Hello everybody hoodedCoverCommander788 here and it's time for another unboxing video, unboxing donations that I received to the PO Box in the month of November 2019. I've got a little different set up this time, I thought it might just be easier to do it this way, I had been doing it on my big table but that requires me to move a lot of things around and this set up does not require me to move a lot of things around so I'm hoping that will just be a bit easier than past videos but hopefully you will still get a good experience out of it. These are the things that I got in November at the PO Box. I always remind everyone you do not have to send anything to me, I'm not asking for donations, it really is enough for me to just have you watching the videos. I'm very grateful to have you here, I'm very grateful to have you going on this journey with me and so you don't have to send things to me in order for me to appreciate you. That being said the donations from viewers have really helped the channel in a lot of ways, they've gotten things for me to review that's allowed me to review things much earlier than I would otherwise have been able to to show my appreciation. When you guys send something to me I'm gonna make sure to put it on camera in a video like this showing everybody what you sent and expressing my appreciation for it so that's what we're gonna do now. So thank you to everyone who sent stuff in, we got something here from another YouTuber, we got something here from another Oki, and we got two boxes here from Brandon Knight, a long time friend of the channel. Alright I'm on my small table here, that's one consequence of doing it this way is I don't have a big table, I have a small table but it still should be fine. I have four packages here to open and I actually just checked the PO box before I recorded this video, I want to make sure that I got everyone in for November that actually sent something in that arrived in November so there was this one which I guess I will start with that I picked up in the post office today and this is from, I'm gonna set these others aside for now, this is from Kevin Jones, otherwise known as SEO toy review on YouTube, it's got a great toy review channel, make sure you check out SEO toy review, well he told me he was gonna send something and here it is so I've already cut this open, I will cut open the other boxes you know off camera just so to make it easier to pull things out but I already cut this open so I can just pull it straight out and then we can see what it is and the first thing we have is a letter that I like this paper email and yes the subject matter gives away what's in the envelope it says hey hoodie no your stalker needed an upgrade have a few straight arms laying around glad it can go to help fix up a figure and that's that's exactly what it is my straight arms stalker figure has broken thumbs and so we have right here a straight arm for stalker there we go a straight arm for stalker with an intact thumb so finally I can have stalker looks like his his left arm his left arm is kind of finally have a thumb so thanks Kevin I guess Kevin noticed after I posted my 1982 retrospective video that my stalker was thumbless so he wanted to help out a little bit thank you very much for that Kevin and thanks for all the great content that you do and thanks for your help that thanks for the help that you've given to me the collaborations have been fun thanks for taking part in Cobra Convergence each year I just love what you do and I really appreciate this thank you this counts as a letter and I do keep all of these so thank you Kevin and I can add this to my memories of you guys so there is letter from Kevin goes right in there so I can keep it for all time let's look at the next one and the next one is from Chris looks like Chris I'm not sure about his last name here but I do notice that he is from Oklahoma so am I so this is from a fellow Oki thank you for that and since I've already cut the tape I'm just gonna pull it right out of the box up and here we go another letter thank you Chris and his name is Chris Gatliff Chris Gatliff thank you very much his letter says dear HCC 788 hi my name is Chris Gatliff I really enjoy your YouTube channel I saw it from retroblasting of how I've worked with retroblasting a couple times they're great people I really like GI Joe I have many things from when I was a kid I have the whale and many others that's cool that's cool would like to start collecting again but I am a mint inbox type of guy which can get really expensive yes and getting more expensive by the day thanks for all your work hope you like what I sent thanks Chris thank you very much Chris and again keeping this letter don't throw I don't throw away any of those letters and so let's see what Chris sent it is okay which do I open first I'm not sure what this paper roll is so I'm going to do this first see should I cut the tape I don't know if it's if it's safe to peel because I'm not sure if this paper should be or could could be torn if I try to peel it so I'm just gonna carefully cut the tape carefully cutting the tape because I don't know what it is and I want to be on the safe side trying to cut the tape come on now tape there we go I safely cut the tape and okay the outside paper roll was just protective very good oh I know what these are this is cool these are copies of I got to zoom in on these copies of the character model sheets for the GI Joe animated series and we've got the Baroness there let's see what's the date on this I yeah this is for a geek animation so this is for the deeks theory at series there's my favorite right there there's stalker oh who else we got oh this is cool this is this is great reference material too we got we've got the hooded cobra commander and come on there we go yeah the bat leader which I guess is supposed to be overkill that's awesome so these are copies obviously but these are part of GI Joe history this is these are model sheets for the for the animated series this is what the animators used as a guide for how the characters were supposed to look it seems it seems we do have a a nude Baroness on there you know just in case they ever needed she ever appeared nude in the series we've got one just sort of over the shoulder but but apparently topless you never know you know the scriptwriter might want to a topless scene with the Baroness and they got to be prepared to animate that so that's awesome thank you very much for that there is one other thing in here that is bubble wrap and let's check it out and it is oh yeah okay I mentioned before supplies are important and necessary and we have o-rings and screws very important I frequently get low on o-rings replacing o-rings is a fact of life for GI Joe collectors and we have some some accessories a bag of accessories let's see what we got here of course they're black and I'm wearing a black t-shirt now this is how it goes if I wear a black t-shirt you guys will send something that is black that doesn't contrast with the t-shirt and then if I wear a white t-shirt then you guys will send something white and that you know I don't know how you guys guess which t-shirt I'm gonna wear for the unboxing when I don't even know that's amazing but let's carefully pull these out here oh there's quite a variety here we've got some Zarena whatever you call that that fan saw gun that I believe that is no that it's not quite the one from ambush we've got a spear that I think goes with undertow and just a variety of things here and I'm gonna go through these later so I can pick out more specifically what they are looks like we've got some modern accessories as well so cool so thank you for that Chris very much appreciated nice to get a package from a fellow okie and finally we have two boxes from Brandon 9th Brandon 9th's been a friend of the channel for a long time so thank you Brandon this box I got early in the month and the other box I got just a few days ago and that other box is really heavy but I'm gonna open this one first I've already cut open both boxes so it'll be easier to pull things out so here we go it is whatever it is it's well packed multiple layers of bubble wrap here Brandon always packed stuff very well so thank you Brandon nicely done we have a letter and it looks like yes judging from the size of the letters I will need to get my glasses so I can read this one moment okay dear HCC 788 if he gives away anything that's in the box I'll stop reading but let's see what he says the end of year 2019 is near but 2020 is going to be a great year I hope so as the chapter of another year ends the next year chapter begins let us remember and reflect on the wonderful memories we have made been a lot of great memories in 2019 it was the best of times it was the worst of times in some ways that is very accurate tell let's let us keep making new friends and keep growing our community our stories and love G.I. Joe will keep going on as long as someone keeps the torch light and going lit and going I look forward to see what happens to Cobra Convergence 5 yet Cobra Converse fifth year of Cobra Convergence yet the next year can you believe it now to the important part what's in the box what's in the box what's in the box in this box are special items for you to enjoy also maybe in the future you can review these items to help grow your the community even bigger I thought it would be fun to expand our G.I. Joe family and you are the perfect man for the job thank you very very much please plus something new and different you can try I am trying to push for an agenda maybe so he's got an agenda here let's see enjoy and never stop playing with your dolls let's make 2020 the best year for reviews Tuesday livestream and Joe fest that's right Joe fest coming up next year your pal Brandon aka night viper you look really if you look really hard in this box there's a piece of cake just for you it will be the best cake you ever had enjoy you deserve this cake and you will know why hmm all right cryptic so let's see what's in the box let's check it out more bubble wrap very nicely packed no damage could possibly come to this because it is very well packed well done Brandon yeah here we go here we go here we go oh I know I know what this stuff is and I think some of you guys probably know what this stuff is too well first of all we have version I think version 2 of the flak viper with file card which is great because as you know I review the file cards too so it's important to have a file card and looking in here there's there's a lot of not Joe stuff so but stuff that G.I. Joe fans especially from my era will probably remember let's start going through them shall we first of all we've got a bunch of the core