what I'm talking about I'm talking about how we are socialized as a people where we come from how we've grown up and what we want as Kenyans and who we want to represent us if it's someone like us then please don't go complaining that people are not doing what they promise to do because how can they deliver if they do not know what they're doing but then the people who are there for example the islans will vote in their people and the person who comes from where they are they have nothing new they will go by that they will promise like an example we've seen leaders from Nairobi have had they've gone for benchmarking in Rwanda but when they come back things don't change allow me to say something on that I'd also like to challenge the electrolytes on one thing it's high time they stop the issue if they don't stop the tribal thing in Kenya is killing us the other day we saw president Magufuli in Kenya telling us that Kenya is a country we are doing well but if we only stop one thing tribalism will go for secondly is as she is saying you realize that as a common one inch the way his mind has been meant to function to a politician the way that let him come and promise then we send him to deliver allow me to give this reference I love my area MP and that man is working very tirelessly every morning to ensure that at least everybody gets something in a way we also during this period that we've been facing COVID-19 Honorebu Timuanyoni has been there for the people of Westlands constituency and he has tried his level best to make sure and ensure that people at least get what they elected him to do but one thing he has lacked for quite some time is what we call support system at what level to make him achieve his agenda for the past two terms has been in me why that simply because as leaders and I repeat this we need to be very accountable over the roles we've been given we need to step up and say yes last month they drew a budget of let's say 5 million to Jengahi Barabara and yes guys this is what we're doing so that is one thing people feel like when they elected in county assembly or in parliament is now the time to eat which is a misconception and that's why personally I'm charging the youth to wake up and say no to corruption say no to being misused and spearhead the agenda of progress because if you are that entrepreneur as a youth let that leader help you but don't allow that leader to misuse you you become my blogger today I pay you let's say 500 bupa a day then you suffer for the rest of your life you're gaining nothing why don't you make yourself usable I mean why don't you stand up and say yes I'm Eric and so and so this is my self and this is where I'm going on the issue that she was saying on the personal identity it's also very important to know who you are alright because you I've been a youth for a long time I'm still a youth and many people that approaches you be it older age or small age you realize that they are looking at what you have then they say how they can get it Eric Nilipea Nilipea it's a common problem but then how do you tackle it from the above alright and that's now where the leaders come and make people vulnerable to use them I'll make you be begging for me 5bub 5bub 5bub every day but you will never grow any time you want to grow and you approach me I see you as a competitor threat the next point it is also important to be creative and innovative as a youth so that when a leader comes he finds you doing something and I like telling people it's also good for you as a youth to have what you call this is what I have what will you do for me before I vote you in it is as clear as that alright we running out of time here there's another interview coming up but do you think political positions have been used in this country to acquire wealth okay I can prove we have a number we have a number who have gone there they are popular they have money here but they still want to go in just to be there but we also have people do we have people who have used the platform of politics to become wealth well that's a hilarious question and first of all it's very true so many people have risen to power and used their positions of power to amass wealth at the expense of the taxpayer and as Eric is talking Hillary about something called neoliberalism and what is neoliberalism I didn't really want to use a lot of many words here that we use in the activism world but I think I have to talk about it for the first time one year neoliberalism is the aspect of the government of the day relegating its key duties to other players like the civil society like donors all these people to come and do things that the government should be doing I mean not necessarily on matters to do with creating public awareness on anything like on our constitution which everyone is doing and there are so many outfits out there educating people and giving them a thousand bob every day or 500 bob kulechin which is not different from from any other hassle out there but I'm saying let's stop commercializing on two things on the lives of Kenyans and number two and number four let's stop blaming the youth over mistakes that Moaikibaki the retired president did let's stop blaming the youth and calling them thieves which is something the president of Kenya did earlier this year because the youth are not thieves the youth are trying to live and survive by their means because their papers are no longer working for them and there is a particular set of old gods and very rich individuals in top government propositions who are not realizing that the youth are 76 percent of our population of our demographic composture and it's time that if they are not sure that things are changing things are actually changing not in favor of any youthful president or aspiring candidate for that matter but things are changing in favor of actually power shifting to the grassroots means that the poor person is beginning to realize that they cannot live on one male a day and when that happens don't blame people for doing the right thing all these people the ten big families that own land in Kenya three Americans or two Americans and the rest are Britons and all these people the foreigners at the expense of someone who went to a forest came back and his fifth generation is from the time 1948 1956 the children of those people do not have something to eat it's coming back on new people that's why an MP will stand somewhere and say this matter and this actually the youthful are starting to reclaim or actually take their power positions and it's going to have a lot of friction and it's going to be messy but messy in a way that we are not here with an intention to fight as the youth but we are here to take power and if things have to go down before that happens maybe even a ballot revolution is quite an idea whose time is not yet here but some kind of change thing is coming so back to neoliberalism let me allow me to just finish about neoliberalism 4 key factors the big 4 agenda health 4 basic things look at who has infiltrated that market look at who has infiltrated that discourse on housing agenda the real estate it has become a capitalistic venture providing people shelter has become a capitalistic venture look at education who are the key players the private sector a rich persons child an MP's child will not go to a primary school public primary school in Tani why? because they can afford so it has become a capitalistic venture look at health I one day went for Mahali Tunaupo Rwai where I was coming from this morning we came to hospital I think it was last year I sat with this mama mawa clinic I didn't know where to start the queues from and I heard the nurses were talking because they were on a T-brick some kind of a brick the medical practitioners they were conversing you know what if a certain international donors withdrew their support to the maternal healthcare system and the relief is it relief or is this this HIV program and diabetes these special programs for people and HIV testing when you go you get ARVs if a certain donor was to withdraw their budget in Nairobi alone so many nurses and medical practitioners and so many people will go home with nothing to it look at who we have today in employment that is a final one your liberalism has hit really