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The thing is though, it's like everything I saw him doing in accomplishing though, I loved it. But then bro, as soon as I stopped thinking about that thing and I go back to my reality look, it's like I'm on my one. I tell you something about it was weird man seeing this, the changes. His back was straight out, his chin was high, his shoes were shinier. When he came back here, he would come on like the weekend leaves and that. But he had his own family going on, we wouldn't see him every weekend. So when we did though, yeah, I remember one occasion, this always sticks with me. You probably remember this. He came and he said to me, yo, who'd you been chilling with? And I was like, no one still. He was like, you don't chill with no one. This is why he's asked me. I said, man, mind you, I'm a very well known person bro. I could make two calls.  He's asked me this bro, and I'm like, I actually don't want to chill with anyone. Truth be told bro, I didn't want to chill with no one after he went to the army. I'm good, I got it by myself then.  I became way more withdrawn.   It's not the same as when you're in prison, you're sitting in a cell. Even though you got a lot of time to think, it's still not the same because it's condensed.  And probably you going to the army has probably saved your life. You, the man with that. What you were going to be found with when they threw the gun away and the man stuck him in. We spoke about it earlier.  And then that ends up affecting you again.  Life, what's the mysterious ways? I can see you as free talking in schools. I can see you as free change in lives. It's funny, you know, because I should do some of that stuff now. Yeah, I do. I don't really speak about my philanthropy. I pronounce that right, philanthropy. And what's that? Basically, my giving back to the community. I want to go give little talks to the schools and trouble some kids and the kids who are on the verge of ending up in that street life or doing some serious crime, or people that have just come out from doing crimes but they've still got a chance to turn their life around. And I do often, I go into certain places, certain centres, certain schools and I try to talk to those guys. It's good for them to have somebody who's got lived experience because I've been there, bro. I try to explain to these kids every single thing we can imagine going through. I've done it. And I'm not just saying that. I mean, I've done it, do you know what I mean? Sometimes you get through to some. Sometimes you don't. You have to learn the hard way. But there's a couple of guys that I can get through to and change their life and change their path. My job is done, man. I'm talking my son over there.  It's every week.  Because whenever I hear it's really close to home. So I just call him to see if he's okay. And it turns out that, you know, one of the guys, well, he's friends with all of them. There's one of the guys who went to school with the other guys, he's friends with him.   I say to him, son, please, please don't hang around with these guys. I understand that you're friends, but please don't put me in a situation where I feel like I need to involve myself. And I don't know if my son's ever understood what that means. You know what I mean? It probably does now. Do you know what I mean?  But it's because I know the lengths I will go to for a personal love. I've done it for him. And I would do it in a heartbeat for my charge, you know what I mean? And we ain't even mentioned none of the occasions that were just quick. Like something happened and the person just got their teeth punched out real quick or something. We ain't even mentioned none of those occasions together. We've only, we just, you know what I'm saying? You hold a lot of emotion, Mike. So I do, I can see you hold your heart in your sleeve. Like I see you feel as if you're always wanting to cry. Like because I think you feel the pain in the past. Yeah, sometimes that does happen, man. It does happen. It does. Some of it, some of it. Do you know what I mean? I live, somebody saw me one time. He got sad eyes, Mike. I was like, it's probably because I've been punched in both of them. You know what I mean? You know what I mean? But yeah, man. There's a lot of regret, man. Like I said, a lot of responsibility.  Even with my sister.  That's another story.  And the show. Absolutely crazy. Bro, she's down the minute. She's wanted. She's wanted though. She's wanted. She's wanted to get her on, mate. Police have come. Police have come. I don't even know what you're talking about. That's not it, bro. You know what I mean? And the thing is, you see where my sister is over, bro. It's mad, yeah. Because she don't understand how much she has that she could give back. She doesn't. She doesn't even understand the potential. None of a bro. Like, she, if she just got to a certain place, she'd have so much. But I feel that with news three also. I feel that with news three. So you're seeing your sister, I see news three. I see goodness. I see kindness. I see loyalty. Strength. But also see pieces there that are also broken. Yeah, man. And we're trying to, like we said, man. We're from an environment where we were never, we were never taught to get those pieces fixed. Do you know what I mean? But as times have changed, man. We've been taught to crack on with it exactly.  That's where you're going to heal. It's talking about it. I'll tell you something. One thing about my sister, I've always said. I'm glad she wasn't born a guy, man. She's the worst in all of her mind. She's the same to him. Like she's done more job than all of us. She's worst in the soul, man. If she was ever a man. I'm just so glad she is. Do you know what I mean? She's shirting would be wild. Wild. How hard is that? The like chasmises and bofties when people are messing. And it's been nuts to meet them. I mean the first Christmas that we've had together in about 10 years was last year. Was we all together? We were all together, bro. Was it either Christmas? Where? What? Mum? Yeah. We were all there? Nah, bro. No, it wasn't, bro. You was there, bro? Nah, bro. Didn't I come earlier? I didn't see you. Yeah, but you were there? Nah, nah. You didn't see me there. Leave. This is how serious it is. We were all together. We were all there together. Factual. The last time we were all together was in Zion. In Zion Bar, bro. When I took the picture. I got the picture on my Instagram right now. 2016. 2016 I was gone. You know what I'm talking about, bro? Yeah, I know what you're talking about. Your birthday. Was it my birthday? That wasn't my birthday. Oh, that was one of my afterpipes for my fights. Was it afterpipes? Every time I have a fight, it's my afterpipes.  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where is the walks out come? I will, man. I was meant to be fighting in July. Yo, you know the song? Dan Toes, yeah. He's got that brand now in all the watches. Darren Toes? Yeah, sorry. Darren Toes is meant to be coming to visit in our gym. I'm like, man. What's his name? What's his name? Yeah, man. Tom Ashburn on I'm as me, am I? Well, I am. And Andy Clamp as well from Down In Parts. But what was I saying then? What was I saying? After my fight. So I was meant to be fighting in July. And that's last time as well. And it just clashed a couple of things that I was doing. And I couldn't, I can't commit the time to training.  So I want to, you know, apply myself and have the proper kind of camp and mind frame for it. You know what I'm saying? So maybe about September. How do you feel after that camp? Do you feel more at peace when you're training hard?   What are the plans for the three? He's then moving forward for the future. What about you, Zehle Shake?  And I was just kind of finding myself, you know what I mean?  Then the opportunity arose with my guide. My guide, I actually met through being in jail and he started his own company in his business. And we've just started bumping heads and we're just trying to push that forward. So at the minute what we're doing is we actually deliver high education and careers education to schools and young people and stuff. So that's kind of like the focus at the minute. But really what I'm focusing on at the minute is just giving back and just developing on myself. You know what I mean? Because at the minute, just like you've been hearing, it's like we're kind of on a roll to self-discovery on it. And it's a beautiful thing. Which we never kind of really looked at. I don't think none of us have really delved deep into ourselves and said, yo, who am I, bro? Like what am I supposed to be here for? You know what I mean? Like what's my destiny? What am I supposed to be? And I always feel like you need to give back. You know what I mean? So as much as you want to take and gain, you need to be given back along your journey. You know what I mean? But then again, use of get books in, use of get documentaries, possibly films. The world is yours.  