this is the the core he's got a nicely labeled here thank you the core hammer 1986 the core boomerang Billy I remember this figure gunner O'Grady 1986 I remember this figure I did get the core figures sometimes just to use as extra guys because I needed extra guys they were cheap they were cheap back then and sometimes just for parts because later in my G.I. Joe fan experience I started doing customizing and a lot of these parts were compatible with G.I. Joe so I got a bunch of these figures the core John Eagle crock 1986 carefully set these aside because there's there's a good number of them oh we got some more accessories here and these look like accessories from the core and the other figures that are in here I'm not gonna pull these out because I don't want them to go everywhere and get lost we have a bipod and a looks like a side but these these are not the core figures this is US forces American force Bush a brush fire by Remco and I did get some of these Remco figures you may or may not remember when I opened my toolbox that had the last few parts of my childhood collection there were some parts in there of these American forces Renco figures also used for customizing back then this is jungle raider Remco protector Remco 1986 really fascinating and you know they they don't look too out of place next to G.I. Joe but of course that's they were designed that way right they were designed to be this is the core large Sarge they were designed to kind of appeal to the same kids that were buying G.I. Joe and you know also be this is a little little less expensive and it hooked me in because I got a bunch of them captain combat Remco and I think this is the last one junkyard from the core 1986 awesome stuff there is still more stuff in here there's a backpack yeah this thing is packed we've got some plastic bags for what looks like packing material and we've got an envelope filled with plastic bags and let's see here we go yeah we've got some car protectors and some small plastic bags so these these will help keep me from having to steal storage bags from my house and these are actually the right size too for accessories and stuff so that's cool and digging deeper I see a what is either a letter or a post-it note all right very funny the cake is a lie all right look I already pulled that trick on Timmer so I guess I guess I deserved this so that's very clever Brandon thank you very much I got a kick out of that so thanks and we still have one more box from Brandon a really heavy box and let's open that now all right you may be surprised how many G.I. Joe fans also collect the core and Remco figures or you may not be surprised if you're from my era you probably remember those figures I wouldn't exactly call them knockoffs they weren't knockoffs really they weren't trying to like recreate you know something that you know precisely looked like G.I. Joe characters but they were G.I. Joe compatible and definitely intended to appeal to G.I. Joe fans but my recollection is they were often quite a bit cheaper you can get a multi-pack of them for like the price of a couple G.I. Joe figures and of course that appealed to me especially when I was customizing for the parts and they had some really nice you know military colors military uniforms that I didn't have to paint over very much in that era G.I. Joe was getting a lot more colorful a lot more neon a lot more purple and a lot of those I painted over with like modeling paint not very well but you know that's that's what I did well these Remco figures and a lot of the core figures had some nice colors that I didn't need to paint over so I was a big fan of them at the time it's really cool to to see these figures again because I remember having a lot of those figures back in the day all right here is Brandon's second box and the last box we'll be looking at again nicely packed plenty of packing material no harm to possibly come to this package because it is very solidly packed and we have a letter and grab my glasses it says dear HCC 788 glad the show in the community keeps on growing also we keep making new friends along the way yes and that's what it is really about it's amazing how time has gone by once we were playing our our toys reading comics watching cartoons the strange how G.I. Joe changes each decade even though we can't go back to a time when it was great to be a kid we can share those memories and keep them alive that we can do unfortunately there's no time machine but honestly now it can be even better because we can remember the better times in kind of we don't have to bring back the things that are not such good memories we can remember the better things of our childhood today's generation spent too much time on games and phones don't know how much fun it is to play with toys and use imagination kids and parents need to get back into playing with toys and reading comics that's why every year at the farmer's market I in town I sell comics okay cool I was a big comics fan too introduced to comic books through G.I. Joe G.I. Joe was my first comic book enjoy it and love doing it always wanted my own comic shop well this is the closest I will ever get now inside the box is something different for a change thought you would enjoy new adventures enjoy the past in a whole new way and see something you've never seen before there are many items for you but there is one first item for Susan okay Susan misses HCC get something in here um you might want to pause the video and have her enjoy surprise I hope you both enjoy the items you get want to wish you both a merry Christmas and a happy new year cobra claws are coming to town yes it is about that time of year so thank you Brandon keeping that with the other letters and right off the bat right off the bat here on top we have it looks like it's all it's I think it's all comic books so that's why it's so heavy there's a bunch of comic books in here a lot of them and right off the bat we have legends of dark claw with a story by Larry Hama I'm a big fan of Larry Hama and I haven't read as much of his other work outside of GI Joe but I've read some of it and I'm happy to get more of it so I can kind of explore his career beyond the pages of GI Joe because Larry Hama honestly has done a lot he's done just a lot more than you think even if you think he's done a lot he's probably done more than that amazing stuff and we got GI Joe European missions that is a new phase of GI Joe that I am less familiar with but I am interested in we have now here is something I remember okay I totally remember this the A team look at that we got a couple issues of the A team here love this stuff it's so out there it's but it's just so fun yeah tv's blockbuster adventure show is now a marvel comic check that out I guess I don't need those anymore lovely lovely and we have the num which is another series that that I enjoyed a lot oh there's there's the one I found the one for Susan I'm gonna I'm gonna pull that one out I'll show I'll show that to her later but I don't want to spoil this price so in Indiana Jones we have a couple issues of Indiana Jones and yeah when I was a kid I absolutely did get these movie adaptations of of the movies that I like and this is the further adventures of Indiana Jones so with that before or that's got to be oh that's that looks like Temple of Doom stuff there so and yeah oh yeah now you want to talk about classic war comics from marvel sergeant fury and his howling commandos I have some from this era it's it was a different era I've read some of the ones from this era and it was a different time different way of telling telling stories different types of stories just not what my era was used to at all fight marines we got oh yeah from Charlton Conomix more fighting how many have oh how many issues a fight marine oh cool we got a nice run of fight marines so this will be something that I can that I can dig into a bit and actually read a series of stories that's cool and we can't have fight marines without fighting army and this okay these okay there's more than just fighting army here I don't know if Brandon intended to go through each one but I mean I want to because I want to see what's here so we have oh we have a good run of fight in army too from Charlton comics group yeah it's got that old comic that old comic book smell just can't get it with with the electronic media so oh I like this um all these have like these hot pink ads for military diamond sales that's I get nostalgic about the ads and comics as well um battlefield action Charlton did a bunch of war comics um the iron corporal that's one that I remember finding in like some old comic shops I remember that title um battlefield action kill Joe of the uh the nickname of Joe or G.I. Joe for American soldiers has been around for a very long time much longer than the toys so yeah battlefield action uh great art on these covers um yeah I can't wait to like really dig into these uh so that's that's why this box is so heavy it's filled with filled with some amazing comic books that I can't wait to read thank you very much Brandon and thanks for being a friend of the show for such a long time really appreciate your support um and uh all I can say is thank you and that's everything we got in the month of November 2019 thank you thank you everyone who sent stuff I want to remind everyone you do not have to send anything to me if you do want to send something to me I will put the PO box on the screen right now but please remember that I'm not asking for anything if you do want to send something I will put it on camera I'll show everybody I will uh say thank you um and you know eventually I may end up reviewing it if it's the type of thing that I review on this channel uh so um so so thank you if I get more packages in the PO box uh in the month of December we will do another one of these videos in January and if I don't get anything then I won't do another video and that is absolutely fine as well uh I am just happy to have you watching the videos I'm happy to have you interacting I'm happy to have you going on this collecting journey with me so thank you for that um but that's all for now um you should have a another vintage GI Joe toy review coming up this Sunday I hope you enjoy that we'll be taking a little bit of time off uh in the month of December because of the holidays but you'll still get a good amount of content and I think some pretty cool stuff so thanks everyone for watching I'll see you soon and of course remember that only GI Joe is GI Joe but the core is is pretty cool too