hard look at markets look at employment in the last one decade we've had so many a lot of youth being chand out of the system and they cannot feel themselves why we have taught people to be professionals but we have not taught people the basic life skills of survival it's not okay for Betty now to be seen doing odd jobs I have since decided to be a farmer it's okay for Nyeraria Mumbi to be seen doing odd jobs because she went to a university and there's something wrong and neoliberalism has to be thrown out for things to start working the right way and the right way is socialism what kind of socialism I saw Pasarish complain on Twitter that people are telling her but of course Pasarish is getting paid a certain amount of money and we know they have the taxes and we also know that she can't be there for the whole of Nairobi to pay rent to pay health so please the dependency the dependency the dependency culture, your handouts and now it's even worse sitak yata miyambili manze fulani I don't have 1000 bob to go to the hospital it has to be broken why corona is here to make people go back to start farming the education system that we have in Kenya today that Dr. Rwande Njoa keeps talking about and keeps bashing she is bashing for a reason we need to teach our children to learn to live and by the skills they get and also be able to question so do not also come here and also scrap the universities and try to cattle the number of people that go to universities do that but make sure the market out there is sustaining for them by doing what ansakurudisha agriculture primary school it's gonna work probably just somehow Eric as you respond to that someone has challenged you and I think this is an opportunity for you to defend your sentiments about education he is saying he should know that there is a big difference between profession and education I think here well before you answer that question try to let me respond to what she is saying and briefly the reason why the dependency ratio views is very high is because leaders have not done what we call empowerment to the youths I think we should be shifting to powering people and powering is giving people money no no no no you see this is what I mean I am vying in mountain view I identify a group of people how do I empower them maybe for example first thing is to register them to be legally noticed that way it gives them a right to access any government office with their certificate to either get weather fund or youth fund I don't have money but I can empower a youth with an idea I've been in art industry till I went to the university that is powering people I'm coming empowering people that's giving people power if they have power they have control now if they have control you see so the issue should be empowering these youths now let me come to our dear one who has said that education can come again it's called aspirin ok there's a big difference between profession and education there's a communication missing there the reason why I say education is important is this when you look at leadership in the context of understanding leadership is like a skill now while I'm doing my CV to apply it to a company for job I'll mention there's part of my leadership interpersonal blah blah blah as I go now the reason why I said education is this once you are a state officer you are in charge like in my word I get to be in charge of over 30,000 people 30,000 people as much as I have the skill I need to have education to run those people if for example the county government with the bbi thing if it goes through Nairobi will not have the governorship right if the national government back to the grass root it gives me say 100 million skill will not distribute how will I ensure that each and every area of my word gets equitable distribution of these projects faithfully wisdom wisdom and that's why we have accountants I forgot to say I'm an accountant by profession I forgot to say I'm an accountant by profession so I will champion for as much as we have the skill but we also need education to run these public offices that's why we love this problem in fact it helps us to become under what to call self audience what I need to spend what is supposed to happen alright thank you so much as you ask your question you will be giving as your your final answer I have a question for you if you for instance was to get into county government in 2022 will you announce for job positions for you to come in your office will you ask people to come and apply for job positions in your office or are you first going to give priority to the people that campaigned for you that's not where we come on the issue of intelligence just jibu what will you do that's what I mean because Eric not Eric but Hillary if I can sum up everything and it's alright to the answer whichever the answer is I've been working for an MP 2018 between March and September as a researcher or actually communications person in parliament and there's a culture a system that exists in these places a former mayor in Nairobi told me why there are kandjo kandjo I'm telling you you cannot bring the kind of justice you want to your people why people for the longest time politicians for the longest time have been employing people that worked for them in their campaigns to go and do very crucial and important roles allow me to respond to her remarks and we are out of time just for the last time as an individual this is what we call rewarding your closest loyalist now let me come this is what we call rewarding your closest loyalist and this is what we call government procedures on job because job is not mine I as an MCA I don't give jobs that is what people need to understand you don't need jobs but there is an advertisement from public service commission let's say in county assembly you can only advise them to apply let me tell you something 90% of offices election offices or whatever offices in Nairobi in Kenya they have 70% of the staff people that campaigned for them and these people that is one of the things I had to struggle with every other single morning as I went to work because people think the moment you ask hey I saw the government signed that the total expenditure in this office whatever is going to be added by 50% if you are spending 110 million whatever I am expecting a pay rise from 23,000 to this number of thousand for a tigal or for a secretary that should happen but go to these offices try counting the number of faces and heads working in those offices they are even ghosts while we were growing up when we were kids we were told that we are the change for tomorrow the change has to start in me so it's high time we stop generalizing these issues and address them as individual no it's high time we start addressing the people addressing the people thank you so much Eric whether for coming and trying to put that into place apparently you couldn't have Hillary you didn't tell me to say I'm a journalist by profession and a communication practitioner yes 30 seconds 30 seconds please director will kill me 30 seconds please sign up and say what you wanted us to know about ok thank you I'm a journalist by profession my third year fourth year trying to get in a mass all kind of whatever experience to be able to get a job in future in these TV stations and also like to say that I'm a digital security trainer I train people how to use the devices and I'm well online and I'm a farmer and I'm sending my love and warmth to the people of Kayole and the way we said we are having an MOU with our future leaders that we as the people we are inviting you but this is number one we want this number two we want this because that is the only way change is going to come in Kayole thank you well my name is Eric Makoha an accountant by profession also a tax consultant and yes come 2022 I'll be vying for MCA position in Mountain View Ward Westlands constituency I hope for your love and I'm also sending my love to all my Westlands people God bless you and thank you Hilary you very much welcome thank you so much lady and gentlemen Wajira and Eric for coming I trust you have learned something regarding the constitution leadership and integrity he's vying so to tamuza tabela kwa toa keshule gani kuna system thank you so much for being part of us we'll be taking a very short commercial break and when we come back we look now into lifestyle the art culture how does it pay how is it helping what are you doing about your talent and gifts keep it Y254 and why in the morning we'll be taking a short break I'm Dereva Hilary good morning


