Thanks for staying with us now with access to fewer resources and generally leaner teams small businesses need to be more creative and tactful in their approach to customer service or experience that's not to say that they can't provide a top-notch experience they absolutely can they just need to be a little more focused with their efforts now customer service is also important for small businesses because it opens a direct line of communication with customers those conversations can lead to product breakthroughs and insight or even reveal a new customer segment you don't even know or you didn't know that it existed there's a strong correlation between customer experience and loyalty and those businesses that get it right are more likely to retain customers and have those customers recommend their products or services to a friend now what does customer experience mean to you and in what ways do you believe it can impact small businesses all right so because she's our very own let me just remind you people again with experience in various disciplines including customer experience customer service customer loyalty digital marketing strategy content development and training both in public and private sector across two continents uti elu has been exposed to various business styles strategies approaches and she's joined us live in the studio hey you know sometimes you know sometimes they underestimate the powerful women that sit on the chair because we don't just try to we don't sit on our own but you know when we have opportunities like this we don't miss it we shine but thank you so much uti it's all right because you know you are giving back to small businesses and i think you know you you do it effortlessly because we've seen you we've seen you uh take on big organizations and they're just going back to back uti elu uti elu let our ways uh wait till they record them let them enjoy small come and learn from me don't be looking at her with one ah she's a madame but thank you so much uti all right so i mean small businesses right um a lot of things has changed um so before social media you know you could easily um how do i put it have contact with your customers because everybody needed to go physical to a store you know to patronize you and all of that because the social media has made customer experience transcend beyond even so i've seen people say that i've been shopping from this i don't even know who the person is so i keep wondering so why would i stay because i used to feel like before before somebody stays with you in your business they must have that personal relationship ah like okay they've experienced you in person and you're such a nice person that makes them come back but now uh people are shopping people are buying amazon they're buying everywhere you know so there is definitely an experience that keeps them going back even though this business seemingly are faceless so because they've not had a personal interaction with the um the business owners so what exactly is that it factor that makes those um customers go back you know what's the experience like for them so i love that you mentioned amazon because um technology has changed the face of customer experience we if i think of the last major milestone that has occurred it would be covid that has changed how businesses are operating so when we talk about creating experiences today it's deliberate right so even if i don't see you money has been my customer for 10 years i don't know what she looks like but she's one of my best customers that can happen today in the past it'll never happen you will probably have met her a couple of times i've gone to a yeah exactly send her a hamper sent her a birthday card you would have done all of those things and those things are still perfectly valid right depending on the type of business that you're running and the type of customer segments that you have they're still valid but today what has changed is first of all the customer has changed so in the past you had a different expectation from your bank than you had from your tailor than you had from your supermarket but today customer expectation is the same across board what we're doing today is rather than comparing my experience with bank a to bank b or shop a to shop b i'm comparing my experience the best experience i've had regardless of whether it's in shop a in bank b whatever business i now have a standard that has been set now you talked about social media social media now has now raised the bar so when social media first started once somebody says i'll go to social media everybody like oh my god what are they going to say and then over the years businesses started to get smarter business started to realize that yes it is possible for things to go viral on social media but then it's also not as easy so depending on the footprint that you have right you can't post today and nobody will ever see you don't have followers if you don't have engagement i mean yes we have a lot of bloggers today that you know somebody might tag somebody and they might then pick up but it wasn't as easy to go viral as people thought so businesses started to go ah okay i can actually come back and respond so if you go on social media today you see businesses respond in a way to challenge people so before it was like ah this business did bad it's gone wrong but even the consumers have changed so now you see people defending businesses when they say something went wrong you see people coming to the comments and you know so the whole landscape has changed you can no longer differentiate on product you can no longer differentiate on price there's pretty much a competitor out there who is either doing the same thing or doing it better than you in terms of quality of product or doing it cheaper so where does the real playground now exist it is in the experience so i am willing to pay more in shop b because i like the experience that i'm paid less in shop a because even though it's cheaper i don't get the experience that i want so experience in itself has become a currency so you can't afford as a business not to pay attention to the experience that you're creating it's so so important for SMEs they always think that they're too small they always think that it's too small so you talk to certain businesses and they go ah we can't afford it this thing or you give certain examples and they go ah but they're a big company they're big companies yeah so that's the first place where i find that for small businesses i always say look as a business owner you set the tone of your business and a lot of people are fighting i want to get the best product i want to get the best product but if you ask them what do your customers truly want they probably can't tell you so they're sourcing all sorts of different things have you noticed when you go into like clothing stores we're starting to get better now but you remember clothing stores everywhere will be jam-packed squashed you have to start trying to pick out one thing you can't even see what they're selling because you're trying to be all things to all men so i see it oh i think somebody will like it you buy it i see it so you have all these products but somebody will come into your store they can't see they can't some people will be turned off by it because they can't even see what you're selling exactly and then some people they walk into your store and you don't have anything that represents them so it means that you don't understand your customer base so that becomes the problem so first and foremost as a business owner i say look you can't be all things to all men what's your business niche who is your customer so if you are a big bank you will have lots of different segments of customers but as a smaller business you have less income you even more power because you can then streamline your customer so you've got smaller income you've got less of a marketing budget you know everything is on a smaller scale so you have to be more deliberate and targeted who is my customer there's no point in wasting marketing spend or even your energy or your staff's energy trying to serve a customer who isn't your customer because guess what you're doing in your business service you will never be able to please that customer the experience you're trying to create if you have even gotten to that far where you're creating an experience for your customer you wouldn't have been able to satisfy the customer so what happens is you run the risk of somebody then having a bad experience of your business and then telling other people so very important as a business owner to understand most times we focus on our product the business owner wants to get the product right they want to get the pricing right so that they're profitable but if you really really want to go to the next step you now need to think about the experience what am i layering on it that if somebody opens a store right next to me tomorrow selling the exact same product what is going to make people walk past that door into my so um i've heard you've said so much and in all that you've said you've told us that customer service is the bedrock of any business and we know that a positive experience creates a second time customer you know but what really brings them back what's what what makes the customers come back is it the services or is it the product so i mean a great product is fantastic doesn't matter how great the experience is you still have to have a product that meets the expectations of your customer now set that aside the service also has to be thought about but i like when you said service because i was hoping that somebody will allow me to do my two-minute talk about the difference between service and experience so the service is great right because but the service only exists when somebody comes to you so for me to serve you you have to have a need you have to want something either you've bought my product and you need help with it or you need some information about your product about my product yeah so there is a push and a pull you are doing something that requires me to then respond so service is reactionary right um and service is great i'm going to celebrate customer service week next week