he cost Um, so I know that the gun is a great place to start But if they don't have anything we partnered with earth economics, they're out of oregon And they've done Quantification of ecosystem services. So with us we were working on floodplains and trying to figure out like the value I think of exactly what you're talking about floodplains specifically But they've I think they've worked on other ones as well And then I know that it was vetted enough that fema actually is using those values for Quantifying ecosystem services They've now added that into their cost benefit analysis. So I think fema's ecosystem services put specific values on specific resources and then Also earth economics. So and they're broken down into like for a floodplain Like there's this many Dollars per acre that is a benefit for storm water water quality and this many dollars per acre for Recreational uses and this many dollars per acre for wildlife habitat and it's kind of broken down Specifically, it's a pretty neat. This is earth economics. It's the name of the company And they worked with the planning commission or with your my company. So yeah, we had done a economic study of floodplains Well, that's really the kind of thing we were looking for any other comments on Yes, Rosanne. I'll make it quick But talking about what Kevin was saying just coincidentally today I read an article up from the Harvard Medical School about the very thing Michael just said That they are actually have done studies about the health effects And this is about the healing power of nature and they've done studies that if you live close to open space I mean it does it includes better sleep reduced depression increased social connection improves recovery from Surgery surgery of reduced obesity better survival after cancer reduced cardiovascular disease So Harvard Medical School Is putting the the connection with and they're just I just read it today just coincidentally On the benefits of of nature in Well, then we were really interested in that Yeah, lots of us Also, Williston did a cost of development study So you might want to call them. I mean, I still probably I have their cost of development study And I forget which firm they used but you know, so Oh, yes When it comes to Long-term effects of the city For obligating themselves for infrastructure She started researching that within the last week for the connection of housing But so just as a sideline since you raised that question, right But the question I had for Kevin is is john Stewart does he work here at city hall once a week every Thursday. Thank you And there's an organization called strong Strong towns strong. Oh, no, that's right. I understand and I've already spoken with I mean chase them down They have a lot of Articles, but I haven't been able to get any good data out of them yet But we'll see yeah John might not be here Thursday after next but Generally every Thursday if you can give me contact information or that would be great I'm the case it's called the juliana 21 Juliana what? Juliana 21 is the name of this case that we brought against the federal government So the next item on the agenda is really a facilitated discussion among the council and commission and committee leadership of key themes Significant decision points and overall schedule of completion We certainly have Touched on a number of those, but if there's some I wasn't going to facilitate this Kathy ann was going to write stuff on a A board or something of our Key findings If there's still energy to do that Yeah, I mean and I do I mean the council needs to decide whether we are going to we need to extend IZ Well that that is a key question No, no, we can't make that decision, but we need to have that conversation We need to hear from the committees and some have said we need a little bit more time It sounds like the planning commission has said, you know, maybe through december So that's another three months, right? Well four months um So I'm I'm The question I had and which I had said I would come back to Sandy's presentation is For the planning commission, do you see it as feasible in your puds to include affordable housing some kind of provision for affordable housing To ours and this receiving sending area Expansion is that something that seems impossible right off the bat or is that something I'm not seeing something easy, but you don't see any roadblocks right off the bat Paul just Help out here, but isn't the affordable housing piece if we choose to go through with the recommendations that john and sandy outlined That's going to apply to housing across the board In the community so that would automatically apply. It'd be an overlay on top of the puds. So the neighborhood Right It would be so if we went citywide with Inclusionary housing I took it one step further than you guys are proposing We're happy because Overlay district. Yeah So for those that'd be okay for those were good. Yeah, even if they become receiving areas because that's the recommendation Michael said it to send Some tdrs to that transit overlay district Yeah I mean we haven't Taken the underlying zoning and added tdrs and added 15 that they're talking about and then looked at what it looks like I mean so that has not been You don't see the immediate. Yeah. I mean what you're doing is you're you're adding two additional factors onto That underlying zoning density. So I mean I think we'd have to make sure that that's appropriate Does the transit overlay district include those nodes that we created along shelver? Yeah, so really it becomes a tool to facilitate some of the development of those nodes In a way if you're providing that extra density even if some of it is Allocated towards affordable housing So which is a good thing I guess no big flags I mean the idea is that we'd like to have more of our development in those Those transit in the transit overlay district. I mean that was kind of the point of Creating it in the first place Right. I think it was part of the point for IZ where how best to increase housing opportunities In our community In a thoughtful systematic way close to services bus lines Existing roads and and commerce and not Just have this stuff that's kind of all over the southeast quadrant for example Yes, just as jessica said the the key question there is going to be If something becomes an additional receiving area and there's An inclusionary 15 bump the implication of that is that it's increasing density, which is Largely a good thing, but the commission has not yet vetted to see Exactly where that is and what the implications of it are in terms of nearby neighborhoods and things like that And then the other half of it is Whether the market is interested in that We could say 50 units an acre But if the market is saying we don't want to build more than 10 Then it's It's it's an allowance, but it doesn't mean that people will do it Would it be Would it present an an extra impediment for a developer? Based on the traditional development types here Relative to cost We can't support high-rise construction. So buildings that are made out of steel They become very expensive anything over five or six stories. Just Arizona doesn't allow that So traditionally you're going to have maybe first floor of concrete or steel And then everything else is going to be wood-framed anyway So there's limits that are built in just economically in terms of what we're going to build In this community right now The way that it's set up Which works with what paul's describing In those nodes that we've created in the transit overlay district It's it is the one thing that we haven't done is we haven't gone back and looked at what the application of the affordable housing bonus would would mean but Functionally it's not going to change a whole lot because developers aren't going to go Higher than what they can build out of wood anyways right now. There's just the economics don't support that and that's four stores It's six depending on where you're at. It's either five or six stories of wood over some version of a commercial space. So You know, they're not kind of that's pretty high given Lots of places in our Seven stories is about as high as you're going to be able to get right now I mean that as you all know you referenced the hole in the ground earlier That's one of the struggles they're having is that steel construction is very expensive and Yeah, well, it's not just a terrace but building in general anyways and trying to then recover those costs is It's a struggle That project Did you cut the mall hole? It's a public common name. I just wanted to talk about the right hole And I did not go officially on record as calling that. Thank you very much. Was that a question or a comment? Okay, a couple a couple points is that um The deadline with regard to interim zoning I I haven't heard now. Maybe I'm in a cocoon, but I haven't heard That it is just totally decimated any development I mean, are we really holding back development because interim zoning is is in place right now? That's one question. No one needs to answer it, but it's in my mind The other question is we've had a lot of people doing a lot of work And the planning commission is doing a lot of work And i'm figuring suddenly august 28th comes by Interim zoning is gone So as john said or sort of intimated that that there's a bit of a race That another development goes in and there's no affordable housing component or That could be the same thing with the open space So we're doing all this business for an arbitrary date The thing is it should be the committee should we have the work complete then it has to go to the planning commission Then it has to go to public hearing But if we're going to have august 28th, why have us to go through the the exercise? I don't want to waste my time doing it. I have a business to run So, you know either tell us to get our business done and Listen to these great committee the committee work and then Go on or tell us this has been great. It's been really fun I mean really I mean what are we doing? I feel like Why don't we ever made a decision? Okay, well, I'm sorry This was the meeting to get the update So we could make a thoughtful decision about do we need to extend right? I'm just wondering on a committee That just has an opinion that I don't want to have the feel like all my work It's been wasted. So anyway, that's my point And I don't want it to I mean I don't know if anyone is interested in well two of the IZ committees have have indicated that an x or three that an extension is needed at least to december And I think in the res in the bylaw There was uh, you could extend it by x By three months