Welcome to Connecting Hawai'i Business on Think Tech Hawai'i. My name is Kathleen Lee, owner of Kathleen Lee Consulting, and I am the host for this program. Think Tech Hawai'i is a platform that encourages civic engagement through conversations that educate, enlighten, and inspire. We are live streamed on ThinkTechHawaii.com as well as on Think Tech Hawai'i's Facebook page. If you are watching us, you're able to send in questions throughout our discussion by emailing them to questions at ThinkTechHawaii.com. So for today, we have a very special guest, and I'm very pleased to have him on the show, especially since what he is going to talk about is super relevant to our current environment. He is a pro at marketing, event planning. I'm going to try to rattle this off as fast as I can, but it's a lot. It's a long list. Public relations, social media management. He's also very active in the local, national, and international markets. He is involved in numerous community and non-profit organizations, both in volunteer and leadership positions, and as well as being a family man, a father, two, and a cook for the family. So I'm ending it with that. So please welcome to the show, Toby Tamaya, president of AT Marketing. Hey, Toby. What's up, ThinkTech viewers? There you go. So thank you again for being on, and I say, Amalette, I need to work on that, since we are going to be talking about leveraging Zoom for networking events, and that is something that you're very versed in. It's part of your business, but before we delve into that, and I know I've already said my intro, but go ahead and introduce yourself to our viewers today. Hey, my name is Toby Tamaya. I founded AT Marketing in 2004. We are public creations, as Kathleen said. We do all the different types of marketing here in Hawaii, and we also, all these kind of new platform services like virtual reality, and augmented reality, and social media, and now a clubhouse, and heavily on Twitter, but anyway, I'm just like all over the place, and I'm really proud to be able to share some of my knowledge of how I've been developing Zoom webinars for nonprofits, businesses, and strictly for networking, but really happy to be here. Yeah. And again, thank you. I know you're very busy, Matt. For those who are not familiar with Toby, I think of it as like, for five of you who are not familiar with Toby, he's like all over the place, and it's good to have him on the show today to talk about how things have been different. So Toby, your business has been heavily reliant on face-to-face interactions and networking events, especially with large groups, because they are networking events that require a lot of people to talk to each other and get to know folks. How has your business, and you even as an individual, pivoted during COVID-19? Yeah. So, you know, I develop a variety of different events. I'll start with the easy ones, the Waikiki Span Jam, the noodle festival. Those are huge events with 40,000 to 50,000 people attending. Those are not taking place right now. So we pushed all those back to the fall. Of course, none of them took place back last year. So that was a huge pivot. We just can't do these large festivals anymore. I also do a lot of non-profit events. I'm working on one that we did last, actually it was right before COVID, it was a second week of March before the lockdown, where we had 800 people at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel drinking wine and eating from 14 different restaurants. We're pivoting that into a Zoom webinar, which is going to be three days long. We'll talk a little bit more about that later on in the program. So that's how we kind of pivot it. We're going into a virtual space. I'm actually developing hybrid events now. So because we're at the Royal Hawaiian last year, we're actually going to be filming at the Royal Hawaiian this year, but we're going to be doing it as a hybrid event. The cool thing about this is that, you know, we've actually been very well with sponsorships already. We sell a lot of individual tickets, not only here in Hawaii, but we're actually able to expand this event around the world. And that's really what's kind of the key movement that's happening now with Zoom is that we're actually able to not only do it here, but now we're actually able to reach a global audience. That's pretty exciting. You know, in terms of the real big pivot for my company, you know, unfortunately, I'm in the tourism marketing business. So it's been very, it's been very hard. And I think, you know, what we're trying to do now is we're trying to really look at how we're going to be developing more on-site premise marketing. We're trying to go more off the locals and try to see what they're interested in. It's been very challenging. And unfortunately, you know, the light in the tunnel, we thought it was going to be a couple months or even six months. It's probably going to be a year or two. So I think for a lot of us right now, we're trying to adapt to see how we're going to do on-marketing. We're doing a lot of more e-commerce. We're doing a lot of more social media advertising and promotions that lead to e-commerce sales. And definitely, we're trying to get people to the restaurants because right now, you know, you can only do about 50 percent capacity. And so luckily, most of the restaurant clients that have are pretty full, especially over this weekend for Valentine's Day. But anyway, that's just some of the pivots we've been doing over the last year. It was very challenging for COVID in my environment, especially for the company that I run. Yeah, tell us more about those hybrid events. I mean, I think that's very fascinating. And go into the why of it all, like with the pandemic and everything shutting down and all these restrictions and regulations. Why should people still keep doing networking events, even if it's a hybrid or if it's just through Zoom? You know, people still want to connect with each other. They still want to be able to, you know, it's been a year now. And a lot of people haven't even seen each other. Maybe they've seen each other on Zoom on the back. And we're going to teach some of the back end reasons how you can connect on Zoom. But we're trying to really bring back a sense of norm. But we're also trying to do what is going to be next. And I really think these hybrid events are going to be next. We're maybe even next year, this event that I'm doing in March will already have 500 people at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, but we're going to reach a global audience of five to a thousand more people that could have been there. So we're going to try this out. It's actually the future of event and networking where you can actually no longer sustain to just being in that realm where you're going to be at the Pacific Club or you're going to be at a hotel. You can actually now take this to another level. People at home, people living on the neighbor islands, people living definitely abroad. And that's why we're trying to really push the hybrids because you do it now. We all know that you can't be successful on your first time. You can learn some mistakes, you'll learn some things going on. So you got to start trying it now because it's going to be the future of events. On that note, so for the hybrid part, there's still that in person interaction. You had mentioned earlier when we were talking before the show that you were working on a project that addresses that. Can you kind of talk a little bit more about it initiatives that you have taken on to make sure that these events are safe or even not even just events like organizations that you're working with when it comes to, you know, safety during COVID-19. Well, actually, I got to say I'm not doing in person. I don't think it's right to do any in person. You know, we're only up to five people. We're going to probably be up to 10 people pretty soon. So no, I'm not doing it in person events. What I'm doing is actually I'm doing an event at the site with just about 10 to 15 people, most of them are camera people. Most of them are just the tech side and we're just trying to bring it on. We are planning for events in the summer, though. And I think the summer, you know, as soon as more people get vaccinated, we're trying to figure that out. But I do have some events in the summer, which will be an in person event. We'll have seated tables. There will be six feet apart. We'll have six people on it where we're trying to work with the hotels and some of our people right now on that. It's very challenging that we're trying to get together. But we have conversations with the Convention Center and other really large venue spaces on how we're going to make it safe. But how we're also going to be developing an online component through Zoom through we're featuring it. So I think right now we're not doing it, but definitely it's summertime and moving beyond that, you're going to see more in person events. But I don't think the time is right in person events right now. I agree. And on that note, you had so you were talking about Zoom and networking using that platform a few weeks ago for Pacific inch. So you did have a webinar, which I feel was useful for folks. We have a couple of images to share so you can tell people or talk about networking using Zoom meetings. So if you could pull up the first image. This was part of your deck for that presentation. So could you go over it for our viewers today? Yeah, before we start, I want to make sure that people understand that there's two different types of Zoom ways, Zoom meetings and Zoom webinars. And so we're going to be talking about Zoom meetings here and how it actually works. And really, what is you going to find out from it? Because Zoom meetings, it allows you to see everybody in the whole area. So the first of all things is, again, we're talking about what Zoom did. Is it allowed us to go into a note? We can do things worldwide. And Zoom actually played into now what you guys probably heard about the most popular social media app Clubhouse happening right now. That is like geography is not a factor anymore. I am doing calls with people from around the world every day. And so we're really excited about how we're moving into this type of non-Hawaii start type of networking through Zoom and through other platforms that are happening right now. Facebook and Twitter are also going to launch their own Clubhouse apps, which are basically audio apps that allow people to talk to each other. You know, social media is key if you want to be successful in meetings between Instagram, Twitter, even Facebook, you've got to be able to have those platforms moving so people can understand who you are and what they want to connect with you. We're doing a lot of virtual happy hours. So basically people are drinking and having a drink and we're having a cocktail. We're doing network breaking breakout rooms and really fun stuff to get people active and people have people get ready to go back out into the real world, which hopefully, again, we're hoping for this summer. You know, we're doing a lot of breakfast, lunch. We're trying to support the restaurants the best we can. There's a lot of great delivery services out there. I work a lot with elite delivery that can deliver things to different people. We can have some virtual dinners. We have a lot of icebreakers, you know, joint different organizations. You know, I think one of the core fund was the Chamber of Commerce. Last year, they did so much different Zoom networking events and I learned so much from them and I really applaud them for being really the forefront of bringing this to the Hawaii business community. And you can actually search for Internet events online.  I'm sorry, not Zoom. I mean, you can search Zoom right now and have Zoom events where you can actually get information about different events. And you can also search and join organizations because every organization sometimes, especially like the Rotary and other organizations, don't have opportunities for you to network. But yes, great networking because we got to still get out there and meet people. And let's pull up the second image because we had a series of it.  A lot of times like you're not going to be on mute. And so just check that out before you go on your cameras and all that thing. You know, check out the lighting. I have so much lighting here is unbelievable all around me. What is that that you just held up?  