There's now time for Python on hardware. We do newsletter every single week, and this is our recap with videos and more. There's so much going on, so I try to pick the best. Here we go. Okay, first up, this is one of the Pythonistas, one of the organizers, Felice, who made these earrings using a circuit Python. Next up is Pikachu, and this is the master mouse. Big news, MicroPython is now on the Feather STM32. We have it on GitHub, we have it on YouTube. Yeah, it's got merged in, so next release of MicroPython will automatically make binary builds for this. And past us even made a video about this. Go past us. Hey, what is this? This is MicroPython flies on a feather. Okay. We have finally got our feather STM32F405 MicroPython variant merged in. Damian George just thank you two days ago. And so now I can run MicroPython on my feather board. Yeah. And we still have a couple libraries for MicroPython like for OLED and this temperature sensor library happened to work. So if you would like to use MicroPython in a feather format, I think this is the first one other than the ESP32 and 8066. This is 168 megahertz STM32F405 and it's the same chip used in the pie board now featherified. We're going to be focusing on circuit Python on this, but I like having MicroPython available for the folks that like that. Cool. Okay. Last week was national 4-H week, so we had a bunch of sales and we had a lot of information. If you didn't know already, we have a official 4-H version of Circuit Playground Express. It is identical except for its green and it took a long time for us to get permission working through the US Department of Agriculture to get this on there. So please, please, please if you're in 4-H, please let everyone know in 4-H about this. Professor John had a class and in this class they were making an app and for 80 Love Lace Day, they decided to put all these amazing women on this app and I thought this was good because recently there was a Forbes like top business leaders list and they accidentally forgot, I assume it was accident, women out. So the students and the professor made their own version. So I thought that was cool. Nice. All right. Next up also in that class, they got 100 Circuit Playground Blue Fruits. So we were wondering what would happen if you have 100 of these? Can they pair because they're Blue Fruits? Would they be able to figure this out? The answer is yes. Next up. In PyCon, DE, Berlin, there's photos. There was an excellent meetup for all the folks from MicroPython. I have a report to Christine from MicroPython who put in a pull request for this newsletter. So we got a chance to add this in here so you could check out the photos more. And then Adafruit was a sponsor for PyLady's workshop. So you can see all of them here with some of the Adafruit stuff that they made. Speaking of events that are going to be coming up soon. Supercons coming up. And if you look in the top middle of this, you can see Scott. Scott will be doing a talk about Circuit, Python on Retro, Hardware and more. Supercharge your hardware old and new with Circuit, Python. So you can meet Scott there. That's coming up pretty soon. And we have Hardware going there. So if you're thinking about going to Supercon, you should. And there's also some familiar faces on there. Can't really see Mitch. He just spotlighted Mitch on our open hardware Daily Post this month. Also coming up is TensorFlow World. October 21st, you will see some Adafruit Python powered badges there. And that's all we can say about it at this time. It's a little bit of a surprise. PyCon April of next year is coming up. They just posted up about their financial aid. And we'll be posting up more things as the clock ticks down. We'll probably be doing something big there next year. Okay, this is neat. This is Circuit, Python. And it's a Circuit, Python poster that's powered by Circuit, Python. So here is a little clip from the folks who put it together. And here's the team. So you can see this on code and solder on Twitter. But excellent work. What a cool idea you take the poster. Blink of dancing. Yeah. Blink of dances. And you learn about Python and microcontrollers with a poster that's powered by Python and microcontrollers. Congratulations to C Grover. This is the string car. It is almost done. It's a feather string car M4 express. The most powerful string car ever. The most powerful string car. And what's neat is we've been watching this in development over like last year or so. So I'm looking forward to not only having one of these, but using one of these. Speaking of new Circuit Python boards, Arturo is making a ton of cool boards and there's already variants. And if you like Arturo's work, like we do, you can sponsor Arturo on GitHub. This is a new thing just like Patreon, but it's for GitHub. And Arturo posted he's like, Hey, they took my application on GitHub. They said I can get sponsorship now. And now Arturo can get sponsorship. So if you're thinking about it, this is a way to say thank you to some of the folks that do cool hardware in the world of Python. And we're a supporter already. So maybe you can be too. Tia Flowers made the Circuit Python driver for the analog devices, AD 5, 6, 8, 9, 16 bit deck. Check that out. And also there's a board coming. This is a new feather. It's a power feather wing. Yeah. Feather takes flight. High power. On the six to 36 volt power supply feather wing supplies five volts up to one amp from six to 36 volts and a feather factor chunky. Okay. This is a bird. And then this is the video of the bird. This is a Circuit Python powered Raven. Oh, it was it was like an off the shelf thing. And then they decided to change it and modify it and then you circuit Python to have it move and do things. And this is kind of a two parter that I wanted to talk about because this is exactly what I think young people or anyone, if they wanted to get into like animatronics and more, this is the way to go. And it's very easy to do that now with Circuit Python. So we posted up this Raven and in the same week, very same week Khan Academy has this thing called Imagineering in a Box. And it's a bunch of high level videos. And then the type of things that you would need to do. The only thing missing is the stuff in the box. So I'm going to email them and say, Hey, y'all are doing these imaginary stuff. We got these. We got birds. We got this bird. We got cricket. We've been doing a ton of robotics. We even did animatronic and Imagineering like projects for one of our past eight boxes. I'm going to email them and see you should email and be like a blank in the box. You just need something inside of the box. Yes. Okay. This is cool. This is the easy make oven controller. This is using a pie portal to control a toaster oven. I'm looking at these like beautiful UI. It's like here's the plot and here's how it follows and you can see the temperature. You can make one of these with everything from A to fruit, except for we do not sell toaster ovens at this time. Okay. There is a lot of Circuit Python stuff going around. This is a Circuit Python going to event. And these folks make these little cute creatures at the Circuit Python. So a capacitive touch. Maybe like place audio effects or something. Yeah. Who is on the show and tell also should this off make a Bluetooth control color changing Jack Lantern. You guessed it. Circuit Python and you can control it with your watch. All right. This is the FT 232 H less posted up about this and showed a bunch of cool things that you can do with Circuit Python on a desktop computer and control things without even using a microcontroller. Circuit Python libraries for any PC. Okay. Python snakes its way to the AWS deep racer. So deep racer is this new AI self driving car. We ordered one a year ago. It just arrived. We haven't taken it apart yet. We will soon. But it looks like already it runs Python. So this is one of the reasons that we decided let's make sure Circuit Python runs on everything. We just posted up about Blinka running on AWS as one of the examples. So Blinka snakes its way to AWS IoT. So you can expect to see lots of Python on things like self driving cars because a lot of the TensorFlow things and more are all in Python. Okay. Scott posted up two videos. So I combined them into one and you can watch the latest and greatest of what's going on with Circuit Python and Bluetooth with advertising and broadcasting and all the cool beacon things that you can do with Bluetooth. Neat stuff. All right. Take it away. All right. Circuit Python Circuit Playground Blue Fruit BLE update on this Friday. First, I've got four blue fruits here. One in the foreground and three in the background. The one in the foreground is broadcasting what color the other three should be. This is known as in Bluetooth land as a broadcaster and three observers. Now, if I just click the button, I can switch and now you can see that like I'm white and the other three are white. If I keep going, now they're pink. One hasn't heard me. Now they're all three blue. That's really cool for synchronizing which animations things are doing and if I can go back. The other thing that's really neat is that multiple things can broadcast what the color they want to be. So I'm going to take this green one. Actually, let's make it red for for Blinka. Let's put this red one over here. And now what I'm going to do is I'm going to take this other one and I'm going to switch the slide switch which will put it in broadcast mode and click it and now you can see it's off and the other two are flickering as I move it closer. It listens better and let's change this to purple. So now you can see that if I put this one here, these two are flickering because they're kind of equally between the two. But if I take this one and I move it over here towards the red one, it became becomes red. If I take this other one and move it more towards the purple, it stays purple. And of course, I can still change the color of the individual one. So that's just a quick update on Bluetooth with Circuit Python. Okay, here's a quick Circuit Python BLE update and working on scanning and advertising and just want to show these two devices, the Feather NRF 52 840 and the Circuit Playground Blue Fruit, they're not connected. They're only listening for advertisements or advertising. So this one here is listening for advertisements and this one is advertising manufacturer specific data and the data is what color it is. So if I click A or B, I cycle through the colors that I've set up and the other device follows along. The goal for tomorrow's work is to get more than one device working so that we can synchronize one device like this with a bunch of other devices all at the same time using the same advertising message. And don't forget we still have the Code Academy Circuit Python courses going on and that is the Python on hardware news for this week. There's a lot. Okay.


