Hi everyone, thank you for joining us today. We're going to give it a minute to allow everyone to join in and get settled. So in the meantime, I see a lot of participants are here. If you are here and you can hear me, I would love to know either what school you're from, where you're representing today, or you can just tell me you can hear the audio so we can make sure that all this is going to be heard by you all. You can just let me know in the chat. Welcome to Josh and Carrie. All right. Okay, so welcome everyone to the second Give Education training webinar all about strategy. My name is Sarah and I'll be leading you through today's presentation. Just a few quick housekeeping items to note before we get started. I want to let you all know that the webinar is going to be recorded and it'll be posted in the toolkit on the Give Education site under the Resources tab. So you can refer back to that whenever you need it. And today you can also use the Zoom Q&A little button. Excuse me to send across any questions and we'll get to as many as we can either during the webinar or at the very end. Okay, so a little bit again. My name is Sarah and I'm with Mighty Cause. I'm also joined by my colleague Don who will be helping answer some questions today and so Mighty Cause, we're with Mighty Cause and we are the platform provider for Give Education. We also have Carrie joining us today from Alumni Nations as well as Josh from Central High School Foundation. So I want to give them both a warm welcome and pass the mic over to Carrie so she can say a few words. Len, thank you so much for attending today. And I hope that you find that the seminar provides you with some useful information on how to make a truly successful Give Education day. We, Alumni Nations, had started this to really celebrate the K-12 public education institutions and give them an opportunity to raise funds. And when you think about it, I'm often overwhelmed that, you know, we have these wonderful Give Tuesday and all of these excellent opportunities, but there's never really up until last year been an opportunity to focus on public education and it's involved in so many facets of our lives. And this is a great day and opportunity for you to get out there and earn some some funds and really do well. And we are continuing to look forward to grow this program year after year. And for those of you that are returning to the program, it's great to see you back this year. But let your friends know as well. We want to make sure to really open this up to people all across the country. And it's not too late to get involved and to sign up and to create your profile. Last year we had, you know, organizations that had jumped on board I think three weeks before and we're still able to raise and achieve their their financial goals of what they were looking for. So we encourage you to get involved. And if there's anything that you need from a technical perspective or have questions, I'm your gal. You can certainly email me at give-educationatalumniomations.com. We will do everything I'm here as a resource for you to help you make this successful and do anything that I can to assist. But thank you so much for joining us today. Awesome. Thank you both. Josh, you're welcome to say anything as well if you want. Yeah, hi everybody. Looking forward to a great webinar today. My name is Josh Busey and I'm the creative director and database administrator for the Central High School Foundation in Omaha, Nebraska. I believe this is our eighth consecutive Giving Day participation of some kind and it's something that we've had a lot of success with in the past. And I just wanted to say that, you know, we want to do everything we can to help you be successful for Give Education Day 2022. And so there'll be some things that as we go along, I might try to chime in, bring up some points and things that we've done in the past that have been successful. But I don't want to take too much time away from the Mighty Cause team. So happy to be here and looking forward to a great webinar. Awesome. Thank you both. We're just really excited to be here with you all for Give Education again this year. Real quick, I'll be brief. If you don't know about Mighty Cause, just a quick intro.  We've been around since 2006 and we're actually one of the first platforms to host Giving Days. So we're just very excited to be involved with Give Education again this year. Alrighty. So our agenda. Here's a look at today's agenda. We'll be going over some of the basics for Give Education. Then we're going to talk through some prizes available during the Giving Day and some of the strategies you can use to help make your campaign a success. We'll do a Q&A session at the end of the presentation. So if you do have a question while we're presenting, you can just click the little Q&A button on your screen and you can send this to us. And I think Don may be helping to just hop on and answer any Q&As as they come through. Alrighty, so our event basics. So Give Education is hosted by alumni nations and will take place on March 23rd this year. It's a 24 hour Giving Day. It'll run from midnight to midnight central time. Early Giving will start on March 1st. Registration is required for this Giving Day. And any 501c3 organization or a school with an MCES code are welcome to participate. So first things first, if you haven't already done so, you're going to need to register your organization. To register, you'll just go to the GiveEducation.com site and click register. On the registration page, you can either search for your organization or you can create an account. And then within 24 hours of registration, you'll receive an email with next steps to help your organization plan for success. And of course, if you have any questions, you're welcome to email, you know, Carrie, like she said, or you can email support at mightycause.com. So once you're registered and ready to roll, you might be wondering just what you need to do next. So first, you're going to want to customize your organization profile. If you have not watched our first webinar, Getting Started, that webinar focused on all the nuts and bolts of how to navigate the Mighty Cause platform. And has a ton of really great Getting Started information on how to customize your organization profile. So I don't want to repeat too much of that content here. So do check that out. It's available on demand so you can view it from the toolkit whenever it is most convenient to you. So after your organization page is customized and filled out, how you would like, you're going to want to start to really think about communication strategies for the giving day and the different outlets that are available to you to reach your donors. So you want to really start thinking about the goals you have your organization, excuse me, for your organization during the Give Education giving event. You'll also want to start to think about securing matching grants to entice your donors. And you'll want to start thinking about how to engage your community and supporters or your ambassadors of your organization to help with peer to peer fundraising for your organization. So this is a really great time to just get creative and get excited about your Give Education campaign and really plan on how you want to connect with and make the appeal to your donors. Alrighty, so I want to make sure we definitely mentioned the good tools that are available to you as you get ready for Give Education and that is the organization toolkit. The toolkit is located on the home page for GiveEducation.com and it just filled with tips, tricks, FAQs, walkthroughs. It also has some templates you can use for your email and social media. So help you get inspired and figure out how to promote your campaign. This is where you will also be able to find today's training recording as well as the first training. So definitely check that out and refer to it while you're planning your campaign. Some prizes. So let's talk about prizes. So each hour during the giving event this year from midnight to midnight central, one participating organization will be randomly selected to receive an additional $100 in prize money. And each nonprofit is only eligible for one hourly prize during the giving event. So if you'd like more details, you can see the prizes tab on GiveEducation.com. So now we're really going to get into the nitty gritty on campaign strategy. So since Give Education is a 24 hour event, the trick to making the most of your campaign is to really sustain your fundraising momentum. And one really great way to do that and make sure your campaign is on track is to set many goals for your organization to help generate buzz and just overall build excitement during the day. So set these many goals for certain hours of the day so you can keep people excited about your own goals and continue working towards, you know, whatever those might be. And many goals also help sustain your fundraising momentum and really get people excited about helping you reach your goals. So to set many goals, you'll want to think of your overall fundraising goal that your organization has and what you'll need to raise or how many donors you'll need to get each hour or section of the day to reach those goals. So be sure to keep in mind when your donors are also most active and you'll want to adjust your hourly or section goals accordingly. So if you know there are certain times of the day that'll be slower for you, you might want to boost that time period by utilizing a matching grant to help really just shake up your campaign and get some momentum during those times. So something else you can do to get your campaign rolling is asking for seed donations. So these donations are from people in your organization's inner circle that essentially will break the ice with with other donors. They really help get the ball rolling and they're called seed donations because they make the number of donations grow. So people to ask for a seed donation might be your board members, your staff, especially those who are in director levels or high level leadership at your organization. You can also ask your organization's volunteers or anyone else like parents or, you know, people who are working at your school who are highly engaged in your work. So just a reminder, seed donations really don't have to be huge donations. It's something that can get into the bank and to your donor kind of minds. They're not the first. Sometimes it's hard for people to be the first one to donate to a cause. So just really getting a couple people who you know will donate so that you can move your campaign forward and start to get more donations coming in. Okay, so great strategy for driving donations on a giving day is also securing a matching grant. So a matching grant is essentially a large donation that your organization is going to leverage to bring in other smaller donations by offering it up as a match. So for instance, if you had someone who was willing to give you $1,000 instead of just putting that $1,000 into the bank and being done calling it a day, you could use it as a matching grant. So you would take that $1,000 and say to those who are donating, hey, between this hour and this hour, any donations you make will be matched up to $1,000. So that basically allows them to double their donation. People love to get more money, more bang for the buck. So this is going to be really helpful. You can do a lot within the Mighty Cause Matches tool like setting a cap for donation matching.  So it's a cool little kind of tool that allows you to do a lot with your matching grant. And especially on a giving day matching grants can be a really powerful way to drive your donations. So since a matching grant is ultimately just a large donation, you're going to want to follow the same process as you would when you secure a major grant gift. So you're going to prospect, cultivate and ask. People you should consider as prospects for a matching grant would be, you know, anyone up again in high level board members, anyone who might be happy to provide a matching grant. One thing you can also consider is asking if you have a board to work together to provide the match. So if you have people who still need to pay dues, for instance, you could utilize dues and turn them into a matching grant. Consider your major gift donors who have given large donations to your organization in the past as well. These are really good prospects. And providing a matching grant can be a fun way for them to liven up their donation.  