is my own Christmas next week is my work Christmas so we're going to be celebrating customer service week and all of that is in the delivery so you talk about service delivery it's an action it's doing something in reaction to something but imagine you have customers you bought something and nothing has ever gone wrong with it you've used it it's been fine you've never had reason to go back to that shop what how can you be a loyal customer right because it was a one of purchase right so there was no need for service now imagine if that business doesn't think about customer experience where will so that means they would have to increase their marketing spend to keep bringing first-timers first-timers to come through the door exactly so at the end of the day what you are trying to say is product over service so the pro no it's not even that it's that you trust me to understand that service is only a part of the journey so i have a service you came you bought i served you you left the product is fine you never needed to ask me a question you never needed anything else you've gone it's like a house you bought a house the house was fantastic great and you've moved on where is the experience in what is going to bring you back it now and that's where you start to talk about experience that's the difference so service is a point in time i need something you give me no experience is a business thinking about the end to end so first of all how do you find my business that's the awareness is a starting point so business owners today social media is where everybody goes right but remember we talked about your customer type is your customer type on social media is your customer type on instagram or are they on facebook or tiktok now or tiktok so you've got to know and understand your customers to then determine how you build awareness some businesses need a website some businesses don't so that's when you start to think about the experience so now you've created awareness now i know of your business now i contact you i want to see your product what information about your product is out there so you see social small businesses today asking their customers for reviews asking them to post comments post pictures why because they're trying to make sure there's enough information out there that when i have a need i know there's an association with your product yeah and then there is enough information out there to say ah this particular business feels to be really good about this thing everybody's saying nice things so today you want to buy something what do you do especially right now the cosmetic industry every time you go online they tell you oh this cream is amazing you know baby girl's skin you know this i'm like how should i buy this cream because i'm just here and i'm reading the reviews and i'm like so i get you so you're getting that point of it so you've got the the the um information out there so you're building on the awareness then this is you ask now where product comes in you have to then have a great product to back it up other if you didn't have a great product you wouldn't have had the great reviews and good awareness exactly then you buy the product so you've bought your cream now you don't know whether you should use it in the morning or use night so what is the experience what information have i given you to have to experience the product in the way that you will get the best out of it and if you don't give me i don't use it other like you know there's some cream they tell you don't use during the day because of the storm you use at night so if i use that cream during the day and i get burned that's the bad experience so you have businesses you see some businesses today who even add some little cards when you buy stuff so what they have done with the hair business is that now they don't just give you hair they give you a brush if it is the other head that needs a spray bottle give you the spray bottle they put a they put a brush they put a they they put a small card that tells you how to care for your hair okay all of that is building on the experience so it seems like a little serene a little sweet now it goes all of these things are creating that experience that you are defining because remember you need the hair to look fly for somebody to say ah where did you get that hair and you say oh i got it from this place ah don't worry if you go to them they will check you they will tell you what you need that's what you're trying to create the end point is customer loyalty and advocacy so you give them the information to have success with your product to love your product to recommend your product because it is cheaper for me to convince you to buy from money than it is for money to take out and add on social media or on tv to sell the product absolutely she will trust me more when i tell her yes i'll just your review exactly i'll just the power of review so you get to that point where you've created that positive impact now your product is selling itself your experience is selling your business and you're not even spending money advertising exactly i have one question for you but let us quickly go to break i see that oh god we will continue to teeter in the clock all right thanks for saying with us now if you just didn't see that we are having an amazing time i think we should not be bringing in guests again i'm telling you okay what do you know about our customer experience and we're focusing on small businesses right now remember you can join the conversation send us an SMS or whatsapp is very one eight zero three four six six three you can also tweet at us at waishu afka woman hashtag waishu so uti so now you've done all these fantastic things the customers all your people are sending reviews in and all of that so a friend of mine went into a store based on the reviews i mean this person they have like boutiques you know all of her and you know people are always talking about how nice their clothes are and everything then she now walks into the store to order i mean to pick up a dress and all of that she the experience was horrible like so she said she walked into the store and the girls were looking at her like maybe she had come to steal or something you know like it was she said it was just but she said so i now told her about another place where i get my dresses she now mentioned that but is it that i said no it's a different because she's never that no matter how nice the clothes that she sees on social media she's never gonna enter that store again and this is a big issue there is a big disparity from the experience some people face online and when you don't physically visit businesses how do we correct this so i love that question it's a fantastic question it's a concept called the moment of truth so what are the most important aspects of a business if you are selling clues right then the first time you see the outfit the first time you try it on the first time you engage maybe somebody if you go into a store these are all different moments of truth but every business is different so for a bank for example opening an account is a moment of truth if the account opening process doesn't go well you probably abandon it right if you successfully open an account then transacting is the next thing if the transaction fails it's a problem if the transaction fails there's a problem but if it fails and it's quickly reversed it's you know what i mean so what happened in that business was that you've created good awareness you have a good product your online experience so maybe when she chatted on social media the person was fantastic oh you we have it in stock yes is this price is this color is this okay i want to go into your store the business has not defined the experience in the store so you haven't told your staff in the store that the minute somebody walks in somebody must be there to greet them somebody must be there to say oh right i understand that just by looking at you i can tell that you are size 12 what kind of outfit are you looking for today are you going for an event um what colors do you like you like black i like colors so there's there key things that you need to define that should happen there should be a template exactly so you need to define what should happen at that point in time because that's a moment of truth for that business for that type of business is the in-store experience so because you have told your staff what to do as soon as you walk in your world imagine if you walk to your store oh welcome to the store madam oh you look so fantastic are you looking for a particular outfit there's something and somebody's just engaging you and they tell you that we have sweets exactly have some sweet and they you know the and you know what i mean so there's all sorts of little things and don't forget that in Nigeria it's actually easier because we are conditioned for poor service so any little you do people are like wow wow so as little as giving you very easy to so that's why people it's very easy to please because if you just did the barest minimum you would stand out right so i tell people all these people that are shopping on that are selling on instagram and everywhere i asked one day i said do you have the list of your customers do you have their phone numbers so somebody says i have a friend she sells bras your size your size buy a few things your size is your size i said every every time you get new stock every single person that has ever bought in that size for you you must send them a message so and these are things that are not overly expensive but it's deliberate so you take what you know of the customer that you have and you create more business it is here in Nigeria that i've seen people go absolutely nuts that they were not wished happy birthday by a business yes so it goes a long way a four Naira SMS in fact if you're sending me books as a business i actually don't like you when i see all the messages from all the banks because i have accounts in many i love that you said i don't like it so remember i talked about customer engagement and understanding your customer you are different man yes you don't like all those messages no so as a business do i know your preferences true