And, you know, make sure you guys get those kind of things going on, including your social media. I mean, that's the way people are connecting right now. Right. You can still leave your email. You can still leave your phone. That's fine as well. But really what you're trying to do is you're trying to make an informal way of people to go back and learn more about you through Instagram, LinkedIn or Twitter. Or whatever social media you're using, or you feel comfortable using. There's a lot of chats going on during the Zoom meeting. So when there's a Zoom meeting, you see somebody going on, you can actually start chatting with them directly, right? Because that's the cool thing about Zoom. It allows you to really just go out and just touch people exactly where you want and talk to individual people there. As for our contact information, I probably made more meetings through Zoom. I'm doing a follow up meeting on a one on one, probably more than I did all in 2020. So that's basically where it was. And of course, utilize your background if you can. You know, sometimes you want to use the background is great, you know, but it doesn't really sometimes you get fuzzy in the back of something that I don't like always using it. But yeah, it also promoted. That was actually the Shilor Alumni Association. We did a big campaign called Shilor Strong back in October and November. I mean, we raised a lot of money and we were actually because, you know, it's pretty hard time for the college students right now. So we're really proud of what we did. But every time I did a Zoom call, I always had my Shilor Strong back on during the fall. That's actually a really good idea for branding. Well, we're about to go on break, but when we come back, you can talk further about using Zoom for networking events. So stay tuned. Welcome back to Connecting Hawaii Business on Think Tech Hawaii. My name is Kathleen Lee. And on the show today, we have A.T. Marketing President, Toby Tamaya. So before we left off, he was talking about Zoom tips. And we have a third image to kind of continue with that conversation and to give you viewers out there more ideas on how to either attend or run successful Zoom meetings. So Toby, go ahead with that. So we already went through what my best practice is for attending a meeting. But hey, let's say you want to create a meeting and, you know, I just want to be clear that Zoom is just one platform. There's also like Microsoft Teams and there's so much other ones out there. But Zoom is probably the one that everybody's using. So that's why we're kind of continuous now. But of course, feel comfortable with whatever you want to do when you're going to create your own event to the platform you want. Just keep in mind that people got to download an app and sometimes it can be annoying. But everybody already, everybody already downloaded Zoom. They know where the mute button is. That's the most important thing, right? You know, try to find the mute button on a go-to meeting. You're going to be like, we're the mute button. So, you know, that's really important to that's why people I like using Zoom because people feel comfortable if they know where a mute button is. But yeah, so you want to keep it really simple. Keep the attendees to how much you want. We always keep it about 60 to 90 minutes when we create a networking event. We send calendar invites for login participants. We open up the session early to make sure that, you know, people want to come in early. We like to make video required if possible. And here's the key. I mean, I don't know what you guys do, but there's this thing called breakout rooms on Zoom. And I'm going to be doing, I do those so often it's like, it's in my, I break out in my sleep. And so what we do is we bring in 90 people or maybe 50 to 90 people into an event and I can break them up into like groups of five and six and they can actually go on and do their elevator speech and tell them who they are. And I can rotate that like four or five times within 30 minutes. And so if you really want to research how to do networking, get a group together and then have them go into breakout rooms. And you can research that more through Zoom and learn how to do breakout rooms. It's been really the biggest thing that we've been doing on Zoom in terms of having networking going on. It's great that you mentioned that because I know that there are some organizations that I have been a part of or meetings that I have joined where people are actually still trying to figure out how to do breakout rooms. So it's good that you go over that and remind people that there is that option instead of people just logging off and then logging back on whenever like a certain segment is over. So good prompt for people. It's a very good, very, very useful part of Zoom for networking. Yeah. And speaking of networking, we do have a viewer question. When is the next event, Toby?  So right now I'm working with the University of Hawaii Alumni Association, the Schuyler Business School. We're doing an event from March 19, 2011 called the Executive Vineyard. It's going to be the 21st year of the event. It's again, it's going to be a virtual pivot. It's kind of cool because what I did is the Executive Vineyard is a wine tasting. How do you get a wine tasting into people's homes? So I actually developed the program where I'm working on a three-day seminar. So I actually have a seminar. And wine is not for everybody, but whiskey can be. And so I actually have a whiskey seminar coming up on March 8th. Oh, sorry, on March 9th. We have the speaker coming in from the owner of the Canadian whiskey. On March 10th, I'm doing a taste of Italy. I have five Italian wines that we're going to be featuring. And here's this. I got the guy waking up at six in the morning from Italy to do it for us. It's crazy. And then finally, we have our main event which is going to be March 11th. And it's going to be a pivot event. It's a virtual event. It's a hybrid event. It's all thrown together. We're going to have people from all over the world. It's going to be cool. We're going to have a game in it. We're going to give away Hawaiian airline miles to get people to go in and just feel excited. It's going to be cool. But before that event, I'm going to have a networking event. And so for people who buy tickets for this event, they're going to be actually able to join a networking event with breakout rooms that they can start doing it. Because actually with the webinars, we can't really network, right? So we want to make it a fun night for Charlotte graduates, as well as their guests to be able to really enjoy this. So again, that's a cool event because it's kind of like what we're going to see in the future in terms of people doing virtual platforms. And we're actually working with high stakeouts at MW and LaTour to do all of our dinners. Elite Delivery is going to take it to their homes. Food Jocas is going to be doing all of our wines. I mean, you got to get creative now these days. And so our next event is going to be March 9 to 11. And we're selling tickets right now. You can visit shawty.edu slash executive venues for more information. So let's go over those types of events with the ones that have like the great interactions and the kind of going along with the theme, right? Like the wine tasting or even like the steakhouse. How does that work? Like how do you get people involved in a way where it's like, oh, I'm tasting with you or are there delivery people or companies that you work with or collaborate with? Yeah, definitely. And we try to keep it as low as possible, right? So we've been working a lot with Elite Delivery. Again, I think I mentioned them a couple of times. But, you know, we try to keep it as low as possible. You know, the whole thing about events is that it revolves around food and drinks, right? So, and everybody's in their home. So how do you do that? How do you pivot into that realm and that sphere? And so, yeah, we've developed all these partnerships with these different restaurants that are able to do it. And again, we're helping out the restaurants because we're actually asking for these meals like early, right? Like two to four o'clock and they could still run their dinners. They could still run their takeouts during the dinner time. They could still run their lunch and they get this whole pocket. Like MW, I'm gonna buy, they'll tell them I'm buying like over a hundred meals for my event. Well, not even told them so, here we go. Yeah, now it's public. But I mean, and that's what we're doing. And so that's kind of cool and that's the way that we can help these restaurants out during this hard time is by doing setting up these delivery services. And then, you know, of course, you were asking the restaurants to give us a good price so we can actually sell a nice ticket so we can actually make a profit for the nonprofit that we're involved with. Yeah, that's a, cause you're also in, along with everything that you've spoken to, you're also involved with not just the business side, but like the nonprofit things as well. Was there anything that you wanted to kind of go over or mentioned to folks out there? Yeah, so, you know, restaurants are hurting a lot. So what I did is I took on the chairperson role to work with the Hawaii Agriculture Foundation to launch a Hawaii restaurant week, which will start from April 2 to April 12 this year. Wow, okay. And so we're really excited, we're making it super affordable for the restaurants to get involved. They're gonna be coming up with these set menus, you know, they're gonna be coming up with these discounts and we're gonna start promoting it heavily and they're gonna be busy during those week and we're excited to be able to bring this, not only in terms of like the marketing that we have with the Hawaii Agriculture Foundation, but we're also excited to help the restaurants. And indeed, you know, we're gonna have, we're also gonna have an auction. So we're asking the restaurants, they don't even have to put a cash in, they can put a gift card or a donation in so we can auction it off. And using that money, we're gonna be donating it to the Hawaii Agriculture Foundation to get help the farmers, help our future leaders of the agriculture industry, help the students really learn about how important, you know, eating local and buying local is. And so it's a really new campaign, but yeah, I'm chairing it, so I'm just trying to get involved as much as I can, especially not, you know, it's a little bit slower for tourism, but I wanna give back as much as I can and help these guys survive until we can really get to a path of success for the restaurants, the whole industry and get to a way that we feel comfortable again. And hopefully it's gonna be sometime in this year, but we know it's not gonna be until summer. So we gotta do what we can over the next four, a few months, eat at restaurants, eat local, make sure you're shopping at people. And even if you're taking, even if you're grocery shopping, remember that everybody has a job there and everybody's getting paid. And just try to keep as much money as you can locally here always, especially when you guys get your stimulus, okay? It's a good time now. I, you kind of already covered this, but I'm going to ask it since it is a viewer question. What are your feelings about hybrid events where people attend in person with the event either broadcasted on TV or Zoom? I just love it. I've been involved with so many different events that are broadcasting, especially on television right now. I worked with the Japan American Societies event in November, Pacific Edges event. I was the head, one of the head judges for their event as well. And so I love it. I love the way, and I go to these people and both of the presidents and the executives of these companies, I thought of, this is the way we're gonna be doing it in the future, okay?  