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Use Fixed. If you look behind me, that is the FixedMusic.tv website where they used to charge $150 a year or $15 a month to give you access to use Fixed Music in your videos and live streams for commercial purposes. Now it's free. Because of the deal we made with Position and Fixed Music, you now get everything in the Fixed Catalog as a Freedom Partner for $0 a month. The entire monthly subscription fee is now covered by us for all of you because of the exclusive deal we've made with Fixed. Do you use Fixed Music? Tell us in the comments below. This website, FixedMusic.tv, will update soon, removing this paid program and announcing the partnership with Freedom and how to get all of Fixed Music for free, which is be a Freedom Partner. Join the Freedom Family. As long as your channel is partnered with Freedom, you get complete access to the entire Fixed Catalog that used to cost $150 a year per channel to get access. Is that exciting? Do you like having free access to Fixed Music? To get it, simply click the I. This link will take you to the Fixed and Position Music FAQ, the video FAQ that answers all your questions about Fixed and Position Music. There is one restriction to using this music and that is documented in that video FAQ. Just go watch the particular video about the one restriction. Click the link down below or enter sink.positionmusic.com. That's the website where you go to to sign in with your shiny Freedom button, your shiny Freedom account, to get full access to the Fixed Catalog of Artists and Music for you for free. Are you excited? I'm excited and we have more music coming. Fixed is about to launch a new set of music from your favorite Fixed Artists. We will certainly make a video about this and bring it to your attention as soon as it's ready. Let's keep growing together. That is the spirit of freedom. We are the freedom family and we help each other grow faster. That will never change. That is my promise and that is the spirit of freedom. And who am I? I am George, founder and CEO of Freedom and you've been watching and we will grow together as a family because this is the Freedom family. You are part of it. We are all part of it and we're all growing together. So grow with us and partner with Freedom. That Play Now button right there on the video bar is all you need to click to get started. What happened to being your brother's keeper?


Happy Aloha Friday! Welcome to a brand-new episode of Perspectives on Global Justice, think back about it. This is your host Beatrice Cantelmo. On today's episode of Perspectives on Global Justice, guest Ruby Menon will share with our viewers an update about the successful program that she started almost five years ago, the CARE program. CARE stands for Correctional Reentry Project. Join us for a time of great talk stories about the power and the strength the arts has on people's emotional and physical well-being, as well as a carolistic force for newfound pride, creativity, healing, and even on how to make money. On that note, welcome! Thank you, Beatrice. Thank you so much for having me and we appreciate it. Oh, absolutely. This is just such an important topic for us to have this conversation on. But before we start, can you share with our viewers a little bit of your background? Like, where are you from and where are you at as far as walk these days? Oh, okay. Gee, I don't even know where to start. Well, I was originally born in Geneva, Switzerland, so French was my first language. And then we moved to the United States when I was young. My father used to work in the United Nations and so we moved around quite a bit, landed in New York City, then had to learn English, and then moved to the Bay Area, which I kind of consider more my home, and then moved to Hawaii, got married, and have been here for almost 20 years. Plus, I think I've lost track. And I've had several careers. My educational background is that I have a master's and MBA, but I had a strong business background. I've worked in human resources and finances. About maybe three or four years ago, I decided that I wanted to do a complete change in my career path. And I've always loved technology. And so I decided to actually my husband and I started to create an assessment product for the nonprofit that he has founded called WorkNet. And WorkNet's mission is to help people transition from prison to the community. So it offers transitional services like helping people get their ID documents, securing a job, housing, a driver's license, so that they can have better job opportunities. And I have always helped him in the periphery. And several years ago, we created an assessment tool to help these individuals transition back to the community by identifying the types of risks that we would need to manage for them as they're coming out, and also to identify what types of vocational pursuits they might be interested in so we could do a better job match. Because of my HR background, I created the vocational piece. He did the risk profile. We tested this product in the field for several years. And then about 2012, I said, you know what, we need to transition this to an online product. And so all of a sudden I found myself becoming a product manager because I had to hire a developer. And I just jumped in 110%, learned a little bit about coding, product management, UX design. And I just found I loved the whole concept of taking a product from an idea to an actual working product. And so I decided, you know what, I think I want to do this for a career. And so a few years ago, I got a wonderful opportunity to work for an early stage startup locally here as a product manager. And so that's what I'm doing today. But I get bored easily. So I loved being involved in a lot of different projects. And this care project has always been, since five years ago, has been in my heart. It came about actually when my husband and I were talking one day, as we normally do at the kitchen table, and he was telling me, you know, how much artistic talent exists in the prisons. And how did you guys notice that? Like, was it through your interactions with inmates? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Because so one of the programs that he offers to worknet is a cognitive skills restructuring program or cognitive skills. And so he has a face-to-face contact with these with the inmates. He gets to know them very intimately.  And he was like, going, wow, this is mind boggling.  And so we started talking and I business mind thinking, gee, I wonder if there's a way, the question came up, I wonder if there's a way that we could market and sell their artwork. And we just kept on cooking this idea. And then one day I just said, you know what, I want to take this on. I want to figure out a way. And that was the birth of care. That was the birth of the care project. And so when you started, it was 2012, right? Yes.  And how many prisoners did you start with? And what was their response? As you said, hey, here's a project, you know, hear me out. Oh, they love it. So how it started was, because I have a technology background, one of the things that we do in technology is we talk about a minimum viable product, which means that we take something, a very basic idea, and we test it before we decide to go full on and launch it. So that's what I did. I thought, okay, let me test this idea. I had no idea if the public would even be accepting of incarcerated, you know, inmate art. I didn't know if people would just say, oh, inmate art, no, no, thank you. Or, you know, if there'd be some interest, I had no idea, right? So I got very lucky. I got to meet Miley Meyer, who is from Namea, Hawaii Gallery, at an event. And lo and behold, everybody was telling me, you've got to talk to Miley and, you know, tell her about this project. And all of a sudden, one day, I'm at an event with her. I'm sitting next to her, serendipity. And I thought, oh, now's my chance. I've got to talk about this project. And so I did. And she said, I love this idea of this. The other thing, too, is because Miley supports a lot of Native Hawaiian projects. And as we know, the Native Hawaiian population is way overrepresented in our presence. Right. It's like one out of all Native Hawaiians are in the correctional system. They represent 30%. And also are the highest group that recidivate, that continuously go back into the system. Right. So Miley invited me to her gallery. At that time, I had two artists that I was working with, had already transitioned out of prison and in the community. So I brought them with me. Do we have any pictures of their work with us? Actually, yes, I have. The artist I was representing, this eagle was made by Mo Kalaikai, who spent six years in Arizona. And he has a very interesting story. He was a welder by trade, but he always loved art. He always had an artistic talent. And it took him going to Arizona in prison to rediscover his artistic talent. And he had a lot of time on his hands, and he started to draw. And he then created a portfolio that I swear to God, it must be this thick for all the time that he spent there. And interestingly enough, art in the prison is used as a currency, because people would come to him and say, Mo, I want to send something to my girlfriend. Here's a photo of her. Can you draw a picture of her? And so he would draw and they would pay him. And then he would be able to use his money for the store, to buy things at the store. And he said after a year, he was able to save enough money to be able to buy a television for his cell. So people don't realize that people with artistic talent in the prisons are respected and they have a way of monetizing within that system, where they can use it as a currency. So an artwork that is done by a person who is in the correctional system, does it get