Nothing like just standing there while you're getting into it. That's not awkward at all. Probably should have done a more grand entrance, maybe. Anyways, hey, this talk is called Leading When You're Not In Charge. My name is Scott Lesser, as I mentioned, senior developer at Life Church. You might be curious about what does a church developer do, or some of you might be like boo, don't care, keep going, and that's totally fine. But just to clear the air, I'm not responsible for any of those super sick church flash websites. I wish that's what I did, but I don't have those skills. I'm going to give you just a quick background of what we do at Life Church. So we have 25 different engineers across three different teams, and I lead one of those engineering teams. And my team is specifically focused on building software that we give away to other churches. So my leadership journey has been a little bit bumpy, a little bit rough. This gift kind of captured it, sort of just kind of falling backwards into it. A few years ago, I was in kind of a holding pattern in my career. So I had been developing, I was still growing as a developer, but I was wanting more responsibility. I wasn't really sure the best way to go about getting it, was it like to pester my boss, was it just to kick butt at my job? And I was also, part of the culture at Life Church is really wanting to grow as a leader, and I was like, yeah, I want to do that, but I didn't really know what that meant totally. And I honestly thought, yeah, once I land in a position of leadership, like running a team, I'll figure out how to do those things. So fast forward to now, leading a small team of engineers, leading so, so strong. And this is a lot of what my leadership looked like. It's like, hey guys, let's go. And it's like, no one's following me because I'm not doing a good job. And so we'll come back to kind of how that change happened of like wanting to grow as a leader and wanting more responsibility and actually getting it. But now that I'm in this spot that I'm in, looking back, I realized that I really could have been doing all of these things the entire time. So I didn't need to be in a position of leadership to be leading well. And instead of like wanting more influence, I should have been using my existing influence just to do more. And so you can kind of think of me as like the ghost of Christmas past. Like I'm up here just jangling my old bones and chains and kind of trying to like get through to you guys about like, hey, if you don't change your ways, you're never gonna get anywhere. So my hope for today is that there's a lot of awkward laughs like that. We have some fun and that you pick one of these topics that stands out to you and focus on that and work on that. So what is leadership? So thanks to confirmation bias, I was able to Google and find a quote that lines up with exactly how I feel about it. Katie Christie says, leadership should be the humble authentic expression of your unique personality in pursuit of bettering whatever environment you are in. You might be thinking, hmm, I kind of had more of a like general patent type leadership image in my mind, right? Like a strong command inspiring vision that could like lead you into battle. And so what we're gonna talk a little bit about is like there's the older models of leadership theory which are like you're born a leader and you're not developed as a leader.  But in the newer models of leadership it's really about finding out what is unique about you. What are your strengths and weaknesses and leading from those strengths? And one of those newer leadership models is the three levels of leadership model. And this might look like something you saw in sex ed in like middle school, but there are three different levels to this. As the name says, there's personal leadership, private and public. So personal leadership is learning to lead yourself. Private leadership is peer leadership, leading co-workers one-on-one. And in public leadership is leading teams of like two or more. And so we're gonna stay in that middle circle in there, the personal leadership. So we're not gonna focus on private or public leadership but just really learning to be a better leader where you are currently. And so, which is fine. Some of you might be thinking like, dull, I do not want public leadership. Like the last thing I want is to run a team. I just want, I just wanna feel like I'm being heard and I wanna leave like right where I'm at. And that's perfect. Like that's exactly where you can be and you can stay there. If you're getting better as a leader your team and your organization is getting better. One more quick thing. So we're gonna be using Yahoo Answers. It's kind of like a learning aid slash segue between topics. If you don't know what Yahoo Answers is, it's a place where you can go in and ask questions and it's pretty much like catnip for internet trolls. And so, actually this slide isn't totally accurate because Verizon recently announced they were gonna rename Yahoo as Altaba. And then while I was working on this talk then they announced again that they're actually renaming AOL and Yahoo as Oath. So I guess maybe it's gonna be Oath answers soon but I'm just gonna refer to it as Yahoo Answers. So what can you expect to find on Yahoo Answers? Something a little bit like this maybe. I need a word that begins with J. Not jelly, I know that's the first thing that everybody was like, oh easy jelly. Nope, she doesn't need that one, she's got it. We need a few more. So you can get some pretty succinct lists like this one going, classic J words like jurisprudence and jojoba. And he got bored and just tapped out there. All right, so leading yourself is the first topic we're gonna talk about. Before you can expect to be given the responsibility of leading others you need to be able to lead yourself well. And so kind of take a look at what that looks like. Some of these things are super basic stuff. Showing up to work on time. Like I said, pick something that you say, oh I can work on that. If showing up to work on time is yours you're like I could do that better then cool you can like head out of here you got your thing you're done. Getting your work done and not just getting your work done but done on time done when you said it would be done without having to be reminded three times. Be prepared. So if your team does a daily stand up and you start every stand up with oh give me a minute I'm not sure what I'm doing today. Be more prepared. Add two minutes of margin to your morning so you can be ready for stand up. Be a self starter. This is something important.  And I bolded this one don't be complicated because I love this one. This is like a really easy filter to like run decisions you're making through. Don't be complicated. Are you making your boss's job harder? Are you a distraction? Are you hard to lead? Don't be complicated. 100 leadership qualities. Can I get a list please? First of all, 100 leadership qualities. That's a pretty lengthy list. I don't think that I think at a certain point you're just describing like human beings like breathing and has eyes. But I do like the update I like but more of lists, details are unnecessary. And why'd you say that? Because this guy nailed it with this diatribe on leadership. And the reason I love it and I had to actually crop out the top like two thirds of it because I wanted to get the sources in there. Me and my dad as the sources is gold because it's super easy to validate those and follow up on them if you wanna learn more. Leading up, I'm sure a lot of you may have seen this kind of mentioned in the outline of the talk and curious about what is leading up. So John Maxwell, leadership author describes it as if you take the approach of wanting to add value to those above you, you have the best chance of influencing them. So leading up is not bossing your boss. This is not a Dilbert comic. This is real life. Don't boss your boss. Leading up is however supporting your leader. It is adding value to the organization and it is distinguishing yourself by working with excellence. So a few things to keep in mind if you're wanting to lead up well and this stuff is just straight up ripped from the Craig Grishel leadership podcast. So if you're looking for a place to like sharpen your leadership skills, it's a great place to start. I can't take credit for any of this stuff. Honor Matters. So he says honor publicly in, who lost it? Honor publicly results in influence privately. So if you want to be over people you need to learn to be under people. You need to learn to be led. If you're constantly undermining your leader like you're not going to gain equity with them. Timing Matters. So respect the timing of just like if your boss is having a super busy day, don't spend 40 minutes telling him how you solved the problem. Like just let him know that you solved it. If you want to take some of their time, like hey can I get 30 minutes of your time? Be prepared when you come to that conversation. Like have notes about what you want to talk about. Don't just kind of show up and kind of wing it a little bit. Motive Matters. So if you're leading up Motive Matters the right motivation is adding value to the organization or to your team. It is not about making yourself look good.  