and we could do it three times Oh, so just a couple of clarifications one It's uh, august 13th is the date I know we've thrown a lot of dates around but august 13th the day is the day that expires unless action is taken to Continue it and then thereafter it is Three months and then another public hearing and then you may choose to extend it three months up to two years So that's the that's the function of that your public hearing is next friday the ninth at four 30 And you have a discussion item on your monday agenda. We do have a discussion on correct um Yeah, so what I am hearing or I think what I have heard from almost every committee is they do need some time and the sort of the real fulcrum of Action is the planning commission and they're saying December if Things go well and we all work really hard We're saying we're going to be back to you in three months with an update And then at that point there'll be another decision that will be needed. Yes, and and I think that's appropriate Because again, I mean I agree with Ted. There's it's Makes no sense to have all these talented people work so hard on these different committees and then Not have enough time to complete it. So it's a useful document and we can get somewhere So to add to art's important point that he just made We haven't seen the output from the committees yet. So it's you know, I said the end of the year, but Because we don't even know exactly what's coming in exactly what kind of policy Discussions and vetting needs to happen You know It's an optimistic estimate, but yes. No, I gathered that I sense that One quick question and then just one quick note There were a bunch of potential questions for a facilitated discussion. I think you largely had them during your discussion I think the the the one Key question that I would ask council, maybe either tonight or monday to respond to is Is there anything that you were looking additionally or different as a deliverable from any of the committees? As they're wrapping up their work. So you heard What they each said that they were providing if your expectation is different about what they're giving Before they wrap up would be it would be helpful to hear that and then just an observation that at the end of the whole thing The commission and council will need to determine how How all of this work balances across the entire comprehensive plan and and whether The bylaws are consistent with the comprehensive plan or whether if you decide that you want to go something very different from the comprehensive plan whether you want to be Adjusting that but that's you know, that's the overall charge of anything that's happening here So well certainly one piece that we don't have Didn't have addressed Is really the second piece That we identified around the values around All the intangibles and we got a couple ideas or other Opportunities maybe to get that information But I for me that was a really critical piece me too John I just wanted to reiterate something. I said when I had the microphone and that is that We have submitted Our work Paul has it It can go to the planning commission. I mean We're done and so in terms of Priorities and moving the needle other than all the work the planning commission has and I recognize that if they could find some time in upcoming meetings to address Inclusionary housing in the overlay districts It would move it out and like I say, we're ready to come and Talk about it and we'd love to see it go right through in a couple months And I just Through your generosity, we've had great support from Regina Mahoney from the regional planning commission So she's ready, you know wouldn't take staff time to present To the planning and she's going to stay with us until we get it done so we'd like to Your endorsement for the planning commission to Look at our work. I just want to remind you you do need to keep talking about how we develop An ongoing funding. Yes To support more affordable housing It's in our allocation. It's in our work plan. Yes. No, no. Well, we've got our allocation. I was just thinking of some kind of Way to generate Revenue on a mandal basis Not just the $50,000 The reason I wanted to ask the question about So they have more work to do it's my point. Yeah That's the reason why I asked the question about any potential roadblocks for having TDRs and the affordable housing inclusionary zoning Together in the transit overlay and you said no, it's just a matter of doing some math That tells me that it could move forward Even before the other committee's work Is concluded. I don't know how Yeah, and we've had this conversation at the planning commission level a little bit and um It's important to recognize that like you're saying Certain things can move forward, right? The TDR is a method, right? It's not intended to be this complete environmental rewrite It's a tool for conservation. No different than a conservation easement or any of the own other tools It's just making sure that it's right-sized and it meets the needs And the goals that we're trying to accomplish here as a city so it can move forward Independently just as affordable housing can move forward independently because it's an overlay So many percent if it's 15 percent or haven't really seen the final we've seen the draft And we need to go through that as commission and jessica will guide us through that But there are pieces that we can start to break off It's finding the right time to do that and we need to talk about how what that plan looks like Going forward and that's probably one of the things paul and capiano put on our to-do list very shortly is how to incorporate The review and the feedback on on the report and the work that the committees have done Any other thoughts? All right. Well again, thank you very much Can I just say yeah, I was just reading through paul's list of questions And so I just wanted to say that the last questions under counselors and commissioners Talking about the balance of conservation and development that I I feel that the work to date has really Served Our comprehensive plan, you know that I I feel That it was a really Um solid affirmation Of the comprehensive plan what I heard here tonight But also the second question I think is important implementation, especially for conservation efforts can take many forms Only some of which are regulatory in nature. Who should be assigned to look at which recommendations should be implemented through non regulatory tools I don't have an answer to that I just it was on your list, so I didn't want us to overlook I I pointed that at you and I saw a lot of head nodding But but we're gonna we're gonna look at it first and if you know, maybe we'll have a recommendation of a different group Because it sounds like that's what we decided their work would come to us and then we would look at it and Make a recommendation. Does that still make sense? Yes, I think it does All right Well, I think um, thank you, um public for coming and the different committees. I'm Continue to be impressed with the people in our community and the expertise that they bring to our conversations, and I Sincerely thank you Okay I Work to do and they don't well way they have a lot of work to do Sue why don't you take the five minute break? Thank you. I'm sorry Hey, someone in your committee would like this A lot of good stuff Okay, so I would like to convene Is this a special meeting? Yes, the city council special meeting for august 1st 2019 And we have to let's see We have um Consider and possibly approve an addendum to the agreement with the school district for the exchange of rights and interests in real property Yay So do you want to discuss it before we go forward with the motion? Um, no, you can make I'm only making a motion that we approve. I have a motion to read Oh, yeah, so I moved that the council approve and authorize helen really to execute on the city's behalf The addendum to the agreement for the exchange of rights and interests in real property with the south brillington school district a second Is there any discussion? I just want to say one thing. I support this because it seems to make sense I just still would love to get an idea of what the cost implications of these new roads are that's not going to happen tonight But at some point I'd love to get an idea of how the budget for this total project is looking because the concerns have been raised about unexpected expenditures What I wanted to know is how far 54 feet is Will there be any parking on the east side of that road? No, it'll be very limited. There may be a few a couple One or two Yeah It'll be extremely safe. Okay, and also, um When I'm looking at page five of the agreement under c the very end and it says Moreover to the extent the reconstruction and reconfiguration of the markot school parking lots is not complete by august 24th 2020 or the first day of classes for mark out school students, whichever shall first occur The city shall provide at least the same number of temporary parking replacement parking spaces for staff Okay, first of all, the at least that kind of struck stood out at me. I wasn't sure why there was at least but um You know, why not the same number but what I was Also curious about is we begin building the building that fall As I understand right and the parking lot will be completed when well right now the way we're looking at is the way we're looking at the Sequencing is that we will begin to build the road the new road this fall With the access to their parking lot this fall But that the parking lot project itself would not occur until school gets out In uh, june of 2020 so it would be completed by august 24th Okay, and then the building goes after that. Well, no, we'll start the building as soon as we get the The stormwater permits, so we'll be on our property building that but we'll delay The um parking lot component until next summer, but the road component will go in this fall so Let's just say that Business can open up and part of that building before august 24th right and The business and the new municipal building municipal building can start up before august 24th Right, let's say that the city clerk can open her office or let's say the library's done and the library's functioning, right? It won't No, okay No, the sequence is We have to build a new road For them to get into there to the school, right? And it won't be the finalized road, but I mean it won't have all the curbs and And everything perfect, but they will be able to get people and buses into And then we'll have to build a new sort of connector To their current parking lot because the new parking lot will be bigger That will be done