to be then put on the exhibit in an art gallery or online? Or do they have to wait until they get out of prison to be able to do that? Yeah. So that's the beauty of our project. So going back to Miley, what she agreed to do was to take some of Mo's work on consignment. And so he sells some of these images that you see on the TV screen are actually on cards. And he sells those cards at her gallery. And I started this relationship with her about four years ago. And to this day, he still receives quarterly commission checks because his cards sell. People love his images. And that's when I tested the idea we had an opportunity to sell the artwork in front of her gallery. And that weekend, the artist made about $300. And so they were able to interact with the public and talk to them. And I started to see something amazing. Like I said, I didn't know how the public was going to react. And what I saw was that people saw the artwork. The first thing they reacted to was the art, right? They love the art. And then we would tell them the story about the care project and the fact that this person was incarcerated. And I noticed the bear, because at first I thought as soon as I say incarcerated, something's going to, you know, they're going to shift, right? That's what, that was what I expected. But I didn't see that. Instead, what I saw was people saying, looking at the person, looking at the art and they're going like, wow, everybody deserves a second chance. And so because of that art piece, it melted their barriers, their resistance, their stereotypes, whatever was going on if you had just presented them as an incarcerated person. And it melted that down. And they saw them as a real person who had some talent, who had who deserved another chance in society. Yeah. And you know, I think that that is so important because, you know, in a society that we live in, we are so judgmental. Oh, you know, if you have a criminal record or are in jail, you're not a good person or you're not worthy of second chances or not available. Right. And that's not true. And, you know, that reminds me a lot of one teaching from my mother, so wise, you know, that she would say to me, it was so important to differentiate between the person and the behavior and the choices that they might have made, good, better, ugly, because they are not their behaviors and those choices is much more to that. And then we also have to walk to preserve the integrity of their person, which I think for a lot of inmates and a lot of people who, you know, hit criminal justice system, that's like it's completely assassinated. You're no longer a person anymore.  That's really special. Yes. And what I realized is the power of the art, you know, originally our model was we wanted to market and sell the artwork so that these inmates could earn money for their transition back to the community because oftentimes they're released with no financial resources. That was the objective of the program. But what I saw from that experience is that it is so much more that it has the ability of changing hearts and minds basically, you know, through the artwork. So let's talk about that change of minds and hearts. Even from the perspective of individuals who, you know, are incarcerated, I don't like to use the incarcerated person, you know. It's a personal, individual past, you know. Their condition is of being incarcerated. But when they started to embrace care projects, what is it that you have seen from that little seed at the beginning and as they progress, you know, in their own work? Oh, I have some wonderful stories from that. So a part of the launch of the care project is we got some seed funding. And so we were able to launch it at the women's prison as a pilot project. And then from there on, so we've added actually at the women's prison now for about four years, four years, I think. And so the women that have gone through the program, I've just saw some just amazing, amazing things. You know, I mean, I don't know if you've ever been in the prison, but it's a very, very harsh environment, very harsh. And I go, you know, for work. Yeah, that's right. I haven't been there, you know, as a new mate. Yeah. I never know. I don't think we want to be there as a new mate. But what we found with the care project is not only that, so we would have two classes per week or three hours each. It was a two hours, two hours each. And so the women would, first of all, look forward to coming because it gave them a chance, a safe space, because one of the things I was adamant about is we want to create a safe space so that they could feel like they could unleash their creativity. And so we gave them some tools, some of them we let them do some, you know, whatever they wanted to do artistically. If they were good at drawing, then they could draw. We were teaching them some different things. I had an art instructor, so for some of them who wanted to learn some different things, we started out with quilling. I don't know if you know what quilling is, paper where you roll it a little coils, and then you make very, you know, different images and things. Yeah, let's take a minute break and then we'll give you a chit-chit. Oh, sure. Okay. Yes, thank you. Hello, everybody. My name is Walter Kawaii. I'm your host for a monthly live streaming video entitled Ukulele Songs of Hawaii, where I bring on guests. We enjoy talking story about the music industry here in Hawaii, sometimes going back 50 decades if possible, and always having some good fun talking with entertainers. We're here located at Think Tech, Hawaii, downtown Honolulu at the Pioneer Plaza building and in their studios. So join me next month for Ukulele Songs of Hawaii. Welcome back to Perspectives on Global Justice. Think Tech Hawaii. This is your host Beatrice Cantamo, and we are here with Ruby Menon. So as we were, you know, talking about what you have noticed with the changes as individuals started to participate from care projects. So a safe space. That's when we stopped. Yes. So yeah, so we created a safe space for them to come and be creative. And we started, at first, we weren't quite sure, you know, we wanted to give the women some decision in what they wanted to create. So we started out with drawings, with quilling, eventually one of the inmates who was a master at crocheting came in and taught the other inmates how to crochet. And they made like amazing stuff. And one of the stories I can tell about the whole crochet period was that one of the women came in, she didn't know how to crochet. And so Sabrina showed her how. And she started making, so she, her family was on the big island and she had four children. But because of their distance, she didn't get to see them that often. And so she had this idea of making stuff for her kids. And so she made like scarves and little hats and gloves and all kinds of really adorable things. So she had children in different, you know, young ages.  And then my kids can get these items. And so that's what we did. And then he sends a photo back with the children wearing the hat, the gloves, the scarves. And we brought the picture into her so she could see. And I mean, of course, it was a totally emotional moment. You know, she was so happy that her kids were able to get these, these, these things that she made for them to create that personal connection. And then all the other women started looking and going like, I want to make stuff for my family too. You know, so they just, and I had, I mean, I didn't plan this, they did this. This came out organically out of, you know, the care project. Well, that's the beauty of projects is that, you know, a lot of times you plan to see the, but you have no control of how it will grow.  And so that is just so neat. And it's just so important to, I know a lot of families when they are separated because of, you know, incarceration times, they don't really have this opportunity to have these nurturing connections. And can you imagine just getting like a scarf or anything that's needed with a lover from? Well, imagine how our kids must have felt like they've got, they felt connected to mom because I'm wearing something that she made for me, you know. And so that's what our program has been able to facilitate for our artists. That's beautiful. And so now we're, you know, we're working, we're trying to launch this at the men's prison as well because right now it's only at the women's prison. And we also sell the artwork on our website at www.worknetink.org. And so, you know, one of the things that I've, right now I'm pretty much the only one who's handling all of this and because I have a day job and a bunch of other things I try, I do my best to try and market and sell their artwork. So I try to go through social media. I'm hoping to have a little show at the Impact Hub in Akaako. I've already started to talk to them so that my next iteration of this is to be able to have a little art show so that people can be more exposed to their stuff. And recently we had the opportunity to participate in the Purple Prize. So let's talk about what is Purple Prize for our viewers who don't know what it is. Yeah, the Purple Prize is an awesome, awesome program. I can't think their price is enough. So what they are is an accelerator but is rooted in Hawaiian values as the foundation of our social impact project. And that's their focus, social impact project. Let's talk about Hawaiian values in the context of Purple Prize a little bit. So what they taught us, our first few classes were actually going out into nature and understanding these amazing systems, these water management systems that our ancient Hawaiians built with the whole fish pond water management system from 700 years ago. And it just blew my mind. It's like these people didn't have computers they could go and Google that stuff and figure out how the heck did they even figure this stuff out? It's just amazing. And they just figured out this amazing system of what they call indigenous technology that we're actually going back to now to relearn these systems of how everything is interdependent. We cannot do something here and expect for it not to have a ripple effect over here. So we have to have that connection. So they really tried to root us into that foundation so that we thought about how we're building our project or program or technology with that in mind for so to have a bigger social impact. And so our project was accepted in what they call the connection space. And I was challenged with at first, you know, the big part of it is that they want you to figure out a technology component because they want to move this into the 21st century. And I was really racking my brain like how what am I going to do for technology? I mean this is like this is artwork and you know showing in the gallery.  