You can also give the donors some extra recognition when you're promoting the match. So major gift donors who like to have a little shout out or even better matching grant prospects, those who like to be acknowledged. Corporate sponsors are also really great prospects because it's a fun, proactive way for them to get involved in a very public way if they so choose and draw attention to their philanthropy. So at this stage in the game, you're, you're probably making phone calls, setting up emails and starting to cultivate these prospects by letting them know you're at what you're doing, seeing how warm they might be to the idea of getting involved. And then in the coming weeks, you're going to want to make your ask, shore up the details with them. You can also have more than one match running at the same time. On my because if you get a lot of great response for matches, you don't need to feel like you have to pick and choose. You can queue them up throughout the day as well. So promoting your matching grant. So at the end of the day, a matching grant is a marketing tool. So in order to make the most of your matching grant you're going to need to promote it. So the first step is going to the matching grant tool on your give education organization profile, and you'll want to add it there. So there are some marketing tools built into the platform for your matching grant, such as like putting a sticker on your donate button when the grant is active which all your donors will be able to see some changes to your to your checkout process also will reflect the match and the match will get listed on your organization profile. You'll also want to add some information to your story in the about section, especially if it's a big match and promote it on all your social media channels, you'll want to send out an email to all your donors or prospects to let all of your donors know about the match countdowns are really great these will add urgency so counting down and sharing your progress is a great way to get people excited and urge them to just stop what they're doing and make a donation so they can further their dollars. Activating your ambassadors so moving on for matching grants, we just want to talk a little bit about ambassadors ambassadors are people who are usually in your organizations in our circle who can help boost your campaign. So that includes board members volunteers. You know, anyone who has highly engaged staff members so utilizing ambassadors can help you break out of your list of existing supporters as well and engage new people and people that might not otherwise you have, you might not otherwise have access to. So an ambassador can help you buy it. You know the most simple thing is just sharing a link to your page with their social circle to ask them to donate and help boost your campaign for give education, or if you have like a board member for instance who is super well connected that can be a huge boost. Or they can help by getting involved with peer to peer fundraising which we'll get into next. So peer to peer fundraising is a fundraising technique where basically you're deputizing your supporters to fundraise on your behalf. So the mighty cause platform is actually set up for super easy peer to peer fundraising. So this is a great way to shake up your campaign and inquire new donors. So if you wanted to try peer to peer you would ask ambassadors your supporters to set up a fundraising page for your organization on mighty cause for give education. It might sound like a big ask but it's often a really super fun way to engage your biggest supporters and really allows them to tell their own story about your organization, how they came to work with you or why they love you why your work is important to them. And remember that this these campaigns don't distract or draw attention away from your campaign, because they're all operating alongside your campaign so these campaigns are typically reaching out to people that they know personally for donations and in most cases these are their friends their colleagues and family, and these aren't typically people your organization might have access to solicit for donations. So you're actually picking up new donors through these peer to peer campaigns most of the time. So for people like you know board members on here staff program alumni. This can be a really great way for them to get involved without just being asked for money and donations. It's a really meaningful way for them to not just make a donation or share a link. And this is a great way. It's actually a really great way to be a part of your stewarding process and really building and sustaining relationships with these supporters. Jumping for just a second so for us, we kind of consider for peer to peer fundraising, we kind of think about people from like a brand management perspective so like we have what we call like cheerleaders people who are out there, using their social media platforms or even just like word of mouth, sharing what we do on a daily basis but for Give Education Day. These are folks who they don't necessarily have to be donating to your cause they can use like their social cloud to kind of spread your message and get the word out there so like, I would just encourage you to think of this as a way to not necessarily seek out donations from these people like if they do donate great, but think of it more like a social perspective like what can they do to further the mission of your organization and get the word out there about your your Give Education Day campaign. Great. Very helpful. So we've definitely seen organizations get some really great peer to peer action by just inviting people on social media as well. Just sending them an email asking for their help for younger people if you have connections, obviously you know from schools and you know younger alumni who have big social networks and are really comfortable online. So they don't have a lot of cash to give but this can be a really excellent way for them to help out and make a meaningful contribution to your organization. One thing to note to help make things even easier for these people you can set up fundraising templates within your account, you can pre fill images, pre fill talking points facts, your logos. And if you're you have the capacity you can also offer to just help set up the pages for them. For organizations that utilize the peer to peer fundraising, we do find that they tend to raise a lot more money on giving days. So it's definitely worth, you know, talking about how you can incorporate some of us into your campaign strategy. Team fundraising so if you manage to generate a lot of interest and peer to peer or you've done that for Give Education in the past and you're looking for something a little new, you can consider trying out team or event fundraising on your head, or on top of. So teams and events can be great for groups of people who want to fundraise together so if you have a board or you have a company or you just have you know parent teacher group or volunteer group teams on events are a great way to get people working together and united over the same cause. You can also inspire some friendly competition to keep them all motivated. So the difference between teams and events is basically that an event allows individuals and groups of people to participate and fundraise together, while a team fundraiser is a group of individuals working together towards one collective goal. Another thing about using our teams or events products for a giving day is that there's tools built in the make managing it much easier so for instance, you can create a template fundraiser so people can use this to get set up quickly and you can pre fill some sections of their page. You can email team and event members through the platform to keep them motivated. So these are essentially just a little more complex peer to peer campaigns. So if you've got a lot of people willing to fundraise for you or you've done peer to peer before and you want to try your hand and a new type of campaign. Alright email strategy so your email list is going to be one of the most important tools for you during give education, because emails are a direct line to your supporters. If you're on social media, you don't have to worry about an algorithm getting in your way or preventing people from seeing what you send them because unless they've unsubscribed your emails it's going to end up right in their inbox and probably send them a notification on their phone as well. So I want to talk a little bit about email strategy because that's going to be super important. In general, you'll want to keep emails relatively short, simple sweet skimmable. You can read email on their phones these days. So you want to be able to have them skim through to get to the point. People are more likely to read emails, probably that pertain directly to them as well so we highly recommend segmenting your email list by sorting your donors into a few key groups. So, for instance, donors who have given a lot or given a regular basis or one time donors or people who have utilized your services, but never donated one time donors you're born volunteers, you get it. You don't need to craft entirely new emails to each of these groups, but you're going to want to probably tweak small things about the emails for each group to make it more personal to that group. So for instance, in an email to volunteers, you might acknowledge how they already help your organization and you wouldn't want to send an email to a major gift donor asking for just $25 if they're a major donor. So first things first you'll identify your key segments, however it applies to your organization, and then you'll figure out how to tailor your message to them. The email is tailored to who the recipient is and the relationship they have with your organization they're much more likely read it and to take action on it. How you segment it really depends on the program you're using but services like constant contact and MailChimp will use tags to segment groups of people on your email list. One thing you'll need to pay close attention to is the timing of your emails. And taking the time to schedule as much as you can beforehand and having a template email ready for things that you need to send out on the date of your education like an eblast asking people to help you get your campaign goal met, or any announcements if you've won an hourly prize. Excuse me as mentioned before most people are reading their email in their phones so make sure that you choose a mobile friendly email template. And test it out beforehand you can send yourself a test email try it on your iPhone your Android, your iPad, whatever you have just to make sure that it is looking and conveying the right love the way you want it to. If you have the capacity leading up to the event we also recommend doing some ab testing, especially with subject lines. You'll want to make sure people are driven to open your emails for give education. So trying out different subject line formats try things like adding emojis you're going to want to see what works better so on the day of your prepared. So, if you're listening wondering what is he talking about a be testing. If you're new to that term is basically splitting an email 5050 and testing one variable variable so if you're testing a button color or a subject line half your email list will get email a with one subject line the other half can get email be with another subject line. And then you can go into your email service provider like MailChimp and see which email gets the most opens. So, to continue on this example so for the button color or placement the email with the most clicks would be the winner for that email you could. You just really also want to be careful about not over testing too many variables. Throw too many variables and it's going to make it hard to see why something might have won an email test or performed better. And lastly, your call to actions or your CTA should be clear and action oriented so something like give now donate now help us today are really great. More passive call to actions like thanks for donating or please consider contributing are not as strong and effective you want to be crystal clear and you want to meet urgent. Social media strategy. So social media. For a high six day we really recommend just staying in your comfort zone. Just going where your audience is so what we mean by that is that if you've never logged on the tick tock before in your entire life, you don't need to start to use tick tock for give education. If you have all the bulk of your followers in Facebook, but only a handful on Instagram and you should really spend your time and energy and effort, really promoting your campaign on Facebook where you're just bulkier supporters are rather than Instagram. So putting your efforts into the platform where you're most likely to reach people and really have an impact. Finally, as well, just like we recommend scheduling emails we recommend scheduling any social posts you can ahead of time to save yourself a lot of trouble during the giving day and leading up to it. You can get like all your key content scheduled with Facebook's publishing tools or creator studio. You can go into tweet decks schedule your tweets save any live posting for stuff that needs to be done the same day, like thinking a donor. If you have progress prize announcements. We find it's super helpful to assign someone on your team to social media for the event so if you have a trusted parent volunteer or a trusted supporter or a board member or someone who can monitor your social media. So they can quickly respond to comments interact with their followers, keep the momentum up on your social feeds. We recommend budgeting a little money as well to help boost some of your social posts or your tweets so for $10 to $20 for an ad it can actually really go a long way. You'll want to make sure your ad is targeted properly as well though so if you aren't sure how to target an ad you can always just default to targeting the people who like your page or the people, the audience that already follows you. It depends on the type of content that does well on social media it depends a little bit on the platform, but in general photos and videos are going to do really well, and you're going to want to consider doing something, maybe a little out of the box. Like a possible Facebook live stream video or a small watch party for part of your campaign. These types of interactive features really help generate buzz, while delivering that ever so lovely algorithm friendly content. And finally, if you're when you're planning your campaign