We're gonna do it safely. You know, we're gonna, you had 300 people last year. Let's do 150 this year. And let's broadcast it and go back on KJN again or back on Hawaii news now. And it's really nice that these, they're actually interested in working with us because, you know, they want to support local, local, local nonprofits here. So it's a good timing. I hope that it'll stay like this for a while. But I think that we're also looking at our side is that we can do television, but hey, can we go even bigger? Can we go global, you know? And so I think that's our next stage in terms of that. But I think the hybrid events are here to stay. It's gonna be this in person as well as it, as well as these virtual events. But I just think right now is not the time. It's gonna happen soon, but it's just not now. Okay, and then you had mentioned too, aside from Zoom, there are other platforms and one of the newer ones is Clubhouse, which I think you're more versed in than I am. I have yet to kind of delve into that, but kind of talk a little bit more about that. So people have an idea of how that connects to what you were talking about, which is the larger picture, which is involvement of people outside of our country.  Unfortunately, it's only for iPhone users right now. Hopefully it'll come out with Android in a couple of months. But man, there's just chats about any subject you want, food, marketing, whatever the football. I mean, whatever you think is interesting, you're gonna find a chat room there that you can talk and be part of the conversation and listen to experts about what is happening. It's a new app. We just heard that Facebook and Twitter are gonna be launching our copycat apps on that. You know that app is big when you're doing that kind of stuff. But I've jumped into rooms with only Japanese. I've jumped into rooms basically with people around the world. I was saying, Kathleen, I was on a call this morning with people from Turkey and Germany. And we're talking about the same issues that we have here. COVID, how do we have entrepreneurship, business? Everybody's having the same problems. If you can listen to the solutions from other people, you're gonna find so much value in these kind of things. And I think Clubhouse is just an exceptional new way of us developing. It's just an audio. So all you do is listen. You can cook, watch dishes, multi-task. I always check email and listen to Clubhouse, but yeah, I really love it. And it has a really, really has a nice connection to both Instagram and Twitter as well if you're active on those platforms. That's awesome. What is there anything else that you'd like to add if we have a couple of minutes left that I didn't ask you about that you want people to know? You know, stay safe out there. Try to figure out what you're gonna be doing to pivot into actually becoming somebody that understand what's happening right now is gonna stay for us for a while. And understanding what's happening right now is also changing the way that we're trying to develop new programs. You know, I've developed new webinars now because of it. We didn't really get into how I'm actually developing webinars for networking where I've developed an eight week long tourism restart webinar that was attended by over 5,000 people here in Hawaii. And so I did that during the fall. And so we're working on new programs like that, but keep in mind that this type of pivot, if you can make it work for you, it might work for you again in the future. And so we're hoping that things get back back to normal. But right now Zoom, stay on it, be happy. It's gonna be here. It's gonna be part of our stuff. Go invest into the $15 Zoom account already if you can. Just start doing it. And yeah, it has some fun networking. And if you couldn't networking event, you know, make sure you take things like Hawaii so we can actually get on it and we can promote it and have everybody back to really meeting each other and starting to network and find out more about how we can help each other. And I think that's what Clubhouse is about too. You know, and I hope that's what's gonna be the future of us. How do we help you? I mean, that's the main thing I always hear on Clubhouse. How can I help you? How can I help you? And that's what we should always lead this office. How can we help each other during this time? Whoa, I like that note. Let's pull up the last image. So image four, just to kind of close it out. So, how do people get a hold of you, Tobe? Actually, Instagram or Twitter, same thing. AT Marketing is my handles. You can get me on LinkedIn. Facebook, unfortunately, is a 5,000 friend limit and I'm so close. It's crazy. I don't know what I'm gonna do. I'm so close to the 5,000 limit. And I had just tons of people just trying to be my friend. I don't know what to do. But anyway, Instagram and Twitter is just basically the best way. As far as LinkedIn, I'm not really heavy on LinkedIn. I'm on it, but I'm mostly on Instagram and Twitter for conversations and for networking right now. Yeah, and you can find all the latest things about the food and what's going on in Hawaii. Hopefully these events that's gonna be starting on later on this year that we can start planning. I really would love to bring back the spam jam, the noodle fast and the Korean festival and all these other events that I chair to bring back here and really help out the community. And I'll get us back together and get us back to some sense of normality. Well, thank you, Toby, for bringing your passion and enthusiasm to today's show. We really appreciate it. Excellent. So for folks that wanna get ahold of them, AT Marketing and social media accounts. Again, my name is Kathleen Lee. This has been Connecting Hawaii Business on Think Tech Hawaii. Thank you to Jay Fidel and the staff at Think Tech. We have Haley helping us out today for making all of this possible. Have a great rest of the day.


This 10th year of Daily Tech News show is made possible by you, the listener, thanks to all of you, including Jeff Wilkes, Pele Glendale, and Dr. X17. Coming up on DTNS, Meta has strong AI tech that it shares freely with the world and will use to serve you ads plus Nintendo's cooling on mobile and never got into clouds, so what's Nintendo's strategy again? We're gonna talk about that. This is the Daily Tech News for Wednesday, April 5th, 2023 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. In Salt Lake City, I am Scott Johnson. And on the show's producer, Roger J. If you, like me, thought Deutsche Telecom owned most of T-Mobile US, you were wrong, but now we're all right. The company reached a majority stake in T-Mobile US late Tuesday. Let's get to the rest of the quick hits. India's Ministry of Electronics and IT published a detailed explanation of the government's plans to regulate AI. The ministry said, AI is a kinetic enabler of the digital economy and innovation ecosystem. So while it's developing policies to address concerns, it doesn't intend to introduce new legislation. There aren't as many AI-related startups in India as other markets. So it seems, at least for now, that India is trying to appeal to entrepreneurs in the space. Apple will open its first retail store in Mumbai, India later this month. Apple shared a picture of the upcoming store called Apple BKC at the Geo World Drive Mall. The company plans to launch its second India store somewhere in New Delhi later this year. Apple launched its online store in India only in 2020 and originally planned for retail in 2021, but that was delayed due to, what was that thing that happened all in 2020? It was a pandemic. It was a virus. And anyway, I'm sure it'll come to me. Beyond retail, JP Morgan analysts estimate that Apple will produce 25% of all iPhones in India by 2025. I have been to this mall, by the way, in Mumbai. Oh, you have. Yeah. And it is a big one. I would think this is going to be a pretty big deal for residents of Mumbai.  A consortium of international law enforcement agencies teamed up to seize domains used for a Genesis market. That's a marketplace for hacked user data. The data on the marketplace included information from autofill forms, saved login info, also cookies. Hence the name by law enforcement for the effort, Operation Cookie Monster. See, they can have fun too. Genesis sold a custom browser that could be used with the stolen data to run bots that impersonated people. Bots sold for as much as $450 each. While the domains have brought the marketplace down temporarily that operators have yet to be identified. So basically they'll just start at them somewhere else later. But hey, it's got a fun name, Operation Cookie Monster. TikTok's troubles with the U.S. government get the most attention, of course. But TikTok is having issues of a more usual sort for a very popular social platform elsewhere in the world. Rest of World reports that several TikTok creators in Nigeria were arrested, two of them for satire against a governor and several for allegedly violating religious and moral sensitivities. Digital rights lawyer Veronica Igube told Rest of World that TikTok has a responsibility to advocate with the government on behalf of these creators. So there's a little bit of a backlash, but the company may be concerned that the government would ban it if it gets too forceful. Nigeria did that to Twitter for seven months in 2021. In another example, Vietnam plans to begin an investigation into TikTok. VN Express quoted a representative from the government saying that TikTok has allowed offensive and quote toxic content in the country. Well, hopefully this one isn't toxic. Kobo announced the Ellipsa 2e, a $400 e-reader that includes the Kobo Stylus 2 for taking notes. It also features a 300ppi, 10.3 inch e-ink screen, Comfort Lite Pro feature that can adjust the front light to reduce your eye strain, and also supports an optional magnetic sleep cover. Pre-orders open now, shipping April 19th. Kobo also announced the subscription called Kobo Plus, which offers unlimited access to a catalog of more than 1.3 million e-books and 100,000 audiobooks. $8 per month gets you either e-books or audiobooks, depending on your choice, or $10 a month for both. Excellent. Well, Tom Henderson at Insider Gaming has sources that say Sony began development on a PlayStation handheld. Hey PS Vita owners, don't get too excited until I tell you about the limitations. It's codenamed the Q Lite. The Verges John Porter picked up this report, so it lent it a little extra credence, but you'll need a PlayStation 5 to use it. It will supposedly use Sony's remote play to stream games from the console over the internet, 1080p 60 frames per second. It also reportedly would have an 8 inch screen, use a control layout similar to the PS console controller. Insider Gaming says its sources say the Q Lite is in its QA phase and would come out before the legendary rumored PlayStation 5 Pro and after a possible detachable disk drive PS5. Now, given that other rumored hardware devices like those two have never materialized, John Porter over at the Verge recommends taking this report with a pinch of salt, but mobile gaming handhelds are hot, so it wouldn't be shocking if Sony's working on them. Steam Deck has taken the world by storm. Scott, what do you think, knowing that this may or may not actually pan out even if it's happening, they might not put out the product, what do you think of Sony's purported strategy here? Well, coming from the perspective of it will probably happen. That's just going to be the stance I take. I don't actually really know, and who knows, you're right about these other rumors. They haven't so much come to fruition as they've just sort of died on the vine, but I think that this wouldn't be that crazy of an idea. The big issue for me would be cost, because if this device comes out, my guess is this will support PlayStation Remote Play, and that's about it. If they want to include other services of the third parties, GeForce Now and others, that would be great. I don't know that that would be in their plan or not. It is definitely not in their plan to support Game Pass via this device. Then price matters. If you're going to charge $299 plus or north of that price for a device like this, that's just ridiculous. I can currently do everything that this device would do, or all the other devices like the Razer's Edge device as well as the Logitech G Cloud device. Those are pretty expensive, and I can do all of what they do plus everything in native hard drive and all other built-in features that a Steam Deck has on a Steam Deck for not much more for the base model. Yes, you're going to pay a lot more for the high-end version of the Steam Deck, but I just can't, as a consumer, see getting up to that edge and go, wait