And I had this amazing experience. I went to this show at the Arts at Marx and the circus performer created augmented reality so that we would look through our phones through different parts of his experience his performance and we would see all these like different objects coming into the environment and we had like a multi-sensory experience and it was a wow moment. And the next morning I woke up talked to my husband at the kitchen table. I don't know that kitchen table spawned a lot of ideas. It's a magic. It's a magic carpet. It's a magic carpet. It's a magic carpet. And we were talking about how much we love that experience and how wonderful it was and the wow moments. And then all of a sudden I thought well what if I did that with the art? Like what if I did augmented reality with the art? And then I started like researching and realizing that augmented reality is being used now with art and people are going into galleries with their phones and pointing their phones at the at the image and then having a multi-sensory augmented reality experience with it. So that's what I had suggested at the purple prize to be my technology piece is to have that AR layer for some of the pieces. So that's my next iteration. That's the new iteration of the care project now which is to bring it into the 21st century with augmented reality. And I'm hoping to do that with one piece when we do our show. I'm thinking probably of the whale. I love the whale because it has so much I don't know if you can show that whale again. Oh yeah. So it has a lot of fluidity and movement so I'm hoping to do something with that image of augmented reality. That is just so neat. So and the artists get to hear about the evolution of the project also like from what is happening from beginning to like now with like these new additions, new spaces. Yeah because Mo Kalaikai is now our art instructor at the women's prison. So he's teaching them a lot of stuff because he's such a brilliant artist. So let's talk about Mo a little bit. Was he one of the alumni of the care project? So interestingly enough how Mo, so Mo was a client I think a while ago and then you know he we found him a job as an artist in a t-shirt shop and every and so when I was building the care project at first I was looking at community artists because we didn't we weren't in the prison yet and everybody would tell me you've got to talk to this guy Mo but we didn't know like how to find him or anything. One day Mo shows up at work net and apparently just like that. Just like that. He lost his job. They got laid off and he came to us to help him find another job and at that time Warren who was working with us like you know came to me says Ruby Ruby this is the guy I've been telling you about you've got to come and meet him you know so and I did and I started talking to him about the project and he was all in after that and then we recruited a couple of other artists and that's how we started the care project was with him. These other two artists one artist now has a very successful tattoo shop and the other artist she's kind of taking care of her grandkids right now so she's not so much involved in her art but Mo is our principal artist he's and we we now he is one of our employees at work net as our resident artist so he creates a lot of the artwork and he also features the women at the women's prison and eventually when we launch it at the men's prison he will be also the art instructor there. That is wonderful and so any plans to work with our jovi correctional system because I imagine this would be so embraced by our teenagers also young adults our juvenile. Oh juvenile no we we haven't really thought about that yet. Maybe there is a seat there. There's always yeah I mean if we can get some more funding for this and we can start to expand it my hope is that we can prototype the project here have it be successful and then start to launch it in prisons across the United States because there's artistic talent locked up in our prisons you know nationally and if we can give all the artists some type of vehicle you know where they can actually showcase their artwork and market and sell their artwork I think that would be huge you know because the other ancillary things that people don't realize is that when I go back into the prison and I tell the women or our artists like you're sort of sold the self-esteem is priceless you know you can't put money on that you can't put a monetary value on that it just validates them it makes them feel like they've got something value to offer the community you know so I just think that there's so many amazing byproducts of this this project not only the fact that they could earn some money but all the the self-esteem and then the break the changing of hearts and minds I mean there's just so many different things that are so cool about this it's just beautiful I mean I can't believe we are at the end of our program for today but I have two invitations for you one is that you come back as a guest in the near future again for part two of this beautiful venture that we started and that you bring you know Mo and other artists that you know are now maybe on probation or they're already you know in the community so that we can also continue you know to hear this beautiful love story from that perspective as well you know oh I'd love to yeah this is wonderful well thank you so much for this vision thank you so much for letting me tell my story about absolutely and this you know magic table that you have in your kitchen on this beautiful partnership with your husband and with the community at large and that may this beautiful project you know expanded to the man's correctional systems here in Hawaii very smoothly and be successful and you know reach out to our nationwide thank you thank you hello ha


Staphylococcus aureus produces various toxins including staphylococcal entrotoxins, SEs, SEa to C, SEg to SEi, SEr to set, and staphylococcalike, cell, proteins which are not a medic in primates or have yet to be tested. These toxins cause rapid onset of symptoms such as nausea and violent vomiting, usually self-limiting but occasionally severe enough for hospitalization. The most common cause of staphylococcal food poisoning is SEa but other classical SEs and new SEs slash cells have also been associated with it. Genes encoding novel SEs and cells with untested ametic activity are widely represented in S aureus and their role in pathogenesis may be underestimated. This article was authored by Maria Rosario Radishio, Maria Carmen Mendoza, and Maria Angelis Argydon.


Over the weekend, kids and adults alike came together for some good old-fashioned fun. In this week's community spotlight, our Josh Peterson shows us how the worldwide day of play isn't only for kids. The smiles and laughter were contagious as Paul Bunyan Park was transformed into one giant playground. For the past decade, the City of Bemidji Parks and Recreation Department have taken part in the annual Worldwide Day of Play as a way to motivate kids to get outside and have some fun. It's really to promote active outdoor family fun. So it's a big thing that Parks and Rec tries to get out there is just being active, being outdoors and having a good time. While providing a fun and safe place for kids and their parents, the Worldwide Day of Play is also a great opportunity to promote fun and engaging programs for kids throughout the year. We get the kids out in the parks, getting them outside, experiencing new activities, getting them connected with different organizations that are offering different services and programs that we may not be. With a variety of activities, kids of all ages had the chance to jump, crawl, draw or even play an assortment of games, which always left the kids feeling like a winner.  But the fun and games weren't only for the kids, they were also for big kids as well. Many of the volunteers for the event were kids themselves not long ago. This is actually my first time volunteering around the midget area. Our instructor, Shannon Norman, told us it would be a good idea to get some hours in for volunteering, so hit her up on that offer and it's been a fun day. This is my first time coming here, I thought this was a good opportunity for me to explore the town, a good opportunity to get some volunteer hours in, and it's actually really cool to watch all these kids just having fun with their parents. Throughout the event, these volunteers found themselves reliving the glory days and are hoping to be back for more. A lot of kids, it's a lot of fun seeing the kids smile and having a good time. Just all around, it's been a really fun day.  It's really cool just to see how all these families interact with their kids. With this week's community spotlight in Bemidji, Josh Peterson, Lakeland News. If you enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland PBS.


