Hi everyone, welcome to our first webinar. We're gonna get started here in just a moment. But before we begin, I just wanted to take a moment and confirm that you can all hear me speaking and you can see my screen. You should see the cover slide that says give big St. Croix Valley and getting started. So if you're able to see that, just go ahead and put a yes into the questions box of your go-to webinar panel.  Okay, perfect, thank you. I just wanted to make sure that I wasn't talking to no one.  Okay, so that literally was a second because it's the top of the hour now. So welcome to our first webinar for 2021's give big St. Croix Valley. This is our getting started webinar. And my name is Linda Gerhard. I'm the senior community engagement manager here at Mighty Cause. And I think this is my fourth or fifth year, probably my fourth year with give big St. Croix Valley. It's been a pleasure to work with the United Way St. Croix Valley on this event for several years now. So I'm very familiar with your event if you've attended our webinars before you've probably heard me speak. And I'm also joined by Lisa Murphy who's taken over the reins of give big St. Croix Valley. Hi, Lisa. Hi. All right, so we're just gonna get right into it. The basics are what we're gonna start out with today. And then we're gonna go into the things that you need to do as a participant to get ready for give big St. Croix Valley. And then Lisa and I will be doing a live Q&A at the end of the presentation. So if you have a question while I'm presenting, just go ahead and put that question into the questions box of your go to webinar panel and we'll make sure that we have time to get to it at the end of the webinar. And with that, I wanna just start off with the basics. So basically what is give big St. Croix Valley? What is it all about? And what do you need to do as a nonprofit? So at first I wanted to turn things over to Lisa just to give you the basics from the United Way perspective. Okay, thank you, Linda. Welcome, everyone. Thank you so much for taking the time to be here today. Overview of give big. It is the 24 hour day of giving that takes place every year on the last day of last Tuesday of April. This year will take place on April 27th. All of the information that you need to know about give big is at the website listed here. And you'll see there too that we are hosted by United Way St. Croix Valley, Program of United Way St. Croix Valley. Every year early big giving for give big starts on April 1st. So organizations I've already registered, many of you are registered already. We're at about 55 organizations now. And a lot of you are getting your pages ready to launch on April 1st and even take some of those early donations. Give big is open to all 501c3 organizations and schools. And registration is required, of course, even if you've registered in the past and I know Linda's gonna talk about that more. There is a $100 registration fee for each organization to participate. And you are able to pay that either right when you sign up for give big. Otherwise, we also have organizations that go ahead and register and send us a check in the mail afterwards. So whatever works for your organization. I'll just turn it back over to Linda now. Thank you. Great, thank you. So after that introduction of give big St. Croix Valley, I really wanted to pull back and really talk about what giving days are and what their purpose is. So giving days are basically 24 hour online giving marathons. And, oh, I missed the slide there. They're 24 hour online giving marathons. And their goal is to really bring together communities, organizations and community members and rally them together for causes that are doing important work right in their backyards. Giving that has a host which in this case is the United Way St. Croix Valley. And they are the people who bring together the nonprofits, they do publicity, they provide trainings and they work with the organizations who are participating. And giving days also have a platform which in this case is Mighty Cause, the company that I work for. And basically our online giving platform is specially built to handle high volume days like giving events. So they're really big days. There's a lot of transactions happening all at one time. And our giving day product on Mighty Cause is specifically designed to handle all of that traffic and all of that volume. So we work with the United Way of St. Croix Valley and we basically put together the website and make the giving event happen. And giving events are really, they run on two different things, community spirit and some friendly competition which can seem kind of opposed to each other but they really do work together to create a magical day. You have leaderboards and golden tickets that you'll be competing for to win prizes. So those go to organizations to either fundraise well during an hour or overall. And you'll see the priceless as we get closer to the event. And they also work to spread awareness of your mission and work, especially with community centric giving events like Give Big, you have the opportunity to find new donors, new people to invest in your cause. So you get some additional exposure and a boost from participating in a giving event. And then you're all working collectively to raise money for the event and for your individual causes. So you're working toward a collective goal. You're trying to show support for all of the nonprofits doing incredible work in St. Croix Valley but you're also working toward an individual goal at your organization. And the best thing about giving days in my opinion is that there are really great opportunity to engage sponsors and community partners as well as peer-to-peer fundraisers. So there's a lot of opportunity for different kinds of engagement with different demographics. And the most important question is what do you need to do to participate? Especially if this is your first year, this may be at the top of your mind. And we're gonna talk a little bit more about the specific things that you need to do, but basically you just need to register to participate and then you need to create and customize your profile on the Mighty Cause platform because that's going to represent you during Give Big. And then you need to plan a fundraising campaign. So decide upon a goal and set up your page, promote your campaign, via social media, email and events and however you choose to. And then also you can consider inviting your biggest supporters to participate as peer-to-peer fundraisers to give you an additional boost. And then on April 27th, you just need to raise money for your cause. So it's really pretty simple and we're gonna talk about some of the things you need to do just to get yourself ready for when early donations open up on April 1st. So yeah, what do you need to do to get yourself prepared for Give Big St. Croix Valley? The first thing, as Lisa mentioned is registering your nonprofit. It's a really simple form. You just go to the website and click register. If this is your first year with Give Big, you may have a few additional steps. You may need to use your EIN or your organization's name to find your nonprofit or if you're fiscally sponsored or you're not finding your organization in our list because you're not in our database, you may just need to fill out an additional form so that our support team can create a page for you. But if you've participated in the past, once you're logged in to the Give Big website, you'll be able to easily select your nonprofit. It's a pretty short form and we do just need everybody to register again even if you've registered before because we wanna know that you're intending to participate this year. Lisa had mentioned the registration fee. You should see the link for that after you submit your registration. And then once you're added to the event, you can add additional administrators. So if you have anybody at your nonprofit, any volunteers who need access to your Mighty Cause profile, you can grant them that access. And then there are some dashboard changes for those of you who are Give Big veterans, but that's one of the first things you'll wanna do is orient yourself to the Mighty Cause dashboard because this is what you're going to be using as you prepare for Give Big and on the day itself to sort of keep track of your efforts and keep track of your donors. So this is basically how it's set up. This is different from last year. We've made some changes because we're always tweaking a dashboard to be more useful, but your overview screen gives you a quick look at your most important metrics since you last logged in and that has recently changed. So there's actually some really cool things you can do there. Like you can add things that you wish to track like your donor retention rate, you can customize the dates. So if you wanted to be able to easily pull what your donor retention rate was for last year's Give Big and see if you can boost it this year, you can actually use your overview screen to do that. And you'll also be able to check in on the status of your registration. So for instance, if you just registered and you haven't yet had your registration accepted, then you'll be able to see that your registration is pending. So it's just a screen where you can check in and see what's new and different with your account and with Give Big since you last logged in. The fundraising section of your dashboard is where you'll find pretty much all of the tools that you'll be using to create your campaign. So this is where you can access your profile, you can edit it, you can find your different campaigns. You do have a screen where if you've done peer-to-peer fundraisers in the past or events for Give Big, you can actually hide those or get rid of them if you don't want them to appear in the search. And you can also customize your checkout flow, which we're gonna talk about a little bit later.  You have a donation report and you have a donor retention report, which we're gonna talk about in a bit so that you can actually reach out more easily to those donors who gave last year, but haven't given yet this year. And then finally, you have your settings. Those are really important to check in with year after year. Make sure that your EFT is still up to date or set that up if you haven't already set that up. It's always a great opportunity to do some spring cleaning. And if you have some admins who are on your account that maybe don't need access anymore or you need to give access to somebody new, you can do that in your settings. And of course, if any legal information has changed, your address or anything like that, you can go in and change that information so that it's up to date. And then the first thing you wanna do is customize your profile. If this is your first year and you kind of have a blank profile, you'll have a little bit more to do. And if you're just checking in because you have been participating and give big for years, then you'll just wanna check in and just make sure everything is up to date. But this is gonna be the main link that you share with your supporters. So the URL to your organization profile is what you'll wanna share. That's where most people will be giving. Of course, you can have campaigns connected to it, but this is the main page that supports you during Give Big. And this is also your opportunity to tell your organization's story. So when a new donor finds you through the search and they're interested in your cause, this is your opportunity to talk about the work that you do and why they should support your organization. And we do actually have a to-do list that you can complete. It basically measures the, how many items you've completed to make your profile as robust as it can be. So once you complete your to-do list, there are, I believe, five items on that. Then your profile is deemed complete and it looks good for the people who come to your page because if people see a blank empty page or there's not much on it or it's out of date, people might not feel comfortable giving so you really wanna customize your profile and show it a little love. Your theme is what kind of controls the look of your page.  That is used to represent you on leaderboards in the search. It's used all over the Give Big site. So make sure that your logo is uploaded or updated and looks how you want. Your banner image is what sits behind your logo and that just kind of personalizes your organization profile so that when people come to your page, they can be drawn in and maybe see something that represents the work that you do. And you can also choose your filter color and the strength for the background. So if you have something that's really colorful and it kind of distracts from your logo, it should be the star of your organization page in terms of visuals. You can put a filter over it so that it's a little bit more in the background. And one thing I do wanna point out is that you can set a theme color. So if your organization has brand colors that you use, you can actually set those on your profile so that they're reflected and the page looks more like it's part of your brand.  