It's as simple as that. What about yourself, Grilla? I've spoken earlier about where we going. How do you feel about listening to your brothers, first of all?   You know what I'm saying? So, for me bro, this communication right here, this is fucking, this is like, to me this is coming like therapy bro.  A little brother likes to talk. I know, I know. I know, I know. I know. I don't know. I feel like, you feel like the way my brother was breaking it down, man. It's always whatever your journey is, bro. You have to be given back along that way.  I feel like stuff goes very smooth bro when you see a lot at the end. When you're doing your journey or giving it the same time, you know what I'm saying?  I've got my finger in so many pies right now.   I've achieved quite a lot and I'm still training with real high level guys. I've just got a new management deal, new management company Kings, so they're helping me with the stages of my career. You know, there's some promotions on the table after my contract finishes with cage warriors, maybe better tour, maybe one FC, those kind of places. For me, we're fighting now, it's about big money fights and kind of just the final years of my career getting some dough, you know what I mean.  At the moment, I've got a business with a friend of mine, we're running a security company, RG8 facilities, that's what we're doing at the minute. We've got some clients, kind of nationwide, it's going okay at the minute. We'll leave all the links in the description. I mean, he hasn't even spoke about any of the security stuff, that's a whole different ball game in January because he's like a personal hardman.  We haven't scratched the surface man, that's what we're good to do. I'm going to get these all on separately again so we can connect, but this is more a join the all three brothers, try to get this on the freeze. I was lucky enough because I've just been known as a hard man of the city, I've been able to get a lot of opportunities within the security sector and close protection and shit, looking after celebrities and stuff, so I've got that aspect of the company that we're dealing with. I've also started to make the transition into acting, so from the fighting the sports personality into actually stage and movies, that's coming on right now.  For me, I'm a person, I was talking to my brother about this in the car, I get something in my head, I'm like okay, I'm going to do it, I'll just do it. If it fails a few times, I don't give a shit, I'm going to keep trying to do it until we figure out the best way to do it. Look at the guy that she films on that as well, do you know what I mean?   Get up and do it.  You know where I got this mentality from as well. I have the big up brother named Cypher from Birmingham, real humble brother, pioneer who always sought to do us well, our best intentions at heart. When my brother was in hospital trying to, was the shell of the man after being recovered from those stab wounds, Cypher was bringing him food every day. He didn't break this down to me. It wasn't even though he was just bringing the food, this keeps bringing crates of stuff over there. My mum was amazed by when she was seeing him doing all this behind you. This guy is much older than me, because he's much older than me. He's an elder for me. Proper, you know when you say elder bro, he really is. This guy ain't one of those ones where he just demands the title. Like bro, he plays his position. This guy is that elder. The first time I even recorded a music room bro was him saying he had a big studio at the time. People all different types of artists bro will go there from around the world bro and go to the studio and enjoy the choir. This guy gave me the keys bro, showed me on the computer. This is how you do this. I got a lot of love for Cypher. Where from, you hear the term, I'll bust my gun for that person.  I'd go to jail for that person. I'd do anything for that person. We've literally been there. Cypher was a very humble man. He's one of the pioneers from the music industry. He was part of a group called Moorish Delta 7. I say all that to say this. I remember one day, if you see Cypher where he was to where he is now. You can see he's a just get up and do it kind of guy. I remember something very simple that happened to me. At the time I didn't drive, we're talking the early 2000s, maybe 2005, 2006. I wasn't driving at the time and he was saying, do you drive? I can't remember why he even asked me. I was like, not yet man, I have to learn how to drive. He was like, just get in a car and drive.  I can't just get in a car.  You want to get arrested? What would you want me to do? What I realized was, it was symbolic. It was a metaphor, what he was saying.  Just go and do it. And that's what he meant. And that stuck with me in my head to this very day. Every day I think to myself, just get in a car and drive. And so anytime I have an idea or endeavor that I want to do, I just get up and do it. And that's how I live. And if anybody else hears this, I hope that they can just think the same way. Do you know what I mean? Do you did it? Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Right now, you've thought you saw it.  Do you know what I mean? For anybody watching that's in the battle, maybe it's in prison, maybe it's going through, especially Burma, and all the shit that's happening on the streets, what are the bad men, what advice would you give for them? Talk to the people that have been through already. I can guarantee you it's not all glitz and glimmer. I guarantee you that it's not all glitz and gamma. And those people will have some advice to tell you that will definitely change your mind about a lot of things. I was going to say, I've told a lot of the young guys that I deal with now and even some of the active young guys even when I was in jail and I'm talking to guys and it's kind of funny because as much as I see some of these oldies, I used to look up to them anyway at least, and I realised no one's given any of these guys any good information, man.  The truth is this, you're going to be fighting for a postcode, fighting for whoever or saying that these guys are your ups, your enemies, literally killing each other, bro. They're acquiring wealth to buy weapons, bro. Kill dudes that Snowfall would have owned their mum so happened to get given a council house that she probably barely can pay rent for in the area and now you're saying you want to kill that you because he's from that area, bro.  You don't own the house, bro.  So I say, I say, stop listening to this fakeness that's out there, bro.  Keep it real to yourself. Be honest with yourself, see being real and this is what a lot of people get mixed up. They think being real is by being on the road or being violent or selling drugs or whatever it is, bro. It's just about being real to yourself. So when that guy comes up to you and says, yo, yo, roll with me, let's just go out of town and start selling some, you know, some faken coke or whatever, make loads of dope or whatever. Bro, you was going to college, be real to yourself, say actually, no, I want to go college, bro, and do that. Say actually, nah, I don't want to go and stab that geezer because he comes from some different area. Be real to yourself and say, you know what, actually, I'm not about that, like, you feel me. Like just be real and be honest with yourself. You know what I mean? How about you again? Well, it's a bit of the same thing, you know. It's a bit of the same thing, man. I feel like it's important understanding who you are and staying just true to that, man.   Had you already pointed it out, bro? We would have been to these spots ages ago, but instead we went about this completely different, you know what I'm saying, and we've had to go through a whole bunch of just heartache, deaths, this, that, bro. You name it, bro, jail, whatever the fuck, bro. It ain't even just he went through it, bro, we've all been through it. You know what I'm saying, so it's like, you definitely don't need to go about it that way. You can definitely have it easier, you know what I'm saying.  Lads, thank you. Absolute pleasure, good luck with the fights. Grill that again, big man. Absolute listen lads, I'm going to get you on again though. Separately part two again, and we'll shoot this shit, we'll go on deeper, I think people will get a lot from this conversation. It's powerful, it's deep. I think use free need to work on a lot of stuff and open up with your father, your mum, whatever. If I'm not going to see me now, then you're right, you know it.   But lads, absolute phenomenal man. Thank you very much man, take care. 100% cheers.