Welcome, thanks for joining us to the nonprofit show. Julie and I are thrilled that you're here and I am thrilled that Julie is in the hot seat. So Fridays are ask and answer are typically our favorite days but I also have to say, Julia, I really love it when you and I turn the tables on one another and you are here as our guest, Julia Patrick, CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy talking about something that I have never heard, I've never heard you talk about and so I am just as eager to learn about dog-fooding for your nonprofit. I know, I'm interested to learn about that and before we dive into this conversation, of course, we wanna introduce ourselves or reintroduce ourselves. Julia Patrick, CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy, this, the nonprofit show was her idea so we thought it would be two weeks, she thought it would be two weeks and here we are three years coming up on 600 episodes. I'm Jarrett Ransom, your nonprofit nerd, CEO of the Raven Group and I am so honored to be alongside Julia as the co-host of the nonprofit show each and every day and we are truly able to do this because of our support and ongoing commitment from our presenting sponsors. So thank you, thank you, thank you to Blumerang American Nonprofit Academy, Fundraising Academy, nonprofit nerd, your part-time controller, staffing boutique and the nonprofit thought leaders. If you have not checked out these companies, please do because they are here to help you drive your mission forward in the best possible way in and around your community in about 28 minutes is a good time to check them out, not now because we have some broad-fooding and what the heck that might mean. But if you wanna share today's episode or any of our other 600 episodes, you can do that. You can find us on Roku, YouTube, Amazon Fire 2D and Vimeo.  So again, you know, every now and then, Julie and I turn the seat on each other, we put each other in the hot seat and we say, hey, we each have many, many, many years of experience in this sector and we each have topics and skill sets that we consider our zone of genius. So today's topic is brought to you by Julia. So she's not serving as the co-host, she's serving as a guest. Yes, and I will tell you, it's a little nerve-wracking to be the guest and not the co-host, but Julia, I'm thrilled to have you here and I'm really thrilled to learn about dog-fooding. And the first question is, what the heck is it? So this is one of my favorite topics and in my trainings that I do for board members and we call them the board boot camps, we talk about this concept. And so let me take a step back. In the early 1970s, there was a very, very popular and well thought of actor by the name of Lauren Green and he was the father of the series called Bonanza and it was like a very patriarchal, very well-to-do prominent family leader, community leader, leader of the Western United States, rancher. And he had this fabulously popular show and he was contracted by Alpo. And so sometimes you hear this called the Alpo effect. And what he did is he came onto national TV and said, Alpo is the food of choice for my dog and only the finest will go into my family's dog. And before this, Americans and people worldwide, they didn't really spend money on dog food. They gave their dogs their scraps, right? We do this in the nonprofit sector. Okay, so this is gonna like hair on fire and I don't have a lot of hair to get rid of. So this is a big concept. So the concept is this, that when we have a mind shift that we say we're going to eat what we make, we're gonna serve what we make. Now what's happened is that the tech sector, interestingly enough, embraced this Alpo theory or the Alpo effect and said, we're gonna dog food ourselves. So when we create a product, we're gonna use it. So for example, we're a tech company and we've created a new calendar feature. Well, now we're gonna make everyone use this calendar. We see this in retail where merchants or designers say, we design clothes and our employees have to wear all the clothes. So for example, you would not go into the house of Chanel and see their staff wearing Dior, right? No, they're wearing what they make. They're eating their own dog food. And so this is a really big deal in the nonprofit sector because we don't eat our own dog food. Okay, this is nowhere where I thought this was gonna go. I know. Because I thought dog fooding, it was negative but really what I'm hearing, especially with the Chanel Dior, right? Which I hope no one's truly eating a Chanel outfit or Dior outfit, but the reality is to believe so much in the product programs that you create that you yourself, your organization, your staff, your stakeholders are also buying into that dog food, if you will. Yeah, and you're serving yourself. So in the nonprofit sector, a lot of times, and we had a guest on yesterday and we hear this a lot, Jared, you'll agree. Oh, we work with limited resources and we do the best we can and so, you know, we take the bruised apples and bananas and serve them to our clients, right? I mean, we do this. We have to be really honest. We have to look inwards and say, yeah, you know, we don't always give the best in the highest quality. Right, and I would say that's not just for our community, that's for our staff. And I would push that forward, right?  And that is something I know that has been in conversation in our sector for a really long time. So, okay, so dog fooding. Now that you've told us what this is, I will admit, you know, I was born in the 70s, so I don't know the actor, but I do know bonanza. I do know bonanza. So that helps me to really understand, you know, what exactly that is. So now let's move us forward and we have this beautiful Dalmatian for those of you, you know, watching the show, you can see this, but for those of you listening in a podcast form, you know, we do have a dog here in an image eating. It looks like real food. He's not eating dog food. There's some nice figs, some pomegranates, some really good stuff. Okay, so on the slide we're gonna talk about, or you're gonna talk about, testing real world use and honest evaluations. Drive us through this conversation. Tell us what these three bullet points really relate to. So this is a really interesting aspect of this. And I'll give you a real world experience. Early in my career, I was invited by the head of philanthropy for a very large organization. And they said, will you come to our dining? Come have lunch with us. And my assistant was like, yeah, she'll def, you know, got it all situated. And it was at a name of a restaurant that had a very similar name to the service organization. Not exact, but similar. And this restaurant was very ladi, it was quite posh. And so I was like, well, okay.  And then to the service organization, right? And I was like, you know, yeah, good for them.  They're having me eat at their kitchen, right? Thanks.  And my contact doesn't show up. And all of a sudden my assistant calls and says, Julia, you're not at the restaurant.  And everybody's looking at me and I don't see my contact. And they're like, no, it's not at the shelter. It's at the posh posh restaurant. The Ladi Da one. The Ladi Da that shared a common name. So what I'm getting at was that this film, Thropic Director, shame on him. He should have had me at his place of business. Shelter, right. We should have been eating the dog food. We should have been seeing. And he should have been showing me what they do and how they do it and how good the food is. But this is the reality. He didn't do it. He didn't eat at his own place. And so this is where the concept is, we need to be testing what we're serving. We need to be seeing how our clients respond to us. We need to become the clients for a period of time so we can understand what's going on. You know, it's so interesting that you say this and again, full transparency. Julie and I have spent 600 days, you know, mornings together. I've never heard this concept until today. And so I am learning right along with all of our viewers and listeners too. And you're so right, you were so right because I think the community is a culprit of this as well. And, you know, and when it comes to donating in-kind donations, be it furniture, be it clothing, we say this isn't good enough for us.  Kind of that, you know, someone's junk is someone else's treasure. And I can tell you that I have seen, you know, the detriment of this hit so many of the consignment thrift stores in our sector that serve as like a social enterprise that they are in fact, you know, losing so much money, sifting through essentially our trash to say, this is not what we can give our clients or sell in our community. And so I think, you know, to this point, and again, as I'm learning this in the moment, Julia, is that, you know, our nonprofit leaders as well as our community members are culprits of this. So how do we change the mind frame? Like, how do we get that person that invited you to the restaurant to the shelter? Like, how do we make this shift? Right, so this is like one of my favorite topics went like I said, when we do our training. And this is my call to the community. And that is to start with your board and have them have an on campus with client experience. So one of my favorite things is, is to challenge boards that run shelter services. How many board members do you think in our country have ever spent a night in one of their shelters? Right? I would say very few.  I want to experience this, but I don't know that that's the truth.  I can tell you the first time that I served on the board of the nation's largest domestic violence shelter, I knew nothing about domestic violence. And I was not educated whatsoever. And I would say I'm still not fully educated. And I went down and spent a shift when I was a new board member at one of our shelters. And I came out of that experience waving the flag. I was like, anybody, I became the million dollar asker.  And it profoundly changed my life. It profoundly changed the way I viewed service. Now, at the same time to kind of balance the stress and the duress of serving on a board is such an important topic, I served in a cultural institution as a trustee on a cultural institution. And so I was like, well, how could I take the same concept? And so what I did was I went to rehearsals and I went into like where stage craft was and to try and see what they did. And I saw how hard they worked and I saw how unglamorous it was. And I was literally behind the curtain, right? And so that was the same experience. This does not mean that it's only for, you know, the toughest of the tough topics. I mean, this could be, let's say you're in an after-school program. How many of our board members have gone to the after-school program and served as somebody that helps pass out the snacks or plays basketball with the kids or helps get kids off the bus or on the bus, right? I mean, there are a lot of ways that we can get ourselves ingrained or, and maybe not even ingrained, but introduced, introduced to what we're doing. You formed and educated. And, you know, when I sit around a board table with many board members, I love the mission moment. And I love when it comes from the board members and these examples, these real life examples that you Julia have just shared with us, these are mission moments. And there's so many opportunities to do this.  