a minute, for 50 more, I can have a hard drive and full Steam integration and all these other advantages plus the things they're giving me. We don't know enough about what this device would be, so we have to make a bunch of guesses about it. I think cloud-only or online-only or direct-to-console-only devices are a viable path forward, but I think the price really has to come down to match the expectation or else nobody's going to buy it. If this thing's $99, the conversation changes entirely, right? Oh, a complete 180-degree change. It's not going to be $99. Well, yes, exactly. But if it were, yeah. Even if it was $149 to $199, let's say it's sub-$200, even by a dollar, I think that's a device I would grab and I would be very interested in it. The fact that these will have dual-sense controller capability, or at least that's the rumor, would be really cool, but that also makes me think the price will be higher than $200. So I don't know. If Sony really is working on this, and I have no doubt that they've at least thought about working on this if they haven't, I'm sure they've thought of all those things. But then again, we're still basking in the afterglow of PSVR2 being too much money for people right now. Nobody wants to buy that thing. Its sales are in the toilet. And this is very analogous to the PSVR, because the PSVR1 was like, well, why would you buy that? You have to have a PlayStation for it and it sold decently. And that doesn't seem to be happening with the PSVR2. Sean Hollister from The Verge is actually around the house today. It wasn't able to be on the show, but I asked him about this, and he speculated what if they bundled this into the PlayStation Plus tier? There's some reasons he said that that would not make sense, but he's like, that's an idea. That's one way they could go about this. Well, I mean, look at what Microsoft did when they released the Series S and X. They made a monthly payment plan where you got the device, you got the Series X in your house, you paid 20, 30 a month. It included the console plus access to Game Pass ultimate for as long as the period was. I don't know if it's a two-year plan or whatever it is, but at the end of all of that, you actually saved 50 bucks on the whole if you'd have gone out and just paid cash for the device and then paid monthly for Game Pass. Something like that would be pretty good if they said, hey, you can buy the device outright for 300, or we'll give you the device for 15 to 25 a month, and that includes our mid to high tier of PlayStation Plus. That's not bad. That I would also consider. So that could be on the table. Hardware is a subscription. Isn't that crazy of an idea these days? Entirely possible they do that. Well, in computer vision, something called segmentation is the ability to tell which pixels go with which objects within an image. Meta is releasing a new segment anything model, also known as SAM for short, along with a training data set called SA-1B. That's the largest of its kind. SAM is being released under an open source license and the SA-1B data set is being made available to researchers. The whole thing is called the segment anything project. So what does it do? Segmentation is tough because it can't be trained on public data and therefore is just more expensive to create and run. SAM can identify and mask new types of objects beyond just those that it was trained on. So you might say, what would this be used for, Tom? Yeah, the model could be combined with others to create a system that could identify text and images. Say look at a web page and tell you everything that's on the web page, whether it's an image or text. Could also do interesting things in virtual spaces. They talked about perhaps you look at a 2D item, it sees your attention, can interpret what you're looking at and then create a 3D item to put in a virtual world. Or you could just create 3D items by describing them. It would be able to take your description and create a 3D item. Or because it's Meta, you can use it for ads. Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth in a separate story told Nikkei Asia that commercial uses for Meta's AI are coming by the end of this year. As an example, he described a system that could and now a quote, ask the AI, make images for my company that work for different audiences, and it can save a lot of time and money making ads more effective. Yes, it's good that Meta is being a good customer and open sourcing things. Segmentation right now feels like transformers did when Alphabet shared them with the community and look what open AI did with transformers. Someone may be able to do something with segmentation and the rising tide will lift all boats. I think that is all wonderful and it's an advantage that Meta has that people forget about when they talk about the future. Well, if the ad market tanks, what's Meta gonna do? Well, they've got a huge advantage in AI that they can leverage. I talked about on the editor's desk today on Patreon, I wouldn't be shocked in five years if we're talking about the big three AI companies, Alphabet, Open AI and Meta. But in the meantime, they got to make the ads work and so using that AI to try to figure out how to get around to the limitations that crackdowns on ad tracking have made is a real thing. Do we think this is Meta's way to deal with those increasing limitations? Probably, right? They're as much as anybody and certainly Alphabet's under this and Google's under this pressure as well, but that's getting harder and harder for stuff to get through trackers and browsers are getting better and better at blocking things and consumers are getting more and more savvy to that sort of stuff. And so, yeah, they want to protect that end of the business. Why wouldn't they actually kind of don't have a huge problem with it? It depends on how invasive it is. But these are the kind of tools I'm interested in in AI, the way these things have been described to me and the way segmentation works. Yeah, I love the idea of me saying, here's a bunch of 2D objects on my screen, make 3D models of them, and then use those for something else. These sorts of tools that we're having to do a lot of manual work for is what I like about AI and about language models and all of this is because it's doing a lot of the footwork so that we can get to the inspiration and get the thing out. It doesn't mean I like all of it, but I do kind of like this and the idea that some of this would, like Tom said, raise all boats and be on the same tide. I'm all down with that. I just don't want to get bombarded with new ways of advertising to me. I'm not going to. That's the short version of the story, but I'm with you, Scott. I'm sorry to bother you. I am with you on this. I mean, there are many ads that I am either just fully capable of ignoring, you know, pretending that they're not there, not clicking on, and then there are ads that are served to me where I'm like, ah, I know why you did this because I looked at that website two days ago type thing. And for, you know, some of that stuff is stuff that I would want to buy, you know, I want to part with my money for this thing, whatever it may be, something like a 3D model of a nightstand, for example, where it's like, well, the picture's cool, but now I really see what the nightstand would look like in my house.  That kind of stuff is like, all right, well, if we can't get rid of ads and we can't, let's make it better. And I think Metta is probably more well-served to do this than just about any other company. Not that we should get thrown over to Amazon, but it feels like if I'm shopping this, these are cool tools I'd want, you know, like this isn't being advertised to me, it's me searching for a product and going, all right, let's see that in full holographic view. All right, let's zoom in and see the details and the seams on the plastic work. I love these ideas, but that's really not what Bosworth was talking about from what I've done. He should be, trust me, he should be. What he was talking about is we have limited ad tracking, but we do know like, oh, it's a woman in Illinois, or it's a man in Texas. And so he's going to ask the AI, like create images of this nightstand that appeal to a man in Texas, also one that appeals to a woman in Illinois. And I think that's what this is. This is talking about. And if I'm that woman in Illinois, and it appeals to me, then it works. Yeah, that's a good point. It's effective. Well, folks, you may know, I do another show called Know a Little More that does deep dives into individual topics. And it's coming back for a new season Thursday. Better than ever. If you have not yet sampled the show, go get subscribed right now. The first episode in the relaunch is going to be about RSS. It's rocky controversial history, how it ended up being the underpinnings of podcasting, despite a fight over its future and factions that make the early Catholic Church look tame. Don't miss it. Subscribe by Thursday at know a little more dot com. Nintendo designer and legend Shiguro Miyamoto told Variety mobile apps will not be the primary path of future Mario games. When making a Mario game, he noted, we try to define what is the gameplay, what is the method, and then define what devices we go on. He went on to say, Nintendo's core strategy is a hardware and software integrated gaming experience. The intuitiveness of the control is part of the gaming experience. When we explore the opportunity of making Mario games for the mobile phone, which is a more common generic device, it was challenging to determine what that game should be. So that was frightening words. Nintendo still doesn't like mobile. But if the company is pulling back from mobile, but also not leaning into the cloud, which is also popular, is its strategy still a good one? Scott Johnson, what say you? Oh man, there's so much to say around this Nintendo stuff. Nintendo is Nintendo for a reason. They have a combination of IP ownership and a history of quality games, as well as innovation and hardware, although sometimes a rocky history with that stuff. But nonetheless, they have put themselves in a very unique position over time that is just a very different place than other mainstream gaming companies. And I think the tone that I got out of reading the article in the interview is that he's not saying mobile will never be the place where specifically Mario will appear, and he already has appeared a couple of times, two, three times now if you count Mario card on the phone. But what he's saying is that's not going to be our primary place in the future. And I agree with him. I don't think it is going to be. I think touch screen only has turned out to be a very limiting factor for a lot of game designers, developers and publishers. And while it works great for certain sort of point and pick type gameplay, when it comes to moving Zelda around a screen or Mario and the way you want to, something is lost when you have just a touch screen and sure you can buy controllers for this stuff. But there's also business models that a little bit weird, but they rather probably sell a premium product to people. Yes, but they're kind of forced in today's market to make it a free to play experience. So I don't think they're going to be hurt by not prioritizing mobile any more than I think Microsoft or Sony. Well, the bigger question is, are they behind the scenes or upcoming or some unannounced thing? Are they working toward getting their hand around what Nintendo's role is with cloud gaming? Are they ready for that level of stuff? And part of me says no, because they have a really rocky history with internet in general. They still do friend codes. It's still a terrible way to run a community, but they also have a really cheap online service. And so there's reasons to like it. But are they prepared for whatever's next? I think they know that mobile for them, anyway, is not next. I just don't know if we know they know what is truly next. And is Microsoft and Sony right? Is Microsoft right about heavy cloud and heavy games on everything and having it all run everywhere? Are they even right? Is Sony right about? Nintendo is different, though. Nintendo has always been different. Like they don't play by the same rules that Microsoft and Sony and Sega and EA and everybody else play. They're very Apple-like in their protection because