So, I titled this talk before I knew the unofficial theme of the conference was empathy. So I'm glad I fit in and I'm not actually going to talk explicitly about empathy but more kind of about my journey throughout kind of the programming world and how it's kind of ended up in the last five years or so with me working pretty much exclusively on documentation and both community and tooling around that stuff. And so kind of the beginning of this starts out about seven years ago I was just about to graduate university and I was writing Pearl for the military and myself and I think a lot of people in this room probably that's not the most kind of congruent activity that I could have been using my time for and it was one it was working for the military but two it was you know this tech culture where there was no documentation no tests no virgin control it was just a bunch of people that had been coming out of the same university and just kind of writing code kind of in a very cowboy style and so I was like okay I need to I've been dabbling in open source and I was like I need to do something that's more kind of what I want to be doing and so I started looking around and I kind of found Python and Django and I actually downloaded the Django documentation as a PDF and I went on Thanksgiving break my senior year and pretty much read the whole thing over that break and I was just so amazed that this document was both teaching me Python was teaching me Django but it was also teaching me kind of web development and best practices all at the same time this was a really really amazing thing and I really kind of fell in love with Django at that point and actually this most amazing serendipity kind of happened you know that the next the beginning of that year I started looking for jobs and I actually posted a blog post about looking for a job the day before Jacob who was the first speaker actually quit the job that he talked about being so transformative in the Django world and so it was just this amazing thing where I actually ended up kind of taking that job that he had given up and I just ended up going to Lawrence Kansas and I found myself in this this wonderful place that just had this documentation culture Django was started in newspaper one of the core people was a journalist you know it was just this amazing group of writers and there was there's this really this value of documentation both within the Django world but also kind of within the Python world as a general community and the best way I kind of like to think about this and explain that kind of touching a little bit on making things normal is that in the Python world people don't use projects they don't have documentation and I think that's starting to become more and more normal in the tech world as a whole but for a long time that's really been the case where you'll go to a project and the first thing people think is to look for documentation not tests not anything else and this leads to a to a community and a culture that really cares about this and so it kind of as an artifact of that I actually started writing documentation for my projects I was just kind of dabbling around an open source and actually wrote like a project that was only documentation as that was the only kind of thing right it was like how do you do this thing a set of documents and I just I have to give Jacob a lot of credit here because he's done an amazing work amount of work like making documentation and open source better his 2009 articles I think are still some of the most referenced writing on documentation that exists I think like Rust or one of these new languages actually like generates a new template of their docs that links to this piece if you haven't read it it's really really pretty amazing and also he gave a great talk at 2011 at PyCon really kind of if you like video over text going through some of these ideals and it was really really impressive that this community cared so much about this problem and so around this time actually created something called read the docs and this was built as a tool to kind of reduce the barriers to writing and publishing documentation so it's basically the like answer to how do I publish my documentation once I write it so I truly believe that you know every barrier that someone has to actually doing the task that needs to be done especially if they aren't that excited about doing it kind of in the first place is is you know you'll just drop the percentages of people that actually perform that task and so we were basically just a hosting and kind of building platform for documentation and this really solved a problem that I had I had you know a cron job running on a server somewhere that was pulling down my docs and building them and I'm like we have tools to solve this problem as web developers and that's really what we ended up building is it was just a commit hook that automatically pulls down your code builds documentation hosts it was very much a tool right it was there to solve a very specific problem and at this point I didn't really understand documentation at a very deep level I just was like oh I know I'm doing this thing and I want to have a tool that makes it easier and makes it better so this was around 2010 when this was created and the slight kind of or the site kind of slowly picked up steam over a few years and we just had this kind of tool that was used in the community but it didn't have any kind of community around it there was no kind of group of people there was not a lot of activity on the ticket track or anything like this so I think at that point in about 2013 we're up to about a million page views a week or four million a month mostly kind of in the Python world we're like all right we have all these users but why aren't they talking to each other and like a lot of people in the tech world the answer to that is get everybody in a room and they will talk to each other so write the docs is actually the documentation conference that I helped create in 2013 and so this actually happens down in Portland every year but we started out thinking was just gonna be this little 75 person you know regional event mostly for users of our software and it ended up the first year being 200 plus people and we kind of the way I like to think about it is we kind of threw a party for our friends and a bunch of other people just kind of showed up but they were all really really amazing and awesome people there's this whole kind of community of writers that exist within open source and software projects and enterprise as well that didn't really have a place that they felt was there their home you know a lot of open source projects have one or two people that care about documentation a lot of companies have one or two people whose job it is it's a very kind of a lonely view and profession and so we actually built a room that kind of brought everybody together and it's a very different feeling than a programming conference even though there are a good number of programmers there it's just a different kind of community and so this is actually the crystal ballroom last year we had about 350 people that got together and sat in a room for two and a half three days and talked about software documentation I think that's really really interesting because we invited really everyone that cared about documentation we weren't just like this is a programmers documentation conference there's not a conference for writers we were basically said if you care about documentation and you're in the software industry in some fashion come come to our event so we get you know we get writers we get programmers but we also get support people we get a lot of you know a few designers we get a lot of you know just just a spectrum really of people within the organization and within open source that care about this problem it really does lead to a much more interesting and diverse group of people and one of the things I've learned is the kind of documentation like attracts people who are empathetic which is really interesting because you have to kind of have that to be able to write documentation well and so my interactions with this community over the last few years have helped me kind of understand the documentation is more than a tool as a programmer it's really easy just to see kind of API references and tutorials and be like this is the sum of what documentation is as it exists in the world is how it applies to me but it's not that like in any way documentation as an abstract concept is a tool that they can teach understanding to people and empowers people to be good at their jobs it saves people time like it's an entirely different skill set than programming as well right like the act of writing and the act of communicating to people is totally different than the act of writing code in the act of writing tests and so I kind of understood the technical writers and people like this know how to make software understandable and I view this as kind of a distinct skill set from the skills that you know programmers and designers have and this has been really interesting because it's kind of over the last few years it's been really kind of heartwarming to see that kind of I do see more and more communities valuing documentation around the web I know Julia the language has some really interesting documentation go has Godoc which is mostly referenced but it's really kind of caught on within that culture and Rust as well has really really fantastic documentation really I think like kind of the new range of languages that are being built this is something that they do really care about and I think the culture is really starting to shift towards you know more people caring about documentation but I like to talk a little bit about kind of why it is that documentation doesn't get written and there's and this is something that I've kind of just started to think about the last few months is you know why why is it that people aren't writing documentation especially kind of programmers right like how do we get more programmers to care about this and why isn't it happening right now and kind of what I've been thinking more and more about is that coding and testing have incredibly objective results right like the type of person who's drawn into writing code is like drawn into that like you know I am gonna like meet the requirements I'm gonna write the tests I'm gonna like have a little box of provable goodness that like does the thing that needs to happen and like that is now done right that's not documentation works documentation is much more of an art than a science you know it is a skill it's a soft skill and it is really kind of something that's much harder for programmers to kind of feel good and feel like accomplished about right and if you this is something that I've really started doing kind of interestingly is I whenever I like run into people at like a conference or something I like say you know how's your documentation about a project right everybody nobody responds like it's amazing and we're so happy with it and like it's perfect right like like literally nobody feels this way about their documentation people feel this way about their code people feel this way about their test coverage but there's this amazing kind of guilt that I think most programmers have where they know their documentation isn't good people value it but they don't really have the tools and the skills necessary to actually make it good or even know when it's good right it's just this kind of nebulous thing they feel bad about but don't know how to actually do so this leads to putting it off right like nobody likes doing stuff they're bad at like it's just not what I'm when I'm gonna go work on an open source project I'm gonna go to the stuff I know how to do and I enjoy I'm not gonna go do the thing where I feel crappy and like it's like I'm just gonna write words and do stuff and so I think this is one of the like fundamental problems is we have kind of there's this a barrier writing documentation with tools there's also kind of a mental barrier and a skill set barrier around how to write documentation just as a whole in the industry and if you think I'm wrong I would love for you to tell me how people are doing this and thinking