So go in there, make sure it's up to date. It's a simple inline editor. You have a lot of options to customize your story, adding links, lists, bullet lists, images. I've seen some people do some amazingly creative things with it. So go in here and make sure that it's up to date and it tells the story you want. And this can also be where you make your main campaign appeal. So there's a lot of great things that you can do here to tell your story, make this more personalized and draw people in. The more time they spend on your organization profile, the more likely they are to actually make a donation to your cause. So spend some time with your story and show it a little bit of love and make sure that anything that's out of date is edited out of that because obviously you don't want references to your 2019 or your 2020 campaign in your story for 2021. You also have the ability to add media to your profile, which is really important. You can connect your Facebook galleries, your Instagram feed. So that way it's really more of a dynamic space where you're importing the things that you're doing on other platforms. Instagram can be a little bit tricky. So if you get any error messages related to Instagram, feel free to reach out to our support team. I'll share their email address and information at the end of the webinar, but you can import images from your Dropbox, your Google Drive. This is a really an opportunity to jazz up your page and tell a visual story about what your organization does. So it looks really great if you're able to jazz this up and put your visuals on there and show visitors what it is that you do. Your checkout flow, this is a little bit more technical, but your checkout flow is really important. That's under the fundraising tab and you wanna revisit this from year to year. So basically this is where you can choose what donor data you would like to collect. So if there's something that's really important for you to know about your donors, you can opt into collecting that data. Something that's just a bullet point here, but is really important is custom donation suggestions and impact descriptions. So what you can do is you have four options for customizing suggested amounts. So by default they're going to be 25, 50, 75 and 100, but you can alter those so that they are custom to your organization. And you can also add descriptions that gives people an idea of what that amount provides. So for instance, if this year is say your 10th anniversary of your organization and you really wanna do suggested donation amounts in 10s, you could customize that and you can also add a description to say like, hey, if you donate $10 per month that helps us feed X number of people at our food bank or whatever the case may be, those are really powerful and that connects donors or connects with donors at a moment that is critical. Plus when they're deciding how much to give. So it's really vitally important that you check in with those and you can also preview your checkout process and go through that as a donor would without having to make a test donation, which is really helpful to understand what that looks like for your donors because we provide support, but sometimes they might call you if they have a problem. So it's important to know what that looks like and sometimes you can find that unfortunately you created a cumbersome process and maybe you'll be able to trim some fat from that and make it an easier process for your donors to get through. And something that's also really important just a small bullet point here, but you can enable dedications and designations. So if you would like people to be able to dedicate their donation to someone or do something in honor or memory of someone because you print that in your newsletter, you can certainly enable that here. And if you have any funds that you would like people to be able to designate their donations for, you can also separately enable that in your checkout flow. So there's a lot of really cool things that you can do in your checkout flow. So just make sure even if you've done this year after year, just check in with your checkout flow and make sure that it looks how you want it to. So hidden in your checkout flow, there's a tab that says post checkout and it's a really important tab. So one of the things that you wanna do there is you want to edit your thank you settings. So you have a thank you page which will display after somebody completes their donation. And you can add a photo, a video, a customized CTA button if you would like, any links that you would like. And it just provides an immediate thank you and acknowledgement from your organization to the donor. So make sure that you have your thank you page filled out. And this is a separate thing as the second thing that you'll see in the post checkout tab is a custom thank you message. So when somebody makes a donation on Mighty Cause, we send them a receipt because all of the donations are processed through our donor advice fund, the Mighty Cause Charitable Foundation. And that's so that we can take care of receding for you. So we email them a receipt, but this is an opportunity to automate your acknowledgement of their donation with our receipt. So make sure that that's updated. And this is also where people can sort of find old information hiding. They'll, you know, get halfway through the giving day and go, oh my gosh, I have 2019 in this receipt, what's going on? So it's always important to check on what's actually written here so that you can make sure that you edit out any old information and make it relevant to your campaign this year. And we do have the opportunity for you to preview the thank you experience so that you can see exactly what your donors are seeing. So this is kind of where all the action is at, at least from the admin side is your donations and disbursements. So every time somebody completes a donation on Mighty Cause, all of the admins for your organization will receive notifications, letting them know that so-and-so made a donation. My recommendation, and I see people do this for giving days all the time, do not use that to track your donations throughout the day. You have a donation report that will synthesize all of that for you and make it much easier to read. So sometimes people will try to piece together a donation report from the emails. Don't do that. We've already done it for you. Don't do any unnecessary work, but you can access donor data in real time and you can export the report. Something that I do wanna mention here is that when you go to your donation report on the screen, you're gonna see limited information about your donors. You're gonna see basically their name, how much they gave and their email address. But if you wanna get more detailed donation if you have source tracking for the donation, if you want their address, if you want any of the things that we collect because there is a lot of data there, you just wanna export your donation report and look at the CSV because that's where you'll find the details. And also you have a disbursement report. So if you are getting your disbursements through direct deposit or check, you will see a report there that breaks down what donations are included in that disbursement. And you'll also see the breakdown of any fees. We typically don't offer refunds, but sometimes you'll see a refund in there if somebody contacted us and said, whoops, I accidentally donated twice. Sometimes you'll see refunds in there. So it's always good to check your disbursement report because sometimes, especially if you're getting them twice monthly, if you try to piece it together with your donation report, it may not make sense, but it's all there in your disbursement report. So make sure that you check that when you get that email from us letting you know that your disbursement was processed. So yeah, that's pretty much your donation report. You're probably going to be spending a lot of time there and get very familiar with your donation report and your disbursement report. So we're gonna talk more about this in the strategy webinar, which is coming up later this month. But matching grants is also an important thing to take a look at on your dashboard. So matching grant is a very powerful fundraising tool that you can use to incentivize people to give to your organization when it matters for you. So sometimes organizations will have matching grants that last for the duration of the entire event. And sometimes organizations will strategically use a matching grant to draw people in during a golden ticket hour or to win a particular prize. So there's a lot that you can do with matching grants. They're really cool. And just to pull back a little bit and further explain that a matching grant is basically a larger donation that your organization receives from a donor, often sometimes from a board member or somebody who has a corporate relationship with your organization. And you can enter that and we'll do all the calculations for you. So you don't have to calculate how much of the grant has been met. And there's always a lot of questions about this. It's a very complex tool. The important thing to know is that you do not have to have your donors pay the match or fulfill the match through the platform. If you enter their email address, they will get an email, letting them know that you've raised enough to meet their match, to fulfill their match. And it gives them a link where they can make a payment. And that is helpful to you because only online donations will count toward prizes. But if somebody is giving you five grand or 10 grand, I can absolutely understand why they won't wanna do that through an online platform and they may wanna send a check. So you can always accept the check and you can enter an offline matching grant as well. It's really up to you, it's your choice. And you can also choose to count the matching funds in your total amount raised by default, that will be the option. And you can also opt not to do that. So if you wanted to add the matching grant as one big offline donation, you can certainly do that as well. There's a lot of flexibility. But if we're counting your matching grant for you as part of your total, you don't need to add it to your page as an offline donation because basically when somebody makes a $20 donation and you have a one-to-one matching grant, we're gonna basically add the $20 that is matched to your total for you. So you don't need to add anything. It's really the easiest thing to do if you have an offline matching grant. So I hope that wasn't too confusing. We're gonna get more in depth about matching grants and how they work and how you can utilize them to boost your fundraising. But it's a good idea to just take a look at the tool because there are some techniques that are possible with this tool. Like you can do a threshold match. So when you reach a certain amount raised, your match kicks in. There's a lot of really cool things you can do. So just take a look at matching grants, get familiar with the tool, get used to looking at it. And maybe I'll even give you some ideas for how you can use a matching grant this year. So this isn't very exciting, but your settings are so important. Again, it's almost spring. So it's a great time to do some spring cleaning and remove any admins who are no longer with your organization. And of course, add anybody who needs to be added to your page.  