mobile gaming is a huge business. And if Nintendo really wanted to do it right, they absolutely could. They could make Candy Crush for Mario. They could make Fire Emblem freemium games that would follow the models that the mobile games do. They don't want to do that because they're very protective of their IP. They don't want to push Zelda into a card trading game. That's what he's talking about here is we have a strategy around the design of the game and they don't want to give that up. Now, maybe that's bad. Maybe they should not be so precious about it, but it is one of the things that has made their franchises so successful. It's why people will go to great lengths to buy a Nintendo product just so they can play Zelda, just so they can play Mario, etc. It's a special experience. You're not wrong. And so that specialist experience that they have curated for all these years is watered down and I felt this when they put that Mario Run game out or the Fire Emblem game you mentioned, but there's still a thing, still a game people can play. When those games were put out, they lessened the brand. They made me go, now these are tainted by free-to-play mechanics. And why do you think that is? Because I've heard other people say the same thing. Why Nintendo specifically can't kind of dip a toe into these mobile waters, so to speak, and have something that people think doesn't bring down the quality of the brand itself? That's a great question. It's a little bit self-inflicted. They put themselves in a position of being, again, in their own little space. They're their own category in a weird way. They don't really compete with Sony or Microsoft or any big boys anymore. What they do is they make what they want to make, and they put it on the hardware they want to make, and then they sell it to you, and then we love it. And as long as that little transaction continues in perpetuity, they don't really need to worry about what's happening in other stuff. They can still dip their toes. But to answer your question, to see a Mario game on a phone just made me go, oh, well now they're like everybody else. The CA or the Sony or the Sony or anybody else, they're just doing games on mobile. It starts to disperse the reality distortion field a little bit. 100% that's what it is. And I think that they know this, at least they do now. And I think they will still see stuff in the future. I think things will drop here and there, but it will never be flagship content from them. It'll always be after afterthought stuff, or it'll be an add-on to be able to play something else or way to track a game that's popular. But Roger, you had a really good point earlier when we were talking amongst ourselves. I think one of the things that people forget is Nintendo at its heart is a toy company. And if you look as a toy company, you want to create a thing that is more than just a game.  And if you looked at the various technologies that Nintendo has tried, whether successful, I mean, you know, it's up for debate, but they wanted to create a unique experience. And I think part of the idea is that you can't have that if you are all over the place, right?   They were, you know, they were trying to make sure that you could get something that was unique out of the entire experience, that it wasn't just the game you were getting. Maybe that means they're the exception that proves the rule. Maybe they can continue. Maybe if Nintendo has a cloud, it's a cloud gaming thing that you can only get from a Nintendo device, right? But only Nintendo could pull that off. Yeah, you're right. Anybody else tries that, they get chastised immediately for trying to do that. And Nintendo could actually get away with it. I mean, there's a reason why the biggest news in the last couple of weeks was new information about Zelda, Tears of the Kingdom. Everybody's eyes glued on that release. It's on a piece of aging hardware. It looks a lot like the previous game. If this was anyone else, we wouldn't be losing our minds. But it's Nintendo and there's magic in there. And this is this is the toy I want. So as long as they keep being that, this other stuff will just be a quick 60 million here and 30 million there, and then they'll just keep making money. What's the cloud toy Nintendo is going to have to answer though? Wait till Apple buys Nintendo then. Oh, yeah. No, I love that. I love that conversation. That one hasn't circled back around in a while. It's about time. And trust me, I'm not, you know, there's no insider information. I just think that knows something. Sometimes they seem like similar companies that might have similar ideas. Different company now. And this is good for any of those of you who might be cleaning out the garage this summer. Maybe you're moving. Maybe you just want to get some stuff out of the house. Best Buy is adding a mail in option to its recycling program. What that does is sell you a box that then you can put old electronics in. You don't have to have bought them from Best Buy and then ship back for recycling. You buy the box, then pack in as many approved items as can fit within the box within a weight limit. You got a couple of options. Nine by five by three inch box for up to six pounds goes for $23 or an 18 by 14 by four inch box goes up to 15 pounds and that will set you back $30. Best Buy does free in-store recycling. So you can take stuff there and you don't have to buy the box or you can have employees come to your house to get stuff. Maybe it's a large TV where you're just like, it's not going to fit in a box anyway.  So you have some options, but this is Best Buy's way to say, hey, want to recycle some stuff? Pay us. Yeah. I mean, nine by five by three is not big. No. You might be able to squeeze a couple thin phones in there. Or like a variety of different strange cables that I'll never use again. Yeah, that's true. You can pour a bunch of cables in there.  Stoic Squirrel says, I hope the box is recyclable. How bad would that be if it was like, you know, a plastic, unrecyclable, like material? It's going to be around forever. It's made of mesh from Mars. We made the box out of asbestos, but it's a recycling program. Yeah. Yeah. It's, you know, you're winning either way. I have, as I look to an area of the studio that you guys can't see, I currently have four MacBooks that are so old that there's nothing I can really do with them anymore, even as a display not happening.  So I haven't done this yet. But Apple, if you say, Hey, I don't want any money back. I just want to recycle them.  So, you know, sure, this is only Apple products. Apple's not saying, just give us whatever you got in the garage type thing. So if you, I don't know, feel like you have more of a hodgepodge, I guess that the best buy option might work for you. And again, I see a couple of people in the chat like, why should I pay them for this? Don't drive to the best buy. You're paying for the convenience of being able to mail this in, having the box sent to you and then mailing it back without having to go to the best buy. But they're still doing their free in-store stuff, if you're willing to make the truck. All right, let's check out the mailbag. Let's do it. This one comes from Brian, who said, after yesterday's discussion of the Thunderbolt dock, Brian said, the Thunderbolt 4 dock doesn't have an SD card slot because surface devices already have an SD card slot built in. Rich and Aya Zaktar, who was the co-host on the show yesterday, had talked about this and Rich responded, and we thought this was good to pass along to the rest of you as well. Thank you for bringing that up. I believe I alluded to the fact that this might indicate their upcoming devices would have SD cards, but a good point that their lineup does feature many services with SD card readers. Interestingly, this doesn't include the Surface Studio or Surface Laptop 5, so possibly refreshes of those might include them. Thank you for the feedback. Yeah. Thank you, Brian, and thank you, Rich, for getting back to that. Good conversation with those two yesterday. Absolutely. Thanks also to you, Scott Johnson, for being with us today. Let folks know where they can keep up with you. Sure. Pretty much everything I have going on right now is over at frogpants.com. And if you're into podcasts, great, got you covered there. If you like gaming, lots of stuff there. And if you like art, lots of that as well. All sorts of things available for everyone. If they just put in this little tiny address into the internet, frogpants.com. That's simple. Thanks also to a brand new boss we got since yesterday's show, and that boss's name is Tom S. Thomas. Tom S. You just started backing us on Patreon. We see you. We hear you. We thank you for being part of the crew. Listen, folks, don't be left behind. If you're listening to the free feed with ads, which you can get rid of in the Patreon feed, we'll get over there and become a patron. What are you waiting for? Thomas did it. Don't get left behind, because when you become a patron, you get access to good day internet, the extended show of DTNS. And on that show today, we're going to talk about a Piper Sandler survey showing that teens don't use VR. Is this it? Is this the end of VR? Did it even begin? Are the early days already over for VR? Stick around. We're going to talk about that. Just a reminder, though, you can catch this show live Monday through Friday at 4 p.m. Eastern, 20 hundred UTC. You can find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live. Tell a friend, it's fun to have you live if you can be with us. We are back doing it all again with Justin Barber Young tomorrow. Talk to you then. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com.


So I'd like to transition us to Tanir Kain Muldrow. She is a trauma survivor and an internationally recognized trauma-informed care expert. As president and CEO of Neen Cares, Inc., Tanir's work has focused on heightening awareness of the characteristics and effects of trauma and improving the performance of service providers, businesses, government agencies, and others who interact with trauma victims and survivors. Tanir is the founder and co-CEO of MetR, a global nonprofit providing services for trauma survivors worldwide. And she previously served as a team leader for the National Center for Trauma-Informed Care. In addition to this work, Tanir served as the executive producer for the documentary Walking Through Bullets and a board advisor for the film Like Any Other Kid. Her incredible story is told in her autobiography Healing Neen and in the 2010 documentary of the same name. Help me welcome Tanir Kain. Thank you. Yes. Good morning. Well, I can promise you I will not go over time because I have a flight. After this, I'm going on vacation. So if you see me, I'll be like Cinderella. The shoes will be falling off as I run over. Don't come after me with my shoes. I don't need them going to the Bahamas. OK? I am very pleased to be here.  