Welcome to the Kirkwood Community College Library's Help Anytime video series. I'm Kate Hess, librarian at Kirkwood. Imagine this scene. It's a dark and stormy evening and your friend says to you, it's going to be a great day for a picnic tomorrow. Where did you hear that? You ask. On the six o'clock news. Whether you realize it or not, you've just asked your friend to cite the source of the information they just shared and they've provided an informal citation. This citation helps you understand why your friend is suggesting a picnic when it's storming outside and helps you determine how likely it is that the next day will actually be great picnic weather. It would also let you verify that your friend didn't misunderstand or misinform you by giving you a place to double-check the facts. Citing sources is done often in college work but is done formally and following a specific style. Citing is a practice that first allows you to clearly let your audience know where you gathered the information you used in creating your writing, speech, website, or any other communication. Second, it helps support your ideas and arguments to show the work of experts is standing behind you. And third, if you don't document where you got your information, your work will be considered plagiarism and major academic offense. A quick note on terminology. Many different terms are used by different people when talking about citing. Some of these terms have distinct meanings and others are simply different terms that mean the same thing. Here's a rundown of the most common terms. First term, citing. It may also be called documentation. These are both general terms that refer to the whole process of telling your audience exactly where your information came from. To cite properly there are two elements that work together. The in-text citations and the work cited. Second term, in-text citations. These are also called parenthetical references. These little bits of shorthand do three things. First, they give you a way to acknowledge the source where you found the information you just used. Second, they point your readers to the specific page where they could find that particular idea or quotation. Third, the in-text citation refers your reader to the corresponding entry in your work cited page where they can find the details they need to locate that source. Third term, work cited. This may also be called a bibliography or references. It refers to the list found at the end of your paper that has the complete entry for each information source you cite. So, when you cite your sources, it's a combination of these two closely related parts. The work cited page which appears at the end and the in-text citations which are scattered throughout your work. In fact, when you create the in-text citation, it's like snapping off the first part of your work cited list citation and plugging it right into the text of your paper. You'll learn more about how to create work cited and in-text citations in the next videos in this series. That's the basics. Now test your understanding before moving on to the next video.


Good morning, everybody. Thanks for being here on this snowy day. I was fortunate enough to go to this Heed Foundation Resonant Retreat back in October and the director of it, Stuart Fine, asked that we come back and do a little presentation to everybody. And so this is fulfillment of that request. Just real quick, Thomas Heed, you might have heard of the Heed Ophthalmic Foundation. He made his fortune in the railroad business and he suffered from an iridus and his wife also suffered from a retinal detachment. So he developed this relationship with the ophthalmic, you know, industry at that time was he was in Chicago and he approached the Northwestern chair and he said I wanted to make I want to make a donation and he left a large portion of his estate to the to that trust and since then they've been funding mostly fellows as a Heed fellow and we have several fellows on our faculty here and you know, they've funded over a thousand fellows since they started and then they also have this yearly meeting this resident retreat and they they take, you know, like 20 residents or so from across the country and they bring 20 faculty in and they they split the faculty. They have maybe 10 senior faculty, which are mostly chairs from, you know, different departments and then they have young academic faculty that have just started into the academic and and really the the purpose is just to talk about academic career in ophthalmology and and kind of demystify some of the process and and motivate us to go into academic, you know, careers. You know, it's a two-day meeting. They just cover the basic facts and the younger faculty all get up and spend 15 to 20 minutes talking about how they decided to do what they're doing and and you know, some of the difficulties they've encountered and and we also spend a fair amount of time on on grant writing and some of the folks from the NEI were there to talk about the different types of grants and some tips on doing that. So I had a hard time figuring out what to talk about because, you know, we talked about everything and and there was so much information presented. So I thought what I would do is just maybe throw up some quotes that to me were influential and I thought, you know, insightful and then maybe get your input on, you know, we have great faculty here that have all gone into academic careers and we have some folks here that are in private practice and you know, this came up a little bit, but not much because the assumption was most of the residents there were you know, planning on going into academic careers. That's how we got selected to be there. But I thought Natalie Kerz, one of the younger faculty members and she said just be honest with yourself when you're deciding whether to go into academics or private practice and and you know, you don't want to do something unless you're really sold on it and you just need to really just be honest with yourself on what's going to make you happy.  You should do it because you want to do it, not because you think you need to do it and you know, we didn't spend a lot of time on these, but I thought for us, you know, here this might be something worth thinking about if we want to discuss it. I guess we can just I'll run through these slides and then if you guys have any, I'd like to hear comments from the faculty on you know, on any any topic that we cover. So they said really academic careers composed of four components or it can be composed of four components.  And they emphasize that you could probably just pick two of these that you're most passionate about and focus on them and Dr. Fine, you know, said spend time doing what's important to you. That's what's going to make you the most happy. We talked a lot about finding the right place to go work and these were the things that I thought were really insightful. You want to pick a place that has a sufficient volume of patience that you're going to be able to to you know, see a lot. Location is obviously one of the most important factors when you're finding a place to work. You need to like the culture, the department. They all emphasize that the chairman's direction and his outlook is very important.  