And as we talked about, you can update your legal address if any of that information has changed. And you can set up EFT. I definitely recommend if you are able to set up EFT doing it because you'll get your disbursements more frequently and sooner than a check. And as we all know, if you've been following the news, the mail can be a little bit slow. I think I got three Christmas cards at the end of January. So if you wanna make sure that you get your disbursements in a timely manner and aren't held up by the postal service, make sure that you sign up for EFT. And then we also have some social sharing settings that you can utilize that will control how your page looks when you share the link with people. So you can add some meta tags, a meta description and have a little bit more control over what your social media sharing link looks like. They all have a little bit of a preview. So you can also manage that in your settings. So not very exciting, but they are important nonetheless. And one thing I did wanna call out this year is being very important. I don't know if we've done a ton of promotion for Give Big With This, but we do have a donation widget and that's under organization profile and then sharing and then embed options. We're working on making that a little bit more front and center, but right now you can find it under sharing and embed options. And basically what our widget is is a secure iframe embed that allows people to make donations to Give Big that count for the site. And I'm sorry, there's like a wrong, I didn't change the, I didn't change the Give Education from another webinar, I apologize for that. But you can pull in the Mighty Cause website and the Give Big website and capture donations on your website that will count for Give Big. So if you wanted to set up a specific page on your website where you're collecting donations for Give Big, you can do that with a donation widget. It also will work in blogs. So if you blog at your organization, you can add the widget to your blog and you can set up recurring donations with the widget, which is really exciting. Obviously recurring donations are really important for nonprofits, especially as we saw in 2020. So you can embed the widget. I'd certainly recommend it, especially if you get a lot of traffic to your website and it just gives you an extra opportunity to capture donations and talk about your campaign. And it does pull in your custom options from your checkout flow. So they'll see your suggested donation amounts. They may not see the descriptions just because of space limitation, but they'll be able, we'll be pulling in all of your donation settings from your checkout flow. So you'll see those reflected in the widget. And then finally, just take a look at the Give Big St. Croix Valley resources. Lisa and the team at the United Way of St. Croix Valley have done lots of great work putting this together for you. So we have timelines, tips, templates, really everything you need to make Give Big a success for your nonprofit. And because Give Big is an event that has been with Mighty Cause for so long, these resources are really strong. They have been improved on year after year. So make sure that you're taking advantage of these. We will also have, you'll be able to sign up for the next webinar we have that is focused on strategy through the toolkit and you'll be able to watch this recorded video and access the slides on the nonprofit toolkit. So if you have somebody that you're working with and you'd like to share the webinar with them so that they can help you get started for Give Big, you can find that on the nonprofit toolkit. It YouTube takes a little while so it'll probably be up tomorrow but you can find it there basically in perpetuity. And there's also FAQs. So if you have any questions about how something functions on Give Big, you can always check the FAQs. There's a lot of great information there that you can use to answer donor questions as well as your own questions. And then finally, don't be afraid to reach out to our support team. We are here to help you and we will also have support on ready on deck basically for the entirety of Give Big from midnight to midnight. Somebody will be on and available to answer your questions and obviously we're available to help you as you get set up. So don't be afraid to contact us. You can email us at support at mightycause.com. Usually that is the quickest method and we do keep business hours. We are on Eastern time so we are an hour ahead of you. So that's important to keep in mind we may not be in the office at like six or 7 p.m. our time. And you can also give us a call. Our number is<PHONE_NUMBER>. And we also have a really excellent support library that you can access at support.mightycause.com. So sometimes that's the easiest place to find a quick answer if you're trying to do something and you can't quite figure out how to do it. So we're here to support you. That is part of what our commitment is to Give Big. So make sure that you don't feel afraid to reach out to us if you have any questions while you're setting up your page or even just wondering where you can access a certain tool. All right, so that is it for the presentation. I did wanna make sure that we have some time for questions. So I'm just gonna dive right in. It looks like there's only a couple. So if you have something that you'd like to ask me or Lisa, just go into your questions box of your GoToWebinar panel and we will be here to take your questions. So this is a question from Debbie. Will we get the slides emailed to us? So that I don't know, Lisa might be able to speak to that. They will be available on the Give Big website in the nonprofit toolkit. But Lisa, do you have a plan to email them out to everybody, the recording and slides? I'd be happy to do that. So I'll send out, I'll be contacting the entire group this week. So as you're on my contact list and I can also get a sign up list from Ulinda and make sure that I reach everybody that's here today. Perfect. All right, this is one from Kathy. If you don't use EFT, when will you receive the check from online donors and from whom does the check come? So that's a great question. If you aren't able to sign up for EFT, the check is processed around the first of the month. So you'll be getting it sometime toward the beginning of the month. That's when we process it. When it gets to you is a little bit more of a question. You'll see it come in from the Mighty Cause Charitable Foundation. So don't throw away any mail that you get from the Mighty Cause Charitable Foundation. The address is Mariana, Florida. That is our admin address, even though we're all remote at this point. So yeah, it'll come from the Mighty Cause Charitable Foundation. And the address is Mariana, Florida. That's a P.O. box, since we're all kind of scattered all over the United States. And it'll usually get to you, hopefully within a few weeks of being sent out at the beginning of the month. Just let us know if you are missing a check and you'll get a notification as soon as we process your disbursement. So what that means is that we'll notify you once we've processed it. So keep your eyes out for that email after the event. Let's see, this is another one from Kaffee. Can you review matching grants again? So I don't want to get two in the weeds because it's a little confusing and I wanna save some for the strategy webinar that we're gonna do, I think in two weeks. But basically a matching grant is a large donation that you leverage to bring in other donations. And how you choose to do that is really between you and your grant tour. Most likely what we'll see is a one-to-one match, which means that, let's say you have $1,000 from a generous donor and you wanna use that as a matching grant instead of just one donation. And you're kind of offering people a BOGO deal by saying, if you donate $25, we're gonna match that. So it gives people the opportunity to make their money go a little bit further, which who doesn't love that? I mean, I love a BOGO sale. So that's kind of what a matching grant is and it works to entice people to make their donation now. So that's why the timing of matching grants can be really important. Last year, I believe we had power hours and I think we're gonna have them this year. So for instance, if you wanted to use your $1,000 matching grant to get a lot of donations coming in during a power hour, that gives you an advantage. So there's a lot of interesting ways you can use them.  And you can use that strategically to boost your fundraising for Give Big. And we have a tool that supports that. So all you have to do is give us the details of your match through the tool that we've provided and we'll do all the math for you. So it makes it very easy because sometimes these can be a little bit messy if you're kind of trying to manage them all on their own, on your own. And this way you don't have to do any math and we will take care of counting it for you. So that's what the matching grants tool is for. And I will make sure that we cover that in the next webinar. So just make sure you sign up for that if you're interested in using a matching grant. And just as one final note, if you aren't sure where to look for a matching grant, your board of directors is a great place to start since they're usually more than willing to pull together some funds to give you a matching grant. And that is one of their responsibilities to your organization is your financial health. So hopefully they will be willing to talk about giving you a matching grant if the idea sounds a little strange and you're not quite sure where to start looking. All right. So can literacy be added to the categories of a donor page? So I think this is, so the categories on Mighty Cause and on Give Big are search categories. So unfortunately we're not able to add any specific categories because those are search filters and frankly that's code that I don't quite understand. But basically I would make sure that you're under education and go into detail on your profile about literacy. You can even try to add that to your display title so that people know that you're an organization that deals specifically with literacy just from finding you in the search. But the search category is kind of our static just because they're global throughout the entire Mighty Cause site. Let's see. This is a good question for Lisa. This is from Jody. Do you have the selfless selfies available yet? I am updating them now in the process. I likely will not have them up on the webpage for another week but they should be there not next week but the following I would check for them and I'll also send out an email to the contact list when they're available and just let you know. Great, thank you. Oh, this is a great question from Ashley. When should we start posting on social media? Is there a specific summary or format that we should be posting on social media? So I would say you wanna start gearing up closer to the time when you'll be able to accept donations. So right now if you post it on social media you can basically say, hey, Give Big is happening and we're a part of it but your page is not actually able to accept donations that count for the event yet. That begins on April 1st. So I would say maybe a week or so before April 1st you can sort of ramp up your social media presence for Give Big and definitely once April 1st rolls around start posting about it a lot so that you can take an advantage of that early donation period but you don't wanna post about it too early because at this point donations toward your organization obviously they still count for your organization you will get that money but they don't count towards your Give Big total. So in terms of like what you should post I would just share a link, share a link to your page that's the URL if you're using your organization profile that's just the URL at the top of the page you can copy and paste it. And there's no specific format. I believe the hashtag is hashtag Give Big SCV. I think that's what's been in the previous years I know that's somewhere on the Give Big site but that way other people will be able to find you for instance on Twitter or Instagram that you're posting about Give Big St. Croix Valley. So I think that's hashtag Give Big SCV but I'm not a hundred percent on that. So Lisa can- Yes, that's right. Thanks, I'm glad I got that one. But yeah, so you can use, you can add the hashtag so that people can find your posts a little bit more easily and actually on the live page we have a display of all of the posts that use that hashtag which kind of makes the site look cool and people can find you on there. So definitely on the big day use that hashtag but really just be creative, be engaging with your social media audience and include a link. Unfortunately I see a lot of nonprofits forget that link and if people can't figure out where to donate sometimes they will make it up and donate through Facebook or who knows where. So just include a link and be engaging and yeah, there's also some really great templates in the nonprofit toolkit. So if you're kind of suffering from writer's block with social media which I'm sure a lot of us are right about now, you can check the templates and there's also a schedule or timeline that you can use there to give you an idea of sort of when you should start ramping up. Let's see, this is a question from Karen. How do you get out of the dashboard and back to the actual page? So right now, yeah, it's a little bit tricky and we're working on this internally. So when April 1st comes around you will have the Give Big logo on your, like at the top of the page so you can easily get back to the Give Big website homepage. Right now you have to go back to GiveBigScv.org and I think you can also follow, if you go on your overview screen, you should be able to see like your registration was approved for Give Big St. Croix Valley so you may be able to get there from there as well. So I know that's a little bit tricky and convoluted at this point, we're working on that internally so that's a little bit easier but either type in the URL or go to your overview screen and you should be