Initiative Matters. So find something that needs to get done and do it. Like lighten your leader's load. So ask her hey what's something I could be doing today to make your day easier? What's something I could be doing to add value to this team that I'm not seeing right now? And truth matters. Don't be a yes man. Like you're going to lose credibility very quickly if every time you're pitched an idea and asked for feedback you'll just jolly about it and you love it.  I hope we never have to work on that. Moral questions on y'all who answers are guaranteed to get the answer you're looking for. Moral questions should I accept bribed to change eBay feedback?  I think they are more than making up for their mistake by offering a hundred dollars. Take it, change the feedback and say awesome A plus. And I wish Catherine had closed that with and send me $10 to keep my mouth shut. Accepting in parentheses eBay feedback. A recent study found that 46% of newly hired employees will fail within 18 months. Of those that fail 26% do so because they can't accept feedback. So I want to talk about accepting feedback well and I want to acknowledge that getting negative feedback sucks and can be brutal. And I'm not talking about like obviously like accepting positive feedback is super easy. Just oh go on, I wish I could hear more. Tell me more about how I'm awesome. So if you're getting critical feedback here are some things that can help you accept it, help you process it. Don't justify in the moment. So if you're getting feedback about hey you're doing, you're never getting your work done on time and or your job performance isn't where I need it to be. Don't try to give excuses in the moment because it's not gonna go well honestly and it's not really gonna, you're gonna get your point across in that moment. Seek clarity. So there's two reasons to do this. First is if you hear that your job performance isn't where they would desire it to be and you don't know what the next steps are, you're not gonna get any better. So ask for examples, ask for practical ways that you could be getting better. But also if you feel yourself getting a little bit heated up in the moment, this is a good way to buy yourself some time. So just say hey maybe can you unpack that a little more for me. Can you tell me more about that? And then just like cool out and don't focus on like wanting to punch somebody. Say thank you. This is really hard to do but if someone gives you feedback and you blow up and you give them the middle finger, guess what? You're not gonna get feedback anymore and you may say cool, I don't want that kind of feedback but you're not gonna get any better at your job or get any better as a leader if you don't do a good job accepting feedback and then seeking feedback. So say thank you because honestly it's hard to give feedback. Like especially I'm not a person that likes confrontation so if I have to go give critical feedback I've gotta go like hype up, go puke, listen to some like rap music getting to the eight mile zone and I'm like I'm ready to tell them they were late today. So that's serious. Process offline. So allow yourself to hey take the feedback. You don't have to start processing through it right then in that moment of like oh my gosh man I'm doing terrible, am I getting fired? Like give yourself some time to think through it. You may honestly think like oh man I don't believe any of what I just heard like that's all false and that's totally fine but give yourself time to like there probably is some truth in there and they may just be terrible at giving feedback and you just need time to kind of think about it. Application is key is the last one so I see it a lot. You've probably worked with somebody that's like has been told eight or nine times about something and they're never getting any better but they're always like man I appreciate you telling me love the feedback not gonna do it. So application is key. Can I hire someone to do vape tricks at my son's birthday party? It's a minion theme party. It's important to know that. So you'll need to have a minion's vape pin. I can provide one if you don't have one already. I won't even, we're gonna go over the answers to that one because the answer is yes you can totally hire someone to do that. That would be a rocking birthday party. Seeking self-awareness. Self-awareness is conscious knowledge of one's own character, feelings, motives and desires as defined by the World Wide Web. I think I just Googled self-awareness and was like copy paste let's go. So self-awareness gives us a clear picture of our strengths our weaknesses and potential blind spots. These are a lot of tools. These are just tools that I'm aware of. There's a lot of them out there to help you become more self-aware. And so I kind of mentioned the older models of leadership of like hey here's what a leader looks like and either you are born that way or you spend all of your energy trying to model your leadership style after that. And the newer models it's really about like finding that self-awareness, figuring out like okay what are my strengths and leading from that place? You're gonna be a lot more effective if you do that. So Myers-Briggs is a personality test that you can take. I'll have some links at the end for all of these on different assessments and books that you can read. Strengths Finder is a book by Gallup. They're a research institute around like employee performance and leadership. And so these two things I did whenever I first started at Life Church and Strengths Finder essentially there's like 35 or 40 different themes of talent and they threw an assessment and tell you what your top five are. And so I did both of these and then afterwards I found out that I was an ESFP so the F in that stands for a feeler which means I use emotions to make decisions. And then three of my top five strengths were harmony, positivity and included. So on paper I looked a lot like an original care bear. And I was kind of like at first like I'm humiliated. This is embarrassing. But what I've kind of learned is like I'm just actually like a super relational person that is for an extrovert. And so like I love connecting with Mike, the guys that I lead. I know the strengths and weaknesses. I know what their personal goals are and I know what their goals are in the workplace to make sure that they align with where our team is headed. And so that is a strength for me. Now I'm not gonna be like, you know I'm not a general patent type leader. But I can either expend all my energy being a super average leader that was modeled out of that leadership or be an excellent relational leader. Emotional intelligence also known as like EQ. This is kind of like a more recent field of study but emotional intelligence is the ability to identify your emotions and the emotions of others. And what they've actually come to find is that EQ is a better indicator of potential success and leadership than IQ is. And then 360 assessments. So I have a link at the end where you can take one of these but essentially how it works is you answer a set of like 20 questions. And then those same questions are sent to some of your peers, some of your coworkers and some of your leaders. And if you lead a team, there's some of the people that you lead. And then you're able to compare your results with their results of what they think and be able to figure out, hey, where's a spot where I think that I'm doing well but I'm not actually doing well. And like I said, there's tons of tools out there that you can use to seek self-awareness. You can take a Facebook quiz to figure out if you're what house you're in in Hogwarts. I don't think you want to model leadership off of like being in Hufflepuff necessarily, but you can. If you take the Myers-Briggs, you can find out which Star Wars character you are. Shout out to my Ewoks. We rowdy. What animal is Sonic the Hedgehog? Short answer. Don't get crazy with it. Hedgehog sources, Sonic the Hedgehog. So I mentioned that 360 feedback tool. I actually, so I did that assessment a couple years back and the biggest disparity between