Sometimes there might, they might not be advertised. This was interesting to me. Sometimes an academic department might not be advertising a job, but if that's where you really want to be, you know, you talk to them about it. They may create the position for you. Dr. Cass is the chair at WashU. So things that they said would help you thrive in an academic environment. You know, there's, there's a couple things. Being passionate is key. You know, being passionate about what you do and your work. Because it takes a lot of extra work that oftentimes you're not remunerated for. Money cannot be the most important thing to you in an academic world. I thought that was a good point. It, you know, it still may be a motivating factor, but it probably can't be the most important thing to you. Dr. O'Brien said one thing to help you thrive in an academic environment is trying to say yes, even if at the time you might not see the what's in it for me aspect of it. And, but, and she followed that with you have to be careful about overextending yourself, you know, because you're going to be approached to do a lot more things than you have time to do. But, you know, try and say yes to people when they politics are so funny. Be where you are. Tony Aldavi said have a saint for a spouse. And Jennifer, this was an interesting, she said one time she's making a cake for her kids and, you know, you're putting the icing on the cake and some of the cake gets mixed in with the icing and just looks terrible. But, you know, she's like, I could have thrown the cake away and maybe started over, but she said, you know, when it's good enough, it's good enough, and you're just done with it. She said that's sometimes true with grant writing, with many different aspects of a career. It's never going to be perfect, but when it's good enough, it's good enough. And Stephen McLeod's one quote he said, the bottom line for getting parole is demonstrated excellence. It's really performing in your job and setting a track record for yourself. Just quickly on grant funding. Dr. Fahey, if you don't submit it, you're not going to get funded. I thought this was interesting.  That's what she's saying. A KO8 is a good way to get started as a clinician scientist and the salary for the KO8 is, you know, for ophthalmology anyway, they figured out a way to get the NIH to fund you up to a competitive salary, and they'll protect 75% of your time for research, and first-time awards are 70% to 100% fund rates, and you can't take rejection from a grant. Personally, I don't know if Paul's in here, but he has experience with, you know, the first time you might get turned down, but you have to keep trying and submit it again and again. And that's it. That's all I had, so you know, any comments from the faculty that I'd be interested to hear, you know, why you chose to stay in academics, some of the most challenging things for being in an academic career, and maybe from, you know, even the private guys in here, you know, why you decided to go to private practice, and you know, anyway. There's a lot of misconceptions about academic ophthalmology, and it's not one thing. It's worth it. There's a whole broad field of different areas that you can look into. You don't necessarily have to deal with them all, but I was surprised by the comments that we got, that even in residency, people had a real misperception of what academic ophthalmology is really about. And I think that people need to keep their minds open, and you can tailor your own practice within the department, as I think you want to do. And there are people who can do pure research. There are research clinicians who can do clean research, and you just can do pure clinic and teaching. And so I think there's a broad area that you can go into. So I encourage residents not to be turned on. I don't want to do that. I just want to go into private practice, because you can do, you know, depending on the department, you can pretty much tailor what you're interested in, you know, within the realm of the department. I mean, it's not that you have to do the time-based research. Especially here, we've got a good example. And here, you know, there's a whole range of almost pure clinic work, almost pure research, and everything in between. That's true. That was a big emphasis from everybody. The things have changed to allow that flexibility. Anyone else have any comments, or Dr. Green? I'll kind of look at all of this from the periphery, but someone mentioned the importance of the institutional culture. And it's just so important. I think it's just so easy, as we make our decisions for ourselves in life, to kind of be starry-eyed, you know, as we look at the big names, or the icons, or the institutions that have been around a long time.  Yeah, Dr. Buddy. I know that everybody had a problem with it there, too. Thanks. Anyone else? Okay, thank you. So I think Paul wanted to go last.


Greetings, I'm Chris Augustine, Director of the Dickinson Research Extension Center, and we're doing some work on soil acidity and how to manage that in our acidic soils within North Dakota. We don't have much research right now to give us guidelines on how to fix those areas. We know we need a liming amendment to improve those areas, but our soils are a little different than where most of the research has been conducted in the past. And so we're working with the North Dakota Soybean Council as well as the Northern Canola Growers Association on trying to develop some recommendations for managing these acidic soils. So when we're talking about acidity, we're talking about soil pH, and really it comes down to the concentration of the hydrogen ion in the soil. So to test soil pH, it's pretty easy. You can go online and buy a decent pH tester for $100-150, but when you do that, make sure that you calibrate it and follow the instructions for that particular unit. But when we do it, we're going to run the same test that a soil testing lab would perform. And that's one part soil, one part water on equal volume. So I'm just using a tablespoon scoop to divvy out the soil and the water. So when you use water, you want to make sure you use distilled water. If you use tap water, there's probably some minerals in there that could influence the pH and not give you the true pH of the soil. So we have a couple different cups here. We have regular soil, and when you mix this up, I already did it. It needs to sit for about 15 minutes or so, so it can equilibrate. And this is a standard soil that I picked up from here at the North Central Research Extension Center in Minot. And we'll put the probe in and see what the pH is. So the pH of this soil is 5.1, and 5.1 can be a problematic soil. When we start seeing pH is less than 5.5, aluminum toxicity, and in some extreme cases, meganese toxicity can come into play. So when we manage these soils, we want to make sure that we're putting the right thing down, and we need some sort of liming agent. And we've been using sugar beet waste line that we've collected from the Sydney beet factory over in Montana. And it's important to keep in mind that it's not the calcium in the limestone that's improving the pH. It's actually the carbonate that reacts with the hydrogen ion, produces water, and CO2, and that's what actually does the neutralizing. It's possible you have some calcium deficiencies throughout the state of North Dakota, so maybe a calcium amendment can work from time to time. But if you put the wrong product down, you can actually exacerbate the acidity. So we have two cups here, one that we put gypsum in, which is calcium sulfate, and another one that we put some lime in, which is calcium carbonate. And what happens with the gypsum is as that dissolves in the soil solution, the calcium is freed up, it binds to the cation exchange sites, and then hydrogen is released from those exchange sites within the soil. So that can actually decrease the acidity, or increase the acidity of that soil even more. So we'll try this with the gypsum. And so it was originally 5.1 with the standard soil. And we've decreased this pH to 4.9. So now this is on the lines of where we would maybe expect some manganese toxicity as well as the aluminum toxicity. The aluminum toxicity will start at like a pH of 5.5, but the manganese toxicity usually starts once that pH is less than five. And so I took that soil again, but this time we put lime in. And lime is what reacts with the hydrogen and which can raise the pH. And for this demonstration, I just used a tablespoon or so of each amendment. And we've increased the soil pH to 6.3. So this is pretty much the ideal soil pH. And so what happens when we increase the pH, aluminum is still in the soil, but the concentration decreases. Our soils have lots of aluminum, because our clay minerals are made up of aluminum and silicates. And so it's in the soil, but until that pH gets below 5.5 it's, they're more so physically and relatively chemically inert. And so when aluminum comes into the soil solution, when