you're going to want to consider follow ups the follow up is super important to keep in mind. When you're planning your content you'll want to plan your thank yous to your donors things like making a video sharing a photo of your staff can be super successful for this. So make sure to talk about the impact of the funds you raise and just kind of close that overall loop on your campaign that means if you are fundraising for something specific, like a new piece of equipment or improvements you're building or something like that. You'll also want to update and send emails periodically on that progress. You'll want to make sure you've got an onboarding plan in place for your new donors, so they come back to donate again. So if you collect addresses mailing them a welcome packet can be a really great way to get them onboarded. You can also create an automated email journey so they can get more info about what you do why it's important to hopefully continue supporting your work. Alrighty so as for support as we wrap up I just want to make sure all the support contact info is here for you for your reference so our mighty house support team is a super great resource before and during the giving day for anything campaign related. If you need help setting up EFT if you need some help figuring out how to strategize around your timeframe. If your donors want, you know, another receipt sent you can reach out to our support outlet and anytime. The times are 9am to 5pm Eastern, you can call, you can email us support at mightyhouse.com. And we will shift into the questions section. That was a lot of information to observe so thank you to everyone for sticking around. If you have any questions you can click the Q&A panel, type those in and then I'm going to open the floor also to carry and Josh if there's anything you'd like to add you can do so now as well. Yeah, I was just going to say, traditionally what we do as donations are coming in. We believe in trying to call the donor possible on the day of and usually we try to get a student or a couple students in here. When we call the donors are really excited when they get a chance to connect with a current student at the school. So it's usually just like a we give them the students a script but it's usually just like a quick hey thank you for your donation, we really appreciate it. But then we follow up as soon as we can with a postcard or in some cases a postcard and an email to those donors saying because of you, here's what we did. So the total amount raised, the number of people who are participated, and then we try to list some action items of like what kind of impacts we were able to achieve thanks to their money that we received. And so you, it's an important piece to not only thank them, but also let them know what you were able to do because of their support. I think that's important as well. That's great. I love that you all have students reach out. Let's super personally. Let's see I don't see any questions coming through something else to that we learned last last year. Mighty cause has a great kind of indicator bar on your organization page to keep track of how much money you raise as it comes in. And something that it's super minor but something that I think is worth mentioning. Even if you're able to get maybe your matching gift money to count early. It's nice to have some kind of information on the page so if a donor goes your page it doesn't say zero donors zero dollars donated. It doesn't say exceed money or like something to start the event off. I think that also indicates probably on the donor's end a willingness to participate if they're not necessarily the first one to jump in and participate get their feet wet. Yeah, that's very true. I love to see other people also contributing so seeing other people caring and being involved like by through seeing other donations will really inspire more people to donate. No questions. Well, if you all do think of any questions, you can reach out. Carrie put her information up there you're also welcome to reach out to our support team. Yeah. Okay, well I'm going to thank everyone again for joining us today thank you Carrie thank you Josh for your hard work as always and always providing valuable insight to us. The webinar will be uploaded to the toolkit on give education along with the slides so you don't have to relist into my voice. You can download the slides and review them at any time. And remember you can always reach out to support support and mighty cause calm and thank you everyone and happy fundraising.


From around the globe, it's theCUBE with digital coverage of IBM Think 2021, brought to you by IBM. Hello everybody, welcome back to IBM Think 2021. The virtual edition, my name is Dave Vellante and I'm pleased to welcome back a long time CUBE alum, Jim Whitehurst, who's the president of IBM and I'll call him Chief Cultural Evangelist. Welcome Jim, great to see you again. Great to see you, Dave. Thanks so much for having me.  I mean, amazing. I wonder if you could share, what's the most important thing you've learned in your first year? Well, well, I mean, as you said, I would have never thought it. Yeah, I was a kid to have an IBM PC on the block and was always into technology but never saw myself as like, you know, running a big tech company. So it is humbling. I would say that there are tons of lessons in the first year. I guess the two that strike me most is, one is just related to strategy and that's, you know, Red Hat and most technology companies were very customer focused but it's around, you know, whatever technology we're bringing to market where IBM has fundamentally transitioned, you know, kind of transformed itself over time to make sure it can meet customer needs. So it's sold off businesses, it's bought other businesses, it's created new businesses. So it really shows the focus and value on serving our customers and doing whatever it takes to do it. And that's been a fundamental kind of different strategy that most companies have had. I think one of the reasons that we've been around for over a hundred years. The second is, you know, I'm deeply into culture and I've talked a lot about the difference running Red Hat that's all about innovation versus, you know, Delta Airlines where I was before which is driving efficiency. IBM is both. And so really trying to think through how you run an organization that needs to run the financial systems of the world at extraordinary reliability and drive roadmaps on things like quantum computing. At the same time, be able to innovate iteratively, you know, with our customers and in open source communities and kind of getting that balance right as a leader. It's, you know, you're kind of doing what we did at Red Hat and what we did at Delta but kind of doing it together. And I think that stretched me as a leader and kind of taught me a lot about how we're thinking about continuing to evolve the culture at IBM. Now, of course you do this leadership series you put out things out on LinkedIn. And you know, words matter and that's what I take away from a lot of the little short hits that you do which I really appreciate. My stuff that I put Jim on LinkedIn is you got to invest like 15, 20 minutes. So I really appreciate the short hits but you do that regular series and I'm kind of curious. Do you do that to reach more IBM people? Do you, open source culture? You're trying to help others. And I'm curious as to sort of why that platform as opposed to sending around an internal thing on IBM. And I'm wondering if your principles and how they've evolved kind of post pandemic. Well, so first off, maybe that comes from Red Hat but I think IBM shares that it's, you know if you have something really, really valuable you want to share it. And look, when I am out talking to our customers CEOs and some of the biggest companies of the world honestly we rarely talk about technology because other people are more detailed or deep in that we primarily do talk about culture and how you think about again how do you take an organization that's been built to drive efficiency and scale on a global basis and make it able to be more nimble and more innovative. And so, you know and obviously hopefully that's all with IBM and Red Hat technologies but ultimately most of my conversations at a senior leadership level are about culture and leadership style to drive that. And so if that's valuable for CEOs of some of the world's largest companies it's valuable to leaders, you know kind of across all spectrums, all sizes. And so I think that LinkedIn is a good way to kind of take some of those messages and make sure we were able to share those much more broadly. So certainly I spend more time talking about it inside of IBM and I spend a lot of time with our clients talking about it. But I think those many of the lessons are applicable more broadly and so why not share them? And LinkedIn's a great platform to be able to do that. How about, how have your principles have your principles sort of changed and how have they evolved post pandemic? Well, I think a couple of things. So one is the pandemic kind of forces you to get more precise about it. And what I mean by that is, you know so much of leadership is about building credibility and trust and influence. And you know when you're seeing someone in 3D live you know visual cues can kind of mean a lot and the water cooler conversations or who you run into in the hall can all help kind of create that level of trust in but you can't do that in 2D, you know as great as Zoom and other platforms are you just can't quite do it. And so you have to be much more thoughtful in how you're creating opportunities to kind of create trust. So I'd say I've gotten more surgical in thinking about kind of what those elements of leadership are that do that. I think the second thing I've really learned at IBM again is back to this, you know we have to be able to do both kind of drive kind of a future state in a known world as well as I call it seek a future state in an unknown world. So, you know driving a roadmap for quantum computing takes a number of different technologies coming together in one year and two years and five years. And that really does have to be pre-planned which is very, very different and I'll call the iterative innovation approach that we use at Red Hat and open source communities and working with our clients. And we have to do both. And so as a leader, you really have to understand the problem you're trying to solve and apply slightly different kind of leadership tactics against that. So when you're executing a known versus you are trying to create something in an unknown does require different approaches and we have to do both in IBM. And I think that's the struggle a lot of companies have. Every company needs to do that. You know, if you're Delta Airlines, you don't want anybody innovating on the safety procedures before your flight. Yet you want a lot of innovation happening on your website and your mobile app. So how do you bring those together? And as a leader, you can have a common set of values but recognize you have to bring different tools to the table depending on the context in which you're leading. And so I've learned a lot more and gotten a lot crisper with that since being at IBM. Interesting. I mean, the pandemic we all know it's been terrible but one of the upshots has been we had a glimpse of the future sort of shoved into a fourth march of digital in 2020.  And one of the things we've been talking about is ecosystems and partnerships and the power and leverage that you can get from those. And Arvin has said, you know, late at night, we are returning to growth company. And so I wonder if you could talk to how partnerships and ecosystems play into that return to growth for IBM. Well, you know, first off, a key part of our strategy we talk about hybrid cloud and AI. It's not just about, hey, a platform that runs across, you know, all the different deployment models is convenient. It's also because innovation is coming from so many sources today. It's coming from, you know, a byproduct from the web 2.0 companies. It's coming from open source. It's coming from an explosion of startups because of the amount of capital in venture capital. It's coming from traditional software companies. It's coming from our clients who are participating in open source. And so you have so many sources of innovation. Much of what we're doing is landing a platform that allows you to consume innovation safely and reliably from wherever it's coming from. So a core part of a platform by definition is the ecosystem around it. You know, having a platform that runs everywhere is great. But if you don't have any applications that run on it, you know, who cares? And so ecosystem and partners have always been important to IBM, but for this strategy of this horizontal platform-oriented strategy, it is critical to our success because much of the platform is the ecosystem.  And so the two sides of that, so all the innovation happening on top and making sure it runs everywhere is what really unlocks the freedom of choice that reduces friction to innovation, which allows everybody in the ecosystem from our clients to ISVs to hardware partners to innovate more quickly. And that's what we really see as the benefit of our platform. It's not a horizontal stovepipe come innovate in this one place. It's recognizing innovations happening so many places and the only way we're going to be able to allow people to ingest that is to have a horizontal platform that everyone's participating in, which is why partners and ecosystem are so important not only to the success of our platform, but to the, I'd say, success of this next generation of computing these horizontal fabrics that require an ecosystem kind of built around them. I think that's an important nuance that maybe people don't understand that yes, you have a platform. Obviously, OpenShift is a linchpin, but it's an enabler for people to build other platforms.  