this summer by Next summer. No this summer. We're hopeful. Well, I don't know if we can get there now, but sometime We hope to break ground on that soon It'll probably be early fall when we can get that complete We had hoped to be done with at least that component But you seem to suggest that the building would be well, and then we have to build the new ramp or access to Allard square and then this winter sometimes when that's done We can start the foundation for the library, but that's going to take a year, right? Yeah, it's going to take more than that, but we need our storm water permits And then next summer we do all the stuff underneath the parking lot for the Storm water and build the new parking lot in the permanent road The road we can start because it doesn't require the same storm water the storm water It's already permitted for storm water. Oh, it is already permanent. Yeah that just the road Okay, so that we can start You know, there's some risk associated with all this but that we can start But we would start the built the construction of the community center What's the risk as soon as we get the if the risk you just mentioned Um, well, you really want to have all your permits in place for everything Before you do begin construction, but this is a road. This is a public road that is going to exist regardless So the risk is kind of minimal, but But we'd really like to have all the storm water permits and every other permit in place Before we start construction and it has to be for the building Okay, when is the First move into the building potentially possible spring of 2021 That was just I just wanted to make sure that we weren't Making impossible for seniors to get in for a lunch or something. Okay um Okay any other Discussion Okay, we have a motion that's been made in second Be ready for the vote all in favor signified by saying aye. Aye. Aye any opposed great hallelujah Yes, indeed to court our esteemed One That didn't take too long let's see now we have An entertainment I moved to approve the consent agenda as presented second Any discussion looks like a rowdy bunch That was a joke. Oh, yeah What did he say? He said it looks like a rowdy bunch. Yeah Okay, okay, if there's no discussion to approve the women's international league of peace and freedom um gathering with musicians and speakers um We signify your approval with an aye. Aye. Aye. Any post great Okay, so anything else we need to do By the way, but let me just thank the council Publicly for your patience throughout this process of getting to this addendum um It's taken a while Had some challenging Discussions and issues, but thank you to the council for your steadfast support for the project and for your patience. Thank you And I just is 54 feet Based on this Kind of standard length of a parking It's it translates into the number of parking Yeah, and there's a little there's always a little excess It's two parking space each as I understand each parking space is 22 feet So there's 44 feet of parking space And then you never park right to the edge of a road So there's a setback of 10 feet, right? Something. Yeah So when you are 12 so when you add both sides you get to 54 feet Um So I don't is there any more discussion on the deadline in our zoning any other thoughts we'll we'll have that I think we need to extend it and we'll do it We have to duly warn that with a note with a public hearing. So we will have that Next friday at 4 30. I I don't imagine it's four o'clock. Okay four o'clock four, okay And I don't anticipate a long debate Yes Conversation Great, so we'll find out if anyone in the public has um concerns Obviously my husband doesn't Um, all right, so I would um entertain a motion to adjourn Second all in favor Thank you very much Um Yeah, nothing significant, it's just a Yeah


Did you know that there's a tried and tested way that allows you to get more value out of the user research you have done without necessarily doing more work? Sounds too good to be true, right? Well, stick around, because in this episode you're going to learn all about the field of research ops and how that potentially could change your perspective on the research from now on. Here's the guest for this episode. Let the show begin. Hello, my name is Kate Tausie. Welcome to the service design show. This is episode 189. Hi, my name is Mark van Dijn and welcome back to the service design show. On this show, we explore what's beneath the surface of service design. What are those hidden and invisible things that make all the difference between success and failure? All to help you design great services that have a positive impact on people, business and our planet. Our guest in this episode is Kate Tausie, a respected thought leader in the field of research ops. And she's also an advisor. Next to that, she runs the cha-cha club, a members club for research ops professionals. Okay, you and I know that without research, there is no service design. Developing a deep understanding of the needs and desires of the people we're designing with and for is a cornerstone of our practice. But you and I also know that research is one of the hardest things to get proper time or funding for. Research is unfortunately still often seen as a necessary expense that should be minimized rather than a smart investment. Knowing that this situation isn't going to change anytime soon, it's worth asking the question, what would be ways that we could make our existing research efforts more impactful and effective? Well, it turns out that there is already a passionate community of experts who are already working hard on having answers to this question. It's called research ops and Kate is on the very forefront of this movement. In this episode, Kate is going to help us understand how we, as service design professionals, can benefit today from the work that's being done by the research ops community and also how research ops desperately needs our service design expertise. So if you stick around till the end of this episode, you'll walk away knowing how you can spend significantly more time on actual research rather than the associated overhead, which systems and structures you need to put in place to harvest the fruits of research that has been done previously and why hiring a librarian has been one of the best things Kate has done in her career. So that about wraps it up for my introduction. I hope you're ready because we're going to jump straight into the conversation with Kate Tauzy. Welcome to the show Kate. Thank you. It's so good to be here. I'm happy to have you on. I don't think we've addressed the topic that we're going to address today somehow, which is quite bizarre. If people stick around till the end of the episode, they'll know why. But before we give too many spoilers, Kate, you have a very interesting career and an interesting journey. Could you take us to the moment where you are today and share a little bit about what you do and what your current role is today? It's a long and secure story, but essentially today I'm a research ops advisor. I run a community called the Char Char Club, which is for research ops professionals, full-time research ops professionals. I'm writing a book at the moment. Those are the things that are most taking at my time. I love to educate people about what research operations is and is not. And I find my strength in working on strategy with companies to help them understand how do you actually deliver research operations into an organization so that it scales not just how many people are doing research, but so it scales the value of research in the organization. There's so much that I could say about that, but one of my lessons that I'm trying to learn in the last couple of months is how to end a sentence there, as opposed to continuing my thought because I could talk about it for at least another 50 minutes to an hour and many hours more. And we will, we will. And that's something I'm practicing as well, getting to a full stop. Kate, one of the questions that I have on the show for all my guests, and I'm curious to hear your thoughts about it, is if they recalled the moment they heard or learned or got in touch with service design, was there a moment for you? Yeah, there was. I was doing work actually when I first came across or kind of became aware of the work of researchers and their need for operations. And that was at the Government Digital Service, which was a revolutionary part of the UK government that started around 2010 or something like that 2011. I could be corrected on the date, but I was working for them as a consultant in 2013. As a side note, I'd been asked to work with them because I was at that point in my career a content strategist. And they needed someone to help figure out they had 40 odd researchers working across government who are producing amazing research. And the sort of evergreen problem of many research and operations teams or research operations teams is where do you store all this information and this amazing insight so you can keep reusing it. And so they asked me to come in and try and solve that problem. And while I was trying to solve that problem, I ended up building labs and doing a variety of other operational things around recruiting and all sorts of things. And it was here at the GDS at the Government Digital Service that I met service designers and really got to see firsthand how incredible design can be, never mind service design or visual design or UX design or any of these other words we've got, just pure design, delivering things that in government you're not necessarily looking to delight. I mean, it's nice if you do, but just to make things really functional, how service designers and researchers and UX designers and sprint managers and so on and service managers and everybody could really work together as a complete team and how critical service design was to that process and taking that zoomed out view of what does, how does a service flow? What steps come after which steps right from what do people assume what are they doing now and what should we design in the future? And I was very blessed to work with some really incredible service designers. And so I was spoiled by getting the cream of the crop right at the start of my journey. Nice. Yes, there was and is still the GDS a very influential space for our community. So cool. Interesting to hear people's backgrounds, including yours. Kate, we have a lightning round to get to know you as a person next to the professional. Five questions. I won't go any deeper on them. Just the first thing that comes to your mind. And the goal is to finish a sentence. So I will start a