that pH is less than 5.5, it can free up, bind to cation exchange sites, release more hydrogen, which can decrease the pH. But then it also has the ability to split water in half. And it releases hydrogen during that process and the OH of the H2O binds to the aluminum. And where we really see aluminum toxicity is you need the pH of 5.5 or less. But you also need to have about 25 parts per million or more of exchangeable aluminum. And so in this graph, we show how as we increase the amount of lime, we decrease the amount of exchangeable aluminum within that soil solution. Some of the things that you'll see with aluminum toxicity, these are some soybeans that I pulled from our plots. The ones in my left hand, that is from four tons of beet lime. The pH here was right around 6.2, 6.3, something like that. And then these smaller soybeans in my right hand, that pH was somewhere around 4.7, 4.9, somewhere in that realm. Other things that you notice besides the size of the plants, these soybeans are starting to get some nodules on them already. And one of the things that happens when soils become too acidic is bacteria activity in the soil can greatly decrease. So the rhizomious bacteria that fix the nitrogen of all of our legumes in North Dakota, that can be hindered with these extremely acidic conditions. So we may see some nitrogen deficiencies. Aluminum can also tie up phosphorus, so it's possible to see phosphorus deficiencies in these soils as well. So a couple of weeks ago, we actually saw some manganese toxicity in these plots. They're starting to grow out of it, but when the plants were much younger, it almost looked like a potassium deficiency, where the leaves on the edges had a necrotic look to it. But there was also a blistering look to it, which is characteristic of the manganese toxicity. Where the shorter canola is, that was an untreated check. And again, the pH was about 4.8 or 4.9 there. And where this taller canola is, the taller canola received four tons of beat lime. And you can definitely tell that there's a difference in the emergence as well as how healthy the plants look and how big the plant looks. So we'll wait to see what the combine tells us. But right now, there's definitely a visual difference. So in the foreground, these soybeans were untreated. So the pH of this soil was 4.8 or 4.9. You can see that we had sporadic germination. This is where I pulled those plants, where the plants were definitely stunted. But as we go to the background, those are where our different lime treatments are. And so where the soybeans really start looking nice, that is four tons of beat lime. And at the way back of this plot, that received eight tons of beat lime. Managing these soils, really, you just need to make sure that you're putting the right stuff down. You need to put some sort of liming agent, whether that's dolomitic limestone, calcitic limestone, waistline from a water treatment plant, or a sugar beet factory. Those are the things that can increase the soil pH. If you put on the wrong amendment like a calcium chloride or a calcium sulfate, that can decrease the soil pH.


Hi everyone. I am so excited to be here today. It's very special for me because I love PradaCon. It's one of the PradaCon conferences that I look forward to every year. And this year I can be here as a speaker versus an attendee. And as Chantel mentioned, my father is in the crowd today. Who I haven't been able to spend a ton of time with due to the pandemic and because he lives in Thailand. So it's very special that he's been able to come join and hear me speak. I do have a lot of content to cover today. And I think I'm the last act standing between you all and lunch, so I'll jump right to it. As Chantel mentioned, today I'm going to be talking to you all about how to gamify your product career. As far as agenda, we'll talk about games first, a little bit about the games industry, and we'll also talk about how do we dismissify gamification. What is it and talk through some use cases of it in product. Finally, we'll apply some of these techniques to your actual product career. So first I'll tell you all a little bit about myself. I started my career in management consulting and there I worked with some of the top Fortune 500 companies on things like new product development, M&A, and growth strategy. I also spent some time working with early and growth stage startups too. This is really where I learned to love product because I was working with founding CEOs. These were the visionaries and bootstrappers who were working and getting money from their friends and family to really drive a vision that they believed in. And it really inspired me to pursue a career in product because I wanted to be a builder too. I overlapped a little bit with Jose who spoke before me at American Express where I worked on a number of different products and built teams across data, personalization, martech, and a developer experience platforms. And today I work in Amazon games. So many of you all probably know or have used Amazon to buy physical goods, but we have also invested a ton in terms of our entertainment businesses. And my role in the game growth team is to figure out how do we take that super successful commerce flywheel and reimagine it for digital experiential products like games. And games has been one of the most challenging, dynamic, and fun industries that I've worked in. So let's talk about games.  If you are, raise your hands. Let me see them. Put them up. Okay. Do you see some maybe 20, 30% of the crowd? So historically, when we thought about gamers, we probably had something like this in mind. We probably, yes, we probably imagined maybe kids, probably usually guys, a little bit socially inept, maybe hanging out in their mom's basement. So obviously not the most flattering stereotypes that are associated with gamers. And it was the pervasiveness and persistence of the stereotype that prevented a lot of people from wanting to identify with the gamer title. Now today, looking at today's landscape, it's quite different. In terms of the games industry, it is set to be a $200 billion industry by the end of this year. It has a keger of 8.4%, which makes it the fastest growing entertainment industry in the world. So this is faster than sports and television. Looking globally, there are 3.2 billion players worldwide. That's 40% of the entire world's population. And if we're going to look at the U.S., we can really see just how diverse the industry has gotten. So today, when we look at the U.S., it's about 50% who are actually female. Over 66% is over the age of 18, and the median age of a gamer is actually 34 years old. More and more we see people playing mobile games instead of PC and console, and more and more we see people playing casual games. And casual games are different because they're not just marketed towards hardcore gamers. Basically, they're marketed towards a wider audience, and they're going to be games like your Stardew Valley, your Angry Birds, and Candy Crush. The reason why I wanted to talk a little bit about this is that I wanted to highlight just how diverse of an industry it's become, just how large it's become, and the idea that you might not see yourself as a gamer, but honestly anyone can be a gamer today. And it's a lot more socially accepted and something that people are proud of. So let's talk about gamification. So it's no surprise that with the success of games, people wanted to copy it, figure out what works so well with games and how can we apply it to other things. So the dictionary definition of gamification is the application of game design elements and game principles in non-game context to be able to drive engagement. So when we talk about game design elements, that includes things like rules of play, it can include mechanics like reward systems, points, leaderboards, and things like that. And basically gamification became popular because people realized that folks were willing to spend hours and hours playing games, but when it came time to do something that was challenging or important to someone's life, they often delayed it or were hesitant to actually do it. So they said, I wonder if we can harness some of the things that make games so addicting, so fun, and try to apply it in