able to see a link there, that notes that you're participating. But if you're still having issues, Karen just reach out to support and we'll be happy to help you out. Let's see. Oh, this is actually a really good point. This is from Heather, just a heads up for anyone who also does Give Men. Contact Mighty Cause after our giving date and make sure your profile shows up for Give Men too. That's a really fantastic point. So there's a lot of overlap between the Give Big St. Croix Valley participants and Give to the Max Day or Give Minnesota and Give Minnesota has a year-round giving portal that they use. So we can only have you as part of one giving event at a time because we can't split your donations from between Give Men and Give Big St. Croix Valley and that would not be to your benefit. So if you are a participant in Give to the Max Day every year and you're on the Give Men portal and you have any redirect issues, you can contact us and certainly after Give Big St. Croix Valley let us know that you'd like to be put back into the Give Men search. So we'll take care of that for you but that's kind of like a tricky little thing that popped up because there's so much overlap between your organizations and organizations that participate in Give to the Max Day. So yeah, that's a very great point. Thank you for mentioning that Heather. I always forget about that. Let's see, it's a question from Jodi. Pardon me. Will past donors receive an email when we put up a new update? This is something that used to get sent out but it was removed a few years ago. Last year I was told that they may add it back this year. So at this point, no, we don't have emails going out for an update so you'll want to sort of manually email your donors. And the reason for that is kind of tricky. Internally, there's really no good resolution to that because some organizations would post an update and they were testing something or they hadn't proof read it yet and they didn't expect for it to go out to all of their donors and they were horrified and our heart went out for them because that's a horrible mistake to make. And so we kind of turned that off because most organizations didn't want that but then some organizations are very good about using their updates. But at this point, we are not emailing all of your donors through that updates tab. So you'll want to contact them directly through your email marketing software, whatever it is you use, or otherwise contact them off the platform just because we don't have that email functionality available right now and I don't know if that's, I don't believe that's going to be added back in. Let's see, this is a question from Patricia. What is the timeframe for having donations count toward give big? You mentioned early donations can start April 1st. When does it end? That's a great question. So early donations are the period from April 1st to the start of give big on the 27th. So from the 1st to the 27th, that's the early donations period and all of those will count toward your give big totals. And it ends after the event ends. So on midnight, I guess it's the 28th but like technically 11, 59, 59, 59 on April 27th, that's when the donation cutoff is. So after that point, we really don't count donations toward give big. So April 1st through April 27th or to April 27th, I should say, is your early giving period and then donations end obviously when the giving event itself adds. All right, there's one more from Kathy. On the main page of the give big site, some organizations show percentage of goal. Is that automatically added or does the admin have to make that happen? So yeah, basically what that is is you have the ability to control your page's metrics. And what I mean by that is your goal and the amount raised towards your goal, what you're counting toward that goal. And if you wanna display the total amount raised in number of donors.  You can set it to zero. The thing you'll wanna change especially if you had a goal set for last year, excuse me, is the date that you're counting from. So you'll wanna set it to April 1st, 2021 so that it counts only donations that are applicable for this year's event and you don't have any old donations counting. But yeah, there is actually a support article called resetting your metrics that'll walk you through that process of making sure that those are reset for this year. We are working on a way that we can sort of just flip a switch and do that for everybody but we don't have that in place just yet. So you will have to go into your organization profile and edit those settings and make sure that they're only counting donations made from April 1st, 2020 this year. All right, so that was a lot of questions. Thank you guys for having so many great questions. I think that is it for us for today. If you have any additional questions either for me or for Lisa, you can certainly contact us directly. And if you have any more technical questions like you're having a hard time with something on your profile, contact support at mightycause.com. Support's actually been pretty light so far so you should get a quick answer to your question there. And then Lisa will go ahead and take care of, well, I will post the recording to the nonprofit toolkit along with the slides and she will take care of sending you the recording in the slides. But that is it for us today. Happy fundraising, I can't wait to see what you guys all do this year for GIF Big. Thanks. Thank you everyone.


We've been waiting for this guys. These are the AirPods Pro 2 and this is the latest iteration of the AirPods Pro. Now, when you look at that compared to the AirPods Pro, they look rather similar. But I'm here to tell you which is better if you should upgrade. Let's start off with the hardware. At first glance, they look similar. They both have Lightning ports, Apple, USB-C would be great, but there are some major differences. First off, you do have speakers at the bottom of the AirPods Pro 2. In this case, that allows you to use your Find My app so when you're looking for AirPods Pro 2 if they're missing, you can actually have an audio cue to you to locate it. Something like this. Sounds pretty nice. Now, after that, you also have wireless charging with MaxSafe, so it supports MaxSafe charging, which is cool, and the battery life has big differences. So the original AirPods Pro, 25 hours. That's what you got for battery life with the case. The AirPods Pro 2, you're getting 30 hours and six hours on the AirPods Pro 2 themselves with ANC off, which is absolutely fantastic. Now, something Apple didn't mention is that you're also gonna be getting 36 hours with the case with ANC off. Now, that is truly impressive, and that's something that I'd like with the AirPods Pro 2. Now, when you're looking at the AirPods Pro 2 Buds themselves compared to the AirPods Pro, they look similar. They have the same look, the heights, the stem, everything is exactly the same in terms of design, but a couple of things are different. You now have a microphone at the very top of the AirPods Pro 2 for better active noise cancellation and also better microphones in the stem so that I can pick up your calls more effectively, which is nice. Plus, you also have volume controls now on your AirPods Pro 2. That wasn't there before, so I'm glad they added that in there. Now, the biggest thing for me with the design here is actually the tips, the air tips. On my original AirPods Pro, I use Comply phone because that's the only thing that actually fit in my ears properly, and I couldn't use any of the tips that Apple provided. This year, I'm using the medium tips that came with it, and I haven't had needed to change anything, so I believe Apple has done a better job here with the air tips on the AirPods Pro 2. Plus, they do provide you with a plethora of tips including an extra small so that you can actually fit in your ears more properly. Now, let's go to the things that we care about. Connectivity, active noise cancellation, all that fun stuff. Just like your AirPods Pro, the AirPods Pro 2 connects to all your Apple devices, a very seamless process. We know how this is, I don't have to explain it, it just works pretty well. But the H2 chip on the AirPods Pro 2 do a little bit more when it comes to the other aspects like active noise cancellation. Now, Apple says that this should be 2X, and I was like, what do you mean by 2X improvements over the AirPods Pro? What that means is that honestly, you can hear the difference between the AirPods Pro and the AirPods Pro 2 when it comes to active noise cancellation. It blocks out so much more noise. It was truly impressive. I didn't expect it to move that far the needle, but it did. So, while I was flying back from San Francisco, I had less of the plane, I was able to also take train rides in the city, and it was fine, like couldn't hear all that crazy noise. I like that, and I think that's a very good thing. The other aspect also is the transparency mode. Transparency mode is greatly improved on the AirPods Pro 2. Simply put, it doesn't feel robotic at all. It feels very natural. Now, the AirPods Pro were close to that. This feels like you're having a direct conversation with someone with nothing in your ears. Now, you can feel the weight of the AirPods Pro 2, but it just works. That's just how I'm gonna put it. They do have something called adaptive transparency, which basically equalizes and blocks of some of that noise that you hear, but also letting in the vocals. I didn't notice it to work as adeptly as Apple stated, but it still worked well. It's something that just works on its own. You can toggle it on and off within, of course, the app itself or within your iPhone directly. Now, coming to the audio part of things, how well do they sound? What's the audio quality? This thing's impressive. Impressive in the fact that, first of all, there's bass. There's solid bass, it is clean, it's crisp, it is clear, and I like the fact that it doesn't overshadow. So that is a huge improvement from the AirPods Pro to the AirPods Pro 2. You also have improved highs on the AirPods Pro 2, so much better, much cleaner. So you listen to vocals like Michael Jackson. Those vocals come up pretty clear on the very top, which is nice. They're not as muddled as they were before. Now the mids for me though, that's where there's not a lot of great expansion. The mids between the AirPods Pro and the AirPods Pro 2 sound really similar, but the overall package definitely sound better. Now, Apple has adaptive EQs, something I don't like because sometimes it changes the way the music sounds to me, but I feel it's just more improved here on this device. Now when it comes to the microphone, you can expect Apple has one of the best microphones in the market for conversations, and I had no issues, my calls were great. I didn't tell people what I was using because I couldn't tell them, but it sounded really good. People knew it was clear and crisp. I like that with the microphone, and it stayed the same. Now, when you look at the overall package for what Apple has brought with the AirPods Pro 2, it is truly impressive. The things they stated, they actually done. Now, some of us may be bummed out they haven't changed the design of the case, but again, that continuity is also very, very welcome. Now, they do have sort of like an application within your iPhone where you can go in and you can manually change things like your noise cancellation, transparency. You can also go into each airport there to actually change things there. You can do your ear fit. You can toggle adaptive transparency, but the big new thing here is personalized spatial audio where you can customize spatial audio to fit you. There's a quick test that allows you to just pan left or right with each ear to map that out and you're done. And once you do that, you've got more personalized spatial audio. Now, I'm not the biggest fan of spatial audio, but I actually found personalized spatial audio to be a huge improvement from this general spatial audio. So I like that that's there. And the cool thing is that also transfers from one iPhone to the other. So once you switch from, say, your previous iPhone to a new one, of course those settings will actually transfer to you. Again, the functionality with H2 chip really comes through pretty clearly. So overall, I'd say this. Look, the AirPods Pro 2 are just much better. They're much better than the AirPods Pro. And if you're looking to pick up AirPods, these are the ones to pick up. The AirPods Pro 2 definitely hit the mark, especially with comfort, fit, and also audio quality. Now, some of you are wondering how do they fare with the rest of the buds on the market? Are they the best? Well, find out in my next video where I compare them to the Pixel Buds Pro, the Galaxy Buds 2 Pro, the Sony Link Buds S, as well as the Sony WF-1000 Mark Force. So, until next time, guys, I'll see you in that video.