question and then you need to finish the sentence. You haven't prepared, but are you ready? Yeah, ready. Shoot. So the first sentence for you to finish is something that always makes me smile. Something that always makes me smile is food. Okay. If I had unlimited resources, I would study language, particularly Hindi. I speak a little Hindi. It's rusty these days and Urdu, which is quite close to Arabic. And so then I would kind of think I'd move around the world. You can get Spanish from Arabic. So that's what I would do. Okay. The next one is the most important quality in a friend is the ability to listen, which is why it's quite good to hang out with researchers because they're professional listeners. All right. Sentence number four. The best part of my day is when I go for a sunrise walk on the beach, which is around five minutes from my house. And that's most days. Making me jealous over here. All right. The fifth and final one. Finish this sentence. The world needs more. The world needs more play. Okay. Thank you for completing this rapid fire lightning question around. That was always, yeah, it's always good to hear a little bit more context that we usually don't get. So let's maybe transition into what we want to explore today together. And that's the topic of the intersection between a research ops and service design. You have a quite distinct and outspoken perspective on the intersection between these two aerials. Yeah, sure. I feel that service design is absolutely fundamental to delivering research operations. It's often assumed that research operations is an administrative role that when you hire a research operations person, they come in and what they'll do is they'll take over the procurement and the more clerical tasks involved in getting research done or even actually do the participant recruitment for researchers so they don't have that headache. And I use the word headache ironically because recruitment, although it is one of the biggest pain points for researchers, the job of research operations is not to just take that away. It's such an important craft aspect of doing research, but it's to design services that enable researchers to do their own recruiting and many other tasks that are involved in organizing and doing research and sharing research beyond just the doing, also the sharing and the proliferation of their knowledge. We set up services that enable them to do it much more efficiently on their own. We set up systems and this is where service design is so critical. At its heart, research operations is about designing services. I find that a lot of research operations professionals, they don't have service design skills. They do the best that they can. But wow, is it powerful if you can train your team up on fundamental service design skills and give them the mindset that one of the first things you've got to do is not just go out and research researchers as the meta quip goes, but to do that research of the entire group of stakeholders that are impacted by a particular service and to move from there. Like do service blueprints, look at the user journey, the beautiful structures that come from service design. It's a wealth of knowledge that research operations professionals should be taking advantage of. It's very interesting because you mentioned that the research ops community doesn't have a lot of experience with service design or service design hasn't fully emerged in that area. I feel exactly the opposite or like I'm on the other side. Within the service design community, I'm not hearing a lot of conversations about research ops while research is like a fundamental element of service design. For people who have been ignorant and living under a rock for the last years and haven't come across research ops, maybe it would be helpful for us to understand a little bit more about what is research ops exactly and how... No, let me take a full stop here and apply my last... What is research ops? Is it able to... Can you summarize that in a few sentences? Yeah, the funny thing is, as I mentioned, I'm busy writing a book about not what research operations is, but how do you scale research? I think it's going to be something like 85,000 words, but I am able to summarize it into something much less. A research operations is all the systems and services that are required to help people to do research, engage with research, take part in research, and continue to consume the research that's been made long after it was actually done, mostly pointing in that sense to a research library, but there's many other ways that research can be shared in the long run. What a research operations professional will do and should do is come into an organization and understand what is the strategy around research. It's worthwhile, Mark, just looking at that definition of what research operations is to take a moment to pause on the word research itself, because research can be anything from, and this is really dependent on your context, your lens, your profession, whether you're a product manager or a service designer or a full-fledged PhD researcher in social sciences, you're going to have a slightly different view on this, but broadly speaking, I feel in the modern business world, the kind of big companies that hire research operations, people and teams, research can be anything from a bona fide trained researcher doing very serious, well-planned studies with a cohort of research participants to a product manager or a designer or an engineer for that matter, wanting to just have a chat with the customer once a week. If you go back to what the word research means, it's about gathering understanding, even the word insight, which is so such a popular word used as a noun in our world to point towards this insight, this negative information or this report even is potentially called an insight, gives you the indicates that research really is about giving new knowledge and new understanding about something. So research operations is about all the operational aspects, the tools, the training, the services, the money, the metrics, the reporting, the people, the hiring, all of this sort of stuff, I'm repeating a few things in there. The compliance is a really big piece in research because research has captured a lot of data that is needed to run a research organization or research practice, which is what I'm going to go back to so that it is efficient and effective and also respectful and compliant. It doesn't get into trouble with international privacy regulations on the way. In a nutshell, that is what research operations is. I want to quickly go to the practice word before I go to the full stop. I use the word practice because again, and particularly recently with many, many layoffs across the sector in the last year and a half, a more diverse range of people are doing research. And so for me to silo research operations to looking after just a research team is limiting to the profession of research operations, and it is not actually accurate to what many, many research operations teams have been tasked with doing. They are looking after everybody, product managers, designers, service designers, UX designers, like put any prefix you want on the front of designer and research teams, of course. And so practice can be all those kinds of people. All right. Thank you for that. And that definitely helps. So in my layman's terms, it's just a way to take research to a more professional level to increase the quality, the consistency. When I think back about in to my days when I was doing research, we did good research, but it was often pretty scrappy and improvised and ad hoc. And it sounds like this, there is a whole profession and a whole field, whole community that is focused on making this more repeatable, scalable, increasing the quality. That would be my explanation. That's right. And that's great. And it's getting that less friction. And so operations doesn't mean to say that a researcher can't arrange their own research. But when you've got 40, 50, 100, sometimes even 300 people, and if I talk again about a practice, it can be pretty quick that you've got across the organization, between across disciplines, many hundreds of people doing research. And if each of them have to reinvent the wheel every time or figure it out on their own every time, it's so inefficient. And so, again, going back to the service design piece, our job is to come in and spot those repeated pathways. I love this point. I've actually written a chapter around this. I've got pretty good words for it. Everybody can walk their own path. But our job is to find the desire paths or the car paths and operationalize those because they're the highways and the byways. It doesn't mean to say that everybody's always going to be going along those main roads. Some people might want to go down little alleyways or laneways occasionally to get to where they need to go. But when we look at where the most people are needing to go, what are the big needs that they have? And we set out operations so that they don't need to kind of keep reinventing the wheel. And hopefully they get things done much more quickly, much more compliantly, and hopefully more effectively as well. There's one extra thing I want to add in there because what that sounds like is it's all about efficiency and helping more people do more research. And for a long time without knowing it, I assumed that. And over the last year or so I've come to really understand that there are many opportunities and operations to deliver services that scale the value of research in the organization without more people needing to do more research. And one of the primary ways of doing that, or two of the primary ways of doing that is through a research library that's highly searchable. That is, you know, like so research goes in there. And then over time, you can start to do secondary research across multiple reports done on the same thing. You know, in service design, maybe you've, I'll go to a GDS example, researching someone's journey through the judicial system is a tough word to say at eight o'clock at night. And so, you know, maybe there's been many studies done across government on something similar, visiting rights or things like that. And so a library can help bring that knowledge together without actually doing more research. And the second example of this is having a way for teams to engage their audience across the organization and like get a big audience together, have town halls that are well attended, have templates and ways of sharing their research out that they reach a big audience. And so again, it's not more research, but about really getting the most power out of the research that's already been done. That's great. And I think so many of us listening to this conversation will start googling and sort of be very excited that there is a whole, again, profession and community who's focused on this because this is definitely one of the big pain points, how do you maximize the value or the impact of the research that has been done or that potentially is being done. You mentioned that you're thinking around this has evolved in the last year or so. We're really curious. What's the story behind that? Like, did something change? Did something click? Did you experience a case? What happened? Yeah. I, four and a half years ago, started working with Atlassian. It's one of the reasons that I moved to Australia was the reason I moved to Australia. I wouldn't be here otherwise. I no longer work for Atlassian. I left maybe eight months ago now. But that was a real, it was a sandpit, a playground to take the theories of what research operations was.  