so these are the things that you know and for a small business it's easier because you have less customers so you have the ability to simply you know what say it's an excel sheet when you pay can i take your phone number can i take your yeah what did you buy most places have some sort of epos system that you scan the thing so you even have a record of what was purchased it's a simple thing that changes the business so today when you see businesses that are leveraging technology that will say there's some businesses you go to today they'll say oh can i have your email address so i can send you a receipt because you know if somebody asks you can i have your email address you know i don't want you to bother me i just want to send you a receipt yeah i've collected your email address thank you oh so that's what they do yes now so and it's so simple so you find yourself now being able to create a database of customers yes and you're collecting information so on your birthday at this person oh you bought this thing i'm running a 10 percent 20 percent promo email is free but so let's stay on that estimate and email for a bit because my dental clinic now only once in a year with the same message merry christmas you know even christmas so happy birthday to david salih happy birthday to have a happy birthday on one just one only once in a year so they will i mean i'm saying that every person in the family one email okay okay and i find that a bit worrisome right if you really are targeting business it's not enough for you to just wish me happy birthday right how so what if i got in the message you say what's the dental situation like the christmas it was just i'm giving them free tips christmas just finished you must have had a lot of sweet things you know come in for a 50 discount what's it called wash and all of that there's every likelihood yeah that's what i'm going to just take it what do you want to think about oh my darling you know i'm learning from the best you're not enough for me you're also gonna say that because right there's every likelihood that i would i would go for that dental clinic you know i suppose you're sending me a happy birthday so and with what mani said people do not understand their customers right they just do a one-size-fits-all especially for bigger organizations you know so how do i begin to help correct that for them so bigger organizations sorry let me since we're talking about the bigger organizations go tv i tell you the truth i get so many phone calls and they are very offensive it's like with notice you've not paid like seriously i'm not interested in your subscription anymore so the thing of it for for big businesses right is it's harder like i said you have a lot of customers and a lot of times they collect quite a bit of information about you but that information and that data is not leveraged so remember i said the thing about collecting preferences one of the things that is fantastic to collect at the time that you onboard a customer which is when you get a customer into your business for the first time please collect their preferences how would they like to be addressed how would they like to be contacted is it email is it phone even when you say phone is it called is it sms is it whatsapp collect preferences so that you are also not wasting your time effort and energy and money because a lot do you know how many sms's i block that i just get i don't like sms's because 160 characters in as far as i'm concerned is not enough to speak to me so if you are sending me 160 sms character sms that means i have to do something to find out more where there's no difference drink take a glass right i want the full bottle of water so i prefer an email i want the shots the the shot cup when you call me when you call me two different people and you say different hello and you say hello and you say hello mister you've lost me and this would have called the same um good good morning sir i said you miss you're not you're talking to the wrong person exactly i am because you because for me because my name is uti right they make the association i think it's a guy so they say nice to see mr i'm like clearly you're not serious about what you're trying to do yeah so the importance and this is where we we come back to the small businesses these are this is information that a lot of businesses don't know how to collect because they say ah you just bought from me and this but imagine how much you can collect when you are chatting with someone on social media it's actually even harder when you when you come into a shop because you buy you pay you go most times when it's not telling you can i collect which is i said develop the tactics to get what you want oh we need to send you some additional even if it's not every sitting because some people again they'll say oh i don't have the money for that you say oh i want to send you a five percent discount next time you're coming in can i get information abc but even when you're on social media at least for you to order you will collect name phone number email address or house address handle everything you ask the person for email address deliveries now i do media because they will deliver to your doorstep exactly so you start to see ways in which you can collect but beyond that basic information now you start to collect preferences how do you understand the difference between money that likes an sms and uti that wants an email you start to think so this is where small businesses need to start to think about how they can collect this information because this is where you start to make a difference in the fact that money always will get my messages because i always send her sms so i know she will read it if you send me sms not only will i see that we block you i would read it even better than or quicker than i'll read the and what's up messages and the emails you know what because it's brief my life is like this i'm on the go let me read it like if you if the sms is two pages of sms i'm not gonna read it so you have to know the different customers that you like i said it's harder for big businesses because you have a lot of customers you now need to start trying to define what makes this set the same can i put them together but even in the set that is the same you agree that a rich man that has 100 million and a rich man that has one billion they are not they're not in the same class but everybody we say they are rich so those are the kind of but when you have smaller businesses it just takes a little bit of thought a little bit of channeling that idea which is why i said it usually starts from the owner to say how do i want to distinguish my business don't just focus on the product so mani has a love him let me give us more please give me more because what you just said just now you say it starts from the owner i understand you know my communicate communicate and they will not even get it but it's all right mani's guys in our office the staff that work directly with her will understand mani way better than the security guard at the gate but she has a security guard has she stopped to tell her security guard exactly what they should say when somebody arrives yes how they should park a car when somebody arrives what they need to tell the car so you see some businesses they will say your car is parked at your own risk certain things that you need to define that right certain things that you need to define so when you start to think about every micro every part of your business experience doesn't happen by chance right you must tell down to your cleaners how to mop your floors right how to you know if you mop a floor in the detergent versus floor cleaner there's a difference there's a difference you need to define all of those things so it's a lot of work and it's not something you do overnight you do it with time so what is most important and what will make the most impact to your business so you collect data and you say you're making data driven decisions but those are the that's how deliberate you have to be about it so most people will say oh and my customer service people have told them to smile or I've told them to say welcome and that is because welcome to so business then what happens then afterwards what do they do have you empowered them that so why do we enjoy amazon so you know what he you know sorry to cut you remember the place you recommended I take my son for his birthday yes ah I will go there 10 10 million times over please you need to tell me about it because my son's birthday first of all from the phone conversation when we got we had booked the mail ahead of time and everything he was back to back okay so madam this has been sorted so have you confirmed this day it was then when we now got there you know it was okay they've assigned a manager to me to ensure that everything is in place so the menu's already so how would you like I said I thought the experience was uh online or did the experience that came at it was it was not far from what is consistent a journey for me the customer journey was amazing because it was not different from what I've experienced from the phone conversations all the way to the final day it was such a beautiful day and they made suggestions yes so again think about when you shop on amazon it's something that we've now become so used to it's not groundbreaking anymore you buy a remote and they tell you people that bought the batteries also bought this this but even in your business you don't need an algorithm to tell you that you need to be thinking ahead so you understand your product better than anybody so even down to the person that is selling let me use who has outfits today it's looking like adiré right yes right there's a way you wash it to stop it from fading now imagine oh I bought the adiré right I've bought this outfit now you said oh you've given me the care tips right I gave you a little card that said this is what you should this is what you do imagine if you cycle back in three months and say oh hi well how's the dress going we hope you've had a pleasant experience with it and it's still looking lovely here's a reminder on your care tips and then here's a few ways in which you can style your outfit and