Welcome in Aloha, I'm Mark Shklav, the host of Think Tech Hawaii's Law Across the Sea program. Today we're going across the sea to Tokyo, Japan to talk with my friend, Tatsu Nakayama. Tatsu is a lawyer in Japan and the managing partner of Nakayama and Partners. He is an intellectual thinker, writer, speaker and actor. Tatsu is listed in the 2020 edition of the Best Lawyers in Japan in the field of international business transactions. I've known Tatsu for many years. We are both active members of the Inter-Pacific Bar Association. We'd usually see each other every year at the annual IPBA meetings. I really believe that in-person social interaction is beneficial on many levels. However, for the last two years we have not been able to meet because of COVID pandemic restrictions. So I want to welcome Tatsu. How are you? Good to see you, Aloha. Aloha, Mark. I'm very excited and honored to be with you, my one of my closest friends in the world. I have known Mark for, I think about 15 years through the IPBA Inter-Pacific Bar Association. Mark is a great, one of the founders of this great Lawyers Association. I have been very honored to be with you. And now I'm excited to say something about Japan on this program. Thank you very much. You know, what really got me motivated to talk to you was a tragic event. That's the assassination of Shinzo Abe on July 8th. And that shocked us here in Hawaii and around the world because that just didn't seem to match what we know about Japan. So I've asked you, Tatsu, to share your personal views and insights concerning all these recent events. And let's start with Shinzo Abe. Okay, thank you very much. Yeah. Talk about that. There's a photo of him that we can display and put up there for a few moments to kind of remember. And there were a lot of concerns that this was a political act, this attack and where he was killed. And it was an attack on democracy and it was the beginning of more political violence. So I'd like you to share your thoughts. Are these valid concerns? Thank you for your good question. I may have to apologize. However, this is not any mournful attitudes anyway. I'll explain this later, but coming back to Shinzo Abe, it's very shocking to us Japanese as well. And first impression is, as Mark said, this could be an attack to democracy, but in a week later we see in Japan, this is not at all related to any political issue or political attack. Mr. Yamagami, the accused, is believed to have very deep personal grudge against Shinzo Abe and some religious body. That is the main reason. And we see that this tragedy is not any attack to democracy. This is what I see. Okay, and so that's, I guess that's a good thing in a way. I mean, it's something that was idiosyncrated or personal to this fellow Yamagami. And as I understand, it had something to do with the relationship of his mother. What was the cause of that? Was that what it had to do? Yes, you are correct. Mr. Yamagami's mother who was so into a religious body which is coming from Korea, the name of which is a unification church, somewhat related to Christian, which I'm not so familiar with it. Anyway, mother was so into that unification church and she donated a lot of money, which is believed to be more than one million US dollars. And that made her bankrupt and also his family, her family went so bad bankrupt in that way. And Yamagami's father and his brother, two of them, both of them committed suicide. Whoa, this is very tragic. That is another reason Mr. Yamagami had a personal grudge or the unification church is a very evil organization, that kind of something, yeah. And he thought that Mr. Abe was somehow connected to it, I guess, is that? Yes, correct. Yeah, Mr. Abe was one of the supporters of the unification church. This is how he believed, yeah. So what happens now in the justice system of Japan with this man accused of killing Mr. Abe? What, will there be a trial? What happens? There will be a trial. And in Japan about 10 years ago, we started to have a jury trial which is participated by a lay persons. And as far as I see, this case could be subject to jury trial, but I'm not really sure how it goes. And my view of his result of this criminal procedure could be a life sentence against Yamagami. Yeah, this is my guess. Yeah, well, we're still kind of waiting to see, I guess, what happens next. In Japan, do they, do you get legal counsel appointed for you? Is that something that he would have? Will he have a lawyer? I'm not sure, at this moment he has a lawyer, but definitely he will have because this kind of big case, another criminal procedure law, this carpet, the accused should be, must be subject to attorney. Even if he can't afford to an attorney privately by his pocket, I would say the nationally or the Japanese bar would afford. So he would be subject to attorney. So he will get, well, that's similar to the United States to appointment of counsel in a criminal case. There are pro bono or lawyers that are appointed. And so that sounds very similar to what we have in the United States. Now, has there been any reaction against the Unification Church by Japanese public or with respect to what happened? From the Japanese society or from Japanese government, we do not see any strong attack or strong restriction against Unification Church. Partly because Unification Church has been popular in this 30 years because 30 years ago, Japanese famous actress, Miss Sakurada Junko was into Unification Church. Now that surprised the Japanese society. And in this 30 years, we see Japanese, many of Japanese people see Unification Church as kind of cult, kind of strange organizations but it was something like this. So at this moment, Yamagami had a personal grudge against Unification Church, but this fact doesn't change the mindset or attitude against Unification Church. So the Japanese society seems to let that pass or let it be. How about with respect to his mother, the accused man's mother, how is she being treated and is she doing anything or is she saying anything? Newspaper says she still believes in so into Unification Church and I don't know other details. Yeah, any strong attack or any strong restriction against her mother, no information. Has she said anything? Has there been any comment from her? No, nothing particular as far as I see. So it's still an ongoing matter. Now, Mr. Abe was killed while he was campaigning, actually two days before the upper house election in Japan, as I understand it. Did his death have any effect on the outcome of the upper house selection? Generally speaking, I would say not big effect of this event to upper house election as expected because nowadays the opposition party in Japan is not so strong. We believe that the LDP, maybe the Democratic Party of Japan would win. So in this sense, this tragic event made no strong impact on the election. Was there any sort of a sympathy vote or anything like that at all or is it just, life is normal, life just went on? Yeah, I think many voters made a sympathetic vote to LDP because in the latter half of Abe's regime, he made some mistake or many mistakes. He was doubted by a people, some kind of bribery or something, some strong, very strong connection with somebody or something like this. So there was a strong win against Shinzo Abe or LDP, but that win is gone, it might be because of this tragic event because many voted for Shinzo Abe or LDP made a sympathetic vote. I see, so they were kind of expected to do well anyway and maybe they did a little better because of the sympathy vote. Now, has the death of Mr. Abe affected Japan in any other way? Has it brought people together or has it pushed them apart or neither? Has there been any type of reaction one way or the other? As far as I see, the deaths of Mr. Abe or the tragic event itself made no distinction, made no impact on making the political people apart. However, a couple of days ago, Japanese government announced that Shinzo Abe would be mourned, would be treated as a state funeral, state funeral, the funeral ceremony made and supported and run by government, which is rare in Japan, which is rare in that this is only second time after World War II, next to the Shigeru Yoshida, I think around 50 years ago. This is the second time, very rare, very big event and which announcement is opposed by opposing quite old making pain by tax to such wasteful ceremony or something like this, yeah. I see, so it has had some reaction negatively, I guess, and with respect to the state funeral, I see. Now, and I guess it's a little too early to see what would happen if there'll be any other political changes. Is there any, do you have any thoughts about, I mean, would there be any changes? There was a lot of talk in America about the constitution of Japan being changed. Is there any, do you see anything right now about that or in Japan? How does that look, any thoughts? About constitution of Japan, gradually, more and more people are for the amendment to the constitution. As you may know, the Japanese constitution has never changed in this 55 years or something. It was made right after the World War II, supported by the GHQ General Headquarters and it has made no changes. And all those generations, senior generation are for the constitution are opposing to the amendment, that this is a very good one because of that. Thanks to that constitution, we have never had any war. However, younger generation are now for the amendment to the constitution. It is very old, some phrases are too old to understand something like this. And this tragic event of assassination of Shinzo Abe made such gradual increase of the supporters of the amendment a bit more because many are for the still sympathetic to LEP. And so, yeah, and the amendment, as I understand it, talks about maybe more military spending, that type of thing. So that's still wait and see. That may happen, but you kind of, you feel that there may be some leaning towards that possible change. Yeah, yeah, it could be possible, but military spending is not so much related to not only constitution, but also political or diplomatic or, you know, countries issues, but it's not only constitutional. Yeah.  In the history book of Japan, Shinzo will be remembered as the Prime Minister with the longest term in the history. This is one good thing and a very good thing because of the repetition of Japan, you know, before Shinzo Abe, Prime Minister of Japan changes every year, Miyazawa, Kaifu, blah, blah, blah, nobody can remember. Even Japanese can't remember who was the Prime Minister at that time, that kind of thing. This is not at all good, but Shinzo Abe maintained his regime for seven years or something. This is very good thing. And in this way, he will be remembered in a good way. Okay. All right, now let's talk about some other issues that have touched the shores of both Japan and Hawaii. The COVID pandemic, I mean, where are we in Japan? What is, what's happening in Japan? What's the status of life there during COVID now? Yeah, today is July 2022. Almost two years after COVID situation. I will say in Japan, very stable, nothing has changed. We hasty to go around, we hasty to go abroad, we see many, many of them, no, most of them, or all of them wear a mask, so with strong pressure, strong peer pressure in Japan. I will say this is very peculiar in Japan. We see others and they wear masks and we wear masks. This is a typical attitude of Japan, yeah. And so the status is the same. It's just everybody is just on guard, it sounds like, but what's the current state of COVID infections, especially in Tokyo? And nowadays in Tokyo or in Japan, we call it seventh wave, seventh wave, big waves coming again in the summer. Nowadays nationally, the number of victims with COVID infections is 15,000, 15,000, or it's going up to, it could be 20,000 in one day nationally, it is going up upward. So in terms of infections, it is going up. However, many of them or most of them are not so serious. No, no big death is announced or something like this. Yeah, this is a situation of COVID. Okay, now, I mean, I gotta tell you that we in Hawaii all wanna go to Japan sometime, but there's a lot of entry restrictions.  