a different context. There's a lot of literature that's been written about gamification from people who are way smarter than I am, but today I'm going to take you through a very popular framework. This framework is called Yukai Chow's Octalysis Framework. Yukai Chow is a fairly renowned gamification expert and pioneer in the field. And what he came up with is this octagonal shaped framework. Basically what he said in his belief was that the reason why we do certain things is because we have certain drivers or reasons or motivations. And there's eight key drivers usually involved in human behavior. The first driver he talks about is epic meaning. So basically the desire to do something that's bigger than yourself. The second is accomplishment. So the desire to be able to achieve mastery and progression. The third is empowerment, feeling like you're in control to be able to use your creativity and get feedback on things. The fourth is on ownership. So the desire to collect things, whether it's well for actual physical things. Fifth, social influence. So how others interact with you make you do things differently. The sixth is around scarcity. So because there isn't a lot of something or because something is out of reach, you actually want it more. And the seventh is unpredictability because you don't know what's going to happen next. You're even more interested and motivated. And the last is an obvious one, which is avoidance, where you want to actually stay away from something that's going to give you a negative response. So he looks at all these different things and he says, usually it's one or multiple of these things that drive us to behave a certain way. And he actually splits it towards the left side. He says these activities are more associated with the left brain. It involves things like logic and calculations and are actually more extrinsically motivated. And on the right side, it's more creativity, more self-expression, and this is more intrinsic motivation. And because this framework wasn't complex enough as it is, he decided to split it down from top to bottom as well. And on the top, he has things that he calls white hat. Basically, all the motivations on the top are things that are actually positive, inspirational, and kind of give you a growing feeling to want to do things. Whereas the things on the bottom, he calls black hat, meaning you want to do it because you're trying to avoid something that's negative. And the reason why I wanted to go through this framework is because the whole idea is that gamification is not about throwing in a bunch of game mechanics into something and hoping that it'll make it more effective. That's really how you kind of end up with Frankenstein products or early applications of gamification that really failed. So nowadays, we see things that are a lot more mature, a lot more developed. His model basically says that you should start in the middle, start within the octagon, first understand what are the motivations that you're trying to drive, and then from there, figure out which mechanics make the most sense. So for example, if you are looking at ownership, there are certain key game mechanics that help you enhance that. Ownership for digital games could be things like virtual goods or virtual pets. For social influence, you see features like likes or funding. And for accomplishment, probably one of the more obvious, you see things like leaderboards, reward systems, and progression bars. So let's go through some of the use cases where we see gamification being successfully applied in products. The first is dual lingo. So this is an education use case, but dual lingo is basically a language learning app. It actually has lots of different game mechanics throughout the app, but we're just going to focus on a few today. So for the first one, basically, dual lingo has you go through multiple lessons, and as you go through it, you gain more and more mastery.  The second is it ties to achievement, basically where you can see progression. You can set your goals for the day, but you can also set goals over time and see how you are tracking. The third that it looks to is leaderboards. So leaderboards has a little bit of a social element to it, as well as an achievement element. The leaderboards essentially let you see where you fall across friends and family so that if you see that you're falling behind or if you're ahead of someone, you might want to be more motivated to move forward. The next example is from Amazon. So at Amazon, we have something called a phone tool. And our phone tool is essentially a bunch of employee profiles where you can see who a person is, you can see what team they're on, you can read a little bit of a bio about them. But we also have a section called awards or phone tool badges. And these are badges that are given to you for completing a certain event. You might get a custom badge for completing a training for a certain product launch or a leadership principle. So for example, this individual has a badge for being a frugal flyer. And basically the whole idea is, again, to tap into things like achievement to show that because you're so engaged with the company, you're acquiring more and more things. It also taps into ownership because you want all the badges. They're all different. And it's especially appealing for folks like me, frankly, where I'm a big collector. I like accumulating things. And I often compare it to if folks have seen the movie Office Space where Jennifer Aniston works at a restaurant and she gets scolded because she has these suspenders and doesn't have enough pins in it. These pins and these suspenders are a way for the restaurant workers to show how excited they're working for that franchise. And she only has a few and it's called flair. So basically this is a way for you to show your flair at Amazon. So now that I've talked through a few examples of gamification, let's talk through how we can apply these to your career. One of the first things I want to just make sure is clear is when I talk about gamification, there's a lot of different games and genres out there. But in this instance, the genre that's probably most similar to this is something called RPGs or role-playing games. And in these games, you basically choose a character and you go through different quests, missions, allies to be able to achieve some overarching goal. So this is probably the most similar to what I'm talking through today. And the most obvious analogy I just want to make sure folks know is that in this instance of the game, you basically are the main character. You are the main player and the game is an analogy for your life or in this case, your product career. So I will talk through four different ways to do this today. The first is to define that mission or what are you, what you are trying to achieve. The second is to map out the levels and quests that are tied to that mission. The third is to assess your stats and the four fists to play co-op. So the first is the most important. It's about defining this epic mission, something that is greater than yourself. And again, that greater than yourself component is the most important part. In a few gamification books, there is an example that's cited about this professor named Adam Grant from the University of Wharton. And basically, he does this study where a bunch of different faculty are required to help fund raise at the end of the year to raise money for the school.  