So, let me do a model little more specific for microtubules. So, instead of treadmilling of actin let me do a model for dynamic instability of microtubules. So, this is just to systematically show that you starting from this very basic model you can build in layers of complexity so that you ultimately approach the biological situation. So, let me say that I my microtubules let me have a probability distribution t plus of n comma t ok. This is a probability of m t of length n in the growing state in the growing state and similarly you can write p minus of n t which is similar except that this is the probability of a microtubule in the shrinking state. So, I say that I have these microtubules these microstubules can either be in the growing state where they are adding monomers or it can be in the shrinking state where it is sort of losing monomers and it converts from one state to another with certain frequencies which let me say are f plus minus and f minus plus. So, f plus minus is the frequency at which a growing microtubule shifts to the shrinking state. So, this is like the frequency of catastrophe. So, this is my catastrophe and f minus plus is like my frequency of rescue frequency at which microtubule in the shrinking state changes back to a microtubule in the growing state. So, these are all my these are the rates and what else. So, when it grows let me say it grows with some rate v plus.  So, that is my full model. My microtubules can exist in two states given by the probabilities are given by p plus and p minus they can switch between these states with these rates f plus minus and f minus plus and in each of these states they grow or they shrink with a velocity v plus or v minus. So, given this I can write down how these probabilities will evolve with time I can write down how these probabilities will evolve with time. So, let me write d p plus d t ok p let me be specific this is p plus of n comma t. So, from what state can I reach this n t? If my microtubule was in the in the growing state then it can have added a monomer. So, I can have come to this state from the n minus 1 state right and the rate of that is v plus right. It was n minus 1 it has added a monomer it has come to n and similarly it can go from this n to the n plus 1 also. So, that is a loss term. So, again a v plus p plus n t right this is a growth from the n minus 1 state this is a growth from the n state. Then of course, you can switch states. So, from the plus you can go to a minus. So, that is again a loss term. So, the rate for that is f plus minus p plus of n comma t or you could come from the minus to this plus state. So, f minus plus p minus of n comma t right. There are the only four ways you can come to this plus a growing microtubule with n filaments. Similarly, you can write down how the probability of a shrinking microtubule with n filaments changes with time. That is v minus in this case from n plus 1 right from n plus 1 it can come to n with a rate v minus and then p minus of n comma t from n it can go to n minus 1 which is a loss term and then these two things.  So, these are my evolution equations for a model like this a model for this dynamic instability of microtubules. So, now, what I can do is that I can take these n minus 1 and n plus 1 piece and expand them in a Taylor series. So, you can expand this let us say I have a p plus of n minus 1 comma t. I do a Taylor series expansion. So, this is p plus of n comma t minus del p plus del n. I just keep terms up to first order and I have p minus of n plus 1 comma t. So, this is p minus of n comma t plus del p minus del n ok. So, if I substitute I substitute this p n minus 1 over here the first term which is v plus into p plus we will cancel this. What I will be left with is minus v plus del p plus del n right. So, what I will be left with over here these two terms instead of writing I will be left with a minus v plus del p plus del n of n comma t. And similarly, if I substitute for p n plus 1 with this equation again what I will get is v minus del p minus del n of n comma t. Now, let me say that I will solve this equations in the steady state which means the I will say that these probabilities do not change with time. So, let me say this is equal to 0 this is equal to 0. What that gives me is an equation for this del p del n. So, let me just write down that equation. So, what I have is a del del n del del n let me write it in a matrix form p plus p minus p plus is equal to plus I think no minus.  So, I have just written that it is the same equation with this del p del t 0 in a matrix form and now I can solve this equation. So, 2 cross 2 matrix you can find out the eigenvalues and eigenvectors and so on. So, let me so this I will not do. So, let me just write down the solution.   So, these are two undetermined constants. So, these are my eigenvectors. So, I have just written down the eigenvectors in use that to construct the solution. Now, let me say I am looking at scenarios where the length of the microtubules are finite. So, it is some sort of a bounded growth which means that if I took the probabilities of this n a very long microtubule n tending to infinity that I say should be 0. What that means is that this a term basically should be 0. So, that will drop out and then you can use the normalizations to determine what this b is and that b will come out to be something.  So, this lambda 2 must be negative what it says is this ratio it gives you a relation that f. So, this is my lambda 2. So, what it says is that f minus plus v plus must be less than f plus minus v minus in order to have bounded growth and if you satisfy this criterion what your length as a function of time is going to look like is something like this length as a function of time it will look something like this it will grow and it will shrink. If on the other hand if you have unbounded growth if you violate this condition this will keep growing like this and until it reaches sort of infinitely large microtubules. So, here it is there is sort of a steady length here it is just going to keep on increasing. So, this is bounded growth and given that this is roughly what you see that sort of tells you even experimentally to a certain this is still of course, against you can build more complicated models, but at least in the context of this model how should these ratios of switching from this plus to the minus state versus the velocities of this growth and shrinkage how should they be related in order to get bounded growth and these you can sort of calculate or measure not calculate from experiments and see whether this holds or not. You can measure how fast the microtubule grows you can measure how fast it shrinks and how fast it switches from one state to another and like I said you can. So, you can keep building complexity you can build in this cap idea that you have this GTP subunits at the end of the microtubule which form a sort of stabilizing role and so on and all of those as you add more and more complexity you will see that you will get better and better match with experiments, but this model this is a very classic model actually this is a model by Dr. Rahman Leibler in 1993. It is a classic model for the dynamical instability of 90 years for any of you who are interested you can calculate other stuff as well. So, for example, you can couple these equations to an equation for the concentration of free monomers right that I still have not done, but in principle you could couple these to a concentration of free monomers and then see what that gives you. So, let me stop here for the day and then I will continue on Friday.


Well, again, welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining us for this special TechSoup hosted online discussion, Equity in Action. My name is Aretha Simons. I'm the webinar producer here at TechSoup. I'm going to be your moderator today. And in a moment, I'll introduce our speakers and our hosts. But before we do, I want to let you know how you can engage with us today. Use the Q&A feature if you would like to ask a question. A lot of times when you're in the chat room, the questions get kind of moved up. So use the Q&A feature if you'd like to ask a question of our host and our speaker today. We're going to email the entire video and the links that we share. We're going to email that to you in about 48 hours. So everyone who's registered, you'll get that in about 48 hours. You find something you'd like to hear or you want to retweet because you're probably going to get some nuggets, some quotes that's going to be dropping. Want you to tweet us at techsoup.org or share on Instagram or Facebook if you need the closed caption. The closed use the TTC button at the bottom of the screen. Before I get started, I do want to tell you, welcome to TechSoup. For those of you who, this is your first time at TechSoup. A lot of you are probably members here, but for those of you who are new, you probably know us for laptops or we're much more than just a place where you can buy laptops. We have a lot of free webinars like the one you're attending today, free courses. We have technical support. There's great blogs and articles that's asked for for good division. We have executive directors of chat. Make sure you join that. And there's so many other resources that we have that we want to share with you. So if you're not a member of TechSoup, go to techsoup.org and sign up. It's free to join. All you need is your 501c3. But you know what, we're here for a very special event today, Equity and Action. So I want to introduce our speaker. Today, we have LaChica Phillips. She is the Director of Equity, Inclusion, Diversity, and Culture. And she is NGO Source Program Manager here at TechSoup. LaChica works closely with the operations team to ensure a seamless system of processes for programs, including billing, marketing, operations here at TechSoup. She does a lot of things, a lot more hats that I'm not even mentioning. And as the Director of EDIC, EIDC, you know, we always get those all twisted and tangled. LaChica ensures that TechSoup's equity, diversity, and inclusion efforts are a fundamental pillar of the organizational cultural department. And I'm also excited to introduce Jasmine Malone. She is the Equity, Inclusion, Diversity, and Culture intern here at TechSoup. And she is a senior at Xavier University of Louisiana, majoring in, guess what, Espanyol, and also political science. She is so excited to be here today. I'm so excited for her to be being our host today. Jasmine helps with programs here, the initiative with the EIDC to enhance the impact of TechSoup's mission and values. So everybody, welcome Jasmine and LaChica. Jasmine, you can take it over. Thank you for that beautiful, wonderful introduction. Aretha, I appreciate that. Welcome everybody. I'm excited to talk to LaChica. I mean, I talk to LaChica every day, but I'm really excited to talk to you in this way. But before we get started, I do want to do a land acknowledgement. I want to acknowledge that a small yet integral part of building equity is to advocate for the visibility and sovereignty of indigenous nations. And for that reason, I want to honor the elders past and present of the Nissanan Nation, which is known as the Northern Sacramento area, of whom's ancestral land I am zooming in from. And I encourage you all to honor the land you join us from today by using the link I'm going to put in the chat here. And go ahead and let us know in the chat where you're zooming in from. And also want to considering TechSoup's global presence, I want to acknowledge the indigenous peoples of North America and those across the world. So here are some organizations that champion indigenous rights globally. The Global Indigenous Council, whose mission is to defend the tribes and nations whose sovereignty is threatened by their lack of legal status in their territories. The Global Indigenous