like something I thought I was doing well that others thought I was doing poorly was communication. And initially I was like, okay, this test is bogus because I'm killer at communication. And then I kind of started like leaning into that and seeking feedback from my leader. And when I figured out was I'm fine at talking. So I'm an extrovert and I love to talk. I love to chit and chat about the old ball game, but I'm terrible at communication. And so I started researching like, well, what's the difference between communication and talking? So it looks like communication is not as simple as I might've thought it was. This is a communication model. What you have here, you have a source, that's me. I'm wanting to encode a message to send to a receiver. It goes through a channel, maybe that's Slack, maybe that's in person, maybe that's email or a phone call and they decode what they think they are hearing from me and now they have understanding. And as you can see, there's a lot of things that can interrupt that message. There's noise, literal environment noise. There's noise coming from the person wondering like, why are they telling me this? Or, you know, what's the motivation behind this? And then there's also just context of, there's language barriers or, you know, there's possibly like just the background of how they were raised. And so as I started, like looking at this, sort of figuring out like, oh my gosh, like there's a ton into communication. Like I don't really know what's the best way to communicate well. And so I just want to talk about just some ways to have more effective communication. The first one, know your audience. So this one is very tough for developers because sometimes we're not self-aware and if we're talking above someone who's non-technicals head and sometimes we love to talk above someone who's non-technicals head, right? So we love to spice up things with jargon and make it sound important and make it sound difficult. But know your audience if you're trying to deliver a message, know if you're talking to a junior dev versus a senior dev, know what information is key to that person to understand. Do it in person if possible. I know this is tough if you're a remote employee, but try to avoid having critical conversations or if there's a piece of information that's super important, doing it in Slack may not be the best place, especially for feedback type conversations, follow up. So this was probably the one that made the biggest difference for me. I'm actually both these, the final two made a big difference for me about following up. So if you're having a conversation with someone and you're in the conversation with the question, are we good or do you understand? Does that make sense? So communication is the, I saw a definition that it is described as the transfer of meaning and understanding. So if I say, hey, did you get it? And he's like, yep, I'm good. I have no idea what that person got from my conversation. Like I have no idea how they understood what I just told them or how they've interpreted it. And so follow up, ask, okay, cool. So what are you gonna do next after we just had that talk? If you say, hey, we need to deploy that to production today. And it's like, cool, I got it. It was like, good, what are you gonna go do?  Number one, that's for sure. I'm just gonna YOLO deploy it. I'm not worried about migrations. It's like, okay. So it's, you know what I mean? They didn't mention some of those things. Okay, there's maybe a difference in understanding because how I encoded it was based on how I understood it. And I've deployed tons of times. I know all the steps that go into it. And maybe this individual didn't. Be proactive. This one was a game changer for me also because if I was behind on a task and my leader wasn't asking about it, I wasn't telling him. And just hoping maybe I got it done in time and could be like, oh yeah, that was totally the expectation. So be proactive. Don't wait to be asked about something. If you're behind on a task like that example, let your leader know, let your boss know. Hey, I'm a little bit behind where I thought I was. I'm struggling with this piece of it. I think I'm almost through it. I'll update you this afternoon. This is something that I'm involved in often is maybe our servers are having problems and my boss wants to know what's going on. And I can either wait for every time he emails me during that situation and say, oh hey, nope, it's still out, we're looking into it. But the thing is he's probably having to communicate to people above him and to outside the organization about expectations and what's happening. And I'm not really equipping him for those conversations. So yes, he obviously knows there's a problem. So he's saying, yeah, cool, we know there's a problem, isn't helpful. So let him know, what is it you think might be the problem and the solution that you're investigating? You don't have to know all the answers but just have a hunch of where you're hunting and let them know when you're gonna talk, hey, you know what, and by two o'clock I'll let you know and at two o'clock, email him back. Don't wait until like, shoot, we still don't have it. Maybe forgot I was gonna email him at two. Just go ahead and be proactive about it. How do I get a job if I'm too attractive? With my physical build, this is a constant problem so I'm glad I got asked. But the answer is even better. I'd like to see what too attractive looks like. I'm serious, I really wanna know. So keeping it real took it a little bit creepy but that's y'all who answers. You gotta love that stuff. Humility, so what is humility? Humility is modest opinion or estimate of one's importance, rank or talent. True humility is not thinking less of yourself, it is thinking of yourself less. Get a quick drink of water. So, why are we talking about humility? So for me, this I think is the secret sauce, the key ingredient to great leadership. I mentioned that I was kind of stagnant in my career. I was feeling like I was thinking maybe it's time to switch jobs, go somewhere where I wasn't feeling like I was being heard. And so I just decided like to the heck with it I'm just gonna make this team be the best team that it can be.  And kind of the motto that I had was like I'm just gonna instead of like trying to mold my leader into like, hey, he should be leading this way, our team should be doing these things. I just decided like I'm gonna be that guy, I'm gonna be the leader that I would follow. And honestly that humility and that initiative was noticed. And that's when I was asked to step into that senior developer role. Leaders Eat Last is a book by Simon Sinek about this. And so the title comes from In the Marines. If you go to a mess hall the more senior officers are in the back of the line. And the reason for that is we think about leadership being about rank and power. And for them leadership is the responsibility of other human beings. And so it's kind of a mind shift of like servant leadership and not about, I saw a quote that being a manager is about being important, being a leader is about making others feel important. And so it's like trying to have that posture when you're having conversations with people of like making them feel important and not about like, oh yeah let me one up you, let me tell you about a thing that I did. Like this quote, in every encounter we either give life or we drain it. There is no neutral exchange. So are you adding value where you work? Are you adding value to the relationships that you're in? Do you contribute or consume where you're at? And so if you leave this talk and you don't pick something and you don't get any better then you're actually taking away from yourself, from your team, from your organization. So pick one, pick just one of these things that any of us could get better. So pick one of these that you felt like really stood out to you and start somewhere. And don't wait to be given more influence where you are but start using your existing influence to do more. So I jumped into Yahoo Answers cause I was like, man I need help I gotta figure out how to close this thing out. And I got some like weak answers like this like nod your head, acknowledge the applause walk off the stairs in case you forget. Thanks mom. But Not Ned came through in the clutch jump off into the crowd allowing them to serve me to the concession stand where I buy a round of tequila shots for my adoring fans. I'm sure that Not Ned, I'm not sure that Not Ned has been to a conference I don't know if we have a concession stand here and if it sells tequila shots but if you find me at the concession stand and they have tequila shots they're on me. Thank you guys.