about it because I've been looking for a long time and I haven't found it things like best practices things like you know there's a few templates and things like that there's these things don't exist as far as I can tell like there's some amount of tribal knowledge that exists within the writers but within the programming community like there's no I don't think anyone knows how to do this like nobody knows how to do this well and that's really bad like you need to have a way for people to feel proficient at something so they actually will go and do it and feel confident and proud of their work and really kind of have a positive feedback loop you know around the act that they're actually doing and so the other part of this I'd like to talk about is just kind of why does it matter right like why is documentation something that I've spent a large amount of my professional life working on and and why is it something that I think is is actually important this is where I think a lot of the empathy comes in is that we all have an amazing amount of knowledge that we could share with people and actually you know like bring them into our worlds and into our communities we're all incredibly talented and amazing people if we write that down and kind of make it more accessible to more people it really does just build a better and more interesting and understanding kind of tech community my favorite kind of explanation of this is you don't want a community full of people who don't read documentation right like what is what is this community look like right like who is this person they're like all right no docs I'm just gonna do it I'm gonna like charge through I'm like type a I'm gonna do this now it's a write a passage right like now you have to do it too we don't have docs because we don't need docs you know like it's it breeds this really insidious culture you know with people who don't value their time and people who don't value their time don't sure as hell don't value your time and so you just end up with these really really kind of awful communities documentation really is outreach right there's all these code schools that exist these days they're like we're gonna do 90 days we're gonna do six months we're gonna have like 40 hours like full-on training then you just like kick them out into the world and it's like hey go use a bunch of software that nobody knows how to use that's undocumented and good luck I'm sorry you know like like I really view documentation as kind of the it is the onboarding it is it is everything it is the UX of your software and if you don't have good documentation which none of us have like it's it's actively repelling people from interacting with your software and becoming developers and actually getting into this community because it is so much about like how we actually use interactive software is through documentation and so read the docs has a user from every single country in the world every month and they're not all white and they don't all speak English 60% of the users that we get these days we get about 15 million page views a month 60% of those have English as their preferred language in their browser so that means 40% of those users would prefer to be reading that documentation in a different language and so this is something that if you've done much travel you've kind of come across this this language barrier right where interacting with someone in person is incredibly intimidating if you don't know the language or you're not sure or you're just like unconfident in your abilities and if you don't write things down and people then have to go interact with the community right like as a as a developer I'm like oh if it's not in the docs I'll just file a file a bug report no like interact with them and then you know we'll solve their problem but like that actual interaction in writing English in a bug report on GitHub can be incredibly intimidating for so many people and when you actually write stuff down as documentation it can be translated right like there's no artifact to translate if you don't have the documentation in the first place so this is incredibly important for kind of bridging out to other languages and other cultures is you know the act of writing something down makes it much more you know you can pass it around it's less intimidating people can read it at their own pace they don't have to interact it can be translated it's it's this really really important step to kind of broadening you know what the programming community looks like and so I I view my kind of existence and and the reason I ended up in this open-source crazy world of ours as one that is really primarily based around documentation and I truly believe that for most people documentation plays a much larger part of that journey than anyone really thinks about on a day-to-day basis so every piece of documentation you write you know you may learn somebody else like may learn and use that as on their path to learning how to code I might help them graduate from college right like might help them get their first job after a code school right like it's it's really hard to know how these artifacts are actually existing in the world but all of these things happen every day with the software we use and documentation that we write and so this was actually best kind of summed up to me at a at Picon a few years ago who was someone who was kind of new to the community and she said you know I can't say that I'm self-taught I've been taught by the people who wrote the documentation and so if this is something that's interesting to you write the docs and read the docs or the projects that that I work on personally and I think this is something that is really kind of important and undervalued in open-source as well as just the software community as a whole so thank you for your time and I'll be around the conference if you have questions or thoughts


I wonder if these handheld mics work? Yeah. Fantastic. Hi. So my name is Natanya Malin-Gazik. I work with all different kinds of companies and organizations on issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion. You see the logos on here, the organizations that I've worked with range quite a bit. I do work quite a bit with early stage and mid-sized tech startups. So have some familiarity working with engineers. The thing that all of these organizations have in common is very strong and often, I would call them beautiful, intentions or values around diversity, equity, and inclusion and some curiosity about where they might be hitting the mark or missing the mark in terms of living those values every day. So I come in and help organizations figure out where they're hitting the mark and where they could be, maybe some room to grow, and then bridge that gap together. So what are we going to talk about today? For the next 20, 25 minutes or so, I'm hoping to answer or start to answer at least two questions for you. The first is, what are we talking about when we talk about diversity, equity, and inclusion? We'll go through some basic vocabulary words together that hopefully will help us be able to have these conversations a little bit more productively together and in our offices. And the second is, what can I do about it? So when you leave this room, when you get back to work on Monday, what are some things that you can actually do in your organizations to help your organizations live their values? So let's jump in. Let's talk about some vocabulary words. I think when we hear vocabulary words, sometimes we think about vocabulary tests that we know quiz at the end of this conversation. And I'm actually not particularly concerned about whether you memorize definitions to these words. I'm really interested in you walking away with an understanding of how these words are related to one another and why it's important to look at them in combination and not in isolation. So let's think about the relationships between the words and not necessarily focus on making sure we memorize the exact definitions of the words themselves. I like to think about diversity, equity, and inclusion as a dance party. So diversity inviting somebody to come to the dance, inclusion actually asking them to dance with you once they're there. These are outcomes. You either have lots of different kinds of people at the dance or you don't. You either have lots of different kinds of people dancing at the dance or you don't. Equity are the processes, not the outcomes, that we use to actually make sure people are able to get to the dance, people are actually able to dance once they're there and feel comfortable doing so. So equity is thinking about things like, does somebody have a ride to get there in the first place? Is there music playing that not only makes people not uncomfortable, but actually makes them excited to get on the dance floor? What does the lighting look like? What kind of food is being inserted? What's the environment? Do people feel comfortable there so that they can feel included? Let's jump into what that actually means at work. When we talk about diversity, we're usually talking about demographics when we talk about our staff. Is there the presence of difference inside of our organizations? I want to take a pause there and think about the fact that diversity actually only exists in relationship to a group. So if you walk away from this talk with just one thing today, I really hope it's that we stop using the term diverse candidate. Usually when we say the term diverse candidate, we actually mean something else. Well, you might mean this person as a woman. This person is a person of color. This person identifies with the LGBTQ community. If that's what we mean, then that's what we need to say. Being more precise with our language actually helps us achieve the outcomes that we want to achieve. When we're talking about diversity, we're talking about a group of people. And if we're trying to bring more underrepresented folks into our workplaces, let's talk about the groups that exist in our workplaces and the groups that don't. So diversity is the presence of difference in a group. I'm diverse only to the extent that I have a lot of diverse organisms inside of my body. But my femaleness doesn't make me a diverse person, right? That's not a thing. And we're talking about equity. So equity are these processes, right? Equity is the presence of fairness inside an organization. And the process is the systems that we implement to try to create a level playing field, which in this field we recognize actually doesn't exist in society at large. And so because people aren't starting from a level playing field, none of us are. It's important to think about the equitable processes that we put in place inside of our organizations to create that sense of fairness. If we do that, then we might start to see a sense of inclusion, where we're actually bringing individuals in as part of a group. We're involving them meaningfully in the processes that we have going on at work in decision making, there's a sharing of power. And we think about that especially when it comes to underrepresented groups who often are less included, even if they are present. And if we put all of these things in place, then individuals might start feeling a sense of belonging at work. This has become kind of a sexy word lately to talk about belonging. Let's think about what it actually means. We often feel a sense of belonging when we're part of a homogenous group. When we sense a lot of sameness around us. So if you think about a time when you have felt belonging, it might be with your family.  You're not having to put a ton of effort into fitting into cultural norms. When we do, when we feel different from other people around us, we're having to actually spend what turns out to be quite a bit of mental and emotional energy to fit in. And that at work takes away from our ability to actually be productive. So what's the point of having a hugely diverse organization? If the folks who you brought in, who are part of underrepresented groups, are having to spend so much of their energy to fit in and to feel like they might kind of sort of maybe belong. That they actually don't have a ton of time left over to put mental energy into their work.  