you send her a few pictures with a new one where to issue I haven't even told her do you know we have no design if you like this one people that like this one there's this this this so you find similarities in this in other products that you have and you share so whilst you are doing this hard effort of I need to find customers I need to focus your customers are right there in your you've sold to them already it's easier to get the customers you have 80 20 roll get the 20 to do the 80 bird in hand then keep trying to find more so yes it's great to find more but imagine if you did that well we'll be selling your market for you she'll be like ah you like my outfit or this shop is fantastic what you're wearing exactly yes that I spent years exactly so that's what it is so you create that excitement around your business because the goal the overall goal of customer experience like I said is first that I get to the point where I'm loyal to keep on purchasing and then that I advocate that I will tell money money ah come on by me because I'm in this space I'm an advocate if I see a business that I like I as I'm living there I've told like one two three people yes and those are the kind of customers that you then want to attract so you create a deliberate experience for the right type of customer they have success with your products then finally I have one question for for uti why would I try to pull out that question I want to say to small businesses I want to ask you this question was it costing them not having that experience wow so how much does it cost you today to acquire a customer the money you're spending on social media ads the money you're spending dealing with customer complaints hiring staff there's a cost to everything right not delivering or not thinking about your customer experience is detrimental to your business in the long run because this outfits today right we have a brand that you and I like she started off selling a very unique kaftan yeah today they are like 20 other people trying to copy it at a cheaper price so if you are not particularly enamored to the brand you just be like ah why will I pay 10k here when I can pay 6k here but if you have gone to her store you have experienced her stuff you have that girl has called you on the phone to speak to you right it means that you've connected with that brand the experience that they've created has made the difference so so so so so critical for us in that experience that if you are not doing it you are losing money that's a simple thing absolutely because one you're not leveraging the customers that you have two the people that are even coming to you do you know what kind of experience they have so you see some people that own businesses they must always be present they must always be in their shop they must always be in their salon why if you define the way things should be and you put processes in place and you train your people you have policies around everything that you do it will continue to run so that's the goal for you is define everything so when you don't you are losing business and you will be more effort to get business money please my question to your resource guests your own in-house booty is how can a small business owner deal with complaints supposing a boutique is highly recommended and you go there for a purchase and it appears that what you bought is returned because it was later discovered to have some defects maybe factory error how would the customer react if not replaced i'm talking from experience this is Austin from Delta okay so first things first businesses must always view complaints as a gift feedback i can choose to simply walk away i'm not complaining i never come back thank you so when i complain i'm actually giving you an opportunity to turn around a bad situation and you actually data shows that customers who have complaints and the complaints are well handled they stay a little more loyal than customers who never have complaints right so a complaint is an opportunity if you know your product well right if you know your product well so for this person who went to boutique and bought something now typically in this part of the world we deal with a lot of integrity issues a lot of fraudulent issues so we tend to have a lot of places that have no return policies for a lot of reasons trust right yes so we have all of those kind of things but a business has to in the same way that you have a marketing budget you have to have a budget for service issues like this right where because you know your product when i gave the example of who has outfit and coming back three months later you kind of have to know the quality of product so if you're not producing your product if you are saying you're just buying wholesale and selling you have to know the quality of your product right it has to be tested so that if somebody comes up and tells you are this thing had a hole in it you know that okay if actually defect is possible because this brand they are not so or it's not possible there must have been an error but you have to define what potentially if a customer has bought a hundred thousand dollars worth of products from you how much how much profit did you make from them and what percentage of that profit are you putting aside if it's in this kind of business where you may need returns you're not going to give everybody returns and you don't expect to see returns every day right but if you have a big ticket customer that came into your boutique and spent a lot of money on and she comes back there's a sacrifice you make because you want to keep that relationship going you have to define the acceptable level of loss so the same way you define how much you will spend on marketing is the same way how to dedicate some money to it it may not necessarily always be money you may find that okay i'm able to replace i'm able to exchange yes because that product in itself that you are collecting back right you've you've exchanged for the customer you've created a fantastic experience this one now depending on the extent you can sell it mark it down and still sell it and you are selling as is so that is a way to then do it so you don't totally lose out you don't totally lose out so it's really about defining understanding that customer base understanding the quality of product of course if you buy if you are selling a 33k 22k then your customers also have an understanding that if i wear it once or twice it's okay not be saying i buy exactly do you know what i mean and it's not the event so when you look at your price point you start to create niche experiences i can't buy something of 50k and i come and tell you how the problem there you are speaking english but thank you so much how very enhanced thank you so i mean this was fantastic yeah thank you mani we're going to continue who to please we have to because this is the big one i have stories before we go and show you followers everywhere at where 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Thanks for coming to our session. This is the Mindshare committee session, what we do and why. So normally we do something similar to the Fedora Council Town Hall. Where we kind of just have an hour for folks to come and talk to us about various things. Throughout the last year, we have realized in certain ways and also worked on mind share visibility. Because we feel like it's a place that's kind of lacking. People still really understand necessarily what the Mindshare committee is and why we do what we do. So we thought we would put together an informational section of our session and in order to help folks understand what we're trying to do. So let us go to the next slide here. So what is the Mindshare committee and also I I'm going to probably ramble a lot, but the bull or Alberto anyone else feel free to jump in. As we go along right. Okay, so what is the Mindshare committee and what does it do for Fedora. So it's a group of folks dedicated to improving communication. Supporting outreach. Motivating contributors and teams. Sharing best practices and managing funding with us. So this is not an entirely inclusive list. We actually seem to do more than that. Because people know us as for dorns they can go to. So as part of our annual survey, we actually found out that people are more likely to approach individuals from the Mindshare committee. Then they are to come to our meetings, or to open a ticket on our Pajor repo or to email the mailing list right and as much as we're a group of approachable folks. We also have responsibilities and lives and it's a lot easier for us to kind of mainstream that through our Pajor repo and our other channels. So that's kind of one thing like we're trying to do that right but so improving communications between teams we do this by bringing a group of people together that are widely buried right so we have reps from different places we have elected people we have a couple pointed people we're going to go a little bit more into that on the next slide. We won't go too far into that, but we're, we're improving those communications between between between the teams simply by having reps from a variety of teams right we have design docs, etc will go a little more into that supporting outreach efforts so you know this would come down to do you need. Maybe money to run an event obviously we're living in a post or we're living in a pandemic world at this point so think this looks like a little bit different. But normally, we would be helping folks run events and get swag to those events. And that could be really anything. It could be, you know, us having a presence at a conference right so, you know you live in some place there's a local conference that you're able to attend and you say, hey, I'm going to bring my fedora presence there. And, and, and you would reach out to mind share and be like, great, let us send you some swag to end out. Let's send you some resources that you can print and have at the table. Let's let's make a badge for you right so we're kind of like this node in between the other teams so we can help think we can help folks do things like pull off events and get swag to those events, motivating contributors and teams. So, this is this comes down to encouragement it's definitely like a people skill thing. We're all interacting with folks in the community and in our separate teams and spaces, and part of what we do as mitra committee members is to help bring some energy to those spaces. To help motivate contributors and, and, you know, individual contributors and also teams of folks who want to work on things like we're here to support you. We want to make that happen. Your dream is our dream.  