Hello, and welcome to the 3 by 3 SEO Tips for JavaScript web apps. I like to start with a few words about Google Search, SEO, and JavaScript in general before we dig into the three tips I have for you tonight, plus a little bonus tip at the end. OK. First things first, Google Search does support JavaScript. Since May 2019, we are also using an Evergreen Chromium to render all pages, making sure that we can index content generated by client-side JavaScript, as well as content in static pages. Most modern frameworks will work fine out of the box, and SEO isn't more of a concern than for non-JavaScript different pages. So you may wonder, why are so many SEOs nervous when hearing that a website will be implemented using JavaScript frameworks? Well, the short answer is, because things can still go wrong. There are lots of potential challenges and aspects that should be considered also from an SEO perspective when building or changing a website. These are not limited to JavaScript sites, though, even if they sometimes do manifest after a site relaunch that happens to be leveraging client-side JavaScript. Such things could include issues like marking pages as no index by accident or blocking our crawler from retrieving crucial JavaScript resources or API endpoints, or setting up the server in a way that prevents us from accessing your site and its content properly. Again, we do see these problems in JavaScript-driven websites as much as in non-JavaScript-driven websites. And these can usually be prevented by having a plan for implementation and testing of a new website or a new website version in place. OK, so we've got that out of the way. Let's look at the first tip, the first thing you should check in a new or an existing project. Does every page have useful metadata? Two bits of metadata are particularly important for your website in Google Search, the title and the meta description, as these show up in search result pages. They are not important for ranking purposes, but they do help your users identify the page they might want to go to in order to find the information that they are looking for. If all your pages show a generic title and description snippet, that is exactly helpful for users trying to find the best page according to their search intention. If you do have specific titles and descriptions, on the other hand, it is perfectly clear to users which one of your pages would be the best to serve their interest. So how do you get that implemented? In Angular, you can use the built-in title and meta services. Import them from the platform browser package and inject them in the constructor. Once you've done that, you can use them in the lifecycle hooks of your component and specify them with information available in the component. That way, it reflects the page content. Here, for instance, we set the title and the meta description according to the currently shown recipe, for example. In React, the React helmet library can help with this. Once you installed an imported React helmet, you can use the helmet component in the JSX of your component's render method. Again, we are setting the title and meta description with information from the current recipe. In ViewJS applications, you can install View-Meta from NPM and specify a meta info lifecycle hook in your component. Similar to the previous examples, here we are setting both the title and the description snippet with recipes specific information from the component data. But title and description aren't the only pieces of metadata that you might want to set. Tip two is that in some cases, like on error pages, you may want to prevent Google search from indexing the pages. And if multiple URLs point to the same piece of content, you may want to specify which of these you consider to be canonical. Let's look at how to do this. Let's start with the error pages. I'm pretty sure you would like to avoid having error pages show up in search results, and so do we. Often, we can spot error pages and exclude them automatically, but it is better to make sure they don't show up by excluding them explicitly on your site. So if you're using Angular, you can use the meta service for this. When you specify a robot's meta tag and set its content to no index, the page will be skipped by the indexing pipeline in Google search. In React, React Helmet gives us the same ability. We add a meta tag for robots and set it to no index, if the recipe does not exist. For Vue.js, it's Vue.meta's meta info method that we will extend to set the robots tag to no index when necessary. OK, now let's deal with the canonicals, because we can pretty much build on the implementations we've just seen. So let's say we have a bunch of different URLs pointing to the same content, like recipes cupcakes or recipes ID 1337. How can you tell Google Search which of these you would prefer to be shown in search results? For Angular, we could build us a link service ourselves. This service allows to inject link tags into our pages. This implementation is basic, but does the job. In our components, we inject the service and then use it to create a new link with relation canonical and the URL we'd like to be showing up in search results for this page. React Helmet has this built in. In React applications with React Helmet, add the relevant link tag in the Helmet section of your components render template, and there you go. For Vue.js applications, you can add a link property in the return object of your meta info method. Include the relation in href attributes and set them to canonical and the desired URL, respectively. With that, we got the basic metadata nailed down. So tip three is looking at one more bonus way of having Google Search highlight our content. Structured data. Using structured data makes your pages eligible to be shown as rich results if the content falls within one of the many supported verticals, such as recipes, books, articles, products, and many more. Note, however, that implementing structured data does not guarantee that your page shows up as a rich result, though. To implement this in Angular, we can build us another small service to inject the necessary JSON LD script tag into our pages. The service can then be used in our components similar to the other services we've seen in this presentation so far. In React, you might add the information in your render method and as part of your Helmet markup. For Vue.js applications, you can pass structured data into your template by specifying the JSON LD markup in your data lifecycle hook and then pipe it into the rendered HTML using the VHTML mechanism. If you want to learn more about structured data, the available verticals, and the implementation details, check out our search gallery at goo.gle slash search dash gallery. Oh, I promised a bonus tip. It's for those of you who use Vue.js. As Vue.router lets you pick different strategies as to how you want to do the routing in URLs in your application, let's make sure that crawlers like Googlebot can actually crawl them. Because one way of configuring it is to use fragments. These have the upside of being trivial to set up on the server as the server isn't really concerned with such URLs. That's because fragments, the things you see following a hash symbol, are ignored on the network level. They only address content that is part of the content of the document at that URL before the hash symbol. Hmm. Unfortunately, that does mean that crawlers treat pages that have all the routing information for specific content in the fragment as if they're all the same URL. To give you an example, a URL like slash recipes slash cupcakes is very clearly different from, say, slash recipes or slash. Crawlers see these as distinctive different URLs. Fine. But what if our URL is slash hash, and then, say, slash recipes slash cupcakes? It's all in the fragment there. That it looks like the home page when the crawler takes the URL. So crawlers will also just request the home page. And that means that all the different recipes and all the other content is invisible to this crawler. Luckily, by selecting the history mode in the router configuration and making sure that your server serves all URLs correctly, you can fix that. That way, crawlers can process all your URLs and see all of your content. All right. So those were some of the basic tips for your JavaScript web apps. I'm sure that was quite a bit, and you probably want to dig deeper and learn more. So let me give you the takeaways again and a few more pointers. First and foremost, JavaScript and SEOs aren't enemies. Most modern frameworks will just work out of the box, but it is crucial to test your implementation and keep an eye on those things and how your site is doing in Google Search. Our testing tools and Google Search Console are fantastic for doing just that, and they're all free. We also put together a JavaScript SEO basics guide to get you and your coworkers started on this topic. Should you encounter any challenges, check out our troubleshooting guide for more information on the most common issues and solutions. We also do have a YouTube video series on JavaScript SEO that you can check out on our YouTube channel, youtube.com, slash Google webmasters. There's more episodes to come in the future. Thank you very, very much for watching this video, and do remember to build cool stuff for your users. Have a great time. Stay safe. Bye-bye.