It is my life work. I'm very passionate about this work because I am a survivor. I'm going to tell you a little bit about my story. And then I'm going to talk about the work that I have been able to do on five continents around the world and how I continue to try to push the agenda for us to understand the impact of trauma-informed care. So people really can have an opportunity to heal and have healthier lives. I'm going to take you back in time with me. And my story is not an excuse for all the bad decisions I made as an adult. And you will find out how many bad decisions I made. And I still make. So it's not about excuses. What I'm trying to do is help you to understand what motivated those bad decisions. And it did. It all started at my childhood. At age nine, I had about seven and a half brothers and sisters. I was the oldest. My mother's an alcoholic. She's always been an alcoholic. And she was the type of mother that would leave us in the household two and three days at a time before coming home and checking on us and feeding us. So it would leave me in the household with my sisters and brothers. And believing that since I was the oldest, I had to take care of them. And I never really knew where babies came from. At that time, I just knew she kept bringing them home. You know, she would be like, I'm taking the trash out. And then two days later, she would come back with a baby in her arms. You may not want to take the trash out anytime soon, lady. Just saying. Really? That's a joke, really? There's a lot of doctors here today, isn't it? Yeah. As much as guys get paid, you should be laughing all the time. So I always try to take care of them. I couldn't protect them all the time. I did my very best. Malestation and sexual abuse started very early on in my life around age nine. And I never really could understand how a man who body was so big that I actually covered my child's body would find any pleasure out of hurting me. But I had developed a belief system that I am nothing. I'll never melt to anything. And this is just how it's going to be for me. And out of that belief system, there was a sub-belief system that was birthed. Bad things happen to bad people. And if this very, very bad thing is happening to me, that must mean I'm a very, very bad child. So I'm going to keep it tucked inside of me in a very dark place and not be able to talk about it. I'm able to go to school a lot because I have to stay home and take care of my sisters and brothers when my mother didn't return home at night at time. But you know what, after missing two or three days at a time, I will always go back to school, always giving my miss lessons, but nobody ever asks why. Why are you missing so many days, little girl, if there was any communication with my mother, there was no consequence because they just would really just pass me off to the next grade. I also started drinking alcohol very early on around age nine. I used to wander into the living room after the last night's party. And I will find these half-filled cups just sitting around. And what I realized was when I drank these half-filled cups, when my mother smacked me down and called me names, it just didn't feel as bad anymore. And when the men came, it didn't feel as shameful or as painful, so I will seek out these half-filled cups to help me to deal my reality as early as nine years old. This is a photograph of me around age nine. I remember getting ready for that photograph. I remember standing in the mirror, trying to get the straight part to make these two perfect ponytails. Washing out this red and white connected polyester shirt with a bar of ivory soap, trying to get it clean for picture data the next day. And brushing my teeth. I brushed my teeth a lot, not because my mother said brush it in morning, after every meal or at night, or because she took us to the dentist. She has never taken us to the dentist. I brushed my teeth a lot because I always thought in my child's mind, if only I could brush away the smell of the men. When they used to force themselves in my mouth, around my face, it's like I could just brush the smell. Maybe things wouldn't feel as bad because the smell never, ever seemed to go away. No matter how much I brushed my teeth, no matter how much I washed my face, the smell sometimes felt like it was suffocating me, and I could not get rid of that smell. So I would wake up in the morning, I would run into the, in the bathroom, and I would brush my teeth, and over and over again, I didn't know how to take care of myself otherwise, because I was never taught how to properly take care of myself. I just kind of wiped myself off, or put some water in a tub, and dump in and dump off. Just never really knew how to take care of myself. And I would run out of the house, jump on the school bus. When I arrived to the school house, the kids would circle me and call me name. They'd call me Pissy Neen, because I always smelled like urine.   But sometimes it was safer to lay in a bed and pee myself because on those party nights, because I never knew who I may encounter in the hallway going to the bathroom. So I learned very early on a way to protect myself, but as a result of that, I always smelled like urine. So the kids called me Pissy Neen. I would run into the school house in a bathroom. I would huddle down and cry. The teacher would come and get me, take me to class and start today's lesson. But again, never ask why.  Why aren't you being taken care of? Well, eventually there was a complaint against my mother to the Department of Social Services. Somebody reported my mother, and she kept getting evicted and she didn't take care, we kept moving from place to place. So when the social worker came out to follow up on this complaint, she walked into our apartment. When she seen the filthy conditions we were living in, she immediately moved us from the household. And as you good folks know, this morning there's not one family sitting around waiting to foster so many kids together. And we was separated and put into different foster care homes. And I was devastated. It was my sisters and brothers that gave me the only joy I had in my life was to be surrounded by them. And she came in and she told me that she had to take me away from my mother and she was gonna take me to somebody's house. She didn't tell me who, she didn't tell me anything. When I got in the car, I was in the back, I was crying because the unfamiliar was so much scarier than the familiar. I learned how to kind of protect myself. When I would hear the voice of that big man that was gonna come and hurt me later on, I knew how to push something up against the door. I knew how to protect myself. I learned that very early on. But now I'm going into an unfamiliar territory. How do I protect myself when I don't know anything about my new environment and my surrounding? And the only thing she was able to say to me in the car was, it's gonna be okay, don't cry. It's gonna be okay, don't cry. And I often think, why was it so difficult to treat me as if I was a part of this? I have to, we had to take you away from your mother and tell your mom, get better. I'm gonna take you to somebody's house that you don't know. We believe she's the best person to take care of you. And again, it's going to be very scary for you. When you go to court, I don't know what happened, but I'm right there, she can call me and I'll try to get your brothers and sisters on the call. But we're trying our best to make sure that your mom, get better and you can go back home with your family. We say that we set this system up. The system of child protective service, department social service, social, they're all trained to make sure that kids are safe physically, but they don't do a lot to make sure they're safe mentally and psychologically. The trauma that's inflicted on children when they snatch in place with no regard, the next day they sent me to school as if nothing ever happened and they start to get complaints, they start to get complaints. She's unable to focus. She doesn't keep up with the class. We think she may have some learning disabilities. No, I don't. You just turned the only world I had upside down and you did not help me to adjust to this new reality. We have to do a better job of taking care of children in these types of system that we have developed and call safe places. We really do. Wasn't in foster care for a long period of time and then I was taken to court and different family members chose each and every one of us. They just kind of came to court and they said, I'll take this one, I'll take that one, I'll take that one. We went off to all different family member homes and my older cousin chose me. She had three daughters around my age. For the first time in my life, I felt a little safe because nobody was touching me and nobody was teasing me. She showed me how to properly wash myself, clean myself. She fed me, she sent me to school on time every day and again, I felt a little safe. But around age 14, after being there for several years, I heard someone call me, Neen, that's what my family member called me and I see my mother calling my name and she was walking up to the house. When she walked through the door, she told me that she loved me and she wanted me to come back and live with her. I have, up until that point in my life, I could never, ever remember hearing my mother ever tell me that she loved me. I didn't hesitate. I ran upstairs, I pecked my things and off into the sunset I went with my mother. Well, by then she had had three more kids. Social service had given her even more benefits so another public housing apartment, within a week she beat me in the street when I was trying to go to school. So she didn't walk me back, I felt, because she loved me. She needed a babysitter. So how do I live without my mother? And I know I couldn't live with her and no matter what, kids love unconditionally. We do. And I don't remember who or when but I do remember somebody telling me if you take a bottle of pills, all you need is one bottle of pills, you'll die. Well, in hopes of dying at age 14 I took a whole bottle of pills and when I woke up in the emergency room with them trying to get the tube down my throat to get the charcoal on my stomach, they were talking to my mother off to the side who convinced them that I took an accidental overdose on my own prescribed medication and I was released right back into her care. She didn't know what to do with me at that point in her life. So she sent me to live with her sister, my Aunt Curl and she did the best she could but by age 15 I was an alcoholic. In order for me to go to school and maintain in school all day long I had to take a glass bottle of gin and juice to drink on all day long just so I can function in school. But it still gave my mother some control over me. So when this man thought I was cute and wouldn't mind making me his wife and he befriended my mother by giving her all the alcohol she could possibly drink. So when it came time for her to sign the marriage license on my behalf she signed it, I was her minor or I couldn't. She signed it, I married him.  Okay, well maybe this older man can protect me from all the other bad men of the world. But this night in Shining Armor there were times when I would see his pickup truck pull in front of the apartment and his headlights were shining through a limber window. I was often frozen in fear because I didn't know if this was going to be the night that he decided to come and take his fingers, swipe it across his finger. If it was dust on his finger he was gonna beat me down until he seemed blood because what he needed to know was what was I doing all day long that I could not dust his house? So there was many beatings in that regard. So around age 19, when somebody came to me and said try this, it was crack cocaine. It was the answer to all of my problems. See I could just use this drug and numb out anything that's ever happened to me and that smell that never went away. When I used crack cocaine that smell went away. And not only did I have that smell but there was also a movie that had developed in my mind over time. You know the movie of the big man that covered my child's body he would take his elbow and stick it in my mouth so I wouldn't scream to the point where I have been beat and raped so many times I stopped counting them. So this drug helped me to deal with my reality. I would say whatever they gonna bring, let them bring, I can deal with this drug. But unfortunately for me in order to obtain this drug to help me to deal with my reality I had to do some things.  He set my son out of state. I end up in the streets for 19 years as a homeless crack addict racking up 83 arrests and 66 convictions.   And I would check myself into our voluntary mental health unit at our county hospital and it just depended upon what day of the week it was. I went on a wednesday, I was getting pregnant I went on Monday, I was bipolar went on a two-day borderline Tuesday and they would always give me a different diagnosis but it was always the same psychiatrists never got that. But I would always ask them, I'd say well how do you know? I would explain to them that I had been up for seven days straight smoking crack cocaine. Well see they never allowed the street narcotics to get out of my system before they truly gave me assessment or evaluation. But I guess you give what you pay for cause I ain't having no insurance. They didn't have open and roll. I know that's not a good joke right now. I'm sorry, that was funny in 2012 though. It's my very first mug shot. I compared this to a young lady I've been mentoring over the last few years. I have a great relationship with the police department now. As a matter of fact, very good friends with a detective just retired and he was just so amazed about the advocacy work I was doing in the streets.   