And we're like, that's awesome. We actually know somebody who's working on that already. Let's connect you. Right. We're sharing best practices, basically working to constantly improve like how different teams are working and how we're working together and help and allow that to evolve over time right so we're trying to to let the committee grow in that sense right so best practices are always evolving. And that's one of the funding requests. This could really be anything. Sometimes it has to go through the council first, depending on what it is, but the mitra committee does work on things like swag. We also approve things like sponsorships of conferences, etc, etc. So, most of the time we're very positive about, you know, sponsoring conferences, etc, it really comes down to like, can you represent your Fedora at that conference for us. What does it all take to be involved. And, you know, can we make this happen with in the timeline that we have provided. So, there are all kinds of, I think we've also had requests, you know, like, can we have a like a password manager or can we have, you know, this thing or that thing so we take into account, you know, our resources and, you know, what we feel will be most beneficial for the community overall. So, that's a very large overview if other people can think of more things we do feel free to put them in the chat. So, how is dementia distributed, who makes up the committee, right. So, I'm a boy did as the community action impact coordinator. I run meetings and I make sure we're kind of all on track and, and so I lead up the team, then we have representatives from a variety of the mind share side of Fedora things so those are community related teams are non coding teams right I don't want to say non technical because some of this work is very technical, but they're non coding teams so we have representatives from ambassadors, comm ups websites design docs and mentor projects. So, this is this list right here is not the end all be all list if there was a team that was super active. We want to have a representative from that team so like prior previously we did not have a mentor projects rep to Council and we made that because we felt that that communication was important with the other mind share teams. So, for example, we have a website and apps team that's coming like up and running right Rick is involved in that as a stakeholder and one of the long term, like, maintainers of websites right but website it might change to websites and apps. It's not a hard and fast list. We're welcome to growth here.  You know, so we might have to switch things up we'll see how, how it would go if things continue to go. We also have two elected positions. So, there's so basically each elected position they have two cycles. So we have one election for one seat at a release, and then the next seat will be at the next release so if you were to sit on my chair you'll be there for two reasons so yeah. And we currently have two elected officials. Okay, so what has the mind share committee been up to lately. You know I could talk about all the different things we do but like let's think about some of the concrete things that mind share has contributed to so you get like a real good idea of what we're doing so we've been a huge support to the community outreach program so that is an effort to revamp fedores mainly fedora's ambassador program but all of the other outreach programs are going to benefit from this as well. So we've done a huge amount of support at giving advice, you know, looking at the proposal, trying to help improve that I give updates I'm very involved in that revamp so updates the mind share committee and let them know how it's going. And they might say hey we have this idea that idea. We've helped to support the new logo rollout by deciding you know what kind of swag do we want to continue printing with the new logo, what do we want to just continue what do we hope to see what kind of objects do we want to even include in the swag right like so one of the things that came out of that is we like we're trying to go for more sustainable products. So actually the new vendor that we're working with behind the cool stuff store has some of those options and we're able to do a little bit of that for the swag pack. So that was awesome and they helped me kind of make some decisions about what was going to go into that. We've also sponsored our helped support sponsoring many other virtual community events. And we've organized the presence and been the folks sitting at the booths in those events, those virtual booths chatting with people so we worked on a presence that summit red hat summit Academy open to the conference, I think there's more. So a lot of virtual conferences and last year that we have organized presence that we also helped out with the first annual contributor survey. I'm just giving some feedback on that and making sure that the community engagement part was tip top. And then last but definitely not least, virtual release parties. I'm not the main organizer for those but my chair helps out a lot with what we do, and how we should form the event. And, you know, let's make sure that let's make sure we don't miss this topic or that topic. So we have craft what kind of like virtual experiences we might want, like external type of events like things like work adventure or that team building service we've used in the past. Right. So, how do you work with mind you're how can you work with my journey how can we help you. So these are basically just an overview of the different ways that you can talk to us. What is comfortable or everyone has a different level of comfortability with speaking in public channels, opening tickets, whatever it might be. So please do what is going to make you the most comfortable. But I'll just briefly talk about like the options you have so you can come to our weekly meeting we're actually in the process of relooking at the time. You can you can attend our weekly meeting and just let the chair know at the beginning like hey I have a topic I want to talk about, and we'll make sure we fit in some time at the end at the open floor. You can open a ticket if you know what you need. Just go right for it. And go ahead and open a ticket on the mind sure we go. You can email the mind sure mailing list I have to say, it is not a very active mailing list. Our IRC channels is much more active than our mailing list I sent out maybe an email week into that mailing list. I don't think I see anything else coming through so. Or you can reach out to a mind share committee member. This is the least ideal option. We're all very very busy people. But if that is what makes you feel comfortable, please feel free to do that. And we can kind of guide you through the process. So, so we hope that mind share provides even more so when I think about mind share I'm like, it's the sharing of minds like we bring the minds together and making the best idea possible can I think everyone has a different viewpoint of that I explain that one to Ben cotton and he was like, What, and I was like, I mean isn't that what everyone thinks, and he was like, no, and I was like, okay. So, it's really about improving communication best practices that we talked about before but I think that the point that I'm trying to make here is we want to help you succeed in Fedora. So if you have something that you want to achieve in Fedora that's non coding related. We are the team to help you. We want to help you make your Fedora thing succeed. There's also a wealth of knowledge in our committee, like most of the people on the team. I'm just curious Nick, how long have you been involved in Fedora. What year did you get started. Hi, I am I have mostly three years here. Okay, since my first contribution from come ups to now triggers more or less. Awesome. Alberto, you rock. Nick, how long have you been involved. You're on mute. If you're talking to us, that's how long forever infinity. You're still on mute. Maybe just write it in the chat. Vipo, when did you get involved in Fedora. I think 2016 17 I've been involved. Yeah, it's been five years 2013. Oh, yeah, sorry.  I recently got five years bad so five years plus the experience person when Ben joined in 2009. And we have Mary Duffy we have till we have, I'm not I'm not trying to leave anybody off on purpose here but there's a wealth of knowledge about Fedora, how things work historically, and also just the network of people so if you're trying to get something done, you're not sure who to go to someone on the mind share committee could probably tell you. So to further that, you know that communication improvement, we also have a rep representative on the council. Right. So we have someone from the mind share committee besides me that goes and kind of represents mind share at the council in those different discussions. So, where else can you find the mind share committee we have stocks here's the repo mailing list I will share these slides at some point. And we're also on elements. And we were also on telegram. So, last but surely not really I think this is last yet. Last but surely not least, you can be a part of my chair. It might not be something it's it's not something that you would do as a newbie. There's a lot of places to start as a newbie being part of the mind share committee is probably not. But if you've been around for a little while, even six to 12 months. This might be something that you'd be interested in doing. It's definitely more along the lines of project management and kind of like thought work versus busy work. So, you know, kind of think about these different things but we welcome new perspectives and having newer contributors even would be seen as a bonus there like what's a new