You'll see I have an equation on the side of the screen. This isn't like a perfect mathematical equation. But what it's meant to represent is the fact that we need to have the presence of all of these things. When we have diversity, we need equity and inclusion in order for everybody to feel that sense of belonging. What you will notice though is that it's quite possible to have diversity without having equity, inclusion, or belonging. It's also quite possible to have a sense of belonging or a sense of inclusion without any diversity at all. That's quite common when you hear especially in tech, people talk about what an amazing culture their company has, how included they feel at work, what a great sense of camaraderie there is among their peers. Do you look at the demographics of those organizations? You're often looking at pretty homogenous organizations. Where I get really excited is when we see the achievement of, there's tons of diversity here, and we're boasting about our culture. And even folks, especially folks from underrepresented groups, are also boasting about the culture, not something to pay attention to. So that's it for the vocabulary lesson. I hope that gives you enough of a foundation to be able to start thinking about these concepts a little bit more productively. I'm going to move on now to what we can actually do about it when we get to work. So diversity and inclusion outcomes, equity process. I'm dividing this up into the phases of the employee life cycle. Just because it's a little bit of an easier way to think about processes in somewhat of an order. And I'm going to start with selection, so hiring. Quick show of hands, raise your hand for me if you're all engineers in tech. So if you have been part of an organization, part of a hiring process, part of a, maybe you've been interviewing or you've been thinking about hiring new people, and you've heard somebody mention the phrase or you've thought to yourself, we really like more diversity inside of this organization. We'd like to hire more women, more people of color, fill in the blank. But we're not finding enough qualified candidates in our field. We don't have enough folks in engineering with the identities. If you've heard that comment, if you've thought it yourself, yeah. So this is something that a lot of my clients come to me with, and I will tell you a little bit of a story about what I have done to help with that. And the kinds of things that you might bring up to your organizations. Next time you hear that. I'm throwing a bunch of tactics on the slide for you. I'm not going to walk you through each of these. It would be a little bit boring. Please feel free to write them down and Google them. And you should find tons of information about each of these. I'm going to walk you through an example instead. Hopefully a little bit more interesting. I had a client come to me last year, early stage tech startup, hiring engineers. Actually, fluency and post-dress was a very important criteria for those engineers. And what they were saying to me was, Natanya, diversity is a core value for us. We mean that, we live it, it's really important. And our engineering team is entirely bailed. And that, visually, is not a representation of what our values are. And also it doesn't feel right to us. Can you please help us find more qualified female engineers? And I said, I would be happy to try to help you with that. But actually, what we need to figure out is why you're having this problem in the first place. And why it is that this is the hypothesis that you've developed is that you don't have enough women on your engineering team because there aren't enough qualified female engineers. Certainly that's true. There are great programs like Girls Who Code who are working to bring more women into the field. But there are quite a few women in this field. So why are they applying to your roles and why aren't you hiring them? The first thing that we did was think about their networking. So it turns out that we tend to hire from the groups that we know. When we're working in tech, we're often in fast-growing organizations. We need to hire somebody yesterday, and so we reach out to our networks. And because we're human beings, we tend to network with people who look like us, who think like us, who have things in common with us. That doesn't make us evil people. That's really, really normal. But what that means is that we need to have some awareness of that and start building our networks a little bit more thoughtfully. So I help this organization build relationships with organizations where women in tech tend to gather. Organizations like Women Who Code where we can post, not only post our job descriptions on their site, but also ask them, what does a meaningful partnership look like for you? What do you need right now? How can we build a relationship for the long term so that the next time we need more engineers, we already have an existing relationship. And the thing that we can do in a hurry is actually reach out to the people we know who are you and start seeing who you have in the organization who we can hire. So thoughtful networking. We then looked at their job description. So there's great platforms out there. Techsteo is one of my favorites. It's been a nice free trial if you want to pop in there today. Techsteo and other platforms like it allow you to put your job descriptions in a website and it pops up for you, shows you what language you might be using that might actually be attracting candidates with certain demographics. So in particular for this organization, we looked at language that might be more attractive to male candidates instead of female candidates. That's a really nice and simple way, pretty straightforward, to help make sure that our job descriptions are not part of the problem. Blind resume reviews. So we took names off of resumes. We took names of schools off of resumes. This is a great way to make sure that our unconscious biases, which is a whole other workshop, aren't playing a bigger role in our candidate selection process than we would like them to when we're thinking with our sound and calm minds.  So what a structured interview does is make sure that we're assessing every candidate in the same way every time. This is really important because it turns out that as human beings we have different comfort levels with different kinds of human beings. Really normal. Doesn't make us bad people. It's just part of being human. And we have a structured interview process. What we're doing is making sure that the unconscious biases that play a role in that comfort level aren't what's dictating who we're bringing into our organization and who we're not. So we look at the business objectives for an organization, take a lot of steps to end up determining what questions we're gonna ask in the interview and how we're assessing a candidate the same way every time based on their answers to those questions. We then talked about eliminating negotiations. So I worked with them in the offer extension process. It turns out that eliminating negotiations is a really excellent way to start chipping away at the pay equity gap between men and women. And one of the challenges that they were having was that they actually had extended some offers to women and they declined. And so we needed to figure out ways to signal to those women, hey, even though you don't see any other women on this engineering team, we are taking meaningful steps to make sure we have equitable processes in the organization. And so that's one of them. We went through all of those steps and we did see more women start to come through and make more progress in the candidate selection process. And we still saw some women declining the offers. And so what we did then was move on to thinking about why might they be doing that? Well, they might be picking up on some things that give them some hints at what the environment might be like inside the organization. It's also very normal to not want to join a group where we have a visual signal that we might be the only one inside of that group. That means we're gonna have to spend a lot of mental and emotional energy once we get into that organization, doing things that aren't what we're being paid to do or what we're gonna be evaluated based on. Whoops. I'm gonna walk you through an exercise if someone can come up and help me. Oh, there we go, perfect. So we then moved on to looking at retention and promotion practices, which we'll look at next. But before we do that, how much time do I have left? Perfect. I would love to have us just start thinking about how we might implement some of these kinds of practices in our own organizations. So if you could take maybe two minutes with the person next to you or in front of you, depending on where you're sitting and start thinking about what you would do in this scenario. So you've just started, you've gone out and started founded your own company. Congratulations, it's really successful. You're growing fast and you've got to hire some engineers. And you're going, you know, you're tiny. So it might be actually pretty, this is the stage or it might be easy for you to just hire who you know, right? But think about it, you're setting the groundwork for what you're gonna look like in a couple of years down the road. So I'd love for you to start thinking about what are the things that would actually be reasonable for you to expect yourself to do today to start building a diverse, to make sure that you can build a diverse team as you grow. So just take a couple of minutes and talk with your neighbor about what things that you might do. I appreciate it. I'm gonna stick with you. You're so big on it. You're so big on it. I think about all the steps you took. You're so big on it. I'll follow you from there. Yeah. Don't do that. You're so big on it. I need to come with you. Yeah. Yeah. I think the benefits especially, so like, sure. We'll try to do that. But yeah, so like, I think some of the new stuff that we've just added all of last year, it's gonna make a difference in that. Like, I think, I definitely, we've gone like, out in the status care too. Some career stuff, some moving and that kind of thing. And then some things, like representation there, but you can still get a story now. Like going to career fairs that are, like, specifically targeted at those groups, specific groups that you know, like the first five, me too. Also your phone. Yeah. The name of the company was like, was the, I don't know. Only the other one. Okay, rapid fire, might as well, I hope that you can talk about that for a while longer. I'd love to hear some of the ideas that came up. What are some of the things that I didn't talk about yet that you would start doing? Yeah. Oh cool. LinkedIn groups. LinkedIn groups. Yeah. Figuring out what LinkedIn groups out there exist that might connect to the folks you're not already connected with. Great idea.  Yeah? Yeah. Are you part of another group? Absolutely. One of the things that we did in the company that I was recruiting for was actually having the engineers themselves go into user groups and start posting in there. Particularly actually explicitly saying we are really excited to bring in underrepresented folks into our workplace. And here's what we're doing to make sure that our environment is a welcoming one. Yeah. Develop a mentoring program. As part of what? As part of the senior engineers responsible. Yeah. Talk to me about how mentoring would impact the selection process. Well, people looking for internships. Oh, so mentoring for folks who aren't yet inside the organization. But junior people need to start learning how to do the work and also help your senior engineers build up leadership kind of thing of mentoring people. Fantastic. Yeah. That's very rare to see in smaller organizations where the engineers are super pressed for time. It's hard. It's hard to get managers to be able to justify letting engineers spend their time mentoring folks who aren't yet inside the organization. So often we see in a mid-sized or larger organization. But certainly it does have a long term payoff. So that would be a dream client for me. Somebody could recognize that. Yeah. Fantastic. Where is the diversity? Yeah. Okay. Actually, we were just talking because we are from the same organization. Fantastic. Actually, we think that our organization is a perfect example because it was started like just recently and our CEO who is a female actually made sure that from the very beginning it is built with diversity in mind and a lot of things she like put down there because I was like the employer number six in the company. So I've seen for all this process. So actually one of the big things she did from day one again she was explicitly focusing on benefits for parents and we have some unique benefits actually. I think nobody has in addition of like giving very generous like parental leave and most importantly actually she made sure that we are giving actually parental leave.  