Data Alliance, whose aim is to defend indigenous data collection and usage and the United Nations reports titled The State of the World's Indigenous Peoples. And so I encourage you all to join me in learning more, donating and being intentional about your use of native lands. And I just want to say that I am fairly new to this role. I am an intern this summer, so I started pretty recently. And I'm also very fairly new to DEI work, but I'm not new to the nonprofit sector. And I have the honor of working with amazing people who acknowledge and advocate for a more just and humane society daily. And for the last couple of years at TechSoup, our guest and my direct supervisor, Lashika Phillips, has been guiding the effort to build a more equitable, inclusive and diverse culture within the organization. Next slide, please. So today we will discuss her approach to these initiatives and how nonprofits can implement similar initiatives holistically at your organizations. So with that, I'm gonna pass the mic to Lashika. Please tell us more about how this program got started at TechSoup and the mission and the vision of the program. Absolutely. Well, I'm super excited to be here, to be doing this with the both of you and everyone here that has joined. Just thank you and welcome. And so a little bit about how the program at TechSoup started. It was very organic, if I could say, because what was really unique about the experience at TechSoup is that equity, inclusion, diversity, cultural awareness and cultural competence has been at the core of TechSoup since the very beginning. So those discussions around, again, equitable practices, inclusive cultures, that is something that was already very familiar at TechSoup way before, long before George Floyd, long before that experience at tragic happened. So when I presented the idea to executives, to our CEO and to other leadership, it just seemed to be the right time for that. I think that it was time for us to carve out a space within the organization dedicated to equity, inclusion and diversity. And so while it was organic, I'm just really happy that we were all aligned. And I know that not every organization has that start. I totally get that. So we have been, and I have been very privileged at TechSoup to have at least been aligned with the leadership and my other colleagues at TechSoup to really kick things off. But it just started with an idea. I said, hey, global diversity awareness month is happening in a few weeks, or at that time it was in a few months. I said, so what can we do? And from there, we hosted several events and I thought it was gonna be something that we may did, we would may do every single year, but it ended up toward the end of October, folks said, well, what are we doing next month? And so then November came, this is like, well, maybe we should plan something for December too. And at that point, we just start to put some things together to be more formal and official. That's good to know. I mean, you spoke to a lot of really important things, talking about alignment, talking about having a month full of events that are focused on building cultural awareness and competency and self-reflection in some ways. I think, Aritha, I think we are done with this slide. Are we done with this slide, Sashika? Yes, I believe so. All right, because I just wanna chat with you. Let's chat. So I know that a few, it's very different to see the word culture included when talking about like a DEI program. So can you speak a little bit more to that? Like why did that word get put into the title of the program and how is it affecting the way that the strategies of the program and the initiatives that are being brought forth are having that focus? Well, for anyone who is not familiar with TechSoup, we are a global organization. And our reach, it spans across over 200 countries and territories. So the idea for culture to not be a part of that, there wouldn't be any balance there, right?  And our staff reflect that as well. We have staff all over the world and the culture is a part of that. It is how we connect. Just recently, we had a brownback presentation about how culture intersects work style. So I think for us, it was just, it was a given. It wasn't even something that I think that we required a whole lot of thought about that just because of the nature of our work, the nature of the nonprofits that we serve, as well as our staff and our TechSoup Global Partner Network. So I think that culture is just a part of who we are. It is at the core. And cultural awareness is important to us as well because again, working with other organizations and other parts of the world, being able to connect on a deeper level, I believe that knowing culture and having cultural awareness allows us to do that. And that's a really good point. I mean, speaking quite frankly, having being a black woman leading this program, we are coming in and me being your intern, we're coming in with a very specific lens and having that awareness that comes into the program and saying like, this is how I move through the world. And so this is also what we could bring to the table when talking about equity in the workplace too and how that affects the work that we do in the nonprofit sector is really important. I think that's a value that you add to it. I'm curious then about the early days of actually forming the program. I know you talked about Global Diversity Awareness Month. And how energized the organization was after that. I would like to know, and for the other nonprofit leaders who are watching today, how, what did it look like to build that collaboration in that executive buying to form a formal program at TechSoup? Well, it has extremely rewarding. To say definitely that. One thing about TechSoup is in one of our admins or one of our leaders in our HR team says that when she does exit interviews, 100% of the time when she asks the question, what is your, the best thing you loved about TechSoup? She says that 100% of the time the response is people, that is everyone's response. Wow. And I say that because having the conversation with leadership about having an EIDC program at TechSoup, it was not something that I found to be very challenging. Again, as I mentioned earlier, we seem to be aligned. And I think that we were aligned not because of the, again, the tragic events surrounding George Floyd. If I really believe it's because it is the core of who we are as an organization. But then also I know that it is important to the people at TechSoup. So having the conversations and having tough conversations was something that I felt empowered to do. I felt that I could trust leadership at TechSoup to have these conversations. And I felt like they trusted me to start thinking about and planning some initiatives around these conversations. So I was just, I feel that we are very fortunate, like I said, to have leaders who, where Dee and I are something that is important to them outside of the workplace as well. So that part was easy. I think the struggle in the early part was balancing time because there is so much that can be done. But then there's also, we have to also take into consideration the time that is needed to build out whatever ideas or suggestions that are being brought to you or to the leaders of the organization. So for me, I think that was it. It was trying to manage and decide what to do first. What is most important first? What is priority? And then from there, just creating plans around next steps and concrete plans. So what did you do first? Well, after the global diversity awareness month, I started attending and I still do attend a lot of webinars on equity inclusion, not just in the workplace, but sometimes I've even had to venture out and watch webinars that were specific to folks in the education realm because I found that some of those resources and tools were also helpful in thinking about strategizing for a program like this. Another thing I did was I began to partner with individuals in the organization. I realized that I had a partner within our marketing team, partner in HR, and I began to really establish and develop those relationships. And then I also started looking outside of the organization to see who I could partner with where I can learn, who could I partner with for me to give back as well. And then where can I go for just resources every now and then? So I was able to start clearing a path that way. And I'm still doing those things. I feel that we are in the infancy stage of our program. So I'm still doing a lot of those things, still attending webinars, still looking to be connected in the best places. So I'm still on that journey. And that is really good to know because as you're intern, I will say there is professional, constant professional development is 100% necessary to do EIDC work. And I mean, I have just learned so much in going to webinars as well. I'm just for talking to you about the things that you learned. So I wanna highlight that as a really great place to start versus to educate yourself. I think that's an excellent point. And then having those conversations to build your network of your alliance of people who are going to be doing this work with you. And speaking to that alliance, I know that you mentioned a little earlier working within reaching out to people in culture, our HR team. So can you speak to that relationship and its value when establishing and guiding a DEI program at a nonprofit? Absolutely. So I think though it's important for me to call out the fact that the EIDC program at TechSoup, it sits within the office of the CEO. So it is not a part of our PNC team. It's not a part of our legal team per se. It is in the office of the CEO. So establishing these other kind of partnerships and alliances has been extremely helpful. In terms of my work with our people and culture team, it has been extremely valuable. Especially considering one of the things that we are actively working on is expanding our candidate pools, diversifying that and expanding our reach. And that is not something that I could do by myself. It requires a team. It requires someone who is experienced in recruiting. And so we have a recruiter that's a part of our HR team. And then we have a person who manages policies and the people side of HR. And so all of that, all of those are key elements for a great partnership in terms of connecting with EIDC and making it effective for the entire organization. So we have partnered around diverse recruiting strategies. We've partnered around locating various diverse groups or associations to become members of or to partner with. We also attend webinars together. We're actually attending a conference. It's a DDI conference hosted by SHIRM. It's in October this year. So we'll be attending that. So we've been working very closely here lately and I'm enjoying the partnership. I've learned a lot from partnering with our PNC team. But as I said, it would be impossible to do that work without the two of us together. So it's really been great, been enjoying that work. And I love how at the end there, you also talked about the conference and thinking, I mean, it just goes back into the education piece, like having that relationship also encourages opportunities for growth as well in these other departments. I would like to know more about your collaborations across TechSoup. So outside of the senior leadership and maintaining buy-in in that way. And outside of PNC, what does it look like for you to have your hand in other projects that are going on in other teams at TechSoup? Well, I don't really enjoy it.  But I absolutely love TechSoup. I love our mission. I love our big, big, big picture. So the idea of being able to work with and partner with other teams, it's very fulfilling. It's really exciting to me. I've partnered with so many other teams. I mean, you have to in this work.  