And so that is a key part of the growth strategy and presumably expands your total available market. Oh, absolutely. And so this is the key is, we can talk about great IBM technologies, we're doing amazing things in security and AI and natural language processing and all these other areas. But the platform is a recognition that we're not going to do everything for everybody anymore. There's just the democratization of technology means that there is so many sources of innovation. And so first and foremost, we have to land a platform so you can consume anything from anywhere. And then of course we'll drive our own pace of innovation both in hardware and in software around that platform, but we are just a player against on that platform where, which we're really instantiating for really anybody to be able to reach customers or customers to reach sources of innovation. I know sustainability is a passion of yours and it's obviously a hot topic right now. It's oftentimes I joke tongue in cheek Milton Friedman's rolling over in his grave with all this ESG talk. And I know you just posted recently on LinkedIn and of course I went right down to Kavanaugh because my premise is not only is sustainability the right thing to do, it's also good business. But I wonder if you could, you'll give us your perspectives on this. Yeah, well, so first off, I mean as a large global citizen as IBM, I think this is an important role that we play. And look, this isn't new to IBM. We came out with our first statements around environment in 1970. We put out our first report that's become our environmental impact report in 1990. We've been talking about climate since the early 2000s. So we've been involved in this for a long, long time because I do think it's important broadly, but there's also a specific role I think IBM can play beyond just our own individual actions to reduce our own footprint. Because of some of the extraordinary technologies that IBM has worked on in the years, especially around semiconductors, we have just an amazing amount of technology, expertise, intellectual property around material science. And so just a couple of examples of those that relate to the environment. We in doing some other work realized that we had a way to be able to recycle PET plastic which is a real problem because so many clothes and other things are now made out of PET. And it's really hard to recycle, but a byproduct of other work we're doing realized we could do that. And so we've formed a JV and we're funding that to not profit from it, but to make sure that much more of the world's PET is recycled. Or the work that we're doing on batteries we're using ocean water instead of rare earth minerals to make batteries that not only are cleaner, but last longer. Those are kind of byproducts of our kind of core business, the areas that we can see the benefits of innovation and material science being able to impact the world. I am hopeful that we'll be able to play a role with all of that in clear air carbon capture. I mean, that's still far further away, but I do think IBM has a unique role that we can play because of our deep expertise in again, material science, quantum computing and modeling that put us in a unique position to have a major impact on the world. I wonder if we could talk a little bit about sort of IBM and its technology bets. And I've made the point a number of times in my writing that IBM's R&D spend has been about pretty constant about $6 billion a year, but as IBM has jettisoned certain businesses got out of the x86 server business and got out of the foundry business with microelectronics, now it's spinning out NUCO. What happens, the effect is that R&D is a percent of revenue goes way, way up and my premise has always been that allows IBM to be more focused. So whether it's hybrid cloud, AI, quantum edge, where are you placing your technology bets and maybe give us a sense of how you ranked them? Some of your favorites. Yeah, so look, that's exactly right.  And so, I've got to break down kind of the core area. So first off, what I'd say is part of the hybrid cloud platform is recognizing we don't need to do everything for everyone. There is great open source technology, there are great other vendors that are doing things that we can enable our customers to access via the platform. So, we're not trying to do everything for everybody in the way maybe 40 years ago we did because we understand there's so much great other technology out there that we're going to make sure that we expose. So, we're investing in areas where we think we can uniquely add value that need to happen that others aren't doing. So, AI, let me take that as an example. There's tremendous work happening in machine learning that we see every day because of Facebook and people trying to identify cats. And so, when you trivialize it, there's a phenomenal work happening there. There's a lot less work being done in AI on things where you have a lot less data or areas where you need explainable unbiased AI and the problem with machine learning engines is they're not auditable by definition. That's kind of a black box. And so, we do a lot of work in areas like that. We do a lot of work in natural language processing. So, we've had more of a as a kind of publicity kind of push the technology, something called project debater where Watson can debate kind of champion debaters. That was mainly to make sure we can understand language in context, which allows for being able to better handle call centers in areas like that. Allows us to understand source code, which helps us think about how you migrate applications from on-premise to the cloud. So, we have a bunch of AI things that we are doing and is a core focus of what we're doing. But specifically, we're investing in areas like anti-bias, auditability, natural language processing areas where others aren't, which is unique and we can bring those capabilities together with what others are doing. Security, obviously huge, huge area where we've invested in quantum safe encryption. We've invested in confidential computing. In other words, even in compute mode, your data is encrypted. So, you can keep your own keys. So, not even we on our cloud can see your data. So, a lot of investments happening around security and that's going to continue to be an area as we know that's going to get more and more and more scrutiny. So, heavy, heavy focus there. Heavily focused on technologies that help you kind of modernize your infrastructure. So, automation tools, integration tools and areas around that. So, on the software side, those are kind of the main areas. When you look on the hardware side, obviously quantum is a significant area where we have a leadership position. We continue to drive. But even semiconductor research in kind of process technology. So, we announced something with Intel to work with them to bring some of our process technologies. As we kind of go from seven nanometer to five to two to ultimately one, that set of technologies is an area where we have a real leadership position and you will continue to work with now Intel to continue to work with others to drive that forward. So, whole bunch of areas, both on the hardware and the software side that we continue to make progress on. Yeah, the silicon piece is interesting. When we saw that with Arvind as part of the Intel announcement, we thought originally, now maybe this is just about quantum, but it's really much more than that. You mentioned the process. We dug into it and we realized, wow, we said, power 10 actually has the highest performance and because of the way in which you, and not to geek out, but you disaggregate memory and Pat Gelsinger talked about system on a package. It turns out, folks, that IBM is actually the leader in that type of capability. The way that systems on chips use memory is very inefficient, but IBM has actually invented some techniques to make that much more efficient. That sort of the future of semiconductors and the reason why we spend so much time thinking about it is because it's of national interest. There's a huge chip shortage, which doesn't look like it's going away anytime soon. So that's a critical part of national competitiveness and technology competitiveness going forward. Well, and the other interesting part about that, and you talked about power 10, going back to the hybrid cloud platform that we talked about, it's not just about running applications across wherever you want to run them. It also abstracts the chip architecture. So all of a sudden, whether it's on the mainframe, it's on power, it's on ARM, it's on x86 and a whole bunch of other technologies that might get developed. We're making it much easier to kind of consume that specialization or variety at the hardware level. Recognize this Moore's Law runs its course. There's no longer this inevitability of everything's just going to go to x86. I think we are going to see more variety because we're going to have needs in the factory floor or in the automobile or with massive container as applications where you're going to need, whether it's kind of shared memory or different architectures all the way out to kind of low battery consumption and that whole kind of breadth and our hybrid cloud platform enables that variability. And then IBM obviously has great technology to enable kind of building unique capability in hardware. So we kind of play on both sides of it, both kind of developing great technologies but then making it really easy for developers that consume and use those specialized features. I'm glad you brought that up, Jim. We mentioned Moore's Law because we all talk about how Moore's Law is waning and it's quote unquote dead. But the reality is is the outcome of Moore's Law, which is the doubling of performance every two years is actually accelerating because of the combinatorial factors of CPUs and GPUs and NPUs and accelerators and DSPs. If you add all those up and actually we're actually quadrupling every two years. So we have more processing power at much lower cost because of the volumes that you're seeing on things like ARM. So it's actually a very exciting time. We're entering an era that we really, it's hard to get your mind around sometimes. So my question is how should we think about the future of a state of IBM? What does that look like? Well, so first off, the thing that I've found extraordinary about IBM kind of having been there now just a little over a year as an employee a couple of years, I guess is when it's Red Hat was acquired is it is unique and fundamentally changing again who we are to kind of meet the needs going forward. And if you think about the needs and technology recognize it was only like 20 years ago that Nicholas Carr wrote his famous article, IT Doesn't Matter. It's about back office. And in that world, IBM was really, really effective at building and running IT systems for our clients. We would just kind of do everything for them. Today, technology is the forefront of developing or building competitive advantage for almost any business. And so nobody wants to kind of hand the keys. So we no longer necessarily doing things for our clients. We're doing things with our clients. So there's a whole set of work that we talked about about how we engage with our clients how we're much more collaborative and co-creative and our whole garage model to help build the capability to innovate kind of with our clients is a key part of what we're doing. We'll continue to drive core technologies forward like quantum and kind of key areas that require billions of dollars of research that frankly no one else is willing to do.  We're going to do the things where we can uniquely add value but then provide it all on a platform which allow you to consume from wherever, however you want to in a safe, secure, reliable way. So as we watch this next generation of computing unfold cloud shouldn't end up being a bunch of vertical stove pipes. It truly needs to be kind of a horizontal platform that allows you to run any application anywhere in a safe, secure, reliable way. And our architecture helps do that. So it's no longer, hey, we'll do everything for you. It's we can do things uniquely on a platform and work with you to be able to help you kind of create your own pace of innovation, your own sources of advantage. And so that's the broad kind of direction that we're going. Again, as enterprises move from consuming technology to be more efficient to driving advantage with it, they need partners who understand that, focused on their success and can innovate with them. And that's really where we're going with our technology, with our services capability and kind of our approach to how we work with our clients. Yeah, Jim, you just laid out the holy grail of computing in the next, in the coming decade and with IBM's acquisition of Red Hat and it really enables that vision. Clearly the company is one of the top few that are in a position to do that. Jim Whitehouse, thanks so much for coming back in theCUBE, really appreciate your time. Thanks for having me, it's great to chat. All right, and thank you for watching. Keep it right there for more content of theCUBE's coverage of IBM Think 2021, the virtual edition, be right back.