contributors perspective on this right. So, I would say not for like total movies but you know even folks who are newer into being involved in for our welcome to join and give us new perspectives and be a part of the team. We would love to run for an elected seat. We would love to see more people voting in our elections. There's actually like historically just less votes for the mind share than fesco and I guess it's because my chair is new or something. But we'd love to see more people just participating or voting wise, even if you aren't going to run when you get to that elections page. So let's go at the top and see mind share right below. Make sure to vote for mind share too. I didn't expect like a one to three hour commitment a week. We have a weekly meeting. It's not required to be there all the time. We hope that you would be able to make it to at least half the meetings, if possible. And that meeting is an hour and then occasionally we'll have follow up little tasks to do. And then I'd say I don't it's been a little bit different because of virtual but I think we try to meet, like once or twice a year as a team. We had a virtual meet up a couple months ago and we kind of we really did take it easy because slow on to see each other's faces. We're always on IRC so post pandemic or when we can travel again, we would definitely take the opportunity to see each other in person, if we could. And it may be might be around something like flock or release party but we would definitely want to see each other in person. So right, that is the presentation slides that I have. I'm going to stop sharing my screen. So we can just chat. How to go. We have two questions. Oh, good coming coverage money. Good. Good. Did I miss anything. No. Okay, one thing. We also do things that you may not see there from entered project there are certain responsibility where I do, I make sure we are participating and looking after mental projects. People from marketing side or ambassador side has a stake in making sure the community outreach revamp is in progress. So, every representative of different sex or different parts of federal project, they have their own responsibility what they do, apart from being this whole community where they try to do something big and together, which is community and happiness in mind, in my, my definition of it mindset as community sustainability and happiness, which Facebook is not so the other side of things. Yes, I would agree and yeah I would agree with your first point to that most folks are doing something in their team that they're, you know, kind of representing but we do have elected officials and sometimes teams just simply aren't as active like the federal right now currently like we have Nick as our representative, but there's not a lot going on there but Nick is an awesome asset to our team so you know I'm going anywhere and plus his stake is in the revamp. So I totally agree with that. Okay, let's look over at the q&a situation here. Will there be fedora join sake representation in my chair. Um, if they could. Oh no, now you're here with audio. You can hear you. Yeah, we can hear you now.  All right. So to answer your question I think I started in fedora 11. Okay, that was very long time ago now 2008. Nine somebody in that video. When was your fedora account created. That's always a good one. I think you can see on badges. All right, so I'm going to take one of the questions here. And Nick definitely let us know. I'm curious. Will there be a fedora joint sake representation in my chair. So, that's a great question. And I'm going to say it actually already does have representation. We have multiple folks who are involved in the joint sake on the committee right now. Furthermore, we've talked with the committee, the joint or the joint sake and kind of the purpose behind that. But one of the kind of fundamentals of that team is low barrier to injury. Right. And kind of a low. Yeah, low commitment type of a sake to be a part of and the whole idea is that folks can simply just hang out in the channel. Now, if folks if folks from the joint sake wanted to be a part of the committee and want to be part of that discussion. I'm absolutely happy to have that conversation. If people think it's beneficial. I do think that we have some representation through the ambassador, you know, kind of role that Nick provides to us, but Alberto is on the joint sake and I think that both the joint sake. And so we actually have that like at least the thought behind that team, or the basis of that team is there. You got it. What is it. April 2007. Nice. So, you're, I was standing 14 years 2021. Like that math. Well, yeah, I think Nick might be our oldest fedoren on the committee. So I think a cache might have left. I hope that answered the question now about the fedora joint sake. We have had this discussion before on tickets and in federal joint channel where I spoke to uncle and more people there. And one of the things we realized is the most active members are already somewhat very close to mindset as you just mentioned. And we also wanted to reverse it in a way somewhere from mindset committee, if they could hang out in joint sex to answer question on how the organization works and different things of it. It would be more beneficial than taking out or asking someone to do one more thing. Because again, as you said, it's a very low barrier. It's a very low commitment thing where you can just go on hang out so it has been discussed and we realized this was not the most needed thing we can look from multiple perspective from ambassador marketing mentor project and all of these things. Do a little bit of chipping in the joint sake. So yeah, this is the whole discussion and maybe I can find some tickets to show around. So, Ben asks, my chair consistently has fewer candidates and fewer people casting votes in the elections. Oh yeah, I'm talking about this. Compared to the council and fesco does the committee see that as a problem and if so how should it be addressed. So, yes, we definitely see it as a problem. And that was one of the reasons why we structured the talk today like we did. And we're really excited to have this up on YouTube to send to people to send to perspectives. You know, I've approached folks. During my term of fcake, I've approached folks asking do you want to be part of my chair committee. People don't necessarily think like they're good fit, but they absolutely are good fit. And they're like, Well, what is it? What does it all mean?  So we're really excited to have this video to show people, you know, what it's all about. So we're hoping we can use this to promote my service ability and understanding. We're also put we've also put in questions into the community survey. So the annual contributor survey and we also were part of the community revamp survey. So the idea behind those were to get a baseline of what kind of understanding for our project has about my chair. And as you will see in my survey presentation later. It's not the right answer. They didn't get the right answer there. So it was like a, who do you first go to if you need to run an event or, you know, you need to get for door resources, resources, events, swag, et cetera, et cetera. I think the number one was local ambassador. The number two was local user groups. The number three was the council. The first year was not even in the top three there. And we had some, yeah, we had some interesting write-ins too. I like like some people just would write it like Vipple, Nick, Marie, like I'm pretty sure we got those responses. So that's not, that's not what we want. We realize it's the problem, right. So what we're hoping is to put some effort into this over the next year. We're hoping that by things like promoting this video, being at, maybe we'll go to the next release party and have a little talk, that could be a way. And yeah, I think that by next year, we hope to see some change in those results of the survey.  So like maybe also the F cake art just put my name in brackets, whatever. So we hope to see a different answer to that. So that's kind of where we're at with it. But honestly, all of us are super involved in Fedora. And I'm going to say that like, even as a person, if it was working for Fedora, we'd work extra time for Fedora, right. So we're all super, we're kind of spread thin on what we're doing, right. So for us, like, doing a lot of that analysis and writing extra blog posts and promotions, it's like, it's one of those things that is not the top priority. The top priority is taking care of the Fedora community, right, like dealing with those tickets, making the sponsorships happen, getting the swag out to people. And so the priority is so unfortunately, like, we only have so many resources and making improvements on visibility isn't something we have like a ton of time and energy for. We'd love to partner with like, maybe the commops team to do something like that because I know that they focus on, you know, analysis like data analysis and things of that nature. So anyway, I think that was, I hope that answered the question. Specifically for the elections, I think we should try to do something different. Like so far, when I've been involved, it's just been me asking people I know that I think might be a good fit. Right, so maybe. Maybe for the election to get more participation in the election itself. Have a badge just for I voted for my share. There we go. And to get the badge, you have to go to the mind share election and vote, rather than like currently there's a I voted, but you can just vote for counseling get it. So I don't know if it would work or not, but maybe if there was one just for mind share more people would go vote even if it's just to get a badge. Like, so actually we thought about like, retiring badges as they, you know, as our community evolved, and that might be like a place so instead of having the I voted we could do ones for council Fesco and mind share and we could have them be repeating one so people want to come back and earn them every time. Like, I probably want to retire the general ones and then make like these, you know, make ones for everybody, not just mind share so council. Next, like, no, we could just do it for us. That sounds good. I mean, hey, it's an opportunity to get more badges. I like getting more badges makes always pro badges. That's what we are here for. I mean, I mean, I don't need to, which I guess this doesn't really apply to this talk but we do need to either fix some of them or somehow change their description to say this is retired, like all of the fast badges, they haven't worked in a year or two. So my idea behind that was to make like grayscale version so just replace the PNG with a grayscale version. Okay. And just like, I don't know some denote it somewhere that it's retired retired at the end of the title. Yeah, we can edit the description or something, because we get tickets that are like, Well, I set my GPG key and I didn't get a badge. Well, no, you didn't. And you never will. So then usually computer kid goes in and awards them to people. What a great one. So, but yeah. Okay, yeah, I think that would be that would actually really help with the elections in particular and a side note on badges. Yes, it needs love. It needs love. You see, maybe I could. I can't overcommit myself but I would love to do some kind of a badges hack fast. Try to get some things in order. What if any of the designers get time. I would very much like someone to make the art for the dumpster fire badge. Apparently we're going to name differently because Matthew suggested we come up with a different name.  