It is extremely important to know that this is not work that you can do by yourself. It definitely requires partnership and it's not something that you can do siloed. So I've partnered with our marketing team. I mean, this webinar being put together, this was with collaboration with our marketing team. And it goes beyond just webinars. We've partnered with our marketing team to produce blogs. As a matter of fact, we've got a blog coming out really soon. Even down to graphics and imagery, like it's really been great to work with them, getting us prepared for various conferences. Working with marketing team has been really helpful and valuable in that way. Another team, it's our cloud support or cloud solutions team. I know that a few months ago, they did an outreach campaign to several of our AAPI members of TechSoup. And so I was included in that engagement, which was, again, I'm really happy to being able to do that. Although I would not have known about some of those organizations had I not been a part of that conversation, but I was able to add some feedback on wording around what we send out to some of our members. What does that look like? And helping us to be more intentional about our messaging. So that was really great. I think that, trying to think of other teams I've partnered with, there's just so many now, just trying to think of other teams. Oh, our digital, our new program, the digital resilience program, I've partnered with Adam, who is the program manager for that, to ensure that messaging is sent out to all of our members and folks who are maybe not members, but just making sure that everyone is aware of our offers and that we are reaching out to some organizations specifically that can reach marginalized nonprofits. So that has been extremely helpful as well, I can tell. And I'm working with impact stories around that as well. So, I mean, the list goes on. Definitely the list goes on, but I hope that if anything, I hope that the folks get that collaboration definitely is key with this work. That is a really good point. And I know that you've also reiterated that a few times here about your collaborations with other teams and other departments across the organization. But I'm also really glad that you talked about considering that TechSoup is in the civil sector, big talking about how DEI work and having that presence within the organization affect social impact. So that is really important to note as well and how it has a full circle impact just from getting started, which is really good to know. But I mean, something that the folks listening here today are the folks watching the recording may be wondering is with the DEI work and talking about these collaborations and talking about working on these projects, there may be other initiatives that cost a little more money. So thinking about funding for DEI projects, what has, can you speak to some of that as well? And with funding, how can you expand the EDI IDC program at TechSoup? Well, with funding, I mean, I wanna say the sky's still there. Yeah. Money does lots of things, so yes. Yeah, of course, absolutely. Right, but I think specifically for TechSoup, I think that funding and additional resources will allow us to get more training. I think it will allow us to partner with more DEI practitioners and experts. I think that there are also opportunities for us to engage technology in our learning. What I mean by that is I've discovered a couple of really unique learning opportunities that they use AI as a tool to teach about diversity, equity and inclusion. That's just one idea. But also, I think it's important for not just TechSoup before organizations in general to invest in assessments. Right, it's important to know where the organization is. And that does take investment, not just an investment of a financial investment, but we're also talking about time as well. Because to do an assessment, it's not something that can be done overnight. So that's just something else to think about. But when I think about moving forward and TechSoup's journey, definitely funds would allow us to expand our training and our learning and believe that it will also help expand our existing employee resource group and our any affinity groups that we add. I also think that when we think about community impact, I believe that additional funding can also create opportunities for us to do even more work in the community around DEI for nonprofits as well. That's really good to know and thinking about how to expand the EIDC program and just for other nonprofits when we're looking at doing that expansion, I think that that's really good to speak to that. In thinking about expansion, we also wanna think about the purpose of expanding and what we're doing this for. So I wanna ask your insight on, because I know that you mentioned early on about the Global Diversity Awareness Month response from the employees, but it's been a couple of years since then. And so I'm curious how the EIDC program or how you plan to maintain employee buy-in as well for the folks like me who are interns and who are here for maybe a few months to those employees who may have just started in our customer-facing positions or who are on smaller teams or our contractors. How do we maintain employee buy-in at this level as well? Yeah, I think what's important is really to keep the conversation going. Consistency is crucial. So if we've started monthly events, then we have to continue monthly events. I think that that is important. I think that's how you gain buy-in. I think that's how you get buy-in and people can count on that. So they can depend on that. Then they go to trust that and trust you. Regardless if an employee is with you for a day or two or four or 12 years, I think that establishing trust early on, that's how you maintain buy-in. I really do believe that. I also think constantly engagement. I think constant engagement, whether it's when I see that we have new folks to join, sending them an email or Slack message to welcome them or to invite them to a discussion or just invite them to a virtual chat. But engagement is key. And I know that engagement in this now remote virtual Zoom field world, right? Then we have, I know that sometimes it can be challenging. So I'm learning different tools to stay connected. It's the one tool that I think folks in TechSoup know that I have been playing with and tinkering with for the past couple of weeks. And that's the huddle feature on Slack. We need to do it a few times. Yes, you know, because just staying connected is very important, because if you think about it, right, how it's impossible to gain trust for someone or something that you don't feel a connection to, right? So I think that's how I'm working to maintain buy-in. I love that you just said that because it makes me think of affinity groups, you know? Thinking about feeling a connection to something you think about what an affinity group is and why folks at organizations and companies choose to start those. Can you, for folks who may not know what an affinity group is, do you mind defining that and then talking about what they've looked at like at TechSoup so far? Yeah, sure. So affinity groups were established. I'm not exactly sure like there's an official year that it really kind of kicked off mainly in U.S. was to create spaces mainly for marginalized groups to feel comfortable in the workplace. So affinity groups were established for those purposes. And so here we are 2021. And I think that the idea of affinity groups have, I believe it has evolved. And I think it also depends on the type of organization or the culture of the organization where you are. So for us at TechSoup, the affinity groups that we have right now, we don't have many. We have two or we have three affinity groups actually right now. And so yeah, I think that they help to create an additional safe space. And the reason why I say an additional safe space because I feel that at TechSoup, we have these virtual spaces where we can connect and we can strategize with folks or just talk about something that maybe doesn't even have to do with work, right? TechSoup creates these opportunities. But I just see affinity groups as a bonus space, an additional opportunity to connect with your peers and to think about ways that we can engage with the community. Because I know that our affinity group, we have an affinity group. It's racial justice, allyship. And they need to talk about how can we at TechSoup, how can we have additional resources? So what can we do to effect change in non-profit stead are doing that work? So that's one affinity group. But like I said, then we have two more and creating those safe spaces.  So to have those spaces, I believe has been helpful for the folks at TechSoup. That's really good that these spaces have existed at TechSoup and that they are bringing such a positive space for folks to gather. And it has that organizational support as well. I want to ask you one more question because the Q&A is blowing up. So we wanna make sure you can get to those. So I wanna ask you one more question. Oh, I'm so excited, I'm so excited. Yeah, I peeked at it. There's some really great questions in there. So I definitely wanna make sure that we have time for that. My last question here is, it's a big one, but... I'm ready. Yeah, I just, because you've talked about teams, you've talked about collaboration, and we've talked about bringing this into different parts of the organization. My question, my last question here is, how do we keep EIDC or DEI programs in a strategic and keeping time management and being mindful and all of that and efficient while also addressing the needs of all marginalized folks and talking black folks, indigenous folks, Asian folks in Pacific Islanders, talking about disabled folks, talking about neurodivergent folks. How do we keep all of that on the agenda while still maintaining executive buy-in and doing these collaborations and all of that? And that's why I say it's such a big question because we're talking about all the things. I know, but it is so important because we're also talking about folks with the intersectionality of identities too. Like we are black women, so we have different, being women in the workplace and being black women in the workplace affects us differently too. So I just wanna know if you can provide some insight for the folks watching how to keep all of these things present. Okay, so that, yeah, that was a big question. And I think I have a, no, no, no, I think I have a very small answer. And my response to that is, actually, Jasmine, if I'm being completely transparent, my first thought when you asked that is you don't. You don't. And, but let me clarify what I mean and what I was thinking is that in order to do all of those things, I think the most important, the most important piece is being intentional. I think that all of those things can happen and can happen successfully, be truthful, when we do it with intention as opposed to just checking a box. Because I think that if we have this long list, you called out a lot of things. And if we do those things, rush to do those things, just to do them, to say that we did, then it's not effective, right? So if I could just take a step back, I would say it would have to be slowly and with intention. Because that, I feel that that is how I've been able to work across TechSoup in a way where I don't feel stressed out. I still love my job. I still love waking up and logging on and go to work. But that's because I can tell from our leadership that it's important for us not to just again, be performative. And I think that that's what you have to think about when you start thinking about all of these things that we wanna tackle. And all of those things are things that should be tackled and should have some work done around those areas, right? But I think we only get there with intention not rushing to the finish line because there is no finish line on this journey. I mean, what does the finish line look like, right? I don't even know if I can envision that. But it is, this is the ongoing work. It's an ongoing process. And so again, I'll say with flow slowly, intentionally and always asking why. No great way to end. Gonna pass this back now to Aretha. Thank you so much, Lashika, for letting me ask you. Thank you. And I'm excited to hear what you come up with for these questions that are in the Q&A. Wow, I told you guys you were gonna get a lot of nuggets.  