I mean, we can't get a good answer. When will Japan ease the entry restrictions for foreigners so we can travel to Japan like we used to before COVID? I would say it, unfortunately, unfortunately it will not be so soon because we Japanese or the Japanese government or the customs is very fearful of the spread of COVID. For example, if Hawaii people, American people, people from Europe came to Japan and COVID situation, the number of infections increases, then the government will be subject to very harsh opposition in this sense. So I would say it could be in that year or so, Japan's entry restrictions will be loosened in a year or so around. I don't be so optimistic to say at the end of year, Japan will be back to before COVID. It is, in my view, too optimistic. Okay, all right, well, yeah, we'll just have to wait and see on that too. These things are unpredictable. Now, talking about other current events, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, is there any common reaction in Japan to that? How does Japan feel about the Russia war in Ukraine? This is a very big event which opened the eye of Japan in terms of a country it is, as it would have been the case in many countries. You know, Japan is adjacent to, next to Russia. We have been subject to territory issues with Russia. And that event, Russia's invasion against Ukraine made a negative view against the issues of Japan's territory issues against Russia. It has been stuck in 80 years or 70 years. The four islands next to Hokkaido is invaded, in our view, invaded illegally by Russia. It has been taken away by Russia. And we had many diplomatic issues that many of us do not believe it will be solved in some good way. But this event, Russia's invasion against Ukraine made much more negative view against our territory issues. That's very interesting. I mean, in other words, there's a similar issue with the Kuro Islands, yes. And Japan that Ukraine is feeling and Russia's attempt, wow, 80, yeah, Russia's attempt to take over territory of another country. Yeah, that's a very interesting issue. I wanna ask you now, I will get into some personal things about you and your views of Japan culture. In December of 2021, you published a book titled Integrity. And I think we have an image of the book cover that we can put on the screen, Integrity. That's your book. What is that a book about? This book is about integrity. The word of which is not so familiar with Japanese people, but in terms of compliance, I am a lawyer, I'm a attorney, though I wear like this, that one of my expertise is advising Japanese company about compliance, very rigid terrorist issues. However, in this 20 years time, Japanese view about compliance too rigid, too red tape, too bureaucratic, they do not think by themselves. So I would like to change the view of Japanese people about compliance. So instead, I use a term Integrity, aiming to access more leadership to think about everything by themselves in that sense, yeah. So yeah, what I hear you saying is that compliance means, oh, just maybe following the appearances of what has been done in the past. And you're saying Integrity is more doing the right thing or choosing to do something else. Or choosing to do something that is right instead of just following compliance. Is that correct? Is it on the right track? Yeah, you are correct in understanding my intentions. For example, we see something and we see something but we have to do something. This is to do the right thing. We see something bad. We feel something uneasy about this in terms of compliance. We have to do some action. We have to be active or proactive. This is doing the good thing, but this incentive or motivation or moving forward, moving or accessing leadership would not be led, would not be made. We're only thinking about compliance, just compliance rules, just compliance rules. Instead, if we Japanese think about compliance, if we see something, we pretend to not to see something like this, I don't know that. I don't know that. You know the phrase, ignorance is bliss. We do not know that. I didn't know that. We pretend to not knowing anything. This is, I don't like this. This is not doing the right thing. Only by compliance, the society or the company or the employees can't behave good, can't do the right thing. So instead, I use the term integrity in order to encourage Japanese people to do the right thing. Okay, so not just go along but do the right thing. I hear you. And we have a similar feeling here in Hawaii too. It says, which is do the pono, do what's pono, which means do the right thing. Now, with all the problems that we've been talking about, do you have any hope for the world? Yes, I do. I try to. I try to be optimistic in everything somebody says. To be optimistic is intention, to be pessimistic is just feeling something like this. I have been optimistic not only to the world, but also in Japan itself. You know, the Japanese most aging society, the average age of Japan is 48, which is coincidentally exactly my age. Anyway, senior, many seniors, so elder society. However, we see many good younger generations very active, more into society issues. This is very good thing. I think this is a case in Hawaii and United States. So in that way, I've been better optimistic and what we should do is to show how we behave, what is to do the right thing, what to show, how happy we are. If the senior people are happy, I believe, younger generation would feel something in order to be happy like that, like Mark, like Tatsu. So younger generation would think how they behave. Yeah. Oh, and also I noticed on your website, you have one of your favorite quote is to live in hearts we leave behind is not to die. And that's a quote from Thomas Campbell, a Scottish poet. Why is that your favorite quote? I like that quote because my life will be completed only after I die. My reputation now in 2022, it's nothing to me. I don't care what they see me. I care, I do mine, what I would be seen after I die. I like another phrase is this, to seek acquaintances, to seek friends in terms of millennia, in thousand years time, to seek a blue bull from the peer concurrently at that time. This is just subject to peer pressure to do the right thing to our society in terms of Japan, Hawaii, United States, the world we should see. What is a right thing? So, yeah. And what I hear you saying too is how you are remembered, yeah, that's important. Now, one thing I wanted to mention and that you look like a Hawaii lawyer. You're dressed up and you have a ukulele. And I've seen a photo of you with. Yeah. But it also, yeah, on one of your websites. What is your connection with being the ukulele and looking like this? Thank you very much. This is not special clothes I do wear almost daily like this, carrying ukulele. I have been wearing like this in this five years or around because I have been to United States, I've been to Singapore, many of the world. In that society, I noticed the difference between Japan and other countries. In Japan, you may know, Japan is homogeneous society, strong peer pressure. Then we see others, less leadership. I do not like this. Instead, in Hawaii or Silicon Valley, United States, heterogeneous, black, white, yellow, many diversity and with heterogeneous society, less or weaker peer pressure. Then we can think freely. We can behave freely. We can do good without thinking of how they think of us or something like this. So in my life, I will have a lifetime hypothesis to change the society of Japan by wearing like this, carrying ukulele, wearing how I should and to make Japan a little bit heterogeneous society. All right, well, Tatsu, I wanna thank you for being my guest today and for sharing your personal insights, your personal opinions, your personal feelings. It's always good to talk to you. So I wanna thank you and Aloha, look forward to the next time we can be together in person. Aloha, Mark. I'm very honored to be on this program. Thank you very much. See you, see Hawaii or in Tokyo. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.


At a London conference they're discussing how to attract and retain more women in technology. It's such a waste for the UK economy not to use those diverse talents, not to get the benefits of diversity because we all know that when you've got a diverse team then you know you get real value both financial and innovative and everything else so we should so be doing something about this. But despite all the inspiring words in the UK's tech sector only 11% of IT specialists are women and this has been declining over the past 10 years. A lot of people are concerned about the low numbers of women in tech in the UK. Employers, policymakers, educators are all puzzling over why can we not recruit more women into the sector as a whole. It's time now we took some new approaches and new thinking to this problem. Clem Herman with her colleague Parvati Raghuram is visiting the offices of a big Indian technology firm in Milton Keynes. One way of addressing the problem of gender inequity in the UK IT industry is to compare it with other countries like India where there's a much higher proportion of women in IT. About 30% compared to 11% in the UK. So as compared to England, in India I saw a lot of women who are in the IT field. In fact when I joined the company in India my first three bosses were women. By comparing and understanding the differences between India and the UK this Open University research project will be very different to other studies. We're going to be doing some surveys through our partner IT companies and we're also going to be doing a series of in-depth interviews with individual professionals about their careers and working lives and to try and unpick some of the more subtle cultural factors that are different between the India context and the UK. We're also going to look at the experiences of migrant women who come from India to the UK in order to see how do they feel about being in such a masculinised workplace. In many meetings I find I'm the only woman in the meeting room especially when it goes into senior conversations or if it is technical conversations. It's more difficult in here because in India we've got family and somebody else who take care we have domestic help which is not available here. It's definitely difficult here other than in India. Back at the Open University the two researchers are reflecting on the importance of their research. I think this research is really important for the OU, for the research itself but also because it's related to our bigger strategic mission to support women in stem subjects that science, technology, engineering and maths. With their two-year project Parvati and Clerm are looking forward to catalyzing change for women in IT. We think this research could make a lot of difference to both participating firms but also to the industry in the UK and in India. We do have impact at the heart of it. That's why we're doing this. We want to make a difference. We want to be able to feedback our lessons into the IT industry, into IT education so it's not just about publishing papers, it's very much based in practice as well.