You've given us an arts and culture experience. There's so many ways to engage. Sadly, I've also been at board tables where the board, many board members will say, I had no idea we did that. Or I had no idea we had multiple offices, right? And so they're very sheltered in what they know and what they're, you know, what they're able to say because then they're not able to be the advocate in the community and speak, you know, to the depth and breadth of the services. So you're asking really, and I know we're gonna talk next, you know, a little bit deeper in the boards and the stakeholders. So what about the honest evaluations? Like, are we able to then see where there might be hangups in this? Yeah, I think what happens is that in my experience and doing board training for so many years and talking to folks, that the expectation of what it looks like to be engaged with our nonprofit isn't always the same, right? And I think a lot of times we as board members, even community members, let's take it into the bigger landscape, we have opinions about who we think our clients are, who we're giving service to. So if it's cultural, oh, well only well to do white old ladies go to the opera, right? No, not really true, nor should it be true. You know, only women of color that are not educated go into domestic violence sheltered. They're the only victims of domestic violence. Well hello, we know that's not true. One in four women in our country, in our country will experience domestic violence in their life, okay? So I mean, we have to retool what we think about. And if we can go into our own nonprofit as not as oh hail the board member, right? No, you kind of go in incognito.  Then I think you can be much more profoundly engaged and come back to what the real mission is. I think it's like undercover boss, because I love that show. Love it, yeah, yeah. You know, that's a great comment, Jared, because it is kind of like that. You know, it's showing up to volunteer but not as a board member or being identified. Interesting. Now that is a concept that I would love to see. I know that we have so many nonprofit leaders, you know, watching and listening to us live right now. And we also know our viewership of these recorded.  Are you eating what your clients are eating? You know, when you brought up that restaurant, I have to say, I was working for an organization, you know, that is very well known as a food bank and they had a social enterprise have, still do, a social enterprise that's a restaurant. And the purpose of that is to teach the clients how to do front-end, back-end, you know, restaurant service. And it was fantastic. And so that was always an opportunity where staff went and ate because it gave the clients the opportunity to serve, to experience that real life. I love that you brought this up and I had no idea that I was dog-fooding before I knew what dog-fooding was.  We're experiencing the mission, basically. You know, we are being clients. We're putting ourselves in our client's shoes as opposed to thinking about what we have. I'll give you one more aspect of how we can engage and make this real. I remember early in my board service, I went to one of my first board meetings and it was one of the most expensive commercial office districts of our city. And it was, it was, talk about La Di Da. I mean, it was a boardroom, very prestigious company, overlooking the city. It was literally rarified air. And I remember saying, okay, this is my first meeting and you might ask me to leave, but why the F aren't we down at the shelter meeting? Right. I mean, What are you saying? Well, the board chair was shocked and was, I'm sure was like, well, who voted you in? And the CEO said to me, well, if we don't do this, no one will come to the meetings. And I said, well, then you have the wrong, you have the wrong board. Right. Because I think if you have to drive past people living on the streets, you're going to have a different perspective as to wheeling up in your Mercedes and tossing the keys to the valet to then go make decisions, right? And this is what's happening in our country. People don't want to see what's going on. It's so nitty gritty. It's really hard. And so we get like a compassion distortion when we are not dogfooding. And yet our staff and our leadership, our C-suite all the way down to the grounds crews are just getting dragged every day, every day. It's just brutal. So here's the million dollar question, Julia. How do we get board members to do this? Because I will tell you, right? Like it's a volunteer position.  In fact, a couple of days ago, you and I talked about there's so much going on in our country, so much going on in our sector. We really need to start talking about these in brass tux issues. Like let's bring up the things that aren't beautiful. Let's bring up the things that are really somewhat controversy. And so looking at this as dogfooding, I have been involved with conversations where board members, I mean, we're lucky to get them at the table. We're lucky to get them on Zoom.  So how do we get them to see the value of this and take that step forward? You know, I've thought about this a lot. And I know that earlier in my years, I mean, I believe it or not, I've toned down. At 61 years old, I've toned down because I was a lot more aggressive as a younger woman. And so I didn't make a lot of friends. And over the trajectory of 30 years of being on board service, I've had those conversations in my head that said, you know, why was I the only one thinking this? And I wasn't. The difference is I was the only one saying it. And I think there's no shame in authentic leadership to explain this. And to say, hey, everybody, you know, we're embracing this concept of dogfooding and we would really like it to become a requirement of our boards.  How do we get you engaged? So one of the things is a tangential opportunity to figure out who the other services or organizations are. I had the opportunity to sit on a 911 board once with operators to see what the calls were coming in, not because our organization was working with the police department or was the police department, our organization worked with the police department. And so that was one of the experiences that we could take as a board member to learn how our organization filtered in to the larger community. Okay, here on fire, those board members that took that opportunity, it transformed us. Not just for our organization, by the way, for our community. So I think you can do some of these things. It's really a board effect. You know, how is this board impacting the community, affecting the community personally as a body of governance? And so you have to think about this. This leads me to the board liaison, one of my favorite topics. You know, if you have a board liaison and you have this mentality, then you can't administrate this.  No, it doesn't work that way. You gotta say it on this date at this time, this is the opportunity who wants to show up. It's tough love, but I think it's administrative. And to hold them accountable, because we really do need that buy-in from our board. We need that buy-in from the stakeholders and to see that. And you know, Julia, you have mentioned those dress rehearsals for the arts and cultures before. And I just think that is a fantastic opportunity to engage the board and funders into, you know, those dress rehearsal opportunities. So you had shared, Julia, that you provide this, you know, training, if you will, during your board boot camp. And I'm, I just love this concept. I love that you allowed me, are yourself, to turn the tables on you today to share one of these concepts and discussions that you're just so passionate about. Who knew that Bonanza would come up in the nonprofit show? For Alpo, Dark Food, come on now. It's a nonprofit show, man. We got it, we got it snapping. We got it going on. I just, I love it. I love these conversations. If this is something you want to hear more from Julia, please reach out to Julia at the American Nonprofit Academy. Of course, you can share this episode with your team thanks to our presenting sponsors. So thank you so very much to Bloomerang, American Nonprofit Academy, Fundraising Academy, Nonprofit Nerd, your part-time controller, staffing boutique and the nonprofit thought leaders. These companies allow us to have unscripted conversations. None of this truly is led or curated, I should say, by our sponsors. They believe so much in the sector and so much in the communities that they serve. And I guarantee you they're in your community because so many are virtual now. But really, Julia, this is a fantastic topic that I'm just so grateful that you were able to share with us because it's really important that we do see the value in the product, in the program, in the services that we're providing. Yeah, I mean, you know, it's a, there's a famous, famous situation that's recently occurred with a change of leadership in Microsoft. And it used to be that Microsoft employees were not allowed to have Apple cell phones. Right. Because, or smartphones, because it was like, hello, the competitor. And the new CEO came on and was like, hey, guess what I'm carrying? I use an Apple, I use an iPhone because their product is great. And I want to be that product. So, you know. That's interesting. It's the same concept. It's eating what you make and what you serve. And that competitive benchmarking, which I loved learning that when I went through my master's of business administration program was really competitive benchmarking, generic benchmarking. So I could see the value of, if we're carrying an Android because that's who we are and that's what we do, great. But we can also carry the competitors and learn what are our competitive advantages. Absolutely. I'll heart and parcel. Well, this is fantastic, Julia. Again, thank you for bringing a topic to light that I have never heard of and I will never now forget it because this is a topic that you cannot forget. You cannot unhear. And again, for those of you that are interested in sharing this, I know I am, find us on so many of our streaming platforms as well as the podcast. And if you have any questions of where these are, go to the AmericanUnprofitAcademy.com and that will steer you towards these various channels. So thank you so much, Julia. Thank you. I so appreciate you, Jared Ransome. Absolutely. And tomorrow we will be back. I'm excited for tomorrow's conversation. Until then, as we sign off each and every day, we ask you to please stay well so you can do well. Thanks everyone and have a great day.