Wow, wow, wow. I'm gonna go right to the Q&A section. Lots of questions here. I'm going to the one I can't answer. One, he, this was anonymous, Tindi. We're still using J-E-D-I language at my employer. Is there a reason E-I-D-C is being used here? I guess at TechSoup. And then I asked what J stands for. It stands for justice. Justice, yeah. So I love, I absolutely love this question.  But mainly, so for us, E-I-D-C, it's again intentional focus, right? And so for us, it was important to focus on the order in which we are approaching change, right? So we aim to foster a culture of equity and inclusion in order to ensure meaningful diversity, right? So that's why it's E-I-D-C. Thank you so much for that question. Yeah, great question. Sarah says, do you have a recommendation for a group that specialize in Indigenous people's healthcare? Indigenous people healthcare, great question. I cannot recall one right off hand, but because you've asked that, I will give you an answer. All right, thank you so much. And Debbie says, is there a nonprofit that's fully integrating E-I-D-C into its mission that you would recommend us to look towards for best practices? Okay, such a great question. And interestingly, and we're talking about E-I-D-C, but what I'm about to say is extremely biased. I was gonna say, I would say take a look at TechSoup's mission and take a look at our values. It is, to me, it speaks volumes because our mission and our values were created years ago, years ago, right? And then you look at what we're doing in terms of E-I-D-C and they are directly connected. Very good. So maybe a little biased there, I'm sure, but... Sorry, I thought you were finished. So the Kidney Foundation says our organization is small. I'm the only full-time person. We serve a fully diverse group of families living with CKD and we're moving our information offerings more online and virtually. In the past, most offerings have been in person. So I guess you were talking about engaging with people on purpose, I mean, on purpose, because you did say on purpose, I love that. It is on purpose, that's right. On online, so I guess you use some words, engage and stay connected. So virtually, how are we accomplishing this virtually, Lashika? I mean, there's so many ways and I'm always experimenting. I'm like, I will try a new tool in a minute. I think Jasmine and Adam, who leads our digital resilience program, now they have me tinkering with a new tool called AirTable. No, AirMeat. Oh, AirTable. Oh, it's AirTable. Okay, because there is an AirMeat, which is great. Yeah, so I'm just experimenting with different tools and not just tools to communicate and to connect, but I'm also experimenting with different tools to collaborate. So I've started using Trello. I've started using, there is a mural board. I don't know if you all are familiar with that, but I've used that before. But I think that it's not just all of these tools, right? It's also just establishing some consistency with connecting because I mean, we just have to do a better job and I'm speaking for myself as well because that is something that we just have to do. We really wanna foster an inclusive culture in this remote world. We have to go the extra mile in terms of our peers, our colleagues, whereas they're not over our cubicle and we can't just look over our monitor to see them anymore, but there are other things that we can do. I had one of my friends from Texas sent me a card, just, hey, thinking about you. So there are other things that we can do to connect. So I would say experiment, experiment and experiment. Awesome, awesome. As someone was asking, how can we inform and train more families regarding options at TechSoup? So I was answering questions. So nonprofits are the ones who have access to the TechSoup products and software. So they'll have to obtain that through nonprofits. What are some good webinars and resources that are good for just those starting out a program at their nonprofit? Wow. We do have some links, but do you know of any like- Yeah, okay, so top of mind for me would be, there is, oh my gosh, there's so many. Okay, so there is, there's diversitycouncil.org. I get a lot of information from them and I'll include that in a, I think you'll receive an email with some links that I'll share, but I will give you this and maybe this is, maybe you're already doing this, I'm not sure, but something that I personally do is you can sign up for Google Alerts. And I've gone and I've set up Google Alerts. So every morning I receive an email that will highlight everything in the news. I have all articles pertaining to diversity, equity and inclusion. And then I have like, I have five set up. So I have one that's an alert for diversity, equity and inclusion. I have one for DEI. I think I have one for diversity and inclusion, but I have all these different alerts set up. So like I said, every morning, I think they all come in at about 10 o'clock and I'll just kind of go through and believe it or not, that is how I have found out about some of the latest webinars that I've attended that were really, really great webinars. So that's one thing. As far as getting some information, you wanna get started, a couple of webinars that the content is still available for replay. And it is the Microsoft Diversity, Equity and Inclusion conference that they did earlier this year. It's called Inclusion. Also, there is a Black Enterprise DEI summit that just happened a couple of weeks ago. The replay is still available as well. I mean, there are other links that I can share in an email to everyone after this. If I can jump in, because the Sheikah's being modest, she also led a whole webinar titled, Five Tips to Successfully Launch a DEI Initiative at Your Non-Profit, which is on demand and available and we can share that with you as well. Thank you. Right, if you can find that Jasmine while we're online, you can put that in the chat room. So this is a great question and this will be the last one. Ooh, this is a good one. I like to ask, this is for you, LaSheikah, of course. It's not for me. Your insight, advice for those non-profits who focus on social justice and actively attempt to create an equitable inclusion change and yet most funds come from or are distributed by wealthy Caucasian individuals. So can you repeat the question? I just wanna make sure I'm understanding. So is the concern that these social justice organizations are receiving funds? Can you repeat that, Aretha? I just wanna make sure I understand you. I like to ask your advice for those non-profits who focus on social justice and actively attempt to create an equitable inclusion change and yet most of the funds come from wealthy Caucasian individuals. Well, I'm not sure that, that's, hmm. Well, I think that we may see more of that happening, right? I think that as people become educated and as folks continue having these tough conversations, I think that more people wealthy, whether regardless of their ethnic background, their race or anything like that, I think that we will see more of that. And I think that receiving an investment like that or receiving a donation like that, I don't know, I guess it depends on the organization and it would depend on the donor because I personally, I don't see how that is a conflict, right? If there is an organization that is doing work around social justice and a person maybe on the opposing side, if I'm understanding this right, wants to give back, I don't report that. I champion that. Like I think that maybe we will see more of that. If, and again, I hope that I am interpreting that and understanding that correctly. I think they might have been asking and I will say this kidney foundation said, just keep saying thank you and do the work. Basically take the money and keep doing the work and say thank you. That's why I laughed a few months ago. I think what they were probably saying is, let me just use one example, which is say Black Lives Matter and I just threw it out there because everybody knows that if they're getting money from Caucasians to do the work, I don't see a problem with that. That's somebody who wants to invest in it and maybe they can't be the face of it but they wanna support it. So yeah, I think if we had a little bit more time, we could dive into that because I can see how that could be some red flags. But so thank you for raising that question. But I think that as long as receiving that donation or those funds or resources does not go against the mission or the values of that organization, I say I support that 100%. Yeah, long as they're not using their money to control the narrative. Someone says I work with a very, they put in parentheses, white group of folks who wanna find ways to bring more equity into each of their organization. I've noticed a repeating cycle of our conversation lately. One, let's try to set priorities to work on and goals to work toward and two, this is a long one but it's good, I gotta read it. We're really, we're a really white group of people. It would be good to get more diverse perspectives on these ideas. We don't want to accidentally do more harm than good. This is so good. I wish you weren't anonymous so I could give you props. And then three, okay, let's find some more diverse perspectives followed by four, let's quickly, how do we do that? How do we do that? Especially without tokenism. So it goes on, very good comment, very good comment. Lashika, you wanna say something about that? Yes, so I think in this, first of all, thank you so much for that question. I would encourage you to find spaces where you feel welcome, find spaces that where you feel like you're able to listen effectively and listen with empathy, but at the same time be heard with empathy as well. And those spaces, they do exist. Because I think once you find whether it's a cohort, whether it's a, I mean, they have groups on LinkedIn, I'll share some links for everyone. But once you find kind of find that space, then you will find a community or a group of folks who you trust to ask these questions to, right? Or to really begin to explore some of these ideas. So it does exist. And guess what? If you can't find that space, it may be an opportunity for you to create the space. That's what I had to do. When I got started in this role, I had no idea. I was thinking, oh my goodness, what should I do first? What should I be doing in what order? And what I did was with the help of an inspiration from my manager, I created a cohort for women who are passionate about DEI. And so every month we meet, we talk about issues pertaining to DEI, whether it's recruiting, this month we're talking about recruiting. And so now I've kind of created this space for myself as well as for other women in the space. So keep that in mind as well in your journey. That's great. Well, thank you everyone. This has been fantastic. Wow, the questions here, the comments, everybody say thank you to Lashika and Jasmine. What a great job. So much engaged, so many questions. So many questions are still coming in. We're gonna share the video in 48 hours and all the links. We have a lot of more additional links to share with you.  So we're gonna pass this on to the next generations, but we still have to keep engaged and keep doing the work. So thank you everybody. See you next time on our next webinar. Bye-bye.