Yes, yes, definitely. And everyone who did that put a lot of effort like overtime effort to make that happen. So we want to say thanks for sure. I'm going to add some good badges ideas out of here. Okay, so let's get to the next question. Go ahead. Talk about the next question. So, Sarah asks, is the representation of fedora at Fosdham also part of your job in the team. My answer would be, I don't think the representation itself is necessarily something that the committee members would necessarily be the ones doing I mean yes, we do. I mean, we do have events that some of us go to, but going to the event is not necessarily part of mind share. I see mind shares role as providing you the resources you need to represent fedora at an event as part of mind share. If you are interested in organizing being having a presence at Fosdham. I see our role as providing you funding and swag to represent fedora. Yes, and the workflow for that would be opening a ticket on mind share repository and we'll have words on there. We'll discuss it in the meeting and depending on the outcome, we would agree how much funding we can provide when to ship things and things like that. So mind says the place you would go to request that, but yeah, as Nick said mind share is not responsible for making sure that we represent everywhere. But the other way we, if someone is someone wants to do that we provide them the resources. That was a great answer Nick. Next question theory mind share committee gets less engaging because it's not visible enough. We agree. How can we help the community see the great work the mind share committee is doing follow up once again Marie answers my question before she gets to it. So we did talk about this and right visibility so using some analytics from our survey results. I put a little bit more into promotion, maybe working in these badges for the elections. I think that in itself will make it more visible because people want to earn badges. And they're like well what's this mind share thing maybe I should book a little bit more. And, and maybe we need to work on something coming up, but it has to be a low, low effort type of a thing but it could be something as simple as getting the meeting notes onto the community blog. I don't know maybe we could try to do like a monthly community blog update from the mind share committee. It sounds like something that would fall on my shoulders which I could just like take the notes from each of the meetings and put it all together at the end of the month. So, those are a couple ideas I just have off the cuff, if anyone has more feel free, and I'm kind of want to read through this chat a little bit. Feel free to drop more questions. Okay, JT I don't think we're planning on. I don't think we're talking about retiring badges as a whole, but retiring specific badges. So, so this is a good point. I could, so someone commented here I could be wrong I think a lot of people think mind share is for people who have been part of the fedora community for a while. So JT when you say that do you mean like that they need to be a while to just come talk to us or to be actually an elected member. I think it might be the second one. And I, and I kind of I mean it doesn't you don't have to be a long time here in here but you, it will be beneficial for you to be a part of the community for like I was mentioning like, it's minimally six months, probably a year. And to be fair, it is a role or being part of this committee does have a certain amount of commitment. And we all super duper care about fedora and have a lot of passion and love for it and I think that is cultivated over time like we don't expect people to just come in and be totally passionate about being in love with fedora it's definitely something that grows. So, people did you want to chime in. I'm just thinking it's pretty much same for any election any committee. If you're going for elected member then to attract votes, you have to be around for a while so that people can vote for you and then know who you are. But most of the mindset committee member if you go back on the slide you'll see there is two elected members that means most of us are coming from certain groups or six and representing it. Usually agreement of the whole group and sick that he had this person is the right person to represent us there. And for that again, it's important for you to gain trust of others being around while working on different things. So, it's not generally rule but to get elected or to get votes, unless there is just one person in the last place happened although the person happened to be a great person that's a different conversation. So, for any election or for anywhere you're going to represent a group you need to be around for a while so that you can gain the trust of community and group member that you can represent them. That was a great, great response the trust part is definitely part of it. I don't, I'm not sure like, I'm not sure what we actually have to say on the mailing list because we really do chat in IRC so much. Like that's our primary chat and they feel like it's dead a couple, you know, said like half of the week but I feel like we're chatting in there every couple days or something. I wonder, okay, we have some more comments. You know, I think that's actually really good point. So, JT made the point again that I think that also means that people may have a perception that mind share does really important stuff, and people may worry that their issue or idea is too trivial to bring up. Since Fedora has been around for a while, it's a large project and has a legacy that can give newer members of the feeling that it's not approachable. Yeah, I mean, I can totally see that. So, in one way, I think we do do important things, but it's just as important as people who are helping like the operating system happen. You know, like, I mean it's just saying like we're all part of this one big ecosystem right so like, I would say that it's an important piece of all of it but I wonder how we can kind of make ourselves more approachable. I'm thinking of like little cartoons. Okay, that would not be sustainable, but like somehow like making our persons a little bit more known like okay this is the mind share committee. Okay, an infographic. That's very simple for people. It says on it. Anyone can come ask mind share for help. Yes, even you. So an infographic might be a good thing to do. And I actually have a mentoring intern right now who's doing graphic design. So that could be something that comes out of her work. Actually, I have a ticket open for it. Yeah, and JT was saying that's not a fault of the committee. It's a reality of the project being older and bigger. And also mind share committee hasn't been around forever right like, Fesco, I'm going to guess has been around for a very, very long time. I don't know when it was established, but I'm guessing in the 10 plus year range. Anyone can confirm or deny my chair has been around for like, I think a little bit over three years. So in the lifespan of, in the lifespan of the Fedora project, mind shares relatively new, right, like newer than the community blog, you know, these things like it's not like Fesco or like the Fedora planet or something. So these more deeply ingrained things we've had around. Yeah, definitely. Do we have any other questions to answer? No, none on the Q&A. Cool. Cool. Well, is anyone else, does anyone else have any questions for us? I think the questions that have been asked have been actually really, really good ones so keep them coming. Ben made an interesting point. So Ben runs the elections for us. So Ben says the Fedora elections are generally a name recognition contest. More votes are cast than the number of page views on the interviews. That's interesting. Ben, do you think that's a problem? Like, has it gotten to us a situation where someone was voted to one of these that maybe wasn't like an ideal candidate? So I don't think it's a problem necessarily because I have seen candidates who are mostly, I think their reputation has been negative, get very few votes. So name recognition does work, you know, in both directions for you. I do wish more people would read the interviews because, you know, I have to read all of them as I put them into WordPress. They're generally, Everyone else to go through it too. Well, you know, they're generally pretty, not that distinct like everyone has their own unique flavor, but nobody's really out there saying something that's like completely out of left field, Kate. But it does, you know, give a sense of where people's focuses are, you know, not necessarily if they're going to make good or bad decisions, but you know, people might want to focus on a certain area. And if you think that's important, you might