All right, here we are in final exam review part two for the MBA 604 innovation and sustainability course. I am Joanie Roberts. I am the Vice Program Chair and Consulting Professor for Sailors MBA program. So excited to be at this point with all of you. I am feeling really good about what we've covered in these 10 lectures and eight lectures and two exam reviews. And I feel much more confident that you all are going to be able to, you know, approach and understand and digest the information the course and be successful on your exams and most importantly be successful in the world. By using all of the concepts that we are talking about in this course. The next two cases, both three and four cover unit three, integrating entrepreneurship with innovation and sustainability. They both cover the learning outcomes of three ABC and D, which are the sustainability entrepreneurial process, identifying sustainability needs and society and the marketplace by finding opportunities for sustainable entrepreneurship, helping creative skills such as idea generation and product design improvements that enhance innovation and recognizing social and environmental ethical issues such as equity, well being production consumption arising from innovation and sustainability product development. So if you watched the first study exam review part one, it's the same here for for three and four, and they are composed of multiple choice questions that also engage critical thinking. Remember to evaluate all of the answers I mean toss out the ones that clearly, you know that can't be that can't be it. It could be to remaining that that make you think a little bit harder and be sure to choose the best possible choice for the topic that we are in here as a sustainability entrepreneur and reflect carefully before responding. Again, the best way to prepare for this exam is to engage with all of the learning activities and all of the learning resources. Every article every book chapter every video is relevant to the final exam. I believe watching all of the live lectures will help you tremendously, but that in itself is not enough without reading all of the material. Taking the end of unit assessments carefully reviewing the study group study guide are also very helpful in preparing for the exam. Engaging with the material and with anyone else taking the course as in posting in the discussions and on the YouTube videos is another way to bring this course to life for you. And remember that for the exams. I have drawn questions from every learning resource, not just the ones highlighted in the live lectures, or the study guide or the end of unit assessments. Here we are in unit three case three. Let's see what we have in store. This one is on a housing crisis happening in Silicon Valley in the San Francisco Bay area. And I'll read through the case and I want to do this because people taking this course. One of them will also be English as a second language learners, and it's important to read everything and give a little bit of a rounding out of some of the ideas here. The title is Silicon Valley the epicenter for tech innovation faces a housing crisis. This case is based on a fictitious company attempting to solve a real world housing crisis. Silicon Valley located in northern California San Francisco Bay area with the core city of San Jose is the global center for technology innovation and home to the world's most dense concentration of tech companies. Several companies such as Apple Hewlett Packard alphabet aka Google Oracle Intel Cisco Facebook and Netflix are located here, and thousands of startups are fueled by a robust venture capital ecosystem. Around half of the startups are founded or co founded by immigrants since Silicon Valley attracts top engineers and entrepreneurs worldwide. The area is surrounded by leading universities such as Stanford, and is known for its cutting edge knowledge sharing culture. For tech entrepreneurs, it is the epicenter for launching growing and quickly gaining venture capital interest, often from Silicon Valley tech entrepreneurs who became billionaires from their innovations. The extreme wealth for some has led to homelessness for others. With all of the extreme wealth generated in Silicon Valley, a serious downside is a lack of affordable housing for many residents. Even though Silicon Valley has the highest median income in the United States. It also has the highest housing cost. The biggest issue is the imbalance between jobs created and new housing belt. For example, from 2012 to 2017 San Francisco Bay area cities added 400,000 new jobs, but only issued 60,000 permits for new housing units. The growing population of over 7.7 million in the San Francisco Bay area, including 3 million people in the smaller area of Silicon Valley has put pressure on the demand for housing against a limited supply to the point of becoming a crisis. With some tech employees living in tents, vans and recreational vehicles. The average small two bedroom apartment runs for about $2500 while the median home price is about $1 million beyond the reach for many early to mid career professionals and residents in supporting industries, such as restaurant retail and public service. All together this fuels a homelessness crisis on top of a housing shortage, leading to unsustainable and in equitable social and environmental issues. So, can innovative and sustainable solutions solve the housing crisis. As an expert in innovation and sustainability, you've been asked to join a founding team of entrepreneurs, launching a sustainable home building company called new AVO to help solve the housing crisis in Silicon Valley. We need to work with the pram or within the parameters set forth by the state of California, no one to have some of the world's most strict environmental laws and building codes. San Francisco is a global powerhouse for environmental innovations programs and policies, making it one of the most progressive and greenest cities in North America. To stay here, you do not need to learn about the specifics of California law for this case. I would like for you to know that you need to apply the most progressive answers in in the case questions. The team is committed to finding innovative and sustainable solutions and architectural design, building materials energy sources water conservation land use and more to create affordable housing and communities. You are asked to provide valuable insights into integrating entrepreneurship with innovation and sustainability by answering the following questions. So one of those questions might look like, how can new AVO apply circular business models in its ideation process. Is it a by using resources for home building that go from cradle to grave. Well, there are some keywords there that sound familiar. However, cradle to grave a grave is a landfill and we know that that is not what we're doing here in sustainability right we are doing cradle to cradle we're doing circular. We're capturing value from resources in a one and done circular way. Oh, what does that mean. Well, there is a their circular is in there that sounds good. However, one and done what is one and done single use plastics single use anything use at once toss it away put it in a landfill. We don't want to be thinking like that in sustainable innovation and design. See, by allowing each team member to contribute a new idea in a circular fashion. Well, that's an ideation process at circular is that. Hmm. All right, let's look at the next one. By considering the sharing economy and its residential community development. Right, there it is answer D. And what might that look like in the real world was the sharing economy in a residential community. This could be many things. And, for example, it could be instead of planting grass in the yards, which is heavy water intensive and unnatural for most places in the, in the United States. We could plant edible gardens. Right, and then everyone can grow food in their yards and around their homes, and then share those food items with others in the community by making a communal marketplace for that, perhaps share the extra food with those who are living in tents, right. And that's a sharing economy. It's a sharing model. What might also be the case. If you're going to create a pool or a water element of some sort, one pool for the whole community and set up people putting one pool in their backyards house after house after house which is water intensive and not sustainable. And how you can share resources share amenities, maybe recycle that water repurpose that water collect water all sorts of great ideas that you are all welcome to also think about in creating a residential community that's sustainable, many more can go there. What I'd like for you to know is that in both case three and four the questions draw from all the course concepts, while also applying the unit three learning outcomes. We are now at the point in the course where units one and two have given you a lot of foundational ideas and concepts that you're now applying in an entrepreneurial setting. I went through the exam, and these are some of the themes and keywords that came up across the exam questions in both the certificate and final credit exams there are two of them. You need to be prepared for things like sustainable innovation and breakthroughs. What's that process like entrepreneurial processes and generic factors in a breakthrough process. A sustainability entrepreneurs what are their abilities attitudes motivations. Think about strategy and structure, the iterative creative process. The window of opportunity for an entrepreneurial idea. How important are the human factors who is on your team. Environmental factors that play into the innovative product designs, the capabilities and resources. Of course we're going to have systems thinking systems change and circular economy that's essential in any sustainable innovation. And also some ideas to be ready for are the creative phase to think different what is thinking different mean from the perspective of sustainable innovation. How could an analogy technique help you think differently. What about molecular thinking and green chemistry. How can value added networks or vans be helpful what about weak ties strong ties radical incrementalism. What does it mean innovation at the invisible level. How about surprising habits of original thinking says one of the videos in our learning materials by Adam Grant, and I've drawn some questions from there. Of course to do it yourself creativity tools a fast idea generator thinking hats that could come up in this case. Let's look at case for case for is can social entrepreneurs solve the food scarcity problem. This case is based on a fictitious company attempting to solve a real world hunger crisis where food is a human right. Food scarcity is a widespread issue in many poor communities and even affects segments of society in developed countries, like the United States. According to the United Nations, 10% of the world's population is experiencing food scarcity with one in nine people going to bed hungry each night. Mental nutrition