Control of fire ants is difficult because the workers protect the queen and move her to safety when the mound is threatened. Scientists eventually may be able to discover a way to lower the equilibrium population of fire ants. One way may be to import parasites and predators from the ants native South America, such as these decapitating flies. Scientists are studying their effectiveness and impact. Six species of the decapitating flies have been released in fire ant infested areas of the United States. Meanwhile, integrated fire ant management is the recommended approach for fire ant control. It uses a combination of practices over time. There is no single best method for fire ant control because each site is different. However, methods which are effective, economical and least toxic to the environment are the best options. The most effective control methods cause minimal disturbance to the mound and eliminate the egg-producing queen. It is not always necessary to treat an entire area for fire ants. Map fire ant mound locations and treat only the areas where fire ant control is most desirable. This can save money by reducing the cost of labor and materials.  Fire ant control products are available at home improvement stores, lawn and garden centers, hardware stores and farmers co-ops. Other products are available only from specialty stores or through professional pest control service providers. Most control products are baits or contact insecticides formulated as dust, granules, aerosols or liquids.


How did the game go? Yeah, I got surprised in the opening. I shouldn't have been, but I forgot to check this line. And I didn't react the most precise way possible, but still my position was quite solid and with a few accurate moves I managed to equalize. I thought you went at some point when I sacrificed the pawn, but got the bishop pair and very active pieces. I could dream of taking over, but Anton played precise moves and I decided it's better to exchange coins and just get a very draw-ish endgame. Right now, you were less a pawn at some moment and you had this double ship. Did you feel that you had enough compensation at all points? Yeah, I thought so. I even thought at some point. He was the one who had to be careful after I went age 5, age 4. I mean, because I can easily work on his king side and then suddenly if the position opens my pair of bishops could really be quite useful. Right now, two games to go. You're probably going to be wide tomorrow. What is your strategy going into the last two rounds? The field wide open. How do you feel right now? Well, I mean, the most important of course is not to lose, but out of the last two games I have to win once. Of course, I mean, just if I have a good chance to do so tomorrow, I'll try as much as I can. But yeah, I mean, of course, you know, I will still play a bit solid, you know, not take too many risks because in any case, I mean, that's the last one for that. Right. Well, we wish you all the best with the remaining games. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thanks, Maxim.


Hey guys, it's Monica. I am going to share with you this beautiful beautiful new wig that I got from wigs.com And at the end of the video, I am going to insert the winner of the giveaway for the hairpiece that I did Maybe three weeks ago, and this was for the Paula Young. Now, there wasn't a whole lot of people that said they wanted this in that giveaway So the odds are that You could have won But this was for the hair clip That I had bought had never used So I'll announce that at the very end of this video. So this will hopefully be brief. I've got a couple of photos I want to insert And a few video clips of me wearing this beautiful Raquel Welch flirt alert wig outside in the color Shaded wheat. I really like this color I have done absolutely nothing to this. I have not taken down any shine I've not sprayed it with any kind of a dry shampoo All I did is when I opened up the box, I shook it and I put it on my head. I've done no styling I have pulled out some of my own hair, which is a tad bit longer. If I had any Preference on this, I wish it was a longer wig for me. I love it It's like a bob style. I'm gonna turn around and show you the back and I still have the The tag on I'll show you that as well, but you may turn around and show you the back The colors are really beautiful. Wait till you see the outdoor shots in the snow I think they really show the colors off well inside in the lights I don't know if you can get a real realistic feel for it This is in the shaded wheat. So it is a rooted color and it is just really beautiful I can part it on either side, but I really do love this a lot again If it was a little longer, I'd really be like wow. Yes So this is really awesome. I received this from wigs.com. They had reached out to me They asked me if I was interested in reviewing a wig and that I could pick a wig that I wanted So I went on their website and of course, this is the one I was really interested in I really wanted to try shimmer which is a little bit longer or straighter look I think shimmer would look awesome on me. I was thrilled to be able to get flirt alert I was thrilled to be able to get it in a color and these fibers are so Realistic they're so realistic. It's totally amazing and I got a bunch of goodies So, you know, I got like a wig stand, which is really unusual and you know, I've reviewed I've had uni wigs I've had Henry Margu So there's a number of other wigs that I tried Henry Margu the the weight that I've wear a lot in most of my videos This is one of my favorites. It's just the perfect length for me. The fibers on this, though I just like incredible. So and I got a little bag and Another I think this might be a pouch of some sorts And I'm not too sure if any of these would be conducive to packing the wig with you if you wanted But the fishnet wig cap This is awesome And then there's sort of like a hoodie or a and I haven't opened it up because I think it's almost like a Bandana style that you put over your head Whether you have a lot of hair or you don't and you might just want to walk around with this I bet you it looks really nice. I'm gonna give it a try and then there was also a brush in the box and I'm gonna insert the clip you you can see what it looked like when I received it and I opened it up I was like really amazed at how well it was packed It was just it was just beautifully beautifully packed very secure And then when I ever took the the wig out and I touched the fibers I was like they were just beautiful and just beautiful beautiful fibers So I absolutely am loving this so without any further ado Make sure you stay to the very end of the video where I will announce of the winner of the Paula young This is the claw clip hairpiece that Just a few of you entered so one of you is gonna get that So thanks so much for watching guys. Oh, and I am filming this on Super Bowl Sunday You're probably not gonna see it till next week, but whoever wins tonight May the better team win obviously whoever wins tonight. Congratulations. I hope it's us. I hope it's the Patriots But if it isn't congratulations to everybody on the rent, is it the Rams? I don't even know. I just know it's Patriots, but congratulations to whomever the winner is tonight Super Bowl and Yeah, I'm super excited. We're home tonight I've got a crock pot roast cooking and so I'll probably edit this video tonight and then posted some time next weekend So thanks so much for watching guys and good luck on the hairpiece giveaway and Good luck tonight whoever wins the Super Bowl This came in the mail today. I opened it up and there was a lovely Lovely card and All sorts of goodies free gift A wrist brush No slip cool open mesh and there's even a Wakestand. Holy moly Look at this And I have to take this out Wow This color is amazing and it's rooted. I can't wait to try this on So this wig was sent to me from wigs.com. This is Raquel Welch flirt alert and RL 1 4 22 SS shaded wheat It is a chopped bob style and it really has a lot of beautiful wave and beautiful Movement, I think it's just really flattering and even though it's shorter than I really like I think it just it's I think it's cute I also think it's very sexy looking and my husband actually likes it So when I have a 25 off coupon that I will add So I have called upon Jay to draw my winner Go patrons Wow, you look uh Sexy Okay, I'm ready and look at him. He's all he's all in his uh super bowl outfit So I didn't have a whole lot of names So I didn't want to do random picker because It would just be like crazy because all of these entries into that video And this again was for the Paula young hair clip. Can you hold that bag? Don't don't peek in there This was the Paula young hair clip. I've never used this. I ordered this quite a while ago And I was hoping against hope that the shade would work for my hair It did not and in my one of my previous videos I said if anyone wants to enter to win this they have to say that I want the hair piece Or the Paula young clip. It's just too blonde for my natural colors. So I had some entries and Without further I do don't rum roll Oh I was going to show you guys They already know what this is Without any further ado, I'm going to hold it up There are all the names going here And I'm going to have Mr. J pick the name Who's it going to be now? Garen sir Garen sir Garen Congratulations Garen Reach out to me. Let me know your shipping information And you will receive this never used Paula young Little hair clip. I hope it works for you. I hope the shade is fine. I hope you like it So yeah, Garen you're the lucky winner. Thank you all so much for entering the contest guys and go I'm going to show you this wasn't I was going to show you this little label Just so you could see I don't know if this is going to focus in or not Floor alert some way should be on here. I think Don't mind my nails. I need to get them done. They're really bad But I do feel like a flirt in it I do feel like a flirt in it. Bye guys