What is going on guys welcome back to the channel and I appreciate you being here today I want to talk about a new raid activity which is coming with a curse of all Cyrus DLC on December 5th and all the details we know on it so far But before we go any further people if you'd like to win some epic loot Simply drop a like on this video leave a comment down below and join my discord server links within the video description Okay, so the latest bunch of stream has not long ended which covered many new things coming with a curse of all Cyrus DLC expansion so expect more videos to come covering every detail worth covering But the highlight of the stream for me was details under new raid activity So let's start so we're going to be getting a new raid, but not as you think bungee are creating now What's known as raid layers there are two of them in the making both coming with the DLCs of the future a Raid layer is basically an expansion onto the Leviathan raid now before the stream today I wasn't optimistic about the new raid activity They spoke about as I actually thought it would be just like an add-on but now that they've explained exactly what it is in a Little more detail. I'm quite looking forward to seeing it in action So basically this Leviathan raid expansion is a new raid set with new encounters new activities New places to explore and new buses the raid is called the eater of worlds It will obviously be a six man and the recommended light of it is standard at 300 Prestige version will be added though, which they state and I quote is basically madness, which I like the sound of now This new raid layer activity isn't going to replace the current Leviathan raid It's like more of a side note for the Leviathan the Leviathan will still be there for you to play Which I may state its light level has been raised to a 300 or whatever will match the current gear level When the cursor also drops and its gear will raise with the expansion to loot obtainable from this new raid layer though There will be an all-new set of armor weapons and cosmetics, which I cannot wait to see This raid layer will obviously start within the same path you take into the Leviathan raid the Leviathan is a world eater So theoretically this place is absolutely massive and we've only been to the palace on top But within this layer we will dive down into this enormous ship So yes, it will basically offer new encounters new places to explore and new buses sounds quite interesting I'm not gonna lie, but I do have many questions the cursor of size DLCs vex themed There's not that about it, but it's a layer with the Leviathan this new raid activity I don't see being vex, which is kind of a little disappointing. I think it should be although it isn't a major upset I just think it should somehow at least be vex related now It might be saying that don't take what I state as factual as it hasn't been confirmed. I just don't see it happening So within expansion to we will get a second red layer So not a completely new raid but more of an add-on like this eater of worlds a layer which comes with a curse of Osiris I mean, I ain't upset about this, but it isn't exactly what I expected They do however try and compare it with the release of destiny one and the expansions that came with that They state the first DLC got a raid But the second never and only got the prison of elders and they're basically using this as an excuse for what we're getting with destiny To being okay They act like because the first game didn't get to raise within two DLCs You guys better count yourselves lucky that you are getting two new raid activities within the first two expansions for destiny To now for me ain't salty about this at all as long as these new red activities These new red layers are for more of an endgame grind I'm completely happy heck to be honest I'd even be happy if a raid activity wasn't added to the game with this DLC as long as they fixed that endgame That's what I think that's what this game completely misses in my opinion That's what destiny one offered which this does not longevity reasons to play reasons to grind There's no reason for me now to start destiny to and it's only been at two months And I had this feeling after a month that should not be the case But hopefully they break two bottles with one pebble and we get both a better endgame grind and great new raid Activities that's the best outcome. I can see all the info coming though is relatively new And there's so much more to be announced There are still two more streams coming which no doubt like this stream will deliver plenty of new info on this DLC The next stream is next Tuesday at the same time and the third stream will be the week after under Wednesday at the same time Now I'm going to go back over this entire stream again to see what else is worth covering So stay tuned for the videos. Thanks as always for stopping by tell me what you think about these new raid layer activities And hopefully people I will see you on that next one


What's up guys, this is Theron, and tonight we're taking another dive into the para-watch wiki. Tonight's thread was started by user Teethbrush on August 22nd, 2019. It's called Barnes From Nowhere. Let's begin. This is a weird one, has anyone had any strange experiences with barns? I was driving through Iowa and saw something burning by the side of the road. It was a barn. I could make out the truss framing and a few splotches of red paint clinging to the charring boards. It was mostly gone already. I was going to stop and see why this barn was on fire, someone could have swerved into it after all. Then I saw someone in robes watching it burn, just staring at it. I decided real quick not to stop. I'm at a rest stop now trying to find a gas station. There's another barn next to the place, pick-related. Thoughts? At this point, user Carniball responds. I think I can top that.  I was only with my father then, mom died a little before, and dad thought that farm life would be a good change of pace. Good 300 acres of annually cycled corn and soybeans, kind of small. A couple sheep, too. Pretty boring when you're off work. You'd have to make the most of what's there. Memorize all the divots, the boulders, where the blackberry bushes were. It becomes a kingdom of sorts. Then the barn showed up. I remember waking up notably later than normal to my father on the phone. He was yelling at who I assumed was our neighbor. Dad was pissed at some construction project on our land they'd done. I didn't pay much attention to this at the time. They always butted heads like bulls back then. So I went outside to dick around as usual, and as someone who had memorized every last inch of all those fields and beans and rocks and trees, I was not expecting to see a barn. It was planted neatly into the soybean field as if it was a crop itself. Didn't look neat, though. For something that appeared so recently, it was fairly worn down.  I couldn't see inside. Light just didn't enter. At all. I never really went in the thing. For how curious I was, that was pretty unusual. My dad wanted that neighbor to take it down and refuse to do it himself. My father was a very stubborn man, wanted things done the way he wanted with no room for error. He didn't want me near it either. It was too rickety and built by a man with a block of wood for a thinker. I kept my distance most of the time. I still noticed a few things about the barn. You know how it was all neatly rowed with the crops before? Well, the day after it popped up, that barn was slightly off. I knew I wasn't crazy then, so I used my noggin to conduct some advanced science. I put a stick in the mud at one of the corners of the barn and waited to see if it would get farther away. Namedless to say, after a couple days, I really knew I wasn't crazy. It was turning towards the sheep pen. One of our sheep disappeared soon after, but part of the fence had been knocked outward, made it look like it had escaped. Dad didn't believe that one bit and thought the scapegoat neighbor was to blame again. I kept telling him to check in the barn, but he refused. He didn't want to go in either. That's no convincing him. The sheep kept going, and my dad would blame the neighbor over and over. It was a vicious cycle, with a very clear way to stop it. Each time I would plead for him to just go into the barn and he would refuse. He had a look in his eyes that I had never seen before. He was strange, subtle, but noticeable. After half the flock had gone, he finally cracked. My dad went and grabbed a rifle and a lantern in the dead of night. I didn't know what he was expecting to shoot in there. He went up to the barn, body shaking enough to nearly cause him to pull the trigger. I could tell what that look was now. He went in and the dark of the barn consumed him whole. Lanternlight faded fast and devoid. I heard muttering, clattering, the occasional swear, suspense, stretch time thin. After what felt like forever, he ran out in a sweat, blood caked on the bottoms of his shoes and tipped his fingers. I could tell it wasn't his. He threw the lantern into the barn. A fire dripped onto the paint, but dried quick. Now, my dad's a rational man. He would have known that whatever fire he lit on that barn would spread to the soybeans. He wasn't stupid, but that didn't stop him from getting the blowtorch from the garage. It didn't start a flame at first. When it did though, it went fast. It was already in shambles. A good fire is all it takes to turn the derelict to ruin.  Then it started screaming. It was an animal, just too articulate for that. However, something about it didn't seem quite human either. I could tell it was the barn. I just know it was. It devolved into choking a while and trailed to a charred rasp. I didn't know if I fell asleep that night, but I know those rasp faded by the morning. All that was left of the barn was four rotted sheep skeletons and heaps of charred flesh. But all that flesh couldn't have come from four sheep. We covered the remains up with dirt and that was the end of it, really. But here's the thing, there's so many abandoned barns in the Midwest from a financial farm crisis in the 80s. So many people lost their jobs, their homes. But more importantly here, they're barns. I wonder how many of them are real sometimes. Sometimes I feel bad about barn burning because most of them are just barns. But if you heard those screams, you'd want to burn them too. Wow. Okay shh.  That can't be real, right guys? What do you think? Leave your answer in the comments below, subscribe and hit the bell, join the site 42patreon, and I'll see you next time.