One year says that for a professional broadcaster, Hannity sucks at speaking. So have you, have you looked at Roger Ailes' book on communication, the way that he would test whether or not someone would be a good professional broadcaster is he'd watch them with a sound off, bro. So to get the full Sean Hannity effect, you need to watch with a sound off. It is, so pay attention in Pennsylvania. Herschel Walker continues to outpole radical Raphael Warnock in Georgia. That race also remains close. And perhaps the biggest political news comes out of the deep, deep blue state of New York, where Republican Lee Zeldin is now officially taking the lead in a brand new poll by Trafalgar. That's Robert Cahaley's group. Now, Lee Zeldin will be here as he's campaigning with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. That's straight ahead. And now the numbers are really, both of them will join us. Now the numbers are really encouraging. But let me be clear and let me pause right here. These races are very, very close. Most of them are within two points. So make no mistake, it doesn't matter if your preferred candidate is in the lead, if your preferred candidate is behind, if your preferred candidate is in a dead heat tie. Anything can happen. Don't think for a second this is a slam dunk. In other words, every voter needs to do their part. Take nothing for granted and don't forget what is at stake. Okay, so you were the message. This is actually a pretty good book by the late Roger Ailes, the man who developed Fox News.  Begin to talk about a political issue and see which part of your face moves and which doesn't. Using the same subject matter, repeat the conversation. However, imagine that you're now speaking to a child. See if your face softens, if your eyes become more expressive, if there is a tendency to care more that the listener understands what you are saying. Most people tend to use more facial expressions when talking to children. So I need to start talking to you like your little children. Let the little children come on to me. Okay, here are the 10 most common problems in communication. All right, this is a good book here by Roger Ailes. All right, lack of initial rapport with lessness. Stiffness or woodness in the use of the body. Presentation of material that is intellectually oriented. And the speaker forgets to evolve the audience emotionally. The speaker seems uncomfortable because of fear of failure, poor use of eye contact and facial expression, lack of humor, speech direction, and intent on the clear due to improper preparation. Inability to use silence for impact. A lack of energy causing inappropriate pitch pattern, speech rate and volume, and use of boring language and lack of interesting material. So you're asking 40, what does it mean? You are the message. 40, Richard Spencer's on with Ethan Ralph right now. 40 is a much better speaker than Roger Ailes after when he passed on 40. Talk dirty to me, 40. Yeah, oh, Clemente says I read that book. Some of it was good. Yeah, some of it is good. So I wanna see Richard Hananya in a prime time spot at Foxbro. Good evening and welcome to 40 tonight. Okay, you're the message. What does that mean? It means that when you communicate, it's not just the words you choose to send to the other person that make up the message.  Receiving person is bombarded with symbols and signals from you. Yeah, we're always transmitting. And if you're an addict, you're transmitting the disease. If you got intoxicated, you're transmitting God. We're always transmitting. Like a 50,000 watt KFI radio station. So everything you do in relation to other people causes them to make judgments about what you stand for and what your message is. You are the message comes out the fact that unless you identify yourself as a walking, talking message, understand you're constantly transmitting, you miss that critical point. The words themselves are meaningless unless the rest of you is in synchronization.  So I was talking to a fellow sex addict the other day and I was saying that the most important part of recovery is becoming comfortable with yourself. So if you did shameful, shameful things in the past, you need to be able to talk to someone about them and to relay honestly what you did without getting all tensed up without your voice, you know, croaking in shame, without getting a shame attack, your face blushing red. You need to have to talk about everything you've done so that you are at ease with yourself. That's the best way to minimize the chances of having your life disrupted by addiction. So generally speaking, people with secure attachment patterns meaning people who move towards people who treat them well and who are good for them and people who naturally move away from people who treat them badly and people who have a positive image of themselves, right? Secure attachment, these people are the least likely to be stuck with addictions. On the other hand, people like me and the way I was raised with insecure attachment patterns where I just obsess over relationships that were important to me or avoidant attachment patterns where you feel like just any kind of attachment is just way too scary.  Well, that creates a vast whole that addictions kind of rush to fill in. So over the past few years, I've learned to become increasingly comfortable with myself by attending the appropriate 12 step meetings, five to 10, 15 minutes of daily meditation has helped. Getting in a routine. I'm someone who needs routine chaos is not good for me. So I have a disciplined routine and that helps me achieve a comfort level. Having money in the bag, regular money coming in greatly helps comfort level, having good relations with my family, friends, wider community, neighbors, acquaintances, right? Getting along with people, having the best possible relations with everybody that I interact with, that does a tremendous amount towards my feeling of comfort, developing my health, working out, getting a decent sleep, getting plenty of exercise, eating right, stuff like that. And then noticing what makes me agitated and journaling about it and working it through. So the more comfortable I am, the less likely I am to for pray to ridiculous addiction. So I used to try to soothe my anxiety by pursuing sex, by pursuing pornography, by attention seeking, by going to extremes in politics and religion. But if I could just calm down, then I tend to make better decisions. Luke recommends Alexander technique for the face. No, Alexander technique is a holistic technique that Alexander technique is a way for noticing how you react to a stimulus and whether your reaction serves you. So many people react to a stimulus by their head, jutting forward, tipping back, compressing the neck. One shoulder tends to be higher than the other. One hip is going to be rotated forward, wrenching the whole back. People carry all sorts of unnecessary tension around the eyes, around the lips, and around the forehead. Like, look at this beautiful forehead. You see my forehead crinkling right now.  You see the waves of tension just radiating from my lips. I'm a man who is at ease in the world. I'm at ease with me. I'm at ease with you. I'm at ease with this beautiful community that we're creating. And so that radiates from my face. Facial Alexander techniques, disgusting but effective. Well, here's a basic Alexander. Let go of everything that you think you know. So that is, I took that in. I let go of everything that I think I know. I have moved from a state of judgment. When I do live streams, I'm frequently in a state of judgment. And now I'm just in a state of awareness, just observing what's going on around me and I don't need to judge it. When I do that, my face relaxes. The neck and the back unlock. The breathing comes easier. Like, I get more width and more length as I let go of that unnecessary tension. And so the Alexander technique. So we're noticing how you react to a stimuli and then learning how to let go of those responses that don't serve you. We tend to build up body arm ring, particularly as we get older. Body arm ring are these unnecessary tension patterns. So if you can learn to notice what your unnecessary tension patterns are, then start to release them. You will feel more at ease in the world. Other people will have more comfort with you because you are more comfortable with yourself. You'll be less compulsive, less driven. You'll make better decisions. You'll be calm. All right, so it's dangerous for an addicted personality to be struggling, right? If you have a tendency towards addiction, you want to minimize how much struggle you do. And when you do struggle, you want it to be in like an appropriate venue, such as you're struggling to lift a weight or you're struggling with a workout or you're struggling to learn Latin, right? You don't want to be going through the day struggling because you will be much more likely to relapse. It's like, oh, I've done good. I just deserve to feel good right now. Let me check out some pornography. So Roger Ailes says he would travel to various cities to evaluate TV talk show hosts who spend time with them. But before meeting the first time he checked into a hotel, watched their programs on TV and with the sound turned off for five to 10 minutes. So if there was nothing happening on the screen in the way the host looked or moved that made me interested enough to stand up and turn the sound up, then I knew the host was not a great TV performer. So Roger Ailes would watch the screen for interesting expressions on people's faces, sudden movement, laughter, or whatever made me say, hey, wonder what's going on here? I want to reach over and turn the sound up. So the less unnecessary layering of muscular tension you have, the more alive you'll be to the movement. So one of the possible downsides of the Alexander technique is you become much more transparent. So when I do this show, I read your comments. You can read literally the comments on the left side of the screen, but you can also read the effect of the comments on my face because there's very little unnecessary muscular tension on my face. When I read your comments, I react and you can see my reactions to your comments just flowing across my face. So if you have access to videotape, or someone to interview you, then turn the sound down, watch yourself. You're still interesting. Place a mirror by the TV telephone.  So when you let go of that unnecessary muscular tension, which can be in your forehead, around your eyes, around your lips, right? When you let go of that muscular tension, you're gonna look much more engaged and lively. Do you gesture when you speak? Do you ever smile? The people who are the best communicators communicate with their whole being. They are animated, expressive, interesting to watch. So tape an ape by a tape of a famous actor. Reading selections from literary works, record yourself reading those same selections, compare your vocal quality. So tape an ape. Tape the best professionals, try to imitate the pros, try to develop a range for your voice. So you start down here, range or vocal variety should be your goal too at what makes a voice interesting, alive and distinctive just as you'd watch, right? So you have that vocal variety, but mainly you want that climbing the staircase, right? You want ascending melodies. Just as you'd watch the tape of Jack Nicklaus swinging a golf club to help you affect your own swing from Bartina Navarra to Lova, swinging a tennis racket to improve your back end. You can do the same with recordings by professionals. So you get that ascending melody there. If you care, they care. So if you care about what you're talking about, other people will care.  