affects 155 million children worldwide, leading to reduced health and wellness, stunted growth. I mean that really sets someone up for for a tough life when they have stunted growth as a young child. Poor performance in schools and lack of success as adults, creating a tragic cycle that is difficult to escape. In 1948, almost 75 years ago or right about there. The UN included hunger and article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it says, everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well being of himself and his family, including food, clothing, housing, and medical care and necessary social services. They should say their family, right, their self and their family. That's the most inclusive way today. Food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security and the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age, or other lack of livelihood and circumstances beyond his control. We, according to the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which I agree with. We need to help people who need help. And, you know, when things are beyond their own control, even though hunger has been a long standing issue for humanity, it remains a largely unsolved problem for many people worldwide. This scarcity is part of a cascading set of social and environmental issues that has its roots in poverty, war, climate change, and natural disasters. As we can see, those are all issues beyond someone's personal control. In 2015, the United Nations adopted the goal of zero hunger as one of the 17 sustainable development goals, which together act as a blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all by 2030 and beyond. Ed. Okay. Achieving the goal of zero hunger, SDG2 is interrelated to advancing other SDGs. As no poverty, SDG1, good health and well-being, SDG3, quality education, SDG4, gender equality, SDG5, clean water and sanitation, SDG6, decent work and economic growth, SDG8, reduced inequalities, SDG10, climate action, SDG13, life on land, SDG15, and peace, justice, and strong institutions, SDG16. So we can see how interrelated all of these goals are in achieving one goal such as zero hunger. Food as a human right continued. Leading the way for the United Nations to achieve zero hunger by 2030 is the UN World Food Program, whose important work in delivering food assistance to those impacted by emergencies and working with communities to improve nutrition and build resilience, earned at the Nobel Peace Prize in 2020. This honor has brought much needed attention and global news coverage on the issue and has inspired more people to try and help solve the problem. And here we have a world map showing those countries, especially in red and orange as having more severe food shortage situations. Social entrepreneurs step up to help solve food scarcity. After reading about food scarcity, you decide to start a new organization called Prosperity Allies based on the principles of social entrepreneurship. Luckily, several of your university classmates enthusiastically join your team to help tackle the issue. After researching the global crisis, you decide to focus on one of the hardest hit nations, Tanzania, located in East Africa to scale operations internationally over the next five years. And we can see this visual here, where Africa and Asia have the greatest amount of food scarcity issues. And again, all nations do have some degree of this. Aligning with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. To make meaningful impact, you decide to align your organization's efforts to SDG2, zero hunger, the aims to end hunger, achieve food security and improve nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture. Within this goal are eight targets which will serve to help shape your mission, vision, and strategy. So we have target 2.1 to 2.5 plus target 2A, B, and C. And you can read through these various targets. They are universal access to safe and nutritious food and forms of all male nutrition, double the productivity and incomes of small scale food producers, sustainable food production and resilient agricultural practices, maintain the genetic diversity and food production, invest in rural infrastructure, agricultural research, technology and gene banks, prevent agricultural trade restrictions, market distortions and export subsidies, which by the way happened to hurt developing nations, usually quite a bit, especially when a developed nation adds subsidies to their agricultural industries, which many developed nations do, ensure stable food commodity markets and timely access to information. All right, I hope that you enjoy this case and thinking about these issues. Let's consider one of the potential exam questions. Which of the following best describes the role of social entrepreneurship? Is it social entrepreneurship is a way of enriching human potential while providing products and services? That sounds pretty good. Social entrepreneurship is a way of pushing the societal boundaries for sustainability initiatives. That sounds pretty good too, right? What does that mean, societal boundaries? Well, in sustainability we have boundaries and they're used in the way of planetary boundaries and societal boundaries. That's kind of the edge of the breaking point. So no, we don't want to push societal boundaries. So when we use that word in a sustainability term, it acts as out B as a possible answer. C, social entrepreneurship is a way of using social networking to build more collaborative organizations. I suppose that could sound like a good question if you did not read anything about social entrepreneurship in this course. Let me jump to that answer if you really did not study hard enough. All right, D. Social entrepreneurship is a way of offering opportunities for people to connect in communities of shared interests. Maybe can't say as 100% no answer. But the question is, which of the following best describes, and with that the answer is a, it is a way of enriching human potential while providing products. And services. For this case, again, I went through the exams and here are some key themes and keywords to be thinking about, of course, social entrepreneurship, social value, stakeholder value, the SDGs, digital social innovation, food systems approach. Some of the tools we went over in the lectures like SWAT analysis, Toes, Pestle, Port of Five Forces, Vrio. Then we have a few things we didn't talk about in the lecture that I do want to bring your attention to which is important. When doing international business say you're in an American business school or you're in a European business school. You're in a Canadian business school where you're in a developed economy, and you're going to go and try and solve problems in Tanzania, which is a developing nation, you need to be thinking differently about what it's like. What the buying and selling market is like there is going to be different than an American market. So our resource 3.1 entrepreneurship and sustainability innovation analysis, which cover the other topics like SWAT, Toes, Pestle, Port of, etc. Also in that learning resource is a few pages on bizarre type economy, firm type economy and new economy. I do suggest that you read those and it'll help you on some of the exam questions. Bizarre type is like a village style economy where people create or produce goods and they come to the village to sell those. That's a very different type of economy than a firm type economy, which would be like Unilever that we talked about. We're doing things on a bigger, broader scale and you have different agendas that go with that. And you'll need to read about those and reach out to me in the comments if you have questions or in the discussions. I can promise that for the foreseeable future I'll be on there. The future I can't see beyond. I'm not so sure. But I can promise you that in the foreseeable future I'll be answering your questions. And the new economy. The new economy is referred to the intranet economy where we buy and sell goods over the internet. Right, also in this case, you will want to review the do it yourself tools, the evidence planning problem definition business model canvas those would be some good ones to look at. You will want to know what impact investors are and and what their role is in social entrepreneurship. And you will also want to know about social entrepreneurship business models, which are legal structures, yet the legal structures create a business model the way business is being done. And there are options like for profit, nonprofit benefit corporation non governmental organizations, and a for profit is your regular corporation or limited liability company which may be called other things and other nations.  For profit company you're going to have to create a profit generating model that will help fund your, your business, although that's not the only way to do social entrepreneurship, you might receive all of your funding from donations by individuals and organizations. You might make it a benefit corporation, which is a corporation so as a for profit model, yet it gives you the legal rights to have stakeholder approach to the way you invest money and still be on the stock exchanges and receive investors and all you know investment money and all sorts of ways. And you might be a non governmental organization NGO you see that you hear that term a lot especially an international entrepreneurship for social causes. Okay, also, the study guide has unit three vocabulary listed, and this is the unit three vocabulary that was covered in the study guide. It was what we majorly covered in our lectures because our lectures follow the study guide. And again, you may see some topics coming up on the exam that were not particularly covered in the study guide or the live lectures, because it's impossible to cover every single thing but we did cover the majority of it we really did. And you will want to review this list of terminology and make sure that you are on board with what all of this means. And if you went through live lectures, I think you will be well prepared for understanding what these mean. Okay, well, I feel great at this point in this course design and and delivery making it available to all of you. I feel good, especially after doing the live lectures with you because now I my own confidence has gone up that you have all of the tools that you need to be successful. What you're doing here is a self study on demand, maybe you've got some friends to do it with you or cohort of co workers to do this program with you which is great. But some of you will be doing this completely on your own. And I'm glad that I had the opportunity to get on here in a video format and highlight some of the most important concepts that incompetencies for being successful. And now I do believe you have everything you need to be successful in this course. And again, reach out with questions. And we are here for you. So thank you so much for hanging with me during these 10 videos. I really appreciate it. And I look forward to engaging with you in other ways as well. All right, take care everyone and good luck.