Welcome to recreating my old cringy outfits episode two if you guys haven't tuned into the first episode I'm a recap the parameters I follow for the new recreated outfit It either has to follow the same color blocking the same item or items or the same concept behind that outfits These videos are super fun to make and you guys can see how my style has changed over time. Remember 2018 Johnny bad And so what I'm gonna do now is I'm gonna be scrolling through my Instagram and picking out Really bad outfits in my opinion you guys might like those outfits I doubt you will but I probably won't like it because of the way it was composed or the mindset the 2018 mindset that I had at The time that just didn't really work out and I don't really follow But before that this video is brought to you by the Ridge wallets the Ridge wallets is light sleek and industrial Suits me perfectly and was designed to fit easily in your front pocket No more of those thick 90s wallets with receipts sticking out and bulging out of your pants No more falling on it and having it feel like you just got punched in the leg It's made with RFID blocking technology to protect you from digital pickpocketers And it's completely solid with a lifetime warranty and over 30,000 five-star reviews. There's screws attached to this thing Man, I personally have the titanium matte black with a muddy clip But you can pick your choice on how you want to carry your cash The stonewash model is a pretty solid choice these things hold up to 12 cards There are plenty of colors or styles that will suit you and you can test drive it for 45 days And if you don't like it you can send it back for a full refund And you can get 10% off your Ridge wallet today by going to ridge.com Slash tie and use code tie to apply that discount by hitting the link in the description It makes a great holiday gift too. Once again, thank you Ridge wallets for sponsoring this video Let's go and find a cringe outfit. Okay, so now I'm gonna turn on my screen recording that way you guys can see Which outfit that I pick out I'm gonna be scrolling through my Instagram So post I've already you know uploaded on the on my page and we're gonna pick out an outfit from there Probably there's already some cringy outfits. There's gonna be no shortage of them Hence why this will be an ongoing series and it's kind of fun to me And I kind of have an idea for what I like to remake because it's pretty bad outfit It actually was the top of 2019. That's last year a year and 10 months ago So all right, so we're gonna roll with this outfit right here. There's a lot of things wrong with this outfit I was very into that super drapey tea where it just drapes all the way down towards your mid-thigh And it's just not a good look this denim jacket is from fashion Nova, which I am not a fan of And I no longer have that nor do I have any of these items actually these cargo pants jogger cargo pants joggers were gone in 2016. I decided to wear them in 2019 Because there were cargos and then the vans old schools This is just a regular lifestyle old schools Not the pro model and I don't even have old schools anymore Because I left it back in New Mexico. Basically. I've always been into tank tops whenever it comes to layering That's why I recommend it for my fall essentials, but I just don't think I did it right at all with this outfit It's definitely just old pieces trying to be modernized to 2019 standards and it just did not work out the color blockings off whole outfit is just really bad in my opinion Let me know what you guys think in the comments down below But we're gonna be recreating this outfit and let's go ahead and check it out All right So as you can see I am taking the concept of a denim jacket a tank top and vans The og fit is just trying too hard and it just comes off flat and meh So what I did to recreate this fit is forget trying to make my fits more color blocked It's okay to embrace a small color palette as you can focus on regional splashes of patterns or layers tank tops are an absolute Must for this transition between the warmer and cooler temperatures Hence why I have this air is in one from Uniqlo I recommend tanks because you don't get that type of color with any regular tea Old Johnny got this right before the denim jacket comes from Express. Everyone's got a light blue denim jacket That's cool, but this gray one is a great change of pace It's super stretchy has a lot of pockets and is well worth the money because I think it's even more versatile than the blue one The hat comes from Amazon and I threw on a bandana from Levi's that I just picked up on Amazon as well Just because I don't like when my collar bones just pop out and like I said regional patterns I felt it was needed and I also tried a simple gold chain with a jade pendant that works, too The cargo pants come from 511 tactical and it's by far the best bang for the buck for cargos It has a DWR coating making it waterproof So it offers that performance for more technical wear but isn't too tech looking to where you can only stick to that lane You can throw these on with a more skate street wear outfit totally up to you I really dig the way these fits and the extra stretch also helps with comfort and mobility These are cuffed with some black crew socks leading to the van slip on I really appreciate these pants cuffed with black crew socks as well because yes, it's relaxed But the crew socks blends in and it breaks up the silhouettes of the pants to your ankles leading to the vans Always like this look think of it like a latte instead of mixing the steamed milk and the espresso for a uniform drink Like a uniform taper having the layers of cream and espresso separated makes the drink a lot more interesting Color crew socks would have worked as well with this outfit But I wanted to keep it one silhouette with a pop of gray from the jackets The vans are just normal comfy cushion vans very versatile sneaker and in my opinion better than the old schools All right, so what did you guys think of that outfits? I hope you like the change? It's not really the same color blocking, but it's the same concept and somewhat of the same piece So let me know what you think in the comments down below for this next outfits. We are gonna go to my archived Okay, I did upload this but I archived it because it was that bad. This is the definition of cringe for me I'm gonna go to the archive posts. I see it right here This outfit right here, man. I did not do the Akron and Presto's justice All right, I'm rocking I'm rocking a pair of skinny denim Skinny black denim with Akron and Presto's I tried reverse layering with that same tee because I was like, oh, I know reverse layering and it just did not look good I'm wearing a Zipper hoodie. This was the the fear of God third collection Inspired type of zipper hoodie. It's terrible and then a camera backpack. I mean look at the way I was posing to I did not know how to model back then And I know in the edits I just brightened up the yellow just to make sure people looked at the shoes and Oh my god, this is just a terrible photo terrible outfits terrible pose Everything about this photo deserved to be archived and to be honest with you I don't even know what my mindset was back then whenever whenever it came to putting it together this outfit because normally You're just like, okay Akron and Presto's I should probably go more tech pair of Jordan ones Maybe I should go for the more street look but this one. I have no idea what I was doing Let's go ahead and recreate this outfit. I will not be wearing a you know any type of sling bag or anything because I've been doing that a lot So it's just gonna be the I'm gonna follow the same color blocking as well as the same Sneakers, so let's go ahead and check it out So for this outfit, I really had to make it up to the Presto's I wanted to add technical elements while keeping the outfit more street So it's a hybrid of street and tech which represents my current interests of style simple Amazon beanie Hella cheap hoodie is a plain black one from essentials, but you can get one from anywhere This is way better than that quarter zip one and we'll never go out of style the zipper one was too much man 2015 to 2017 was a weird time for zippers and instead of reverse-laying a stupid shirt underneath I layered the hoodie with the Uniqlo ultra light down vest You want to go with the ultra light down one because it's just as warm But won't make you look too puffy. I find this combination quite tasteful and if I had other colored hoodies I try and find a similar colored vest as well pants are from Orbit gear my favorite brand for more technical gear You know slings shells pants. They've got everything. I like these pants because there's an insane amount of storage You definitely won't be using all the pockets at once, but it's nice to have extra space Especially because we're carrying hand sanitizer and extra face masks nowadays These have a track pants type of feel but also has those techie vibes great fits not too tapered has a wider leg opening So it can accommodate a lot more sneakers slim and chunky and of course the prestos Definitely a shoe you only see on the gram and not in person. You really don't see on the gram anymore Actually, which is why you should pick one up Nobody wears these and that's it followed the all-black vibe. I was going for before only I have better hair The outfit has more depth and I kind of know how to model it Who knows this fit might be cringe next year and I'll end up and I'll end up remaking it next year Who knows alright guys? What did you guys think of those recreated outfits? Let me know which one was your favorites and if you guys liked this series Go ahead and follow me on Instagram at flower Johnny tie find a cringy outfit to you that maybe I can remake in the future Check out the Ridge wallet. It's a perfect gift for the holiday season and don't forget to subscribe


I'm going to go ahead and start. It's just about 2.30. So you guys enjoying this? Syed's talk was like frickin' awesome. Like seriously, it was. Like I hope that those of you that sat in on his talk have a newsletter by tomorrow. Seriously. So I'm talking about how to make the most out of Yoast SEO. My name is Niall Flores. I'm from the St. Louis Metro East area. So that just means the arch is my neighbor. So what I do is I design and develop websites that convert, which means that I deliver projects and websites that get the person to have visitors that buy, subscribe, share, comment, get them to do what they want to do, because that is the purpose of the website.  So today I'm not going to talk about website conversion, because even though I love to, I'm talking about Yoast SEO because I do work for them. I'm on their support team. And so if you are a premium member, sometimes you may see me and maybe you might be a free version person.  But we're here to try to help you in everything. So hopefully this will help some of that frustration with the plug-in and everything that some of you have. So you can find me at Blondish.net. And if you do any tweeting, please use my Twitter handle Blondish.net. So my objective today, they're pretty simple ones. Go over some basic SEO tips and go over a few must-dos and basic best practices for Yoast SEO. Some of them you may have heard. Some of you may not. I just kind of like put my little spin on it because I've been using Yoast SEO for probably four years now. So before going into the plug-in, it's better to go and understand basic SEO first. And in order to understand basic SEO, you have to understand Google first. And a lot of people think it's a game and Google hates them. Why is this happening to me? I can never get my site listed right. Well, it's not Google's fault. Google's mission is actually very clear. It's to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. And what they want to do is make it very human. So it's not like they're trying to do a search and it's like some weird term. And you're like, this doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Nothing's coming up. It used to be that way a long time ago. But they've been more refined to, like, for example, Painter Dallas, Texas. And you have all these search results up with even people who have local established businesses and their pins and a map and all these things that used to not exist. They're trying to make it very easy for you to get to these things. And on top of that, you can see these things on mobile. Call them from your mobile phone by clicking on the number, clicking on the map to get to Google Maps. So it's like really awesome. So linking is important. If you want Google to find you, you need to be linking. They follow the links, kind of like a dog.  