Welcome to Living Mosaic, a project of the Spark of Humanity Network. My name is Martha Holden and I am a member of the Spark of Humanity Network. Living Mosaic is conceived as a project to explore the concept that there is a solution to the causes of the current heartbreak in the world, which we are all experiencing if we're choosing to allow ourselves to, rather than being in panic, distress, or denial. The idea is that the solution may be conceived as a living mosaic, big, in which we each have a place, and that we're each a unique and essential part of the mosaic. In other words, we are each, including you, we're each an essential part of the solution. So the challenge is being willing to let go of everything that gets in the way of our being drawn into our niche in the mosaic, and to be acting and living and thinking in a way which supports others in being led, guided, moved, stumbling into their niche in the mosaic, not grabbing, not pushing away, just allowing the mosaic to form and allowing ourselves to be part of it. In that way we are part of the solution, and when we recognize ourselves as part of the solution, when we're willing to become part of the solution, give up our ideas of what the solution is and what we're supposed to be doing, then we have a sense of being part of something bigger than ourselves and something that's very good. And so there's a feeling of participation, there's a sense of purpose that helps us get beyond our despair out of our denial into a sense of joy, perhaps, or as some say, unconquerable gladness as we allow this process to take place and are willing to be there for others and encourage them and allowing it to take place in them because for everybody, of course, the process is unique and we are unique and we are essential. So that's the idea of this is to have a conversation around that or if nobody shows up, we have a monologue, which is me talking until somebody zooms in or phones in. So today we are talking about the interplay. Does that mean there's a phone call? Coleman? We don't have our hand signals down right. We're talking about the interplay between the living mosaic concept and the spark of humanity concept. The spark of humanity is an insight that has been around at least in my life since the late 1970s that there is a spark of humanity in every one of us. In each one of us there is a spark of humanity and it may be defended and often is and it may be distorted and it generally is and it may be baffled and it frequently is. In fact, we've come to think that the distortions arise from the bafflement. That when we come gliding or yanked or whatever out of the womb that there's bafflement. What do we do now? How do we survive? This is a whole new environment. There are very large pink beings around me. I don't know, maybe not pink, any color of beings around me. What do I do? And that can lead to the distortions. Well, if I do this, maybe they'll feed me or maybe they won't hit me or maybe they'll clean me up or maybe they'll rock me to sleep and sing to me. So the distortions arise from the bafflement. This is just the way we're understanding it. And then because the distortions are uncomfortable because they are not true to our spark, to who we really are, to who we're being grown into becoming, to who we're called to develop into. Then we have the inner line of defenses, mostly denial. I can't do anything about it. This is necessary for my survival so I'll just block it out. I'm not going to pay any attention to it. Block it out. But if you, on the outside, get too close into that mix in towards touching on my distortions, I do not respond well because I'm being threatened because it's painful because it's disorienting so I have my outer defenses. We have a little book. We have a little video. The defenses are like two boxes around our spark. And the outer one is like, stay away from me. It's protect ourselves from others, from you, from your ideas. The inner box is more like denial to protect ourselves from our own thoughts and our own experience. So what we've come to see is that if you, through your spark, getting in touch with your spark, which is not here and it may be anywhere, for some people it's solar plexus or hard or, you know, it could be anywhere, and for some people the spark moves around. Through your spark, we start our meditations. You can look at our website. We start our meditations, which basically every other Sunday they're aligned with the phases of the moon, the Sunday closest to the full moon, Sunday closest to the new moon. With getting in touch with our spark, letting our awareness and our spark hang out together so they become reacquainted. Then through our spark, down around here, around my solar plexus, we reach out to connect with and affirm the spark in another, which we can do regardless of their defenses or bafflement or distortions. And what we've discovered is that when our spark reaches out to connect and affirm with the spark in another, it strengthens their spark. And the strengthened spark seems to act to erode the defenses, clarify the bafflement, and release the distortions. It falls apart, not in the same order it comes together. Erode the defenses so that we become aware of our bafflement because we're aware that our spark cannot be damaged, it cannot be put out, it cannot be corrupted, it cannot be extinguished. Our spark is essential and it's okay, and we don't need to be protecting it. We need to be helping it grow, strengthening it so it can reach out and connect with and affirm the sparks and others so that their sparks become strengthened and their defenses become eroded and their bafflement becomes clarified. Oh, I don't need to be doing that anymore. And so their distortions are released. So through this work, we become agents of transformation, which is quite the thing. It's very subtle. And as much as I talk about this and as profoundly as I believe it and have seen it work, I don't practice it as much as I'd like to. I'm always glad to be reminded. Oh, Martha, how about you try using your spark here? Oh, yeah, right. Anyway, but it's a spiritual practice. So that's the basic idea. In the back of the spark booklets, we have three reassurances. One, in each one of us, there's a spark of humanity. As we claim our spark, and we can only claim our spark through connecting with and affirming the spark in someone else, we can't do it alone. We can do it physically alone, but we cannot do it. We have to be in relationship with someone. Whether they know we're in relationship with them or not doesn't make any difference, but we connect with and affirm their spark. That's how we claim our spark. In every one of us there's a spark of humanity. As we claim our spark, we become agents of transformation, which is very powerful, which is why we're here wanting to spread the concept because it's very powerful. And there's no downside to it. As agents of transformation, second reassurance, as agents of transformation, all the resources we need are available to us. Not as agents of militarism or consumerism or any otherism or anything else. I don't know about those, but as agents of transformation, all the resources we need are available to us. And we may need to stretch and grow, which is not a bad thing, to access them, but they are available. We can live in that conviction. And because this process of connecting with and affirming the spark in someone else, to strengthen their spark also strengthens our spark. So in this process, our defenses are being eroded. Our bafflement is being clarified. Our distortions are rising to awareness so that they might be released. So the third reassurance is it works best when we ourselves are willing to be transformed. So we had a section a few weeks ago about willingness. There it is. Are we willing to be transformed? So that's the basic spark concept. Now working on this, and we've been working on this since, oh my gracious, seven years with a group doing things, doing the meditations, calling on Orca media, bless them to support us in this. And then it's sort of like, okay, this is very good. This is very good. Everybody should do it. It's a lovely thing. But why? Besides it just being a lovely thing. And within the past couple of years, blogging, working on the Spark website, our blog is sparkbark.sparkoffumanity.net, the ideas come that, okay, there is a solution and it may be envisioned as a living mosaic. And we're each a unique and essential part of the mosaic. So claiming our sparks allows for or facilitates the erosion of our defenses and the clarification of our baffle month. And thus invites us to the release of our distortions. And that allows us, it makes us fit, it makes us more susceptible to be drawn into our niche in the mosaic. So the mosaic is the why of the spark of humanity work or discipline. The mosaic is the why because it allows us to become part of the solution. And being part of the solution feels as good, I think pretty much as it feels as good as anything can feel in this world at this time. And maybe at any time, but it just feels good to be part of something bigger and that I'm not in charge of and that I get to participate in this movement. I get to participate in this life that's bigger than mine and that I trust. And so that's a good deal. So that's why to do the spark discipline, the spark practice. Is because it allows me into the, come into the mosaic and then pondering the mosaic of, okay, here we go. We want to be part of the solution. We know that's, you know, that's what we really want to do because we're all people of good heart, of course, here. But how do we do that? And so the spark practice is the how of the living mosaic, of how we prepare ourselves, how we make ourselves willing to be transformed, how we become susceptible to the process. Early on in this series, I said that the mosaic is alive. It's alive and it's evolving. And because it's alive, it works, it lives toward its own wholeness.  We are part of the design of the wholeness of the life of the mosaic. And so it wants us, maybe it even inhales, who knows, maybe it's like, is gently trying to inhale us into our right relationship, our unique position, our unique niche within the mosaic. So that's the interplay between the two, the mosaic, the living mosaic and the history behind the living mosaic and the spark of humanity project. And it's something that we are working to deepen and develop, to make more accessible to others, to practice it more deeply ourselves.  When we're doing it more deeply, it creates a gentle slope so that others are more likely to roll down the hill into the same understanding and the same participation in this work. I'll wait a second, see if there's any questions, anything comes up with me. Otherwise, there's, oh, there's somebody there. Is there someone there? Hi, Martha. Hi. Oh, my boy. Here, let me put my headphones on. It's so good to see you and so good to speak to you. Yeah, I don't know how many people will watch this or are watching it right now, but we're old friends. And on January 1st, I made a commitment that I was going to find Martha in touch base with her. And two days later, you sent me an email out of the blue, and it was like, okay, so this is cool. I just wanted to say that, like you said it just as I was thinking it a few minutes ago, that if we're going to engage in this, we need to prepare ourselves to be changed. It's very easy for us to come into it and think, oh, this is a way for me to control the world. I want the world to be the way I want it to be. So I'm going to do this work and people will change. And thank goodness. About time. Yeah. I've had, like you're mentioning, I'm very slow with some things. I get impatient and I skim a whole bunch of stuff. And I think I understand it. And that's why I appreciate this meeting, because I'm able to understand that there is laid out somewhere a meditation practice that I have yet to discover and practice. But I will do that. I want to say that when I first read and watched the first couple of videos about the spark of humanity and living mosaic, I had the experience over the next few days of being in sticky situations one after another, like suddenly somebody would come at me and try to start an argument over absolutely. In one case, I found a guy's wallet and I was returning it. And he starts yelling at me, like, what are you doing here? Like, who are you? It was just, and all I knew at that point was the name spark of humanity. And I thought to myself, look for their humanity. Like just, just, just take a breath. Just, just take a breath and feel that person's humanity. And in each of these, it was three different situations. It changed, like the whole dynamic changed. And in the third of them, it turned out to be someone that politically, I'm pretty political, and I would have to, I would have to find this person as my enemy in other times and earlier times in my life. Now I would say they hold a really different perspective. And I do to say the least. And he wasn't open to just discussing he had his perspective.  