But I always compare when I would go down there trying to support them I would see how distressed they were always were when they'd get arrested cause he would call me say, hey, we got set to such. I know you've been working with her. She needs you. We just arrested her for a major charge. Come and support her. And I will watch how distressed they were. And in my very first mug shot even at a very young age I wasn't distressed at all. I said maybe I thought somebody would finally ask me what happened to you instead of what is wrong with you? Why can't you get it together? Now I'm gonna talk to you a little bit of being retraumatized in the multiple systems I've been and I'm not gonna spend a lot of time on this cause I really want to get to some Q and A and in my vacation. I'm from Annapolis, you know. I'm always on the flight. I love the fact that I was able to get on a mock train and come here today. Even though they said walk from, it was a short I don't know who said it was a short walk from Union Station. What fitness person sent that email to my office I want to know because it was not. Not in this heat, it was not. From Annapolis and because people always see me as the homeless crack kid prostitute. You know, they never could see past that. So I had a lot of issues with police officers just not being able to listen to me after I'd been beaten and raped. I would try to tell them and I was always disregarded because they were always just too busy trying to lock me up for something. Something that I did. Ending up in correctional facilities all the time this one particular time, I went into the correctional facility, the Tenton Center and around the county. I went in and I told them I was pregnant. They said, yeah, I came, whatever. And they put me in a holding cell with two ladies when the nurse came down to do the medical intake. She took my urine sample, took the two women that was in a cell with me. I don't know why she did, but she did. Well, they mixed up the urine somehow. And two days later she told me I was not pregnant but I had a urinary tract infection. And they medicated me by giving me an antibiotic and an americotic pain reliever. And at this time, if you didn't take prescribed medication by the doctor, if you refuse your medication, they put you in what they call isolation until you stabilize. We call it the whole, so I ain't one going the whole. So I took all the medicine they told me I needed for this infection that they insist I had. I had to go to a bathroom one morning. I went to use the bathroom and my baby head came out. I was five months pregnant. They shackled me down to the gurney and threw a sheet on the bottom half of my body with my deceased baby stuck between my legs while they figure out who would escort me to the hospital. I tell you this horrible story for one reason. So often people go back and forth into the same systems of care. And we so easily and readily make up our mind that everything they we say, they always say we're liars. Remember, not for one minute that somebody say, wait a minute, maybe this woman know more about her body than we're allowing her. Maybe we should retest her just to make sure we're not wrong. Another thing that could have been prevented. Always, always put into seclusion and restraint.  That was me. One of the worst things you can do to somebody that is a victim of neglect and abandonment. As a child, I was a victim of neglect and abandonment.  See because my issues with my mother was always triggered and nobody was helping me to identify, address or treat my trauma. So I did the only thing I know to do and what I knew to do was to tap into my survival mode and my survival mode has always told me to fight because I didn't know there was any other way. So when they came with that trade food, trade medication, I smack it out of my face. Now I'm there on a walkie talkie called Nicole. People running towards me usually meant to restrain me. Do you truly understand what I'm saying?  Somebody that has been held down in rape multiple times causing more traumas, layers and layers of it. Take me even further away from the possibility of healing or recovery. Not intentionally, I know, but because we don't understand the impact of trauma, sometimes we cause more harm. Making it impossible for people to heal. Always over medicate. And truthfully, I'm gonna keep it real. I appreciate it to free high.  But unfortunately for me, for bipolar disorder, they would give me Thorazine, Adavan, and lithium at the same time. Somebody please help me hold my head upside, like the drool of the corner of my mouth. Again, making it impossible for me to heal. As a result of rapes and prostitution, I never knew how my children were conceived when I was homeless because every day somebody was raping me and I was prostituting every day. But one of the things that I could not deal with was have somebody take my baby out my arms and walk away. But rightfully so, they were removed from my care. And the last time I was able to see two of my kids, they put me in a one-way mirror and let me watch them with their new mom. And when I walked out, they gave me this picture and said, this is your last communication we'll be able to give you. So 19 years, I went deeper and deeper into the streets, eating out of a trash can. I wasn't allowed to go in anybody's house.  People telling me that there was no hope for me. I put this one in for two reasons. For 19 years living on street, I had really nice teeth. You can't smoke crack for 19 years and have teeth like that unless you take care of it. I always had to brush my teeth, no matter what. And I would get pat down by the police officer and say, is that a weapon? I was like, no, that's my toothbrush. I always had to add a toothbrush. When we was getting the footage of the film about my life, I had a camera crew for 20 months following me wherever I went. So of course, when I need the bridge, my toothbrush and toothpaste was still there. And out of all my mug shots, it's the only one I was distressed. I said it was a perfect time for intervention. 14 years ago, I'm in prison again. I'm pregnant again. And I'm terrified I'm about to lose another baby. And I don't know how I'm gonna live yet again having another baby snatched from my arms. I got used to the beatings and the rape. I would tell them, put your gun away, just hurry up.  But I couldn't get used to my children being taken away from me. Here I was in prison, ready to lose another child. And something dropped in my spirit. So I laid on the concrete floor in my prison cell. I said, God, I don't know if you listen to people like me. But if you do, please help me. Please don't let them take this baby. Not long after that desperate cry to God, I found out about a program called Tamar's Children. They say it works on your trauma. Really didn't understand what trauma was. Oh, I thought trauma was when you get hit by a car or when you come back from war. That's what I thought trauma was.  All the things that you experience in your life, those things aren't supposed to happen to you. And I'm like, really? Because where I come from, that's not trauma. That's the norm. It happens to everybody.  And they said I'll be able to recover. Did I really think that these people could help me at this time? I had 31 failed treatments. No, I did not. But they said one thing made me wanted to go to this program. They said you get to keep your baby with you. And I said maybe if I can keep this one for more than three hours this time, things will be different. So I went to a program that started to ask the questions that I always needed asked, what happened to you? Why would a nine-year-old drink? Why would a 15-year-old become an alcoholic? How did you live in the streets for 19 years without not even wanting to come off the streets? What happened to you? So they started to work with me with the first trauma that impacted my life. My mother, her lack of love, lack of protection. I went from that and learning how to heal from that to all the times I was sexually, mentally, physically abused, everything I could remember. And now I was in a safe environment. These things were no longer happening to me. And I was believed and I was able to heal. And then she said, we're gonna start to talk about your children. I said, no, ma'am. I said, how do you heal from something that continues to give me pain? Every day that I wake up, I realize I had four kids walking this earth. If I passed them in the streets, I wouldn't even know it. How do you heal from that? She said, you do. You just don't do it by yourself. And I become so distressed when I talk to my kids. I would cry and I would rock. When I rocked, she rocked. She would mask my emotions since she followed my lead and she took me through a grieving process for four kids at the same time. So I was able to begin healing in that area. See, a lot of systems try to help me over the 19 years. They try to give me bits and pieces of information. But I had so much trauma packed so tightly inside of me. Bits and pieces of information couldn't penetrate any of that to get it rooters. I can build the foundation so my belief system can change from I am nothing to I am somebody and I can be anything I want in this world. See when my belief system changed, my thought process changed. And I started to make the best decision. And the best decision I ever made was to go through a one year course and guess what? How to be a mother. Yeah, because if you don't know, you don't know. My learned experience from my mother. So I had to learn how to be loving and nurtured and protected. And do you know, my last pregnancy was the first time I ever heard the word secure attachment. How sad is that? I had four other babies. And not until my last baby, somebody suggested that for me to form a secure attachment helped me to form a secure attachment with my daughter. And I went through a one year course how to do that. And I can tell you, my daughter had a secure attachment. She's 13 now. So that's a whole different traumatic experience. All the beatings, all the rapes, all everything that ever happened did not prepare me to raise a teenager. It's crazy. But my she used to travel with me everywhere as I go. But now I have a nanny so when she got to go school, she's back home going to school. But what a difference it made for my daughter. My daughter has tested in highest percentile ever nation for several years for the National Standardized Test. She's been taking, thank you. She's been taking French four times a week since first grade learning Swahili. And she's very smart. She corrects my grammar all the time. She's so much smarter than me. She just won an award, a cash award as a humanity awards that she won as a national contest, which is called Letters About Literature. And all the grades write about books that impacted them. And she wrote about the book The Hate You Give. And she got a cash award for that. She came second place in the state of Maryland. So I get awards all the time. Don't nobody give me cash with mines though. But what a difference it made. She doesn't know what it's like not to have a mother that says, do you have homework? Listen, I wanna see your homework. Let's talk about your homework. I have never missed a parent-teacher conference. Every year on the first day, my team know to leave that first day of school open so I can walk my daughter into class and let her homeroom teacher know what you do here. I will be forcing it back home. I'm your partner at this. She doesn't know not to have somebody to love and support her. What a difference it made in her life. 14 years ago, it's when I cried out to God and when I found this trauma program and I never had another desire to use drugs, alcohol or even smoke a cigarette. It's been 14 years since my healing process since I did any drugs, any alcohol or smoke a cigarette and I have no desire, okay? That's the difference I'm talking about. 14 years ago, I go into prison with my daughter. 13 and a half years ago, I went into the community program, the trauma-based program. 13 years ago, I went into community to take care of my daughter. I got an apartment. 12 years ago, I purchased my first home. You see where I'm going with this.  