Good morning. My name is Brian Gallagher. I'm the CEO of United Way Worldwide. We'll be doing this session in English, not because our panelists can't speak French. Each one of them can. Sadly, your moderator cannot. So I apologize for that. We'll be doing this session in English. We will keep our comments brief and then have a discussion among the panelists and then also, hopefully, take questions from you. And I will not do the formal introductions. Each speaker has their opportunity to speak. I'll say a bit about their background contextually, but you can read their bios. The title of this session, the Status of Healthcare in Africa, challenges and opportunities seems pretty apropos, given the fact that there are clearly significant challenges and significant opportunities. There's been real progress made in health care across the continent. In the last 15, 20 years, life expectancy is increased. Childhood health outcomes are better. Death from communicable diseases is down. But clearly, that progress has been uneven, and we still have many challenges across the continent. Africans endure 17% of all the disease in the world, and yet are 11% of the population. 50% of all expenditure for health care across Africa is out of pocket. Only 1% of health care expenditures worldwide is in sub-Saharan Africa. And in fact, I learned just getting ready for this session, there's a $1.7 trillion US dollar fraudulent drug issue across the continent of Africa, a couple of that with infrastructure, poverty, violence in some places, the shortage of trained professionals. Clearly, we have challenges as well as opportunities. So as we think about in asking the panelists their thoughts on opportunities and challenges in the future, whether it's inpatient care, outpatient, preventative care, diagnostic services, is maybe to think about the way that President Kagami last night described. He was asked the question, did you look at the Singapore experience when you designed the governance model for Rwanda? And his answer paraphrasing was, we looked at everything. He wanted to create a Rwandan system. And what I would suggest is that there is an opportunity given the evolution of health care across Africa to create an African system. Not a US system, not a French system, not an Asian system, but an African system. And that's what I've asked our panelists to think about.


Hello, and welcome back to Disturbing Book Reviews.  Little life update that absolutely no one asked for. I moved, and so if you were wondering what I've been doing for the past two months, it's been sitting here in my dining room. This is kind of my workshop area.  I was like, I'll save money. It'll be personalized, whatever.  So because my brain is huge and I'm able to multitask while I'm reviewing these books, I'm just gonna be like painting and workshopping things at the same time. What exactly am I doing in this video? Painting fridge magnets.  Also, if the audio in this video is very echoey and you hear creeps and crinkles, that's because I have no rugs. I'm filming this in an almost completely empty room. I hung up like a curtain to try to muffle the sound. It's not working. Do you wanna hear these reviews or not? Enough wasting time. Let's get on to our first story. Ah, at the end of Alice, this story is about. You're just gonna have to bear with me while I give you the synopsis and then we can move on to being horrified by it, okay? At the end of Alice is a book from the perspective of this serial pedophile murderer. Serial pedophile? I don't know.  And of course, because his crimes are so horrifying, he gets fan mail. The story follows him in this pen pal relationship that he begins with a young woman. I think she's like a college age woman.    This is your one warning. I show the trigger warnings but this is me telling you that those trigger warnings are no joke. If you don't want to be upset by any of the things listed here, I'm not kidding, it gets bad. I gotta hand it to them. This is probably the most upsetting book that I've read in my pursuit of reviewing disturbing books. You know, like the book Cows? Cows disgusted me. Like it was gross. They talked about poop and stuff. Whereas this book disgusts me, like on a I can't stop thinking about it or getting these images out of my head level, you know? Let's start with the things that I like about this book. I love the voice of the main guy, the narrator, the pedophile guy. He's such a great hateable character not just because of the crimes that he commits but because of his voice. He's so pretentious and verbose and sure of himself. It's clear that he thinks that he's like a Hannibal Lecter type guy. He uses so much purple prose and he describes himself as if he's like a character in a story, like dear reader, dear audience, you know? It's very Humbert Humbert. Hello, Future Julia here. I just realized I forgot to mention one of my other favorite things about this awful narrator.    And yet you are the one reading my book.  Who's the real sicko reader? And I just wanna be like, listen, man, I actually run a YouTube channel where I review disturbing books once a year.    It's kind of like funny games, you know? That would be where the whole point is to like make you think about why you enjoy watching horror movies, why you enjoy watching violent media. And like on one hand, I get where they're coming from with that. Like you should think critically about the media you consume. But on the other hand, if you're really trying to make a point that consuming violent media is bad, then shouldn't we be like ganging up on the author or the director? Probably that is the thing that kept me going throughout the book was just how entertaining it is to read this guy. Like I don't even know if they ever specified that he's British, but I just in my head started reading him with this like not quite British, but so articulate that he almost sounds such.   Is he scary? Is he intimidating? Kind of. At times, like especially when he's recounting his crimes, it's like chill. It's like intimidating listening to him, you know?  I love the contrast between how he sees himself of this like smart, intimidating criminal mastermind his reality, which is he is an old weak man in prison. Now he's the one getting abused. This book is not, you know what? I was about to say this book is not boring at any point. That's not completely true and I'll explain it a little bit. This book is great at keeping your attention in a way of like watching a car wreck. You're horrified, but you can't look away. I felt myself several times like wanting to turn my head from the page, but like feeling like I couldn't. I just had to keep reading. It's that kind of story. I found the girl character to be a lot less compelling and a lot less interesting. Not that her parts were like boring. Obviously it's horrifying. At the end of the book, I had a lot of questions about her. I felt like I didn't fully understand like where this comes from with her. The desire to be a monster like the guy in the narrator. I forget if they say his name. If they do, I'll put it up on the screen.  So yes, I do wish that more of the book's length had been dedicated to like fleshing her out a bit. But also it's the stream of consciousness of this like self-righteous pedophile guy. Like I don't think he actually cares about fleshing her out. Now let's get to the stuff that I didn't like and the stuff that I had a problem with. Shocker, I don't like the descriptions of child rape.   Like we needed more background noise. My problem with these descriptions, I'm not just gonna say this was upsetting, this was upsetting, this was upsetting. The problem is not that these descriptions were upsetting. That is clearly what the author was trying to do. The problem is that I think it takes away from the book. I hope that I've made this clear. This is like an interesting story. This is not boring in any way. It didn't need filler. And these descriptions of child abuse end up feeling like filler. I can't tell you how many times while reading this, I was very into the story. And then it comes to a screeching halt to go into a flashback of him remembering when he like prayed upon some child. And it's like, oh my God. Like I believe that the goal of these sections was to upset the reader and to really make us feel like we are in the head of this violent pedophile, you know? Like this is what he thinks about. I feel like that could have been achieved with a fraction of these flashbacks, you know? And also these flashback moments, none of them are that different from each other. None of them really add anything to his character and to the story. It started to feel like this author was trying too hard to make this book disturbing. And they didn't need to do that. Like maybe this is just me, but when it comes to descriptions of child abuse, it doesn't take a lot to upset me.  And I can hear people saying like, well, Julia, it's the point, right? We're supposed to be disgusted and horrified by this. But that's the thing. By the midway point of the book, I wasn't horrified anymore. It got to the point and I cannot believe I'm saying this, that these descriptions of abuse got boring. Like, how do you do that? I remember at one point in the story, I was reading it, I was into it. I came to the end of a chapter, I turned the page, I realized that it was going to be another one of these flashbacks. And I said, oh my God, out loud. And the story ends with this one final hurrah where they describe the crime scene of the victim that he killed, because I think he only actually killed one victim. And it's so over the top. It's so bloody, it's so gory, it's so sick and twisted. And you know what?  