Internal links from one page are post to another or external links from other websites, like if you were featured in an interview or a roundup, which is like a list of links. Like people thought your article was really good. Like for example, on my website, I have two roundups called Monday Mashup, which is like blogging, social media, web design, SEO. And so I pick like the most recent topics that I think are like solid ones that people should be reading. And then I have WordPress Wednesday, all WordPress stuff, community news, themes, plugins. And it's just a little, you know, a hodge podge of awesomeness. So and basically I'm linking to them. So those people didn't really submit their site to like Google Search Console. I've given away for, since my sites are already, you know, on Google Search Console, it's been up for many, many years, 10 years now. They'll get to that website. So how does Google determine what to list and where? Search results are determined by what fits your search terms best. Links to well-written content, links from other websites, also known as off-page factors and content that is shared well. Because we are not in just focusing on regular search and content. We are also looking for social search, what you're sharing on Facebook and Twitter, Google Plus and any other social network. You can even stumble upon. So it may rank better than other websites. So a few basic SEO tips.  Anything, if I have links and everything, don't worry. I will post them later so you don't have to take any notes and I'll make sure to tweet. You have many of you seen me on Twitter, it's gonna happen. So you'll see all the links, you won't miss a thing, I promise. So write natural and let your blog voice shine. Do not go in there and put your keyword in there and say, I gotta put my keyword in here this many times because you're gonna force yourself to focus on that and you do not sound natural at all. I've had some people like, oh, well it's telling me, oh, am I not getting a green light for this? And you know, SEO and I gotta have more of this keyword in here and you can't do that.  Finding out why in the world this does not make any sense any longer. So use keyword research to cover topics that bring your niche needs in order to target and bring in reader subscribers buyers. Title, 50 to 60 characters, very simple. Put your keywords toward the beginning of the post. Some of you who've used Yoast SEO probably have gotten me not using the keyword in the first paragraph and it's probably because you either have a short code or an image or something like that there. Don't worry about that, you can ignore that. It's just how that happens. It's trying to say that your image is your first paragraph. That's not a worry, that's just the page analysis tool. Write in an engaging title. So the, something like the definitive guide of WordPress SEO. It's like, oh my gosh, this is really complete guide and everything. I should go there because it says everything about it. That's what definitive gives me in mind. I don't want the guide to WordPress SEO. I want to make it a little more descriptive. So actually that also goes into my cool resource links. One of my friends, she was the keynote speaker at WordCamp Seattle, the beginner one and her name was Kimberly Morris, got the air. She actually introduced this little cool little tool that you can generate blog titles. And for any niche, basically you put the keyword in and you can come up with all sorts of wonderful and colorful titles for research and everything. I really like the other three tools like Google AdWords Keyword Planner. Yo Suggest and Google Trends. That's pretty much aligned with what Yoast actually says on what their tools that they recommend. Google Trends is really good so that you can keep on hot topics like for example, if any of you are doing like fashion or news or anything that has current news, that would be a really good place to go to. More basic SEO tips. Have an about page and a contact page. I would actually go further than this. The reason why you should have these things is one, the about page, it should be telling you what your mission is and generally telling people who you are, what you're offering and then your contact page is a way for them to get in touch with you. Now just swap your email address for every bot in the world to get. Just get that there and plus Syad's talk, that little box, check mark box to subscribe to your list. Man, pimp that out. Get some subscriptions and your leads in. Video, audio and podcast. Image, infographics should be a company by some text. At least 300 words. You just don't put it up there as a blog post. I know there's people who use wordless Wednesdays or something like that and just put a picture up. Put a description with it. And I'm not talking about your made a description for when you describe and suggest to Google what you would like it to be. Put it in your post and you can actually utilize that. For example, if that image may be like marketing, like an infographic, you can use it to guide them where you want them to go. Whether it's another article that's related. If you like this, you may want to read more about it here or something like that. So link to external resources to enhance your own content. Again, where linking is really important. There's been a, I've noticed over the years, a big decline about people wanting to hoard all their own links with on their own website and they're not linking to other people. Google follows links. The thing is, is links can also make you some really powerful friends if you link to the right people. And so it also builds your authority. So yes, you have all your content, but if you're linking to other people, now you don't sound crazy. So make sure your site is mobile responsive. I'm sure you heard mobile, Gaten and everything. And there is a tool and you can find it through Google Search Console. And make sure that your site is mobile responsive. A lot of you are not just surfing. From here I'm seeing we have different size of laptops. She's got several different devices right there. I mean, there's several different sizes and everybody is surfing, whether they're buying something or reading your website, whatever it might be. Make your website responsive so that whatever they prefer, they'll see it. It's also part of accessibility. Site speed is important. Under four seconds page load time is ideal. Under one now? Goodness gracious, that was three months ago. They were saying four on the page. OK, hurry up and do one second. I challenge you to do it today. But I would actually say four seconds is actually really a really good time to go and get your site under. If you can get it to two seconds or one second, great. Especially the front page, start with that first. Last slide on basic SEO tips, promise. So sorry, I have a big list maker. I have a balanced site structure like a pyramid. I'm pretty sure all you guys visually know what a pyramid looks like. It looks very balanced. You have the top, and then it goes out from there. So you have your home page, and then about page, contact. Maybe your services or something like that. And if your web designer portfolio, however it may be. And then from there, you spread to your other content like your blog, and then you interlink those. Have a clear navigation. Don't put everything in your menu. I've had people like even, what is it, on the 2012 theme, they had all these three lines of just navigation links in their main menu.  You don't need that. It's so they simplify it. Don't 301 direct all your 404 not found pages to the home page. You're losing traffic. People just get confused and go away. I thought I was going here. I guess I'm not. And then they try it again. If they're feeling brave enough to do it, otherwise they just go and never come back ever again. So for example, if your page in Google Search Console that comes up in their crawl errors, say it says, say you no longer have a page on a topic on strictly maybe redained a blog post. And you forgot to redirect it to the new blog post. Then don't redirect that to the home page. Redirect that to the page that actually exists. And if there's no other that exists there, then finally, yeah, you can do that. Or you can make a special page, customize your 404 page, to make sure, for example, I like to do a form. You said, I see that you were searching for this. And I'll get that in my form. That's what you were searching for. And then give you the opportunity to give me feedback. And all of a sudden, that gives me fuel to replace content that you were actually looking for, whether it's from my website. Or maybe I'm saying, well, I no longer do this kind of stuff. But I know somebody who does, who's a really good friend. For example, Chris Lima or something like that would have some awesome article about membership plugins that I'd be like, he's the one to go to. So have a clear permalink structure. Post name is a really good one. I'm glad that it took a long time for them to add it as an option in the WordPress admin. And when they added it, I celebrated, because forever I was typing for post name. And can you keep those questions till the end? Sorry? For our membership plugins, chrislima.com. Post name, it's an option in your permalink settings and your WordPress backend. And if you need to know how to clean your site structure, I am leaving a link up here so you can go into it further. So now that we've got those over, we got to talk about Yoast SEO. It is a tool to help you optimize your website's content to be seen more favorably by Google. When I answer my support tickets and they ask me that kind of stuff, this is exactly what I tell them every single time. It's like my swipe I add in every time. So Yoast SEO, you can optimize several areas. It actually has a real-time page analysis tool. So as you're editing your article, they have a page analysis tool that analyzes it as you go. You can edit your titles and made descriptions. These are a way to suggest to Google that this is the title and description that you really want to be seen listed in Google. You can edit your robot meta settings. And they actually come with a XML site map feature. And they generate it for a post site map, post page, taxonomies. And if you have custom post sites and everything and a plugin doesn't recognize it, you can actually add a filter in to have that piece of site map added to the Yoast SEO site map. It has social integration, especially for Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, Pinterest. And as Google Search Console, the free version does have Google Search Console integration. That way you can see all your 404 crawl errors or any other crawl errors that come up in Google Search Console. You can edit your robots TXT file and your HTXS file. You can also optimize your RSS feed so that, for example, anybody who tries to fetch your crawl site and then they post it up, you could put a link in that RSS feed to link back to your sites and they know where the original content came from. And then they also have canonical links. So you can tell where the original content came from. Even if it came out from another website, maybe you got syndicated from Forbes. Well, Forbes is actually, if they have a tool, a canonical link tool, they'll link back to your article that was the same article there. So Google won't dock you for duplicate content. Some of you already have the most current version of Yoast SEO. This is actually the next version that's coming up very soon. This is the release candidate right here. So, of course, the URL doesn't look that pretty because I was beta testing. So when I took the screenshot, I was still testing it out. I just need to do screenshots. So rather than the old one, we've kind of cleaned up the snippet editor area. We still have that, but it seems a lot better. You just click the button and you get the fields separate. It's not so confusing anymore. And we listen to you about that. So here you can edit your title, SEO title, your slug for your permalink, and you're made a description. And that's just the first part of this. This goes in your poster page editor. So here you could add your focus keyword and