And one of the best things we just got back to work is back to work, right? That's helpful. Yeah. So after the maternity paternity leave we have also another four weeks when they come on the short week three times a day on full base. So yes, that's fantastic. So flexible schedules and parental leave benefits are actually that's perfect segue. Thank you. Not even a plant. Into the next section which is talking about, oh, just kidding. Talking about, I'll tell you what's covered up about retaining and promoting diverse talent. So when we think about the kinds of practices that we put in place going back to this previous example where we were bringing women through the pipeline and they were rejecting our offers, thinking about why might that be the case? So when we didn't expect questions actually ask them and one of the things that we did was implement surveys for Kansas who've gone through our hiding process regardless of the outcome. But one of the things that we were learning was that we weren't doing a particularly good job of advertising or sharing with candidates punk the examples of the kinds of equitable processes that we had in place. So here on the screen, I'll tell you what's covered up. So the first one says specific and productive, constructive feedback. So when we give feedback or giving it about a specific incident that happened we can describe the behavior that took place. And then we're being constructive about what we are asking the person to do. One of the things that we know in tech in particular is that when women receive feedback it tends to be vague. It's not necessarily about a specific incident that happened, but it's about like, well, you're just showing up in kind of a funny way. I'm not quite sure. I feel like you could be more ex. If we can be specific and constructive we're actually helping somebody's career quite a bit more. The other thing that's covered up says pay equity and transparency. The other thing that's covered up says share an office housework. So the first column here is really about the kinds of feedback that we give to employees and how. When we think about retention and emotion we want to make sure that we are evaluating people in a fair way. One of the ways that we can do that is the kind of feedback that I just described specific and constructive. Another way we can do that is 360 reviews so making sure that when we're evaluating somebody we're taking a lot of different perspectives into account. If we care about how people treat their subordinates then we've got to ask their subordinates about how they're doing it. And then making sure that we take that into account when we're thinking about promotions and we have a really clear ladder that's transparent for everybody to understand how you can move from point A to point B. Promotion criteria is also a really great way for an organization to live their values when it comes to making sure that we're promoting leaders who are actively supporting our values. So there are companies out there who refuse to give an employee their bonus or promote them if they have been a manager unless as a manager they have managed they have accomplished making their team more diverse as it has grown. If they haven't been able to do that they can't get their bonus that year. So that's a way for an organization to really say we're putting our money where our amount is we might look at a manager's engagement score is to think about is there a huge differential on their team in terms of employees with different demographics experiencing engagement differently in the organization. So really making sure we're evaluating folks fairly and then holding ourselves accountable to that as an organization. Amplification is one thing that I think I should explain because we don't hear a ton. Quick Google with the word amplification in Obama, White House and women will take you a really fun story that I'll summarize for you quickly. You would hope that a president with Barack Obama's values would have be the leader of an organization the White House that was quite equitable and inclusive particularly as a black man. But it turns out that our identity and our values don't actually necessarily mean that we have the practices in place to create the kind of inclusion that we want. And it turns out that the women who worked on Barack Obama's staff were noticing something was happening inside the White House that's really common for women to experience in any organization. Which is that at large meetings a woman would speak up, share an idea. The conversation would move on nobody would really recognize the idea. A man would share the same idea a couple of comments later and all of a sudden it was a fantastic idea and everybody was talking about it. And the women were fed up and so they decided to become allies for each other and engage in a process that we now call amplification. Which means that as soon as a woman shared an idea that another woman at the table thought was interesting then other women would jump in immediately and say, gosh Natanya I love that idea what I heard you just say was I think women should support each other in the workplace by doing x, y and z. And make sure that everybody around the table had an opportunity to actually hear that idea twice. This is something that men could do too except that then we bring in a complicated dynamic of the man getting credit so it actually worked quite well for women to do it for each other. But this is an example of something that you don't need to be a manager to do. There are tons of grassroots efforts that we can engage in to create more equitable processes inside of our organizations. And I encourage I think sharing office housework is also something that we think about when we're thinking about women in tech and in particular office housework is things like who remembers birthdays? Who plays office outings? Who takes the notes during meetings? These are things that we see women tend to do a lot more than men on average. And so when we can put in processes and systems to make sure that we have ways for dividing that work what we're doing is making sure that everybody has an equal amount of time to put into the work that they're actually getting evaluated based on and that we decide to give promotions based on. One of the reasons why it's important to engage in systems and processes like these is because especially in tech but across all most industries in the US we see lots of demographic diversity, entry levels. We've actually done like law is a great example of this. We see 50-50 parity in gender in the entry levels of the law field. And then we see that the vast majority of equity partners in law firms are known. They're also majority white. What's happening? Why are we not seeing people get promoted at equal rates because a lot of these processes aren't in place. People are welcomed into organizations and then have to spend a lot of their time and energy fitting into cultural norms that aren't theirs. We're not actually including them in the culture in meaningful ways giving underrepresented folks time to commit to the activities that we're then evaluating them on and giving them promotions on and then we're not seeing them rise in the ranks. So one quick last exercise let's say you're a manager of a team of 12 or so engineers and your boss comes to you with an opportunity and says I would love for you to nominate one person on your team to join a leadership development program. So this could be any kind of program where this is an opportunity for somebody to develop leadership skills. It's gonna be a big boost in their career and really set them on a management track. Turn to your neighbor and chat for the next 45 seconds or so what factors are you gonna use in determining who to nominate? How are you gonna figure out who to nominate? So like none of these successful solutions will ever come from beginning to the end because it's all kind of housework. So I wanna leave a few minutes for questions in the end and the interest of that I'm gonna jump in and share with you. This answer is a lot less straightforward for the last one. Now the criteria is gonna be really different depending on what your team does, what kind of leadership position we're looking for, what qualities do you think of leader? The thing that turns out to be important in the answer to this question is that you've engaged in the kinds of practices that we talked about before. You've got regular feedback going on, evaluation of criteria are clear. If you've done that, then it's gonna be clear to you what are the different qualifications of different people in your team.  Who could use that development opportunity? And you're gonna have some confidence that's not based on, well I happen to know that because I get coffee more often with this person. Or I happen to know that because this person's kid and my kid are on the same basketball team. But it's really gonna be based on my understanding of everybody on the team's work and how they're doing. So I think I have maybe 90 seconds left or so. Is there any time for two questions? Yeah. So back on that, so if you have a situation where somebody's president but for whatever reason, if you could be a woman on the team, it could be someone who's from a low income background and sort of feels something in the midst of a bunch of rich kids, they may not be suitable for that. They may not be stepping up. They may not be raising. So now when you say we're gonna promote, you're still gonna be promoting the same people. So before you do that, you should already have things in place to encourage people to step up and support them. When they do, encourage people to speak up and support them so prior, there should be steps prior to that. Exactly. Thank you, I appreciate that reiteration. So, right, exactly. So the answer really is, this is a complicated question, right? And in order to make sure that we're actually able to answer it thoughtfully, what we need to do or make sure that we have these equitable processes in place. You'll see one of the other tactics almost turning that we had talked about as regular feedback surveys, right? And so this is reverse feedback. This is making sure that you're actually asking your employees on a regular basis, has it done? What are the things that we could be doing as an organization to make sure that you feel a greater sense of conclusion and belonging at work? When we make these surveys confidential and anonymous with a better chance of actually receiving feedback, it's gonna help us improve as an organization, make sure folks are actually having an opportunity to shine. And of course crafting as we go, none of us are perfect. I'm not perfect at how I implement this stuff. I run these surveys all the time to make sure I figure out where are my blind spots? What have I not told this organization to do that I should be telling them to do? I don't know unless I ask so really important point, thank you. Maybe one last question. Well, hopefully the panel is great food for thought. I'm gonna pass it off to them. You're gonna be hearing from a couple of different folks who think about these issues every day in their organization and hearing from examples from them about what it looks like to actually implement some of these equitable processes at work. I would love to stay in touch with you and continue the conversation. So please feel free to reach out if I can answer any questions and I'll also stick around after the panel as well. Thank you so much. Thank you.