Your voice will automatically move up and down. You'll automatically start ascending the staircase, right?  Every communication situation asks yourself, what am I feeling here? How do I feel about what's going on? So right now I'm enjoying myself. Being committed is crucial. Very few people freeze up or unable to speak or go into a monitor when they feel strongly about something. Roger says, when I speak to others, I'm always in control of time. That's rate of speech, pauses, space, where and how I move, eye contact, emotional messages that my eyes send, my voice, volume, pronunciation, changes in pitch and tone, my state of mind, calm, happy, upbeat, self-confident, my attitude. I'm threatened, open-minded, friendly, the flow of dialogue so that I know when and how to insert my ideas and opinions and my feelings. So he says, I can correct 15 communication technique problems with one ounce of energy. It's fundamental to success. The right energy you are absorbing what others are broadcasting to you. You project enthusiasm. Most so-called speech problems clear up automatically if you are energetic and enthused. So a good communicator's energy is a life force, it's a vitality. Properly focused energy comes across as positive, a magnetic intensity rather than a negative, overall intensity. So it's an inner flame that we all display where we sincerely believe something we talk about. We're committed intuitively. We know true energy when we see it and hear it in a communicator. It's the energy associated with a Harry Truman or a Martin Luther King or a Winston Churchill. We all know people who radiate this life force in abundance. When people with energy speak or even listen, they don't display inattention or lack of focus in the eyes or lack of interest in the face. People in love have energy. People who love their jobs have energy. If your energy is up, your rate, volume, and pitch will be appropriate to the situation. If you're enthusiastic, if your posture is good, if you're friendly, if you're comfortable, then you have the right kind of energy. So Roger says when he first started speech coaching, he did it the old fashioned way with drills and practice on rate, pitch, and volume. My clients made progress, but it was slow and tedious today. I do it organically. I work on the energy level of the communicator. So that was one of the challenges for Dennis Prager when he got into radio. The people who are in charge of the station, the program directors would keep telling him, more energy, more energy, more energy, more energy. So that's one of the big differences between the professional broadcaster and the amateur is that the professional broadcaster has those ascending melodies, speaks with a tremendous amount of energy. So compared to how you'd speak in normal life, you need to speak with at least five times, if not 10 times the amount of energy on a YouTube live stream or on the radio or on TV. So what's the energy level? Is it appropriate to the situation? What are your goals? What are you trying to say? What do you mean? How do you feel? How much do you care? If you're in touch with these things, your technique will improve quickly and dramatically. Most people think that their energy level is much higher than it is. Now he says 80% of our clients are surprised when they first see themselves on tape. They say, I didn't know I was so boring that most people come across with insufficient energy. Most 99% of us are kind of inhibited and so we don't really go far enough with our energy. Look forward, I'd love to play poker with you. Don't play poker. Yeah, my face is way too transparent. You'd take me to the cleaner. Relax in that ease of the world, harmony of mind, body and spirit. Roger Ailes always knew the right moment to pinch a bottom. Because I've never known of a person being fired because he refused to talk to the press. So it went in doubt, don't talk to the media. Remember, the media has nothing to lose by interviewing you. On the other hand, you could have plenty to lose. Okay, let's go back to Greg Gardner. It's just exploited. But even without an election, they probably do the same damn thing. They cherry-picked the psycho's political positions to pretend he's conservative, you know, like Liz Cheney used to do. What, did he compare her to him? Yeah, I hope so.  Meanwhile, Republicans focus on crime. Home invasions are up as are murders, rapes and robberies, and in places where politicians advocated to funding the cops. We can call that a political take too, except this one is rooted in reality. I suppose Republicans could have made up stuff as well, like there was a wit and gavel found at the scene with chocolate, Hagan-Daw's ice cream on the handle. But they didn't. And so the media screeches like Hamala having her feet tickled.  Even after a violent crime is committed, rights. If you righties continue this fact-based, we're gonna smack all of you with hammers.  So there are lessons here, but politicians in the media, they aren't interested. It's about only political outcomes. Last week, it was pretending John Federman's brain worked. Now, now it's the Pelosi attack was MAGA, January 6th, and hate speech. It's a constant threat because it's code for criticizing Democrats. But as long as they win in November, then nothing ever needs fixing. And that's why the criminally deranged are still on the street. That's why this happened. There's nowhere for the mentally ill to go. And bottom line at Pelosi had just been another victim.  If it was just an Asian lady, we'd likely be told beating people with a hammer is a misdemeanor. And the media- Yeah, good point there. Okay, so here's another book on a similar theme. It's the autobiography of the founder of 60 Minutes Australia. Say it with feeling Gerald Stone. MAGA stars, media stars, trailblazing TV memoirs of a prime time warrior. So after the Cuban Missile Crisis, Gerald Stone got a little concerned about living in the United States. He thought it was too dangerous. So he moved his family to Australia. Now his father was a Russian-Jewish-American bootlegger. Then Gerald Stone and family moved to Australia in 1962. And he noticed that Australians tend to be much more emotionally repressed than Americans. So Americans tend to much more wear their emotions on their sleeves. So I heard one American sound Dennis Prager's radio show that she went to the Sydney Opera House and after her performance, she was the only one to stand up and cheer. So this exuberant display of emotion, much more of an American thing than an Australian or an English thing. So journalists in any country tend to treat the news the same way. This is a newcomer. I brought a precious asset of fresh pair of eyes along with the sharpened perceptions of a stranger eager to make his mark. My writing style stood out as different from what Australian readers were used to. I made an extra effort to explain things my colleagues regarded as too common to bother with. And as many Australians are still burdened by the reticence of their British heritage and unused to discussing their feelings, that reluctance to delve too deeply was reflected in the press coverage. As a recently arrived American, I was constantly made fun of for being part of a population obsessed with psychoanalysis. But my background made me more prone to pursue issues most of my Aussie colleagues treated as taboo. So we noted Australians treated their beaches with the reverence of open air reverence cathedrals. When mates got together, they did so on the basis of absolute equality in Australia. Americans tend to be earnest and idealistic. Australians tend to be more reserved and skeptical. So Australians are less burdened by sentimentality. They have less of an over-eagerness to please. They're more skeptical, more quick on the draw with a deflating remark. In 1964, John Lennon said to Gerald Stone, how'd you get into this country? I thought they had a white Australia policy. And in the 1960s, he interviewed a theater manager who said, if someone's got ABO blood, he's got only one place and that's with the other darkies. They all smell, they're ignorant, they drink too much. People from the outside just don't understand what they're like. So Gerald Stone became entranced by TV and it's far greater emotional impact compared to print. Something as simple as a momentary pause for a tightening of the lips could alert the public. So he met David Frost. He noted he was as charming and charismatic in person as he came across on screen, but not for a moment longer than he needed to be. The veins in his temple were as easy to read as a stopwatch, flashing purple to let you know precisely to the second when your time with him was over and it was back to business for him, moving on to devote himself to another one of perhaps a dozen other projects. So here's the quintessential TV personality. Skill performer trained to communicate with his viewers at every level, not just through the words he chose, but the varying rhythm and pitch of his intonation.  Journalists might be highly trained in the art of gathering information, but they weren't half as effective communicators as David Frost. The facts don't sell themselves, take someone willing and able to use every trick in the trade to get their message across to say it with feeling. So Gerald Stone hired his TV reporters at 60 Minutes Australia, one of them to be as warm and animated in their delivery as they might be at a lively dinner party with close friends. Whatever the story, tell it in a way that makes each viewer think you are speaking directly to them with such feeling that they can't help, but listen and care. The TV stardom is the ability to come across as the kind of natural friendly person anyone could easily relate to. So Stone says, Australians tend to take life less seriously than Americans, much less prone, called strong views on personal choice issues such as sexuality, morality, religion. All right, let's get a little bit more here from Greg Gaffo.  Their, their state, California state logo should be a bare and a straight jacket. And with all the homeless in campus, their new state motto should be the golden shower state. Their state bird, a $1.7 million toilet. I know it's not a bird, but they don't have a state appliance. So the suspect was a homeless, iconic, like tens of thousands on the streets. And they're a danger to you, but now also to politician spouses. The things that happened to everyone else finally happened to someone who matters, the husband of the speaker. He's not a cop, a retiree or a student. He's rich and powerful. And if they throw the book at the suspect,