But I often wonder, did they realize that treating my trauma was gonna break that generational cycle in my family? See, my daughter doesn't know what it's like to be hungry, what it's like to live in a dangerous area.  So in other words, the cycle has been broken because she'll be able to give her kids what she was given and so on and so forth. That's the big picture in all of this. She goes to the key school in Maryland with the best private schools, rated the best and the most expensive in Maryland. So yes, I'm living the American dream. I'm in debt, there you have it. Come from underneath the bridge, you're going debt with the rest of us, Miss Kane. The more debt you have, the more American you are. Well, guess what? I am a super American, okay? But I can tell you all the wonderful things that I was able to accomplish. I give God the credit for it because nothing, it's nothing humanly possible. I could've done to accomplish everything that I accomplished. But the work I have been doing is internationally and nationally, I train systems of care to do better. We had to get better results for the people and understand the impact of trauma. I've now been working with, I do a lot of work with the state of Florida because anybody from the state of Florida, y'all know they need a lot of hands on work, okay? I just spent three days in St. John's County, St. Augustine area, and I went on a shadow business with them when they went out, the child protective service workers went out to the home. I just kind of shadowed to see how they were working it out and working and engaging, and then I do a six-hour strengthening relationship with families, training, and then I start working with the birth moms so they can start working towards getting their children back. So I do all this work, every system of care. All of my films are regarded to trauma. All the films that I produced, I'm producing TV now, but everything is kind of grouped into my, it's like my life, everything is I'm passionate about because it's all go back to my life story and the hope that came out of me being given trauma treatment. So my books, everything that I do is, my nonprofit is to help people, so I'm very fortunate that I get to do the work that I do. We really have to understand trauma if we really want children to grow up in healthier environments. This is not just about going into the school systems and making a difference. This is changing the outcome for the family. You know, you cannot treat the child without treating the family. And I encourage, when I encourage everybody, I'm also working with DOE and the state of Florida as well and some other states, but I really encourage people to understand what it takes to start working with children, with trauma in schools. First of all, we need to get away from thinking teachers gonna be able to do it. What we need to do is make sure teachers don't do more harm. But we have to put into place something on grounds in schools because sometimes that's the safest place for them. So we need to utilize the fact that they feel safe there and put in some kind of counseling or something in the schools. And when something is recognized as being, okay, a little different, something's wrong there, you know what I mean? We need to help kids feel safe and regard them not only physically, but mentally as well. I'm so glad that everybody's talking about trauma for them, okay. I don't know, I think Oprah just said, I've been doing this work, I was the team leader, I've been doing this for a long time now, but Oprah said, so everybody said, trauma in front of care, trauma in front of care, did you see Oprah? Oprah's talking about trauma in front of care. Like, oh really? So we definitely, it works, because here I am, it works. You know, I employed people, I changed the game. So people can, and I go into communities and we provide services, free services for communities to heal and certainly to protect and get the children within it. Thank you so much for sharing your story. What an honor to hear your story and I'm really glad you made it from the train station here. As the mother of a 15 year old girl, I can empathize about the trauma of raising a teenage girl.  If folks have questions, please approach the microphones. We'd love to be able to entertain your questions while we still have to near with us. But to get us started, you know, you're working with systems now internationally, domestically, and I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about what you think makes those systems ready to hear this message versus systems that may not be ready to act. Well, the fact is, I think that what's happening is trauma-informed care is just not the flavor of the week. Like we had some other models or something.  So pretty much the government is saying that systems should be trauma-informed. And so I think what's happening is people, it's not so much people thinking that, oh, well, we gotta get this and I mean, we do have some systems that say, hey, come help us. But I think that because the way funding is dropping now and you see that language and you have to be trained, you have to have some kind of component of trauma-informed care, you know, people are like, okay, let's get this because they wanna obtain and maintain funding. And which is, it doesn't matter how they get it, but I think that we can't just use the language, because I go to a lot of places that they show my film and they think they trauma-informed. I'm like, no, that's just to get some awareness to it. Now you need to really put yourself in a position. And you know, I always tell people, you cannot be trauma-informed without making sure that you understand the people that work for you. Because how often do we have people in our system of care that has unidentified, unaddressed and untreated trauma that then sometimes spill out into the people that we serve unintentionally. So the first thing is for the, due to healer-healer, so any kind of thing around that to make sure that their staff is taken care of and supported. Lull? Hi, Lull Solomon with Kaiser Permanente. And firstly, thank you for an incredibly compelling, grounding and funny talk. Oh, I'm so glad you like it. But you're just tremendous. I was really appreciating everything that you said. So if you were a mayor of a city or a supervisor for a county, what would the policies be that as a person who encounters the police department or the child welfare system or all the other systems that cities and counties have, what would the policies be that you would wanna see on their agenda to make sure that they're trauma-informed and not just training of city and county staff but other actions? I think that if I was a mayor, God help the city, but if I was a mayor, if I was a mayor, the one thing I would do is help the city to understand that there's a saying that it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a community, it takes a whole city, a community to heal a trauma survivor. So I think that my first thing was we no longer gonna be territorial but our departments. We're coming together, we're gonna come together, I will put together a task force for trauma-informed care. I will make sure that we will have CIT officers to understand trauma when we go out into the community, especially when they're dealing with children. I will make sure that the money that does come down, you know, well, we're city's obviously where we're broke, that there are something when we start to talk about what's gonna be given to this school and what's it that we're gonna have to really consider making sure that some more psychological things are put into place for children in school. And, you know, the guidance counselor, maybe we can put a guidance counselor that's also moonlight as a therapist, I don't know. But I think that the whole city will have to come together, but I think putting together a task force so everybody can go out and kind of monitor what was going on in the city to see where change needs to take place. And that's what I do, I will bring everybody together and so help understand. And then I will bring in Tanir Khan to pay to, okay, that's not, I will bring me in and pay me to speak so everybody can get excited about helping people. Yes, next question. Hello, my name is Damian Perkins. I also work for Kaiser Permanente. I do arts integration. So right now we are in development of using the arts, collaborating with other educational theaters to build curriculum, trauma-informed curriculum for teachers. And first I wanted to ask, do you think that's a good idea? I think it's a great idea, but I think that when you're doing it, you're just making sure that you're doing it in a way that they won't cause more harm. You know, teachers are underpaid and teachers are, got way too many kids in most classes. And, you know, they see what's going on, but they can't focus on that. I think that we cannot think that we can put that on teachers, but I think that she just needs to be trained so they won't do more harm. You know, and be able to do some kind of model, train them in a model where they will make sure that they're tapping into kids' strengths and not their weaknesses. Because what we see in the schools are, the teachers are always looking at what's wrong with a child instead of what's right with a child. And we need to make sure our teachers are tapping into their strengths and building on their strengths. Their strengths and getting away from what's wrong. You know what I mean? And because it is in the kid that's going to heal. So we really need to let them know by encouraging and uplifting them, you know, I go to some schools and I'm modified. Like, oh my God, did she just send it to a child? You know what I mean?   We just can't take that for granted. And I think that it's a way to go with, I think it's great that you want to do that.  Because they are ready. A lot of them are already out there protesting, you know. Dan, you want to give them one more thing? You're going to run from you ladies, so. One of the things that we were concerned about was the follow-up after we do the workshop, the follow-up and the resources. So I just wanted to ask, did you have any ideas or suggestions about what that could be? Because we don't really want it to be this one-time thing where we come in and do that. Absolutely, and you just have to find a way where it will work for that system, you know what I mean? When I do follow-up, I go back because I sit there and I, if I spend some time with a system or agency, before I leave there, I'll sit with them to help plan out some goals to become more trauma-informed. And then every 90 days or every six months, I'm back on a call with them or if they need me to, I'll go back out because you know, some turnover because of turnovers and help them to be grouped to see why they weren't able to get to this certain goal and we have to rethink this. And because I spend so much time with so many different systems, I see like in Iowa was working, that hasn't worked in Texas, you know?  And find the right fit for them. Thank you. Last question. Hi, I'm Debbie Plotnick, Mental Health America and we met many years ago through our very dear, close friend, Ms. Jackie McKinney. I just wanted to ask you to talk a little bit about one of Jackie's passions in addition to trauma and trauma-informed healing, peers and the role of peers. And how do you see peers in schools maybe being part of this solution? Absolutely. So peers are invaluable. They are in, absolutely invaluable. You know, to put a peer in a school would be a wonderful thing, you know what I mean? Because what happens is you have that identification and if I'm going, I'm working with my peers automatically, I identify myself, I'm not here, I won't wear my suit, I put on my jeans and my shirt and I'm like here, I tell them why I'm there and the only difference between me and you right now is that somebody finally gave me an opportunity to heal. But they instantly, there's that identification and they feel safe.    So yeah, of course, absolutely. The peer work, the trauma peer work has been tremendous, tremendous and it has, again, SAMHSA is all about peers, you know, and it's a lot of funding in that, you know, where you can get funded to put peers in schools.  Well, thank you so much, Tanir, for sharing your story with us today. Please help me, thank you, Tanir. Please enjoy your vacation as well.