Aloha and welcome to Eyes on Hawaii. On the Think Tech Hawaii, I'm your host, Carol Cox. Today my guests are Mr. Micah Don, founder and Mr. Jonathan Don, director of Protectors of Paradise. We will be talking about their organization's efforts to educate and raise the awareness of people to help combat illegal dumping, the destruction of natural and cultural sites, and the protection of plants and animals here in Hawaii. So we've talked so many times about the environment here on the eyes of Hawaii, but these two gentlemen that Mr. Don the Dones, I'll call them the Dome Brothers, Jonathan and Micah, the efforts that they do, I've been out there trekking that same area, the west side. So I call it the Renaissance, west side Renaissance. And without further ado and prolonging this, I'm just happy to have them to come on the show on Eyes on Hawaii here at Think Tech and talk about what's going on on the west side. We'll call it why and I or many areas, but I'm glad that you're doing it. And I can't again to tell you, I think there's others will join you because the way you do it now, you're reaching out to people and it's going to be a hard road because people come from outside dumping and whatever, but if we can get them educated. So Micah, thank you Jonathan, thank you for having us on the show. All right, well tell us about Protectors of Paradise first of all and how long you've been in and are you a non-profit and how do people contact you? Let's not lose that before we go and get in deep into this. Well, first of us, thank you for having us on the show. My name is Micah Doan Aloha, I'm the founder of Protectors of Paradise. We are in fact a 501C3 non-profit organization and just a little bit of a brief history about our program. We started maybe about a year ago and we noticed that I guess during the increase of visitors, it was kind of like the social media age as more and more exposure of the leeward coast was being put up there on social media, more and more visitors were coming down and we noticed an increase in abusive behavior, whether it be trash being left behind by beach goers, illegal dumping, people harassing wildlife. We've just seen a major increase in the past I'd say five years or so and we'd go down and whenever we'd visit the area, sometimes we'd talk to the one parkkeeper for that area and it was kind of bad for him in the sense that on Monday mornings after the weekend, it was like he was just buried in trash and debris. So we decided to maybe get some watermen together, some people from that frequent the area and that cherish the area to come together and form a community group to do our part to assist in what we can and whether to be hands-on or whether to just raise awareness and get the word out that you know we have a beautiful coastline on just one of the many beautiful coastlines of Hawaii and because there's not so much attention and focus on you know from the authorities in the state it's kind of really up to us as a community and people to try to police ourselves and just do what is right to take care of the land and its resources. We've been just trying to make efforts in doing that. Micah? Oh, Johnathan? Yeah, yeah. Micah explained a lot and we just you know it's growing up from our young childhood days we went to Makua a lot with because of our family ties there we've you know filled a deep connection to Makua and also just the whole West Side we enjoy going there and for the beauty of it so we just I guess over the years the trash has been potting up and so I mean it just takes away from you know the natural beauty that over there that it has so we just they make us that we're just trying to along with a lot of other you know community members on that side or wherever on the island just trying to do our part to give back you know to mother nature and just to just to continue you know keeping that restore on keeping the beauty and restoring it so that for the future generations are cakey and just so that they can continue to enjoy going on that side now this this place called we'll call it the West Side or the West Coast and some say the negative connotations but I think by far and many of the islands they call one island the Garden Islands of Valley Isles but I'm more intrigued and impressed by the wine I close than pretty much any place because even though it's towering mountains and Cathedral valleys and all of that geological times of informed and the sloughing it's still accessible to people for whereas you go to Hawaii Kai side it's steep cliffs and not as friendly not as usable so the people are more likely to go to be attracted to that and as we see now increasing tourism and some unchecked uncontrolled visitation people chasing the dolphins and it just seems like there's a flurry now the flood gates open and so when I see protectors of paradise I think you get it now you got it you're out there investing your time I know what that's like what are you getting from assistance from your legislators or do they recognize you or have they incorporated you or seek to help you or state agencies or city agencies well in terms of the state agencies I guess over the years since we put in you know along with just a cocoon help from a lot of other people that put in in the time and work at the state there's other DLNR and they have supporting Shona support you know giving us aid and support and help us in a lot of ways in terms of the legislature or you know it's we're trying out that that one takes some time you know there's just so many ongoing issues that you know we work with them and they work with us but it's just we're gonna have to it takes a little more patience and time and more communication I guess to do that yeah well Micah I see this as a no-brainer because we given the fact it's obvious that there's an impact it's obvious that there's illegal dumping burning of cars dumping of fluids it's clear so the city and the state should immediately recognize or an incorporate a befriend you as an entity yeah that participate not wait until you go and find your way to their doorstep because they do have certain grants and they have monies and it's their interests because they're the ones our government officials and legislators actually soliciting greater business and tourism and whatever so you should be in and I would vow for you because I know what big impact it is on practically any turnout and into the bushes alongside of roads potentially becomes an illegal dump site and we're talking about major dumping of materials and chemicals and paints and glass and batteries and tires I want to speak to I think you guys caught someone or someone reported a guy actively dumping tires yeah I believe there was a and there's a lot of controversy to that I believe the truck was stolen by an employee and it went and dumped a bunch of tires on the west side but I think that was handled with HPD and what not but that's just kind of a little indication of what goes what happens there regularly and um it's just because you know if you go from Kial down on to Cana Point there's no residential area there's no businesses or you know everything's just pretty much nature and that's what makes it so beautiful but the flip side of that is you have nobody monitoring the behavior and whatnot and we've been trying to put the pressure on different entities with the city and the state and we've been having a good working relationship with the state parks in the sense that they've been open to the feedback that we've been giving them and I honestly believe that they're trying to do what they can what makes it a tough situation I think is that an area and such as the leeward coast which is we joke about it in the water it's kind of being the last stand for the local people in the sense that on the island of Oahu it seems like the Hawaiian culture part of it is being kind of squashed out and to me it seems like the leeward side is that last little area left and so that's what kind of intrigued me to try to step up and maybe do what we can before it's too late because if people look back at what happened up in the North Shore with the surfing industry and the way that skyrocketed and now people were making money and you know off of it and now the North Shore out you know if you look at the beachfront in Pupukia the land all know there are you know big expensive homes and you know talking with other watermen in the water they've kind of talked about how they could see that possibly you know starting to happen down in the leeward coast and if we don't stand up and step up to hey say we're gonna take the responsibility to take care of the natural resources we have and in the end we might not have very much of a say or a voice you know in it and the hard part is when we've tried to contact our representatives on the basic needs we we haven't necessarily gotten the response to address those basic needs and there's a lot of people that I believe have good intentions to to better the area in the coastline but there are specific basic priorities that we feel that aren't being met so what we can ask people the more pressure you know the community members can put on you know the authorities the state our legislature to try to you know hear their voice as well maybe we you know might be able to get more response speaking of the culture and those things you have also concerns and you're trying to combat and and prevent the desecration of for example the cave at Makua and the upper cave at Makua and the trespassings can you both speak to that real quickly yeah so um we were actually working with the department of defense and HBD to try and figure out a way if we could you know monitor and enforce people that were trespassing on to you know federal property which is the federal jurisdiction and hiking up to the upper Makua cave which is known as the Ngawe cave and just that area from the cultural standpoint there's a lot of cultural artifacts you know I can specifically say where you know but you know just from folklore and history and Mo'olelo so it seems to me that it's just kind of peculiar that there's not more being done to try to protect that area people are going up there and it's to me it's simply for an Instagram shot for a social media shot because we'll watch people go up there and then come right back down I'm nobody's I haven't witnessed anybody going up there for any type of cultural um you know practice or whatnot we witness people graffiti up in the cave uh we've gone up there to clean graffiti and you know when we got in the cave it's crazy it's like nothing but spray paint in there and it's hard to imagine that hey this is you know a cultural site that you know a lot of times you see on the news somebody just created a culture site and everybody's getting all bent out of shape well you know these cultural areas are being disrespected on the daily and it's like it seems like only a few people are you know linking an eye to it well I I think it's really important that the city and the state state agencies do not let this just develop into an all-out uh free fall and that's what's been happening on there okay we're going to take a break hold that thought and we're going to come back uh Micah and Jonathan Dawn with Protectors of Paradise so we will take a break this is Eyes on Hawaii Think Tech Hawaii I'm your host Carol Cox we'll be right back this is Think Tech Hawaii raising public awareness nothing is making sense welcome back to Eyes on Hawaii on Think Tech Hawaii I'm your host Carol Cox my guests are Mr. Micah Done founder and Mr. Jonathan Done director of Protectors of Paradise we're talking about their organization's efforts to educate and raise the awareness of people to help combat illegal dumping the destruction of natural and cultural sites and the