And the second group, he says, if you do this, these can be used as scholarships for students who really need them. These can be used to improve the actual campus and make it a better place for everyone. You can probably see where I'm going with this, but obviously in study B, they were able to raise two times as much money because they cared about something, again, that felt greater than themselves and their individual needs. So that's really, really important. The whole reason why we're doing is because there's something epic about it. Now in games, oh, now in games, my mic's not working. So now in games, epic missions can vary. In Mario, his epic mission is to save Princess Peach. Those of you who play among us, your epic mission as a crewmate is to be able to figure out who the imposter is on the ship and kind of defeat them. In Final Fantasy, Cloud's epic mission is to save the planet. So again, the underlying theme is this idea that it's something that's greater than yourself. Now, if we look at this with people, what are some personal epic missions for founders or CEOs? We have some examples here. So Oprah's, Oprah's epic mission is to be a teacher and to be able to inspire her students so that they can do more than they realize they can do. Steve Jobs is always a product favorite. His epic mission when he was Apple was to create tools and products for the mind that could advance the mankind. Amanda Steinberg is the CEO of a company, founder of a company, rather called Daily Worth, which is a financial media company for women. And her mission was around cultivating self-worth and financial security for women. Now the fourth one is myself. My epic mission is to use some intrinsic qualities I have around curiosity, empathy, and tenacity to really build learnings not just for myself, but also for others and potentially the industry and experiences. And notice I said experiences, not products that can actually change people's lives for good. So it's really important for you to formulate that epic mission, figure out what's most important to you, and make sure that, again, that it's bigger than yourself. The second thing is once you define your epic mission, your norfs are what you're working towards, you're going to want to map out levels and quests. So what are levels and quests for the non-gamers in the audience? Take this example here for World of Warcraft if we have some World of Warcraft players in the crowd. The mechanics vary by game, but in the case of the World of Warcraft, you essentially have a player, and that player starts off at a certain level. And over time it can go and progress through multiple levels. Levels are essentially stages for that player. In order for them to advance to the next level, they have to complete something called quests. And quests are essentially tasks that they have to do. It could be something like killing a monster, solving a puzzle, saving somebody. And over time they get more and more experience, and they can quote-unquote level up. By completing quests, you get something called experience points. So each level usually has a certain number of quests so that you can advance forward. But there's also this concept in games of side quests. Side quests are different from main quests. They're not mandatory, they're optional, and basically they're created as a way for you to further explore the game, basically to interact with the digital world a little bit more. And they're also important because you actually oftentimes can gain a ton of experience by going on these side quests. So let's talk about a sample product manager, Questtree. Questtrees are created for games that have lots of different quests and lots of different side quests. It helps you map out overall how does the game look. So for this one, I'll just use myself as an example. And again, all this is illustrative. But let's say there's four levels. The first is you're being a product manager. The second is around being a people leader. The third is if you're head of product or overseeing a whole suite or portfolio of products.  For each of these levels, there's a set of quests that you need to complete before you advance to the next one. So for example, you probably cannot be considered someone who has mastery as a people leader if you haven't created a development plan or if you haven't completed a performance review. You probably can't be considered a thought leader if you haven't published any original research. On the right side, we have side quests or things that are not necessarily tied to your job, not necessarily said that it gets you to the next level, but they're equally important. So examples of side quests can be participating in a hackathon. So working on a problem space that's different from your day to day one.  So third, you have to assess your stats. Stats, again, like all things in games can get quite complex and there's a lot of different terms for it. Sometimes they're called skills, sometimes powers, sometimes talents, but I'll try to use a fairly simple example to take you all through it. Because we all love Pokemon, we'll use the example of Pokemon. So here we have a character, Bulbasaur, and we have Dragonite. So when it comes to player stats, there are certain things that are intrinsic to the player and we call those attributes, things that are natural and just kind of come naturally with them. And second, we have things called skills. These are learned abilities that you gain as you get more and more experiences. So looking at Bulbasaur, we can see that some of his natural attributes are his ability to vine whip, while Dragonite's natural abilities include his ability to drag and tail. But they also have some common elements that we evaluate them against in terms of skills.  And you can see it looking at this kind of spider chart where they fall across each of these different areas. So each character has a different set of innate abilities that are special to it, and it has different skills that they get evaluated on. And as you go through the game, this changes over time. When it comes to PM skills, there are tons and tons of scorecards, matrixes out there. Plenty of them have been published on Medium. Your companies probably have some as well. But this is one that is illustrative again. But what I want to stress here is that in order for you to figure out where you want to go, you need to figure out what are the competencies that are necessary, and what's the proficiency at each of these levels. So what you need to be a product manager is going to be different from what you need to be a thought leader. Usually it's a progression where you have to achieve increasing mastery at each skill in order to be able to do this. And what I want to stress here is the importance of a rubic or benchmark to look against. The other thing I would say is, even though there are a lot of scorecards and matrices online, something that I like to do is calibrate it with people who I know are in these roles right now. Are they exhibiting the same levels that I'm seeing, or is it different? So that's just something that's super important. Next, let's kind of look at a character profile together and build on some of the things that we've talked about. We'll use myself as an example, with a little avatar there. The first thing I'd say is, let's figure out what my epic mission is. So I'll put that up there again. Second, what are some of my attributes? So in terms of advantages, I'm a connector. I love connecting with other folks, connecting folks to each other. I have a lot of curiosity, and I like to think that I have a lot of integrity. Disadvantages, just like any good PM, I have lots of bouts of imposter syndrome. I get hyper-focused on things, and I get a lot of high-stubborn. If I were to evaluate my skills against the scorecard prior, it would probably look a little bit like this, which puts me as a Level 3 ahead of product, which is fortunate, because that is what my role is today. So I'm qualified for it. And if you look at this, if I want to move up to the next level, one of the things that I need to work on is my public speaking. Therefore, I might go on some quests to actually gain those public speaking skills. So this is why, again, I am here today, and you are all helping me level up in this area. Another area that I like to include is achievements. You all know, as I mentioned earlier, I like flair and badges. So for this example, I show what kind of different emojis or icons I can use for different certificates that I've gained or different products I've managed or different talks that I've given.  