We haven't done it yet. But it was each of us walked away saying, let's get together and have a cup of coffee and have an intelligent conversation. And let's not be prepared to change each other's perspectives, but just to listen.  And so I really appreciate it. I wanted to share those with you. And I wanted you to know that now that I know there is a meditation practice I will undertake to follow that process, because it's already, this has already been valuable to me. And I really want to support you as much as I'm able to, and in what you're doing. And I want to be supported by it. I want to be changed. Part of the solution. Because you are part of the solution. And I appreciate hearing that, because most of this work so far is out sort of, I know it's good because I do not, I'm not blocked into just physical reality. I know that the vibes may be subtle. I may never know the results. I never, but that doesn't excuse me from doing what I'm called to do with all the integrity and gravitas that I can come up with. But to have you with positive feedback is really great. The meditations, we do them on alternate Sundays at one o'clock in the afternoon by telephone.  I just figured that out yesterday, and now I'm on the email list. Oh, good. Good, good, good. You don't need me at all. You're all set, right? That's good. Other people that may watch this now or later will get that information as well. Right. Yeah, that's good. It's good. Yeah, the meditations are, I don't know. On the former meds website, we had a whole bunch that had been recorded here at Orca, so you could sort of do the guided meditation at home and the sanctity, you know, without a telephone without, but, and there may be in the archives in the website, the attic, we call it, yeah. So anyway, good. For those people who can't make it on Sundays, because for you, that's 10 o'clock in the morning. And so that's sort of, whether I'm going to a temple or a church, it's that time of day, so it could, but yeah, I'll look for the recorded ones and one week I'll not go anywhere else and I'll stay home and enjoy it. You'll show up, right? Good. Great. Thank you. Any questions, anything you want? Because we've got, no, we've got 14 seconds. I've got a clock. Thank you for showing up, Danielle. And thank you for those of you who got the notice. Danielle did the prayer that went out with the announcement for this, and we're going to be talking about it later. Thank you very much. Thank you, Orca. Thank you, Danielle. Thank you all. Goodness. Bye.


Welcome to NTIA Nightly, I am Genelle Norville, this edition's top stories. St Lucia and the OECS will soon be armed with rapid test kits in the fight against COVID-19. Southern businesses consolidate to take advantage of new opportunities and a special campaign to assist vulnerable families during the COVID-19 pandemic is launched. St Lucia along with the rest of the OECS will soon be armed with rapid test kits in the fight against COVID-19 as member states reopen. The kits are among critical equipment to be procured by the OECS commission. As the world continues to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, the ability to conduct accurate and frequent testing cannot be overstated. Director-General of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States OECS Commission, His Excellency Dr. Dedicus Jules, highlighting the importance of accurate testing, indicated that the OECS commission has been working assiduously to obtain accurate testing kits. The OECS commission, through its various missions, got in contact with a Senegal company making accurate test kits to be sold at one US dollar. However, these were intended for use solely in Africa and so the commission resorted to alternative means. With Caribbean countries embarking on a regional approach to reopening the tourism industry, the need for rapid testing has become even more evident. His Excellency Dr. Jules also explained that the OECS commission has been able to procure equipment to aid in rapid testing. In the context of the need for rapid and widespread testing, this becomes an unassailable cost for our governments. So we are aggressively trying to get donations of test kits and all of that. The other thing too is the testing equipment. We discovered through our mission in Brussels that the International Atomic Energy Agency is providing the most accurate testing equipment available globally. And that uses radioisotopes and so on. It's very sophisticated. It identifies every type of virus that is known and it does it within very quick time within an hour. Multiple tests can be executed at the same time. So we approached them and we got agreement from them to provide one of those pieces of equipment to each member state. Including St. Kitts and Levis, which was not a member of the IAEA, but we were able to make the case because of the unification and the free movement of people in the OECS that leaving them out would leave a hole in the testing network. So we were able to get it. Ironically, St. Kitts has received the equipment and Tiga has received it. The others are on shipment to St. Lucia, Grenada, Dominica, etc. The OECS Commission has also been successful in securing funds to procure respirators. We have mobilized something like 1.9 million U.S. dollars from the corporate private sector. Places like Massey and Republic Bank and Sajiko have been of immense help to us in mobilizing the finances required to help purchase the respirators. As you know, that has been a real challenge in terms of the supply chain internationally. We've had some countries' orders of respirators seized or we've held back in the U.S. Yes, because they're looking at themselves first. Because people are looking to protect themselves first. So the demand far exceeds supply and that has been a huge challenge for us with some of the orders that we've made. But things are beginning to ease up now and we are able to see more speed and responsiveness in what we're ordering. The Director General who appeared on the Information Command Center on Friday 5 June 2020 indicated that the OECS Commission will continue to play its part in the fight against COVID-19. The business community in the south of the island has consolidated as it prepares to take advantage of the opportunities investments in the south are bringing. The issue was discussed Sunday evening during the GIS NTN panel series COVID-19 Road to Recovery. Anise Antoine has the details. The Road to Recovery business and investment panel discussion focused on investment opportunities around the island and the synergies that exist between government agencies and business organizations as the battle continues against the COVID-19 pandemic. Sabina Valmore, Founding President of the Southern Business Association launched in November 2019, explained that the newly formed body promotes the economic development of the south by providing advocacy and support for small businesses including car rentals, bookstores, taxi drivers and contractors. Valmore stated that with new projects continuously coming on stream for the advancement and future development of the south of the island, this type of institution is critical in creating opportunities for small businesses. We're now at the point where we want those projects to happen. We are waiting for them to happen. We want to see improved and improved economic climate in the south of the island. That is what we are looking for. We invest the same kind of money as the rest of St Lucia. We want to begin seeing the same kind of returns and we do not think that isolating ourselves as a community is going to work to our advantage. We understand that the world is now a global space and isolation. There's nothing for us as a community. All it will do is to keep us at a disadvantage. Valmore explained that the Southern Business Association will continue to liaise with entities such as investing in Lucia to ensure inclusion in plans for the development of the south. At some point before things begin to actually take root that we would have another opportunity to sit with Invest in Lucia as an association. So our members would have that opportunity to dialogue with Invest in Lucia to find out exactly how it is they would be able to capitalise on what it is that was coming for the south. And that is one of the fundamental reasons, Lisa, why we're insisting on ensuring that the Southern Business Association is present at the table. Because for too long businesses in the south have not had a voice, have not had their presence at the table where the decisions have been made. With the change in dynamics of operations due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the president of the Southern Business Association encouraged members to find new ways to make their business more efficient and profitable. What we are finding is that there is a lot of need as far as financing will go because for a lot of members business has ground to a halt. There is no money coming into the business. And so for some of them the concern is whether I will even be around post COVID. So that is one of the challenges. Another big need right now in the MSME space is the ability to pivot your business so that you have an online presence. And I was fortunate to take part in a recent meeting with the OAS where they were discussing this platform that is now available to MSMEs where your business can move online if you don't have the capacity. Because what we saw during COVID was that businesses who had the capability of operating in the online space were able to continue especially if they were essential. But for those of them who did not have that capability, everything