And as service designers, you would well know that things are never siloed. Even if you think they are, they never siloed. They're all interconnected. And your job is to understand all those connections and not to get so bogged down on the connections that you don't get anything done. But once on the ground there and having the space and the team and the support to be able to do some really interesting things and to scale research services out to 500 people, between three and 500 people, at the end of the day, on a quarterly basis, 250-ish people would be using our services in one way or the other. And that was with a team of 10 people. So very scalable. I started to realize when you're looking at the regular metrics of how many people are using your services? What are they achieving? What is your impact as an operations team? We did quarterly operating reports and an annual operating report to be able to track that. Then I started to look at, okay, this is interesting. So we're recruiting so many participants. We've got so many consent form signs. We've got so many videos being stored. We've got so many people sending out thank you gifts. And they're doing this much more efficiently through our services. We're getting anecdotal feedback to be able to support that. And also they're coming back for more. Very similar to what a product manager might do or a service manager might do in terms of tracking their service. But it's at that point that I started to think about what can we do here that is not tied to usage of the SIN? How do I put this? It's not tied to one-in-one-out sort of thing. And that's when I've been speaking with my manager about a research library. It's something that we had been speaking about for many years. I've worked with her at Government Digital Service and we hired a librarian, Alison Jones, who is exceptional and has done an incredible job of the library at Atlassian. It's one of the most robust research libraries I've seen anywhere. And I can only take credit for hiring her and letting her loose. And that really started to show even, and I left just before it was launched, but even at the start, you could see that now we've got something that really supercharges the value of the research that's already been done. Our metrics now they're not only based on getting more research done, which is when you're just measuring recruiting, number of reports that have been created, all these other metrics, you're tracking how much research is being done. And this was starting to track how are people engaging with existing research, which just got me thinking, where else can we be doing more of this? Because now we really are scaling research because there is very little additional cost in bringing that research together and then creating really beautiful refined knowledge out of the knowledge that already exists is like, it's next level. I hope that you're able to share a bit more about this with us because this sounds intriguing and poses a lot of questions. Can we dig a bit deeper into this research library? Yeah, let's dig a bit deeper. I'll let you know when I've reached the end of my ability to share. And then we'll sign an NDA. So you sound really excited about this and it seems like sounds like a game changer. What do you feel was different about this library and what was maybe the secret to making this work? Because I've heard a lot of us try to set up a research library, which almost always fails and failing in the sense that it lacks adoption. I think that's the biggest challenge. So what was the secret in this case? It's a very easy answer. So I'm going to go to a story. Certainly when it comes to researchers and possibly this is also applicable for service designers, there's a lot of angst when someone who is not a full-time researcher thinks that they understand research and will just go, oh, it's fine. I'll just recruit someone off the street and have a chat with them and that's my research done. And I can do research because it's really easy. I can have a chat with my friend so I can also do research. Imagine, and Mark, you could correct me, that service designers might be have a similar problem. I don't know where someone might just pick up things and go, oh, I've read a book and there's a service blueprint. Now I know the double diamond. I can be a service designer. So very often you hear valuable and valid is the word I'm looking for angst from researchers who feel that people outside of their immediate of their discipline misassume the value and the extent of their knowledge and skills. What I think is ironic is that researchers very often do this and as a service designers, it sounds like as well when it comes to incredibly specialist and incredible skills like librarianship. So the secret source of the success of that library is that I hired a real librarian. We didn't assume that we could make it up. I'm not a librarian. I learned that in 2013 when I worked at government digital service to try and sort out their content. And I realized that my content abilities were really great when it came to like CRMs and designing great CRMs and doing all that sort of content stuff, tone of voice and all that sort of stuff. But I was no librarian and I was no archivist, not even close. So my biggest advice in getting a library that actually works for you is hire a librarian. They have years of training, years of knowledge around how to do this work well, how to build a system that is adopted because when you go to it, there's trustworthy content in it. And when you search, you find what you are looking for. There's nothing like success to fuel adoption. And they also know that a library needs to be maintained. You don't build a library, develop a taxonomy, and then go great job done. Now, we've got a library. It needs constant maintenance. It's like a garden. It needs to be regularly garden, which is I'm sure you know a term that is used regularly in the taxonomy world. You need a full-time horticulturalist. So that is the number one tip that I can give you. Second to that is that in the research world, we have a lot of very expensive tools now, repositories, libraries, things like that. And there are excellent tools out in the wider world that are way cheaper. And they are library tools because surprise, and this is going to sound patronizing, I don't mean it to, but we've had a library since ancient Egypt and before, libraries are not a new thing. And there is an entire industry built up around creating libraries. And research is not special. We don't need a special library. We just need a really good library. The tools that are out there tend to be really good as tools for community of practice. I call them campfires where you can gather your immediate crew around, and you can bat insights backwards and forwards, and you can chat about them, and you can really kind of get down to the nitty gritty of what it is you're actually looking at and talking about. But when it comes to the final artifact of research, the research report, or whatever format that takes, a slide deck or whatever it is, then you need something really structured and a lot more draconian. Campfires can be pretty loose. Taxonomy can be free flowing. It can be folksonomy. But when you get into the library land, it needs to be a structured, tightly held taxonomy that works because someone is in control. It's run by a dictator. It is not the democracy of the campfire. Yes, that makes a lot of sense. And I think this is also a mental, mostly a mental shift that needs to happen to acknowledge that a resource library is probably something that needs to be created and maintained by an expert. And that it's not just, I don't know, a Google doc or a Notion document or whatever doc tools we have these days. It's not about the tool. It's about the structure, the methodology. I'm still curious. How does that impact adoption? Because I can see information being searchable. That's already step one, information just being available. Is there a secret to adoption? Because just having the information is probably not enough. Alison Jones, I'm sure she's working with us right now at Atlassian. And she'd be the right person to talk about this. But I won't let the question go empty or go unanswered. It's again such a critical part of the person who owns the library. A library needs a full-time owner because to your point, you can't just build the library and walk away. Mechanically, it needs to be kept up to date. The focus of content changes that needs to be kept up to date to the changing context of the research that's going on. But also, someone needs to be in charge of driving adoption. And that can be roadshows answering a service desk where people drop a line to say, hey, do we have anything about this? If you've got that resourcing to be able to actually do, it wouldn't be like a full literature review, necessarily a full dig into the content. But it might just be pointing to some top results or something like that. You need to do trainings to help people understand how to use the library. Again, part of the service, going back to service designers to understand where does the library sit within the greater ecosystem? And why do people come to it? And what services do they need before they actually land on the library to encourage them, help them to use it? Are you going to run it as a self-service library? Are you going to do a full service library where people drop a ticket and you do all the work in the database? What kind of service model are you going to even put around the library? And that's going to have a lot to do with the culture in the