I felt nothing reading it. Why?  If the author really wanted to make this moment as impactful as it could have been, I really think they should have cut out a lot of those flashback scenes. Artists and authors give the advice that when you're reviewing your work, anything that can be cut out should be cut out. Leave something up to the imagination for God's sake. Take one lesson from what's his name, L. Ron Hubbard, or no, HP Lovecraft. L. Ron Hubbard is the Scientology guy, oops. So yeah, I guess that's my little sensitive, pussy, PC principle takeaway about these really graphic parts of the book. Would I recommend this book? Honestly, I don't think so, which is a damn shame because like I said, this narrator character is genuinely interesting and entertaining and fun to read. I think that writing a stream of consciousness character is way harder than most people understand. And this author managed to make a great stream of consciousness character. So I really wanna praise them for that. But how you managed to make child abuse boring? I will never know. Honestly, that's quite an accomplishment. It truly feels like the author wanted to write an upsetting book and they were going to accomplish that by any means necessary, even if that meant writing a book that was not good, you know? If you want to read a book about pedophiles that's like disturbing and well written and well edited, just read Lolita. Lolita is what I think this book could have been. Okay, I'm sick and dying right now.  But I just thought of an example of another book that does what this book tries to do much better.   The protagonist slash narrator is a serial rapist who feels no remorse for his crimes. There's multiple rape scenes. The difference between the end of Alice and Clockwork Orange is that Clockwork Orange was able to be disturbing and upsetting and shocking and then move on and get back to the story. Anyway, I'm gonna retire back to my sick cave. My throat feels so ugly. I genuinely fear that I won't wake up if this is my last video. So that is my final review of at the end of Alice. It is a twisted and compelling concept with great execution at certain parts, but it just got smothered by this desire to shock and disgust. And I think that's a real damn shame. Moving on to our next story, which is... They break and they shame. They get laid back and bump their bodies.  Gone to See the Riverman is another pretty short disturbing story that is also about people who are pen pals with prisoners. Hey, look at that. Gone to See the Riverman actually has quite a few similarities to at the end of Alice. Alice, Alice. Our story follows Lori. She's middle-aged, she's a waitress. She takes care of her adult disabled sister. She doesn't really date.   This is another one of those stories that goes back and forth between current day and the past. As we see moments from Lori's childhood, her brother who has passed away and her sister before the accident that has disabled her. Our story follows Lori. She is working on this criminal who she's dedicated a lot of time to building rapport with. Like she's very invested in this guy. His name is Edmund Cox and he is like an exceptionally cruel and dangerous man that she is just obsessed with. In an attempt to prove to Edmund how dedicated she is to this pen pal relationship, I guess, she offers to do a favor for him which involves finding a key and giving it to the river man.  And of course she decides to take her disabled sister with her into this bayou swamp area. Lori is a fascinating character. I don't know if you've noticed but I love characters that are just delusional. Throughout the book, she insists that she doesn't get into these like criminal pen pal relationships because she's a groupie or she's in love with them or anything like that. She is an investigative journalist. Like she wants to get inside their head. She's controlling the strings.  Like yes, Lori, you are definitely the one in control here. Gone to See the River Man is a very fun and I think underutilized version of the unreliable narrator where we meet Lori and we get her version of herself where she is underappreciated. She's a family woman. She works like a dog to support her disabled sister with no thanks in the world. And she has this one interest of like getting inside the mind of crazy people. It's not that Lori was like lying about who she was.  I'm gonna tell you right now, I really like this book. I think, I think it was really creative. It really had me on the edge of my seat and it's very different from other disturbing books that I've read.  Probably my favorite aspect of the story is the Riverman himself. This mysterious figure who lives in the wilderness that Edmund Cox somehow needs to make a deal with. So in case you haven't figured it out, the Riverman is like kind of bad news. Not to like stereotype or anything, but anyone whose name is like the blank man. I'm immediately a little bit on edge. I'm sure you've already figured this out just based on the fact that this is a mysterious guy who we're making deals with, but this is very similar to a Faustian bargain or a deal with the devil. Like it's all very reminiscent of those folklore and stories of like standing at the crossroads and making a deal with the mysterious person who approaches you and suddenly you're the best bass player in Alabama but at what cost, you know? Or at least that's what I assume this story was going to be. But this was my first expectation subversion. The Riverman is not the devil.  Basically the Riverman's whole deal is that he has otherworldly power. He can give you things that are impossible to achieve any other way. But unlike the devil, his goal isn't to like make a deal and buy your soul. He doesn't want to own your soul. He wants to make your soul as rotten as it possibly can be.  Now let's get into the flashback section of this story.  At first I was frustrated and bored by these flashbacks. I was fascinated by the Riverman. I only wanted to read about the Riverman.   Tell me more about this guy who you only hear about in the first place if you're already doomed. Little did I know that these flashback sections were going to rock me so hard. ["Summer's playing"] Basically from the start of the book, anyone who is more observant than like a rock can figure out that there's something that we are not being told about Lori.  Like something is weird about her. Like halfway through the book in these flashback sections we actually learn just how twisted Lori actually is and it completely resets the tone of the entire book.  What? It's just an ordinary Krabby. Oh my goodness. Without directly spoiling what this reveal is, basically at some point in her childhood, Lori did something unforgivable isn't even the word to describe it. I know we're already way past the point of spoilers but I really, if you plan to read this book, you need to experience the moment of this reveal for yourself. Like when I was reading it and I got to this part, when I tell you that I put the book down and turned away, like I couldn't look at the page anymore.  I felt like how I felt when I was reading cows in that scene with like the poop and vomit and blood or whatever, except in God to see the Riverman, there was none of that in this moment. It was just human wickedness that was so far over the line for me that I had to like take a break. I have not read a book in a long time that has had that effect on me. Oh, and you wanna know the best part of this like horrifying reveal moment? It like wasn't graphic at all. This was not only surprising and I think refreshing but I think it made this moment that much more upsetting that I didn't have all the details of what was happening and my mind was forced to fill in the blanks. God, man. Maybe I'm overhyping it. Maybe other people have read it and this moment wasn't as impactful for them. I'm just describing my experience with it. In case you haven't figured it out already, I do recommend this book. I do like it. Massive trigger warning for all of these things. I'm not bluffing at all.  Anyway, enough of that horrible memory.  I really enjoy scary stories or scary characters that have like rules behind them, you know? I love urban legends like that. And the Riverman is swimming in this such thing.  Who could have predicted this? For example, when Lori gets to the place where she's told the key will be, she discovers, big spoiler here, that the key is hidden inside the chest of a dead body. And in order to get the key, she has to reach inside and like dig around. Lori learns all too late that the object that you're trading with the Riverman doesn't actually matter. What matters is what you did to obtain that object. Basically, the Riverman only does deals with people who are already corrupted in some way.   And I'm gonna stop here because I've already spoiled way too much. In short, would I recommend this story? Yes, absolutely yes I would. Because like I said, even with the spoilers that I've given so far, I feel like it's still impossible to know where the story is going to go when you're reading it. It's just one subversion after another. It makes you feel dizzy.  I've yet to reread this book. I probably should, but I'm also like scared too. And with that, my knees are cramping from sitting like this for too long. So I'm going to end it here. Have you read either of these books? What did you think of them? Or do you have ideas for other disturbing stories that I should review because I wanna get back into this. I've been busy in my apartment, but I don't wanna keep neglecting this channel. Thank you so much for watching. Subscribe if you want to. Don't if you don't. I'll see you next whenever I upload. Bye. Oh. That's all I do.