ground to a halt. The Southern Business Association has a membership of 58 businesses to date. From the Government Information Service, I am Anisia Antoine reporting. Still with business, the manufacturing sector was met with a snag with the onset of COVID-19. However, manufacturers are looking to continue in the growth trajectory that the sector began last year. In 2019, manufacturing recorded growth estimated at 8.6% up from 6.6% in 2018. The sector's contribution to overall real GDP moved from 3.2% in 2018 to 3.4% in 2019. President of the St. Lucia Manufacturing Association, Margaret DZ, attributes the positive movement to innovation in the sector and an enabling environment created by government. She was a panelist on the GIS NTN series COVID-19 Road to Recovery. The discussion focused on investment and business opportunities. One thing that the government did for us, which was very favorable, is paying the vat at the point of sale rather than at the port. Because before 2018, like two years ago, prior to that, when vat was implemented, we were paying vat at the port. So what used to happen to us, because of economies of scale, some of us didn't have the capacity to do bulk purchase of raw material because the vat would increase, obviously, based on the amount. But now that that was removed, the Prime Minister at the first meeting with us, that was one of the great things he did for us. We're very grateful for. He removed the vat at the point of the port and put it at the point of sale. And you know cash flow is king. That's your reality. So that has now enabled us with the increased demand to be able to buy more bulk. So increase your working capital, buy more bulk, and you pay the vat at the point of sale. So when we buy more bulk, that means we get bulk discount, economies of scale, and it's beneficial to us and it has a domino effect on the consumers. So we're very grateful for that. In 2019, the estimated value of manufacturing production expanded by 6.1% to $340.1 million. The food sub-sector, which is the second largest component of manufacturing output, contributed most significantly to the growth in total manufacturing production, expanding by 14.4% in 2019 to $103.5 million. Margaret Desi says the sector's performance during a year when Brexit and the U.S.-China trade war threatened to derail global business. The local manufacturing sector was able to not only maintain stride but improve its gains. The government has already made a commitment through the plans to support local businesses that they will give us what is required, whether it be warehouse spacing, whether it be concession. The similar opportunities that are there for foreign investors to come in, it is also there for locals to get. And that is very important and we need to remember that. But we need to have that entrepreneurial spirit. We need to be able to decide that we're going to sell our way through the crisis and not just sit back and wait until the government do everything for us. We need to do something for ourselves to be able to sell ourselves through the crisis and then win towards the end. President of the St. Lucia Manufacturers Association, Margaret Desi, appearing there on the GIS NTN panel series COVID-19 Road to Recovery. In response to the economic impact of COVID-19, Winwood and Leeward Brewery Limited, Doubile's bottling company, WLBL-DBC, has announced its 2020 Peter Malter Nourishing Futures campaign plans. The aim of the campaign is to give back to vulnerable families across the island through the St. Lucia Development Fund, SSDF, Marcy Store Supermarkets and the National Emergency Management Organization, NEMO. We have more in this report. WLBL-DBC kicked off the 2020 leg of its Peter Malter Nourishing Futures campaign recently in the community of Grosele. Company officials were pleased to relaunch the campaign, partnering with the St. Lucia Social Development Fund, the SSDF, to provide food and grocery supplies to vulnerable families negatively affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. SSDF will be assisting us in selecting vulnerable families in various communities island-wide, and the Peter Malter brand will be providing these families with much-needed food and grocery items. This will be done on a monthly basis. Every month we'll be selecting one community, and then we're targeting six families per community. We're starting off this month with the Grosele community, and we'll be working our way down to the south of the island. Executive Director of the SSDF, Alison Mathera, expressed gratitude for the contribution, particularly during this challenging time. It is unfortunate that COVID has come along, and the decimated economy is not just of St. Lucia and other islands in the region, but also internationally, and the troublesome thing about that is, and which is what makes this contribution so invaluable, is because we know that private sector organizations will be a little crash-strapped around this time, at a time when we will need to call on them the most. The second phase of the campaign, according to WLBL DBC officials, is currently active through a promotion at massive store supermarkets. For every Peter Malter purchase, five cents will be donated to NEMO to assist families in need. The 2020 Peter Malter Nourishing Futures campaign is committed to providing support to local families through other trusted partnerships in 2020 and beyond. From the Government Information Service, Lisa Joseph reporting. In keeping with changes in international oil prices and government's application of the modified market pastoral petroleum pricing mechanism, the retail price of diesel, LPG 20, 22 and 100 pound cylinders has changed. The retail price of gasoline and kerosene remained unchanged. The price changes take effect from Monday, June 8, 2020. Gasoline remains unchanged at $11.50 per gallon. Kerosene remains unchanged at $7.15 per gallon. Diesel decreased from $11.92 to $10.44 per gallon. The 20 pound LPG cylinder has decreased from $26.19 to $25.82. The 22 pound cylinder also decreased from $28.80 to $28.40. The 100 pound cylinder decreased from $147.71 to $144.05. The next adjustment of the retail price of fuel products will be on Monday, June 29, 2020. And this is NTN Nightly, up next, Primus Hutchinson with the NTN Nouvelle Aquial. It is possible for infected food handlers or workers to introduce the COVID-19 virus into food or onto surfaces within the food business by coughing and sneezing or through hand contact unless they strictly follow code-personal hygiene practices. Food handlers must wash their hands before starting work, before handling cooked or ready to eat food, after handling or preparing raw food, after handling waste, after cleaning duties, after using the toilet, after blowing their nose or sneezing or coughing, after eating or drinking and after handling money. More than ever before, your important role as gatekeepers of St. Lucia's nutritional health and food security should be taken seriously. When you exercise these precautions, you not only safeguard your health but also continue to allow St. Lucia's access to clean, healthy and safe food. Remember, it is our responsibility to ensure our nation eats fresh, St. Lucia's best. Welcome back. We join Primus Hutchinson for the NTN Nouvelle Aquial. The driver of the Nouvelle Aquial, Primus Hutchinson, the driver of the Nouvelle Aquial, I find permission to travel and then passenger more after. During your discussion with the NTN, Prime Vice-President of the National Council for Public Transportation, Country Frederick, and also who started with Lady Léa-Huit-G, the passenger who was supported by this passenger, Mr. Frederick, in prison, these police officers have done all they can to assist you, and we are also here. So, we are here to help the passengers and the passengers and to help them to get to the right place during their service. We have seven passengers. We have five. We have four families who are from the same family. We have three and four. We have seven. Because we are living together. We are living together. So, what we can do, where we are living together, where we are living together, we have to feed ourselves to do that. Trusty, we are here. We have three passengers. I have found everything I need, the Prime Minister, and I have everything I can to assist the passengers. But if the passengers continue to work, to support the same people who are here, and to do the same thing, we will be able to correct the situation. We have the same responsibility for ourselves, to look after ourselves. We have the same responsibility for ourselves, to do what we have to do. We have the same conscience. We have the same responsibility for ourselves. Where could we be doing it, where would we behave. We have to work in peace. Just like theittä top house that we work with, we will take the same responsibility for ourselves, and every one of us works their own way. Their California land that we have all to assist. We have to continue to protect and take care of the COVID-19 patients and eat them. This is the school that we pay for. I have the facility for social distancing and also for the protection of the patients. I am an officer of the Department of Health, because Ragnanan is very confident that this school has respected all the protocols and that it is the health that leads to the health of the patients. Ragnanan, Pepe, Yahwedi, Guida, Jiki, Maladisa, and Kapote are the perfect match for the battle. The quality of the problem is very good. So, these reasons are very important for the ministry, especially this school, to implement all the protocols. The first one is the first school, that is the first school of the impolite school, Eflin Leos. This school is very important for the change of social distance and also in the prevention and prevention of the disease. Therefore, the ministry is the only one to implement the standard of safety that will protect the disease. And to the ministry. The first minister, that can affect the studies. That is to make sure that if the studies are found out by LAD, you guys are to be treated in a healthy facility that can help us to live in a safe place. The charging fee for petrol, condisils, cylinder 20, 22, and 100 li. Gasoline costs the same as before. Gasoline costs the same as before. That is $10 per litre, but $11.24 per gallon. Carousine, pasangina, please. Equestria, 1 dollar, $10.24 per litre, but $7.07 per gallon. Diesel, with risotto, $10.07 per litre, but $1.03 per litre, but $10.04 per gallon. Cylinder, 20 li, but $26.29 per litre, and $3.5 per cylinder. The cylinder was sold for $28 and $3.4 for $28 and $4.8 per cylinder. The cylinder was sold for $457 and $1011 for $454 and $4.9 per cylinder. The cylinder was sold for $257 and $3.4 for $1011 and $4.9 per cylinder. The cylinder was sold for $1011 and $4.9 per cylinder. The cylinder was sold for $257 and $4.9 per cylinder.