organization. With the audience, your intended audience, if your intended audience are C-suite level employees or executives, you're hardly going to say, well, there's the library over there, just help yourself. You're probably going to put in something full service, a really nice polished report comes to them. But if you're looking after 5,000 or 10,000 or 100,000 people in an organization, you want to go with a very good self-service model. So it's looking at those pieces to really understand how you drive adoption so that people can succeed. And again, as I said, if they succeed, they're going to keep coming back for more. So yeah, it would be, it's actually a really good question for people like Allison, who are building these libraries in organizations, and there are so few of them out there that are really working and scaling that I think it's going to be a real role model. Correct me if I'm wrong, but what we're hearing here, and it starts to click slowly, but surely in my head is that my question about adoption is just a service design question. If you treat research or your resource library, not as a static object, but as a service towards the rest of the organization, you should actually design that service. And then when you design it correctly, adoption shouldn't be an issue. Does that make sense? That it makes complete sense. And I think you've very beautifully summarized a lot of what I've said already, but just in like a small sentence, I should steal that from you. Yes, what is, you know, early on I said that research operations is often assumed to be the clerical work or the administrative work of doing research. Researchers need a lot of tooling. More than designers, probably more than service designers, because there's so many moving parts of the logistics. But what often happens is operation specialists get stuck in the procurement phase and then procured done, thank goodness for that, and then moving on to the next thing. And it can be easy in the rush of things and with pressing demands to forget that the tool itself, it's a service in itself, but it's a service owned by your vendor unless you've built it yourself. And it sits within the ecosystem. And it's the job of research operations to do the service design piece of understanding this asset that I'm putting into the organization needs to, the image I get is like the heart sits with arteries and veins coming towards it. And it's got muscles around it and lungs and all sorts of things. And it's all perfectly coordinated. And so where does this particular tool sit? And what kinds of veins and arteries does it need in order to hook it up to the system so that it is now part of the living organism? Yes, that makes a lot of sense. And at the start, you sort of made a pledge that research ops would benefit from a bit more service design mindset attitude, methodologies. I'm not an expert in research ops at all, but I would expect that they already have adopted a service design mindset. What do you feel is missing? And maybe do you have a story that exemplifies where that's missing? Research operations is still quite a young profession. A lot of people think that I invented research operations. I could probably write that one for a while, but the truth is, and I regularly admit this, that research operations has existed in a few forward thinking organizations like Airbnb and Microsoft. Notably, I think it's around 20 years or something they've had a research operations team of some size. Airbnb, I think, is 12 years. Salesforce is, again, more than a decade. Facebook and places like that have had some form also for much longer than my mark on that profession. However, those were isolated incidents. And in 2018, I started the research ops community. I no longer run it, run by some other wonderful people and have been since 2019, and ran a project called the, what is research ops? Hashtag what is research ops? This is still when Twitter was Twitter and it was cool. We missed those days. Thanks, Elon. But that really put research operations on the map. And now we're in a place where there are many people across the world doing research operations, and those teams are growing and really getting more structured behind them. But as a profession, we're still finding our feet as to, we're finding our identity. We're in our teenage years. We're still trying to understand who are we? Are we punk rock? Are we goth rock? Are we hippie? Like what are we? And part of that is also trying to understand what are the skills that we need in order to do the job the best that we can. I think that's one of the reasons, along with the fact that research operations people are so busy and so in demand, just like their fellow researchers that they're often working side by side with, many people, you know, there's just so much demand that there's very little time to kind of stop and do what I do, which is have the time to contemplate and interrogate what is this profession. So that's what I bring to the space and to the field. So for a story, when I had grown my research operations team at Atlassian to, I think at that point, we might have been seven people and we eventually grew up to 10 or 11 at some point. And I worked with a really wonderful agency on some stuff called Paper Giant, a really great agency service design or sort of strategy agency based in Melbourne in Australia. And they had a really strong service design backbone to how they worked. And so at that point, I realized that although I was trying to think as things as like service, that the individuals on my team who were incredibly skilled in each of their areas, whether it be marketing, technology or participant recruitment or finances, whatever, when they did something, it would be done as a silo and there would be a sense of like tick box, I've like delivered this thing and there would be not a lot of consideration as to how it fitted into the bigger picture. And so having had my experience at the GDS with amazing service designers, I asked Paper Giant if they would come in and run a 10 week masterclass with us. And it was really eye opening for the team. Some of them who had worked in research operations for some time to learn about these skills and see them, you know, service design is so mature and it's framing of you've got amazing tools that are well published and great communities and fantastic books, things that we don't have. And I noticed once we've done that 10 week training that although we didn't always have the time to do all of the service design behind something, there was a much greater sense of awareness around how you have to think about how something fits into the bigger picture and that your stakeholders aren't just the one obvious stakeholder that there's actually a whole lot of people who should be included in your design. And finally that the work that we were doing was actually a design job. I actually can't believe it's taken me this long to get to this critical point that it is a design job and not a clerical job, which is incredibly empowering for people who are working in operations because it's a creative job. And I noticed that it was difficult for people to sketch and to draw and create. And it took me a while of even after that course is saying, give me the map. It doesn't need to be pretty. Make it a mural. I don't care. Sketch it on paper. But let's start to make these things that we're doing visual so we can understand them better. I don't know if that answers your question, but it's certainly what was on my mind. Yeah, thank you for sharing. And yes, that definitely answered it to an extent and also inspired some new questions over here. I think I'm starting to get a better grip at what you mean with the fact that it's not an administrative or a clerical job because when you're considering research to be a service towards the rest of the organization, it's not just about managing the processes. It's also about designing those processes, putting them in place, strategizing about them, seeing how you can add most value. And once they're there, of course, they need to be maintained and sort of kept up and running. But it sounds like the conversation so far has mostly been focused on that management aspect rather than the more strategic aspect. Like how do we show up as a research ops profession inside organizations? Yes, so a story I've been writing this book for some time now and I have, it's 11 chapters. I could be 12, I'm forgetting now, but I've got three chapters that are written, but they need work. And recently, I nailed chapter one. I was thrilled with that. My editor loves it, which is always good. And I love it too. And the second chapter, I thought, wow, I've nailed chapter one.  And it is a chapter about strategy in research and research operations, and I spend possibly 80 hours over a week and a half just spinning wheels on this. But I have to get it right because strategy is so important. And this is where it's so difficult because strategy is important in everything. You know, if you want to have anything of success, you need to have strategy behind it. But it's extra important to have this chapter in the book because over the years, I've run workshops. There's one particular workshop called designing a research ops strategy. And I've been running it since about 2018. And I've had something like around about 300 research leaders and research ops people come to those workshops, predominantly leaders, even up to director level. And I've been stunned because in order to have a research operations strategy, you need to know what you are going to operationalize and why, which means that you need a strategy for research. And so I'd asked research leaders to come to the workshop prepared with, even if it wasn't a formally written research strategy, with some really good notes about what their research strategy is. And over the years, I've been stunned to learn that they didn't have a research strategy, many, many didn't have a research strategy, didn't know what I meant. And really that I would need to step back to what is this, how do you even make a research strategy because it's difficult to operationalize something if you don't know what you're, what you're going to operationalize.  