everything. I actually used one of my articles, existing articles, to put in the data. And so my Convert Drupal to WordPress one. And so basically, this is all the actual analysis of that post. And so, yes, it has a stop word. It's telling me that there's two in there. Well, I actually need it because that's actually how it's supposed to be out there on Google, Convert Drupal to WordPress. So it tells you, I have an image. Or sorry, actually, I have, this post has been recently updated and blah, blah, blah, something like that. So it's, of course, the focus keyword's not going to be in the first paragraph. That's true. So I got a red. So it kind of gamifies how you do it. Some people don't like it, but some people really like it, really do like it, and some people really like it so much that they're that type A personality. Like, I need it to be green. I will get into that eventually. So now that the features and everything, I'm just giving you some screenshots. If you're using Yoast SEO, we actually have given you a better way to enable and disable sitemap functionality instead of the little checkbox. That's kind of hard to click because it's so small. And then when you enable it, the other screenshot to the right just shows you what the sitemap looks like. So you can edit your titles and made us from the individual posts. But you can also edit them generally. So say you really aren't being picky. You don't really need to customize a post. You could just fall back on your general template that you've come up with. And there's variables and everything. There is a way in that back end to be able to, there's a drop down like a screen options. And it gives you all the variables that you can use like for your title, the page separator, your site name, whatever the way that you want it to be seen, you can suggest it that way. You can also select meta robots for indexing or no indexing. You can also, if you prefer, if you are writing totally evergreen content, which means that whatever you wrote five years ago is still valid information today, you can hide the date in the snippet preview, which if you blog and you come up with the search results, some of you've probably seen this in blogging, that there's a date before the description. This allows you to turn that, take that out there, hide it. And you can also control whether you really want the Yoast SEO meta box to show for that post type or taxonomy or archives or whatever it might be. So one of the cool things I kind of mentioned is social SEO, social profiles and open graph. So you can, the great thing about this is it allows you to customize how you want your posts to be seen on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and everything else. So if you actually fill out all this stuff and even if you connect it to like a Facebook admin and Insights, you can even track this kind of stuff. So the other thing is the profiles and everything. Google has what's called a knowledge card and if you've ever seen in the search results to the right on some places like maybe IMDb or something like that. And so you see all this information and all of a sudden you see icons to like Facebook and Twitter and everything to their profiles. That's something. Google does not always issue those to people. Remember, it's a suggestion. So the example of, OK, the previous screenshot if you connect your posts, connect your, do open made up, or sorry, open graph and then fill out everything. For example, I shared this on my professional fan page on Google. And so it tells you my title, the description, and it tells you where it came from and who published it. And when it says it's linked to Nile Floris, it's not linked to my professional fan page. It's linked to my personal fan page. So it knows that I'm a real person outside of my fan page. So next thing, as I mentioned about gamification and the green light, that green light might be really tempting. But please do not live your life by it. It may harm you. It's kind of like putting so many keywords in that really don't belong in there. And it's just really awkward.  You're like, I'm confused. It's not an absolute mess. Right naturally, don't force content or take away specific content just to get all green lights. I included an article. Yo Swyfe did a really awesome job writing it up. And it came at a time we really needed this explained. And I'm pretty sure most of the people who have already read the article before really appreciate that it actually is reassurance that you don't have to have all green lights. It's OK. Yo SEO best practices, titles, and descriptions. While Google ultimately makes the decision of what's the best title for your article is, don't give up. Make sure to set your titles and made templates in your WordPress admin under SEO, Titles and Meta. Sometimes you will need to edit the individual poster page titles if you need it to be different from your settings, just like I mentioned earlier. Yo SEO best practices, XML sitemaps. Enabling the XML sitemap feature is only half the work. I count a lot of people. I have to ask them, did you submit your site to Google? Search Console? Remember Google's following the links. So if you're really new, that's the fastest way for Google following the link if you submit it to them in the first place. Images. Don't forget to label your alt tags in your images. Preferably put your keyword in it, at least one of them. Don't use huge images. Scale or resize them. Label the image file with the keyboard, like just I said. I linked a few things on there. Really handy if you want to learn more about it. On don't block your CSS or JSS files. Unfortunately, people still are having this issue. And that's fine. There's a way to do that. Google can't crawl your site or render it properly. And basically, if you submit it as a Google Search Console, you could actually see the line that they're having issues with. It'll have a little caution right next to that line. So you need to either change it or take it off. Don't block your WP admin or WP includes because they have scripts in there that help your site be seen properly in the right order. Otherwise, it comes out like whenever your style sheet fails. So that's how Google's going to see it. And that's not cool. Write at least 300 words. I know some of you aren't really the biggest writers in the world, or sometimes you're so busy. 300 is the minimum magic number of words you should be writing. This includes for products, images, video, and audio content. Don't just post them alone. Of course, like I said earlier, have a mobile-ready website or make it responsive. Accessibility really does matter. Just because you can surf your own website doesn't mean everyone surfs and processes your website in the same manner. Make sure your website is accessible.  There are a lot of legally blind people in this world. I think another accessibility one out of five of your visitors have an issue with accessibility whenever they come to somebody's website. That's pretty serious. So you need to think about those people. And I'm not talking about elderly people. I'm talking about young people. My best friend, she's 35. She's actually legally blind. She can't see gray text. Make your posts easy to read. Well, unless you're like an academic and your target audience is an academic, yes, then fine. Bring out the big dogs when it comes to words. So don't use a lot of big, otherwise don't use a lot of big and fancy words. Your readers need to understand you. And also break up your paragraphs. Very the length of the paragraph. Walls or texts are very daunting. Especially for people who are dyslexic, I'm dyslexic. If you have more than nine lines going, I have to really look at it closely. And it's slower. And it's harder to read. That's fine. That was the last one. So are there any questions? Just in case if you're shy or you need to ask more, I will be in the happiness bar after this. So I guess I could start in the front. A gentleman right here. OK. OK, so he was asking about hiding the date and everything. If it totally like Google doesn't even know it's hidden and everything, Google knows when you posted it, OK? It's just hidden from the description. So you can't hide it from Google. Hide it from Google like, you know, data-wise. But you can hide it from being seen in the search results. So start writing content more around that event, OK? OK, so it's all an updated content, like for example, an event that was like last year. And then he's posting new content and everything. If you really want Google to get to it right away, submit your sitemap index to Google Search Consult on a major change like that.  They'll crawl it. And they'll place that over the other one. Not all the time. Remember, just because you submitted, just because you submitted Google the sitemap once, if you make changes to your website, you should be occasionally, as you change, or you don't need to set, when you submit that for event and you want attention to it, you submit. OK, see me in the happiness bar. We'll talk about it. I'm sorry. The minimum, the max, the best. Google does, she's saying what's the best amount of words for blogging, like a blog. Honestly, it depends on the content. You really have to think about what you're going to write about. Look to see what's out there, see what they're writing. But your minimum, yes, is 30. However, I like some 50, 1,500 is a really good number or more, like I said, Google likes long form content the best. So OK, I'll have to see you in the happiness bar. I guess everybody is going to go down. If you have any questions, you can see me in the happiness bar. OK?


Hello everybody, welcome back to another AI video. In this one, I'm gonna show you how to fix male pattern baldness in seconds inside Photoshop. And not only that, we're gonna use the new AI features or functionality called generative fill. You will notice that I am in the beta and that's because the generative fill has not come to the full production version yet it should be there in the next few days. Anyways, let's see what I'm talking about. Here's Prince William. Here's Prince William with hair and not just regular hair, it's pretty close to perfect if you ask me. Let's go over here to Dwayne The Rock Johnson. He obviously has no hair. Little girl hair. How did I do that? Let me show you, that's right guys. You saw that right there. Okay, so I'm gonna delete all of these layers here and now I'm gonna show you how to do it in seconds. First side, make sure you've got your image loaded up. Switch over to your lasso tool like I've done here and then we're just gonna lasso around the area that we wanna make a fix to. So in this case, it's all the top of Prince William's head here. So this looks about right, something like that. Presto, now you're gonna get this little bar here. It's kind of like your generative fill bar so to speak. I'm just gonna move it down here and then I'm gonna click on generative fill and in that it gives me the option to describe what I want. I'm just gonna type in hair. Now if you wanted blue hair or pink hair or purple hair or you wanted a unicorn horn, whatever, go ahead and type that in. In this case, I'm using hair, clicking on generate. It takes a few seconds and then I'm gonna show you what we got. And then I'm also gonna show you how to make adjustments in case it doesn't come out correctly. So here we go. Hey, actually that did a pretty darn good job.  So okay, so he's got, all right, he's in a boy band, whatever, okay, doesn't matter. Prince William's in a boy band. Okay, he's in another boy band but he was rejected for it. Sorry, Simon. And then, okay, that's pretty cool hair. Now that's all great and wonderful but let's say you didn't quite get it right. So for example, right here, you'll see here, I want some more hair here because it's got a little bit of a widow's peak. So what I'll do is I've gone ahead and I've just lassoed it again. I'm gonna click on generative fill and then I'm just gonna write in hair. Click on generate and watch this. It's just gonna go ahead and make a few quick little iterations and it's gonna fill in the hair that I want. So there we go. Let's see what we got here. Okay, I'm gonna move this down. Okay, that's not too good. That's not bad. That's not bad. Okay, so let's see with it on and off. Okay, so it's a slight adjustment but it's done it. This is all you need to do to fix male pattern baldness inside Photoshop with generative fill. Thanks for watching.