protection of plants and animals of Hawaii so again thank you for coming and then sharing because I've been over at Waianae it's a place dear to me I love it it's just that open country and I can't say that those are pyramids the poodles but boy they should allow you to dream when you're driving through there and seeing how beautiful and it's dry and then on the rainy season you see the eight and nine waterfalls coming down off of Mount Kala up in that area it's just stunning so anyway Micah you were telling us about contact how does one contact you or okay or participating in your cleanups and whatever thank you Carol so we are currently we're relatively kind of young groups so right now we're on Facebook and Instagram oh you can email us at protectors of paradise at yahoo.com and a contact number would be<PHONE_NUMBER> but we encourage everyone to come and check out our Facebook page and Instagram page to keep up to date on the current events and upcoming events such as cleanups or any type of outreach events we have so we're more than happy to have everyone come along. Jonathan? Yeah um you can just like you said contact us on the Facebook or Instagram and also you can contact my number is 388-3936 for any questions and information on ongoing projects that you know that we may be participating in or may be aware of you know so. Or just anyone that has any um projects or help that they need assistance with or um you know we're here to help to try to just reach out to community members if they're having a problem in their you know nick of the woods you know we've gone to places to help people remove you know rubbish from their house if they're going to get evicted um you know. Because it's likely that it will end up on the side of the road in the canyon so you're being proactive are you? Yeah um whatever we can do you know um there's a lot of good community members out there so as a figure you know the best way for everybody to get together you can move together as one army and get better results. Well again wine is the place for me I the afternoon the colors of the water when the they're backlit by the sunset I mean you see spectacular colors just that alone is is enough cause to preserve it but there's another thing that is troublesome the the harassment of marine mammals the monk seal the dolphins and they come to rest and all can you you have great concerns about that so can you talk to the public or the viewers out there what would you like them to do and not to do? I think basic information and education is the start you know because growing up and going down there and seeing the the spinner dolphins swimming every day you know we had no idea the dynamics of their behavior was going on we said wow there's dolphins out there beautiful but the the weird part about it there wasn't too many people swimming out there I remember the the first two groups that um used to go out on kayaks from the beach and whatnot but um you know as time went on and through the exposure of social media and now it was cool to get a shot to move with the dolphins I started to realize myself like wow there's a lot of people in the water with these dolphins now so I started to kind of read up more and do a little bit of research to see hey how could this affect the dolphins in a negative way um come to find out um that you know the Hawaiian spinner dolphins are one of the only nocturnal um dolphin species of dolphins and so they go offshore and feed at night and the reason why they come to Makua in particular um you know they're at different beaches resting during the daytime but Makua provides a big sandbar for them which allows them they kind of have a safe haven in which um that brightness of that sandbar allows them to see predators coming from a far away so um unless chirping water yeah a little calmer in those bays especially Makua and so you know the over the years the the number of tour boats have increased and you know these tour boats were dropping somewhere between 30 to 50 people right on dolphin pods sometimes you know and um with all that going on now there's also an increase of um people coming from shore to swim with the dolphins you know we wouldn't do in our outreach out there we get a lot of feedback from people like well if I don't go swim up to them and chase them or and it's not really um harassing them and um from what we understand and you know talking with different you know um people on the subject that according to the mmpa or the marine mammal protection act that um any any type of interaction that changes their normal behavior falls under harassment so if I go jump in the water and swim out in an area where I know the dolphins are going to swim through if one comes and checks me out you know I changed his behavior regardless if I think I did or not um I did and the more people can um make themselves aware of what they're actually doing um to these creatures um and you know realize that hey I have a choice that I can make and am I going to make you know the choice to go out there and neglect everything that um is being demonstrated to me or I'm going to just you know make the better choice and situations where we tell people where um like uh a child at night if you tell him hey let's play video games all night he might just do that you know but he won't be able to move and the next zombie the next day so when they go swim with the dolphin if a little baby dolphin comes and checks them out and they think they're playing with them yeah it might be playing with them but the fact is later on that night the dolphin has to go out you know and feed in deeper waters and feed and he has to worry about his fitness and his health and the mother is not getting the rest because they got to stay up all night and watch their kid because he's playing video game now their fitness is not up to far and just these boats traversing so frequently uh and so close the frequency that's given off the sound may have an impact of a mere disturbance so we need to be more considerate of that and and not and I think Noah should be a little more aggressive and and be more aggressive in posting signs and monitoring and walking and talking along the beaches and patrolling that area I know um there have been uh no uh office of law enforcement officers that have been frequent in the area more and um we're able to contact them if it's getting too crazy um they are actually I believe in the process of working on a um a distance rule in which it probably would be a 50-yard yeah well that's a recommendation and I think Noah needs to really grow up and strap on the the rules and start to prosecute people because yeah you see if you read their rules it's just says the general public thinks it's only it's 50 feet and or you'll get fine and arrested but the reality is that's just a recommendation yeah you you know you have to show so we shouldn't have to wait to that kind of yeah and this proliferation of boats and they they have increased but yeah another problem that I know that is very troublesome to you and you guys are working trying to prevent it and clean up is the burning of pallets along the beach yeah I believe in every pallet there's something around like 200 nails over 200 nails we're talking about 280 nails and what are they thinking I mean you you tonight you go and you pilot you know I mean to be honest it's something that you know we've you know we've done in the past of growing up and young and a lot of people have done it in which it's it's a if you're running to the beach real quick and you need to just go get some firewood there's places that have now you do know what that was a confession so you're going to environmental heaven I wish the rest would come so it's just a lot of times like people are then after you know it's I mean it seemed like common sense you know but then you know you realize after you shoot these if we ain't picking up these nails fine then you know what's happening then so before because there wasn't so many people doing it you know one pallet fire here or there I don't think I'm too much people you know made noise about it but now you know I went down there a few months ago on the weekend and it was like a scene from Mad Max road wars where the entire beach is just loads of fires and you got eight eight to ten pallets in a fire and so like the next day you know we do our cleanup to come walk on the air and you can feel the warmth you know dig it up there's not just pallets in there there's a lighter fluid cans there's rubbish there's people are just all that gets into the tide pool yeah yeah just notice a difference I mean from the sand I mean that that line you can see the difference between the white line and there's that charcoal gray it's just extending closer to the ocean you know and so leaching and see last winter there was a huge swell that came in and well eight away a lot of the sand at Makua beach and eight away the sand but was still left was the remnants of a fire and it was just all these rusted nails just now come back over time it stuck together it's like one well before we we gotta be closing here shortly but uh regarding your organization and also are any events coming up soon or participation or or would you you any equipment use asking for donations or some kind of flatbed truck the haul trash or what anything like that yeah I mean any any type of donation or help is more than appreciated you know for the whole first year we were you know operating we've been using our own personal vehicles but as anybody knows you know with this wear and tear and it's tough to use your own car to haul away trash and hazardous materials you need a big car out there you know flatbed would definitely help in the means to try to find you know different types of donations are fun to try to get these types of supplies but everything we've gotten so far trash bags we got from the states but um chainsaws uh gloves um you know whatever we we've tried to acquire our own so any types of any type of help is more than what message would you like to leave the public that's watching this today real quick any any messages please the message that I guess I would leave here is that um you know we live in a very very beautiful state and unfortunately there are certain areas that they are just aren't priorities for um the state or whatever authorities to take care of and manage and so sometimes we have to just take it upon ourselves and um regardless of what anyone else is doing to just take the initiative on ourselves to be responsible and realize that hey I I'm coming to these areas I'm having a beautiful connection a relationship with him it has nothing to do with the state this person that person but just between me and nature I know how I should be treated and if I could just she takes care of us we should take care of her treat the whole island as a sacred you know sacred area if you see somebody doing something bad I mean you don't have to get into a fight with them but you could you know we'd have to learn along the way sometimes you can go up with aloha and tell them hey maybe we can try to I can help you do this in a different way or whatnot but we we got to work together I think as a community because that's the only way to get any anywhere well I really appreciate you guys coming in and thank you so much we haven't even touched the surface here but I definitely I'll be willing to help as always and we'll keep chugging along so thank you guys thank you if you're interested in getting on our mailing list go to think tech Hawaii calm thank you for joining me today on eyes on Hawaii on think tech Hawaii thanks to jay fidel our executive director and our technical support team robert mclean race engeland and nick section I'll see you again in two weeks I'm carol cox aloha