And last year, I did another workshop in Europe. And I thought, wow, it's like four years later. Obviously, that's not going to be a problem anymore. And it wasn't my best, best workshop, because I assumed that people would be working on research strategy now. And still, it was a room of maybe 45 people and 35 didn't have a research strategy, didn't know what it was. This it has to change, you know, in order to, to operationalize, you need to know what you're going to operationalize. Now, the last point in this is, is that I think that this gap is because many leaders have, have made the assumption, or just gone into an autopilot where in order to do more research, I miss hire more researchers. And I miss make recruiting easy for them to do so that they can do more research more quickly, and they can be happy. And then we must have a library so that people can find the research. And that's it. And so the entire focus of the strategy is like growing the research team, which means hiring more researchers, which means getting in to the right, you know, friendship with stakeholders who want to flip your head count, so you can get more research, a research head count, and then more research done. But a strategy should be really, if you, if you boil the strategy down to hire more researchers, then it's pretty easy to see that that's a very limited strategy. And so there's incredible scope to look deeply at a strategy and trying to understand what are the goals of the organization, where could I place myself to get the most stakeholder buy-in, not just for hiring more researchers, but for supporting various initiatives around research. You know, there's so much creativity in that. And again, there's that word creativity. And I think a lot of us, and I say us because I've certainly been in this space myself, have gotten stuck in a bit of a rut with our work and have missed out on the play, a word that I used right at the start, and have missed out on the ability to be creative in what we do, to think really laterally, to try different things, and to devise operations that really help to deliver on those plans. I probably go off on a bit of a tangent because this is such an important point to me. And service design is such an important part of trying to understand how do you actually live on these strategies so that they stick, that they really stand on their own two feet. That was definitely a good point to emphasize the importance of strategy and putting that in place, and that it's really hard to do a good job when there is no strategy. Now, what we're hearing from your story is a sort of very clear call to action to the research ops community to dig deeper into service design. We are a service design community listening to your story. And I'm sure some of us would love to engage more with the community out there which is called research ops. What would you advise us to do if after this conversation we are interested in connecting with our research ops folks and peers? I'd like to say as an introduction to that question that I think there's huge scope for service designers to train research operations professionals, but also to consult. It's not always the budget to have a full-time service designer in a team or the need sometimes. But one of the most valuable things I've managed to do is hire a service designer at the start of a project to come in and actually map out what the service is all about, what does it want to achieve, who's at stakeholders and so on and so forth. So there should certainly be, particularly as the research ops profession and the research profession matures and starts to understand itself as a service and a business within an organization or as an agency, a research agency is a business. It does have to have these inner workings in place for service designers to become more involved in research operations. I suspect design operations and possibly even DevOps can say the same thing, but I'll stick to my own place for now because certainly this is where we have very complex systems. I mean they are hugely complex and so it's a really interesting landscape to practice some of those skills. When it comes to connecting with research ops professionals there are two primary ways to do that. The one is the research ops community. I mentioned that although I started it in 2018, I stepped away from it in 2019, but it is there and thriving and it's a really good place to meet thousands of people who are either research ops professionals but also research leaders who would just be the kind of people who might be smart enough to hire and a service designer to work on their team. The second place is, I run a, it's an invite only community so it's not open to the broader public but you could always reach out to me if you are desperate to speak to someone or understand I'm happy to have a conversation, but there are also 120 people in my club. It's a cha-cha club who are full-time dedicated research ops professionals who might be interested in just sharing a bit more about their world. I think there is a lot of opportunity for the two communities to start to share backwards and forwards and to learn from each other, certainly from research operations. I mean a wealth of tools that service designers offer us. And vice versa, so this is such a valuable and interesting conversation to have here on the service design show because again, research is one of the most important aspects of the service design process and to know that we can deliver higher quality and do it an easier way and not to sort of reinvent the wheel and yeah it's very valuable and it's also great to hear that there is a community out there waiting for our help to actually do their work. So yeah it sounds like an obvious win situation over here. Before we start to wrap up I'm really curious you're writing a book, you have a private community, you're maybe still consulting. What's next for you? How do you see your role evolving and how do you maybe see research ops as a practice evolving? Next year, early next year I'll finish off my book and then I'll get back into advising and running workshops and speaking at conferences and doing whatever pops up. But there are a couple of areas that I would like to offer some value to the research and the research operations space apart from running my club and building up the confidence and the structure around the profession. One of those is in really telling the story of what are the big challenges that are happening in the research world. Long ago, well perhaps not long ago but who knows the COVID time, it's that quantum time, we can't keep track of it. But it feels like the conversation in the research profession is moving on from what has moved on from methodology and it is more interrogating how does research drive impact and or in business terms how does it deliver value into an organization? And with the recent downturn in the economy, a lot of researchers, I think it's almost 40% of the research industry has been laid off, which is a staggering number. And I'm hearing more and more now that there are more silent, what I call silent layoffs going on with they're not these big announcements but people being let off in one way or the other. And so there really has been a serious knock in the face to interrogate how does research really cement its place in an organization and make sure that the value that is delivering into the organization is tangible. And so where I think I could offer value is telling the stories about what people outside of research think about research. There's often spoken about friction with product managers. Why? What do product managers want? What are their assumptions? Like what do people think about research? As you can tell from my voice, there's still some forming going on around what that is. But I used to be a journalist, used to be a radio journalist. And my full time job was to tell stories not from my point of view, but from what other people are thinking. And not always to have the answer but to provoke a conversation about these things. So I think that could be something really interesting I'd like to get to. Otherwise it's going to be business as usual for me, workshops, conferences, advising, strategy, coaching, and running the Cha Cha Club, which takes up a good amount of my time. Some of the things I'm working on with that just briefly is a state of research ops report. It's currently working to see if I can get a sponsor for that. I might just be on the brink of that. To bring out something that really helps us understand where is research operations, how many people beyond my club are working in research operations, what are the biggest concerns that are there, and what are the salary bands and that sort of stuff. It's starting to look at how we bring shape into also the kinds of skills, so that conversations like this aren't potentially surprising, but we have a templated competency framework for research operations that someone can pick up. So there's a few things like that on my mind that, again, could bring shape to the field. I'm sure that somebody in the audience right now and the listeners is inspired by your story, and they would love to learn more and dive deeper into this topic. What are some good places to start, and maybe if they want to continue this conversation with you, are there some ways to do that? Great. So the primary way to get in touch with me is LinkedIn. I am on Twitter, but you probably won't find me there all that much or X. So LinkedIn, number one place to find me. If you message me, I don't get back immediately, but I will get back to you for sure. To learn about research operations in general, once a quarter, I run something called Cha Cha Talks. It's a public event, so you can join it. It's for free, and it features Cha Cha Club members as hosts and as speakers, and they are incredibly smart people, like just amazing, and they have done some incredible talks in the past. So if you want to learn more about research operations, absolutely come and join one of those. The next one will be coming up in November, right at the end of November, I think the 28th of November this year. If you want to find out more about the Cha Cha Club, visit chacha.club. Yes, it is like the dance moves. It's not a dance club. It's a professional club. It stands for cheerleaders and chums because research shops professionals need a cheerleader and they need a chum. They're often on their own. So it's like kind of like the Lonely Hearts Club band for research jobs. Otherwise, there's my website as well, katetowsy.com, and you can contact me via my website. So a variety of ways, and I would love to hear from you. We'll make sure to add all the links in the show notes. Kate, thanks so much for coming on. I learned a lot and it was very helpful. I wish I had this information a few years back in my career, but you know, never too old to learn. So I'm going to make a guess that this isn't going to be the last time you and I connect on this topic. And yeah, but for now, just thank you. Thank you for what you're doing and thank you for coming on and sharing your stories. It was such a pleasure. And I hope it's not the last time that we connect on this topic or any topic or even building communities topics. Kate has definitely got me thinking and excited about the value the research jobs community can bring to service design. I'm curious to hear from you. What's the one question you have for Kate after hearing our conversation? Leave a comment down below and we'll try to get all of them answered. If you've made it all the way to the end of the conversation and you enjoyed it, please click that like button not to feed the YouTube algorithm, but to let me know whether or not we're on the right track by addressing topics like research jobs here on the show. My name is Mark Fontijn and I want to thank you for spending a small part of your day with me. It's an absolute honor and pleasure. Please keep making a positive impact and I look forward to see you in the next video.