The first is that this is for you. It's not for a hiring manager. It's not for a recruiter. This is personal to yourself. So with that being said, you should be honest in it. You should not be exaggerating things because you're using it. You kind of know yourself best. So stick to the facts. Be candid about it. The second is because it's for yourself, make it personal, make it fun. If you guys want this template, I'm happy to share it, but there are probably other templates that you can create so that you can really show your skillset the best. And the third thing I would say is, unlike your resume that only gets updated every time you look for a new job, this should be something that you look at consistently, you consistently update as you go on more quests, as you improve your skills and as you power up. So the last thing is around playing co-op. So Singer Player Games was a lot of where the industry was for a long time, but then the concept of multiplayer came in. And with the pandemic, as well as a lot of technological advances, we've seen more and more multiplayer games. So playing co-op means to play cooperatively. That means it's not just you in the game. That means that there are other characters as well that you can interact with. And there are a lot of benefits to playing co-op that I'll talk about. So when you play co-op in games, again, these RPG games has this idea of classes. I'll use the game Lost Ark as an example, also an Amazon plug for one of our games. But basically in Lost Ark, there's these different classes that you can choose to play in terms of the character you choose. There are some characters that are called warriors. They have a ton of brute force. They're physically really strong. Then there are other characters called mages. Basically, what they have is the ability to heal. They have the ability to cast spells. And we have martial artists who are really speedy and have great agility. So you might choose the one that speaks to you the most, but you also want to create a cohort or a team of folks to have these different skill sets so that you can do things together.  You can achieve so much more because it's not just yourself. So in terms of the worlds that you're conquering, the monsters that you're fighting, they get that much bigger. And that's why a lot of folks like to play co-op. So some tips in terms of how to play co-op in your career. There is the obvious group of folks that you have. I think Jose talked about the three amigos, the product, tech, and design. But that's just one area. I would say that you should definitely look at other areas where you can find players to kind of team up with. You can do things like meetups, look at Slack channels, join affinity groups. You should also look at recruiting some diverse skills. One of the reasons why people love playing co-op is because it can complement your skill set or it can amplify your skill set. Another thing to consider is playing with different people across different levels.  And finally, the most important piece is, what is your shared vision? It's really hard to get behind or play co-op if you don't have a shared vision around things. And in terms of sample group quests that are super epic or especially epic when you do it in a group, these can include things like brainstorming. Brainstorming is the best application of playing co-op because diverse opinions coming together will lead to better ideas. So design sprints, hackathons, idea thons, great ways to play co-op. And when it comes to building things, sure, you can do certain things on your own, but if you do it with other people, it can become that much more impactful and you can also de-risk. So that's why you see so many times co-founders or co-authors of things like books and companies. All right, so again, I know that we have about a couple of minutes before we hit lunchtime, but I did want to leave you all with some key takeaways. The first is that the games industry is huge. It's growing. Anyone can be a gamer. Even if you're not a gamer, I would encourage you to look to this industry for learning. There's a lot of great things going on. The second is that gamification is not just about tactics or mechanics. It's about understanding motivations, figuring out what's most important and then optimizing for that by applying those techniques. And the third is to gamify your career. You have to remember, again, that you're the main character, that you're the key player. This career is for yourself. You should define your own version of an epic mission. You should write it down. You should break it down into where the levels, where the quests, and go on those side quests to get additional learnings. You should assess your stats, be honest about them, track them, and figure out how you're progressing over time. And the fourth is play co-op, find others, and have fun. Thank you all.


I feel great. I think the last couple of weeks, I'm really just looking forward to and working on just really trying to get the ball in the air a little bit more. I've hit a couple of doubles that have been in the gaps on good pitches. But as right now I feel really good at the plate. I feel like I'm seeing the ball well and I'm just trying to get more swings off. I feel like for the last two weeks I'm probably gonna start being a little bit more aggressive and try to get to to really get some swings off of some good pitches. And Boone talked the other day about how he likes you in that free-hole. How comfortable are you there? I know you did it a lot. You've done it a lot in the past. But how was your comfort level there? I'm super comfortable there. I understand what the job needs. I know that I can do both, you know, a hit for power and also get on base. So, and especially in our lineup with the four guys that I'm around, I think that combination is pretty good. Next question goes to Brendan Cuddy. Brendan, please unmute. Aaron, thanks for taking the time this afternoon. We've asked you a lot about this, but just what's the situation with the elbow? How does it feel? Where's it at right now? I mean, it's good. It feels really good right now. I just went three games in a row and it felt great. You know, yesterday I woke up in the morning feeling completely fine. So, you know, that was the big test for this year. And it's been going really well. Hey man, no driving and talking. Brendan, do you have a follow up? Next question goes to Sweeney Murdy. Sweeney, please unmute. How about sitting in your office and talking? Is that okay? That's good. He's not very bright anyway. I'm just kidding. When you think about, you talk about the lineup, how much does the first inning have an impact when you're talking about trying to go after a starter? You know, the guys at the top of the order and the ability to throw 20, 25 pitches on a guy right in that very first inning. Is that something you guys talk about a lot as kind of a jumping off point? Definitely. I mean, especially when the top of the lineup is attacking the pitcher right off the jump. It's definitely tough for a guy for a pitcher to kind of get comfortable. I feel like when you take first pitch pitches right down the middle, it kind of lets them be comfortable.  It kind of puts a little bit more pressure on pitchers. I feel like the first four batters for sure are definitely trying to go up there and do damage right from the jump. So, you know, it's very key for the top of the order to get going fast because they just set up everything for the rest of the lineup. Is that me? I don't know if this happens or not, Aaron. Do you four talk about it together as, okay, well, he does this to me. I'm going to do this. I mean, is it a kind of a group discussion about attacking that night's starter in the first inning? I mean, obviously, you know, I'm the only left in the first four. So, you know, they definitely talk to each other about the way they might get approached. And it's definitely something that we discussed during our hitters' meeting and pretty much how the first inning, how they think it might go. You know, Marcus and PJ definitely do a great job with getting us prepared and ready for the game and the starter that we're about to face. So, I feel like the conversations are definitely going on, especially throughout the game and especially in the first inning. It's kind of the only part of a game you can game plan for, right? I mean, everything else kind of changes after that score, pitchers, everything. This is really the only chance you have to, kind of like, whether it's a football type of game plan, that's the only time you have to implement. Yeah, definitely. I mean, you know, it's the only time that we can actually prepare for it because we know for sure who's pitching. So, yeah, definitely.