Hello there everyone and welcome. This is Melissa Armo. I'm reviewing from January through mid-November. It is now 2018. It's hard to believe the year is almost over. So this is the stocks whoosh, 2018 trading room tracking. If you were in the room all year this year, I'm gonna review next the winners and the losers for the percentage of win ratio. And it's been a good year. So if you'd like more information, you can email me at melissa at the stockswush.com or call me at 929-3200 Gap. Follow me on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn or Skype. If you decide you wanna trade the market, it's an independent activity. So you do have to feel confident about your abilities and yourself and you're empowering yourself to trade because it's up to you. The amount of money that you make in the market is really based on you. So you have to set yourself up for the greatest chances that you have for success. And if you don't do that, then you're gonna lose. So how do you do that? Educate yourself, focus and follow good mentor. I think that's a good way to start. So the year started out in January, pretty good. First week of the year here, two winners. And then second week, again, there's four quarterly earnings seasons if you trade gaps is what I do. So you have the four earnings seasons that have the most gaps, the most picks, okay? And then there's the in-between periods. You still get trades, but you get more, more trades in earnings season, just so you know that. More picks, more ticker symbols to look at more quality, bigger moves typically, okay? So then you had the eighth play was a winner, DKS was a loser, Urban was a loser, AYI was a winner. You can tell the days that were good or hard. Good days, one ticker symbol. Best for you was a winner, no trades. GME was a winner on the 12th. Room was closed on the 15th for the holiday. Then there was a winner, the rest of the week, no trades on the 18th. Every day this week was a winner. Every day this week was a winner. And then starting February, no trades. S-T-B-K-S was a winner, C-M-G was a winner. Tima was a loser and then H-B-I was a winner. ESP took two shots. Sometimes I'd do something called a retake. You'll learn that in the class. EXP first year was a loser, second one winner. Then going into second week of February, no trades, room closed. It was a holiday there, then Spy was a loser, Carb was a loser, Fossa was a winner, and TAP winner, true winner. Room closed on the 19th, WMT was a loser, WMT was a winner. Again, retake, you'll learn that in the class. Winners, the rest of the week. I just love it when there's a first quick one. Love it. 26, DF was a winner, Spy was a winner, two trades, Disney was a winner on the 27th. Lone, TSR was a loser in CLG was a winner. MNST was a winner, Footlocker was a winner, and going into March. Another winning week here, start at March. And then, no trades in the 12th. Mondays are the slowest days.  And then, excuse me, the middle of the week is the busiest, where you get the most things. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Spy was a loser, Q-Com was a loser, G was a winner, SIG was a winner, Babel winner, Tiff winner. This is March, Facebook winner, Oracle was a loser, Facebook was a winner, Facebook was just a short, so many times this year. Love was a winner, TB Day Off, QQQs was a loser, WDC was a winner. Starting out then April, ALTH was a loser, UA was a winner, no trades, no trades. TB Day Off, Spy Loser, Spy Winner, no trades 9th and 10th. 11th, Spy Loser, Q's winner, Fast Winner, BBBY, nice winner on the 12th. Z Loser, WFC Loser, WFC Winner. And then, WFC was a loser, the 16th, no follow-through. Netflix was a winner on the 17th, IBM, nice winner on the 18th, PG winner on the 19th, the 20th. TB Day Off, the 23rd, aka our X was a loser, two trades, that just didn't work.  Win was a winner on the April, T was a winner, eBay winner, 27th, no trades. Then the 30th, AR&C was a winner. May, CMI was a loser, STX Loser, LL Winner. SNAP was a winner, it was a good one. Again, we're in May, CAH Loser, AIG Winner, FLR Winner, TSCM Loser, CTSH Winner, HTZ was a winner, WOT took two shots, first trade loser, second trade winner. EXCLA was a winner, a no trades on the 11th. XRX was a winner, VIPS Loser, PM Winner, M Winner, Cisco Loser, second trade winner, WFC Winner, and CPB Winner. WFC was a shorter lot this year now, I'm thinking about it, that suck, it's just horrible looking right now. May 21st, no trades, tall winner, target loser, target loser, target winner, that was a rough one there on the 23rd. 24th, AG&C was a loser, BBY was a winner, the Lucker winner too, that was a nice one on the 25th. And then Memorial Day Off, NKTR and June Winner, CCL Loser, Starbucks Winner, AMBA Winner, SJM Loser, LRCX Huge Winner, Spy Loser in this eighth. Day off on the 11th, no trades the 12th, HRB Loser, Team Winner, and Oracle Winner on the 14th. Then getting ramped up here into the holiday week, Spy Winner, No Trades, Spy Loser, and then a Winner, Starbix Winner, AOBC Loser, WTM Loser, Starbix Winner. RHT Loser, RHT Winner, again, retake required. Sticking to the conviction. CCL Winner on the 25th, No Trades on the 26th, 27th, Cag Loser, and WBA took two shots on the 28th. Then off for the holiday, PEP Winner on July 10th, Spy Loser and Winner on the 11th, LB Winner on the 12th, WBC Winner on the 13th. 16th day off, Netflix Loser just did not work, just totally did not work on the 17th. 18th MS Winner, UAO Winner, eBay was a good one in the 19th in July. SKX Loser, G Winner on the 20th, 23rd Off-Spy Winner, GM Winner, Facebook Loser, Facebook Winner, and Twitter Winner on the 27th. And then LA was a Winner on the 31st. August was a good month. Cake Winner, Trip, SYMC, DBX, QQQs, one Loser in 18th and the 14th. Qs Winner, M Winner, I mean, just good start to the month. Then the 16th, WNT, pulled it around after the second trade, DF Loser, AM out Loser, AM out just did not work. That was about a day, the 17th, Qs was good, but failed, sometimes it just failed, it was no reason. EL was a Loser, Spy was a Winner, ETFC was a Loser, HP was a Winner, Target Loser, Target Winner, and then LB was a Winner on the 23rd. GPS was a good one on the 24th. No trades, 27th. Took two retakes, the Spy was a good one on the 28th, but it took two shots. DKS Loser, AO Winner, 2TB Days Off-Room, closed for the Labor Day, no trade in the 10th, Babel Loser, Apple Winner, No Trades, Care Winner, Spy Loser, No Trades, FDX Winner.  We don't trade, oh, a million things a day. 919, No Trades, RHD Loser, Qs Winner, UNFI Loser, UNFI Winner, again another retake.  No trades in the 24th, Facebook Loser, CTL Winner, Nike Loser, IBM Winner, BBY was a good one in September, Facebook Winner, Tesla Loser, that's been insane to trade actually. SFIX was a Winner, CENIX was a Winner, No Trades in the 4th, and then October was a really good month. COS was a Winner, KR was a Winner, Fast was a Loser, but the Qs were a Winner, Spy was a Loser, Second Trade worked, No Trades, No Trades, Qs was a Winner, IBM took two shots, Winner, on the second one, big one, then the second day of follow through. Spy Loser, Apple Winner, MM took two shots, and again, that one worked really well too. T was a Winner, No Trades, WDC was a Winner, TBDOF, ACAM Loser, and again going after it again, ACAM Winner, DDD was a Winner in the last day of the month, and October was a good month. November, break even just killed it in ECA, and it ended up going on to work as a Winner, to be honest with you, it never stopped out. Debi was a Loser, Qs was a Winner, TBDOF, SYY, easy Winner in the 5th, Car was a Loser, Spy was a Winner, Mar was a Winner, and the 6th, Z, the 1st one just killed too quickly in the, it was a Winner, 2nd was a Loser, Cors was a Loser, and then the market was a huge trade this two days. Win was a Loser, CTRP was a Winner, two days in a row, Yelp was a Loser, and all in all, if you roll through the whole thing, 76 Loser so far for the year, and 158 Winners, so the Win Ratio is 68%, that is extremely high, and I'm telling you, it's the focus, and it's the conviction, and really, you shouldn't have some crazy commissions because we're not over-trading. So I teach a class, it's called the Golden Gap Course, it's a full two-day course on how to strategically find, pick, and play stocks that are professional, bearish gaps. Classes online, you can be anywhere in the world and take it. Cost of the class is 59.99 US dollars. Email me at melissa at thestockswish.com if you wanna sign up, or info at thestockswish.com if you wanna sign up. You really, really benefit from being in the trading room. If you do my class and sign up for the room. Now, there are people that are trading alone, that's true, but the people that are in the room are the ones that are getting the benefit of hearing my pick and the top pick every day. And even though it costs money to be in the room, people find it worthwhile. Now, when I do an offer where I do the room free with the class, like I'm doing for the Black Friday, don't miss out on that. It gives you the first year after the class and the room for free, and then you can go trade off on your own, or pay for the class and buy it in one year's time. You would be ramped up, and you would know if you wanna trade alone, or if you wanna be in the room and you find it beneficial, but you would definitely learn a lot and get all my calls for an entire year like this. So, it's not the end of the year yet. It's close to it, but it really has been a very good 2018. So, if you have any questions, again, email me at melissa at thestockswish.com or info at thestockswish.com. Have a great day, everyone.