want to vote for them. And whereas somebody else is going to, you know, if they're going to focus on some other thing, you're like, okay, that's nice. You're probably going to do a fine job, but it's not the area that I'm particularly, particularly care about. But I do think people who want to win an election should participate on mailing lists and in IRC channels as often as they're able, because, you know, sharing good ideas and having people recognize, oh, that person has said a lot of good things in the past. I know their name. Sure, I'll vote for them. Okay, in an ideal world where we have unlimited resources to create design materials. I would totally love to see like, like a, like some kind of overview thing where it shows I don't know like doesn't have to be their face but like something that gives the title of them like their platform. So like, these are the topics I care about, and then we can like tweet them or something. I don't have unlimited design resources, but it's a cool idea. So I wonder if we could approve the election interview visibility as well. Yeah. And that's partly, I mean, so the, the election, the links to each interview are right there in the app when you vote for the person. But I think also just like, right. I wish I had, maybe I should put him in like through a URL shortener next time just to get a head count of how many people actually click them because I'm guessing it's very few. But I think it's also partly just improving the visibility of the community blog more generally would also help there because that's where they're published and if people are reading the community blog more they will see them and they will potentially read them. Right. You know I just had an idea to as you were talking I was thinking about like, we actually have someone who's a coder in that elected seat, but we could try like promoting those elected seats as. Chances for, you know, engineering or coding related people to get a little bit more involved or give their perspective from fesco or whatever to the, the, you know, community side of Fedora. Does that make sense.  I think that's where the divide is right so I also think that there's this divide of like people who think that they can be in mind share like me to be involved in teams under mind share but that's like not necessarily the case. It could bring you to come from the coding side of the door and have plenty of very valuable input to our conversations and perspectives that we probably haven't had yet in the conversation. So, just a thought. Like the council fesco rep. Yes, something like that. It could be a thing I think that fest goes and be like we don't want another official seat somewhere. That's my. That's what my thought is, but we'll see.


Welcome to the Fiji Symposium 2019 here in Cairo, Egypt. I'm very pleased to be joining the studio today by Mr. Kevin Hongwei, who is from Ants Financial Services in China. Mr. Hongwei, welcome to the studio. My pleasure. Now I'd like to start off by asking you a question that I've been asking a lot of people that have been sitting in that chair there. What will it take for the world's poorest people to prefer digital financial services over cash? Yeah, it's very related to advantages of DFS. Actually, firstly, DFS can break through the limitation of time and space. The people, especially the poorest people in rural area, can access financial services only with a mobile device. So it can latch the financial services scope. Meanwhile, DFS can also decrease the handling fee. It's very important. For example, the poorest people in rural area usually get the social welfare. And in traditional way, there will be very high handling fee. So the recipient can only get the part of the social welfare. But in DFS way, the people can get all the money from the government without any loss and with very high efficiency. It's a very good thing for the poorest people. How do you see the FinTech sector reshaping digital financial services? Yeah, as we know, the financial services mainly depend on the underlying infrastructure, which is shaped by the technologies. Currently, FinTech can provide a lot of innovative technology for the underlying infrastructure. And the innovative technology not only accelerates financial services, but also can create new financial services. There are two examples from Alipay. The first one is the cross-border remittance from Hong Kong to Philippine. And the blockchain just transfer the remittance information to the Philippine from Hong Kong. And the local bank just trust this information and can deliver the money, the cash, to the recipient account directly. It's the first example, the second example about the QR code scanning. And the merchants just have QR code on the paper and the user just can scan the QR code to proceed the payment with very high efficiency and a low cost. It's some example of this. What about authentication? Kim, perhaps you could tell us a little bit about, I understand that Alipay has got some technology for strong authentication. Yeah, actually it's a very good question for me. And I just want to introduce the Alipay authentication using IFA standards. There are two aspects. First aspect, IFA is a set of standards and specifies the end-to-end authentication scheme. And the security is the most important point of this IFA, including the security of terminal, security of connection, and the security of identification. So it's a very important part which has been implemented in Alipay authentication platform. The second way is IFA is very easy to integrate into the existing unified comprehensive authentication platform. There are also some password-based authentication tokens based on authentication and also, which can be controlled by user configuration and also risk control. If the authentication is suspicious, then maybe two-factor authentication will be used or even more. So that's our authentication based on IFA specifications. And finally, what contributions can Alipay make for Fiji and other international organizations such as ITU and World Bank? Yeah, I think the biggest contribution for Fiji, ITU and World Bank should be the practical experience from Alipay. Currently, Alipay have over 870 million users so far and a lot of sophisticated application scenarios. And meanwhile, Alipay also is a FinTech company and there are a lot of innovative technology and FinTech experience. Both of them can be contributed for the ITU, Fiji and World Bank. And we just want our contribution to be helpful for the financial inclusion and also so much more people, especially the people in need. Well, thank you very much for joining us in the studio today. And we look forward to catching up with again some stages in the future too, hopefully. Yeah, my pleasure.


Great outdoors, y'all. Just fired up the ATV. Haven't seen the old meat wagon in a while. You know, had a few attempts on the Puppa Clan. I've done some close to home hog archery attempts. I do. And as usual, I'm going to try with the bow. I'm gonna go sit it. Old trusty, the only tree stand out here. And there's usually something there. I'm about to make a run, switch some cameras around, put a camera out. We've got about an hour. And then I'm going to climb up into the tree. All the trying to get something unique, interesting, looking for that one special bug. That's over. It's going to be fun a couple of days out here, right up for Christmas. And we actually have a cold Christmas in Texas coming. Y'all know what it's all about. I got the adventure wagon parked under the shed over here. We're going to be cooking up right there. Got a nice little cozy home set up at deer camp. Now it's time to get to work. So let's get some cameras out. Let's make sure everything is going to be right for this evening. Glad I made this stop. This is where I was going to hunt. Battery was dead in the feeder. Probably been dead for a while. Anything's going to be coming here. Unfortunately, that's my only tree done in right now. This is the closest feeder to the one I was just at. And there's nothing on the ground. I'm thinking that some of the deer that usually go to the one I was just at, where the battery's dead, are probably going to be here. All right guys, everything is all set. Do we have the bow check? We have a release in our bag. I like what we got right here. I'm optimistic. Don't really have a huge reason to be optimistic, but I am. Guys, it's nice and dark in here. Just how I want it. So I actually want to show you my set up here before, before we get going. I just set up the tripod. I took some string out of my pack to the front of the blind to open flap. Because I've always had a problem with leaving that open. It just feels kind of exposed. And I've got a string tied to it where I can raise it up. You guys are going to see the light come in as I raise it.  And then I can raise it up because this blind has not been here all season.  See right there are so thirsty for blood. Pointless.  I'm just going to go back to the house and see if there's anything out in the fields. In control. How come? Yeah, very nippy. This has not been my hunting season, to say the least. Sort of a misty evening. And it's going to turn very cold tomorrow. I feel at peace in the outdoors when I have a fire. When it's cold, even when it's not cold, it's just something about it. There's something very primal, but when I'm in a pinch like this, I need to get a fire going quick. It's dark.  And we're taking the easy route with a lighter. A little lighter from Bucky's. Get set up.  This is going to be a game changer. Otherwise, we're going to be pretty cold and miserable out here. Oh, nice. I got a deer kernel, corn kernel stuck in my lighter. It's probably not going to light. Cotton ball is dry. That is going to stay lit with Vaseline. Probably, I don't know, a minute or so. Maybe give us enough time. Leeway, oh my gosh. It's already going out. That's not a good sign. I need you to catch. Daddy needs a fire. Pretty dang on bad. Okay. All the dry grass is caught, surprisingly. Going to burn out pretty quick. Oh, and I need this wood to catch. Stuff is so wet. Pretty much used all my Vaseline. So this is not going to be good if this doesn't light. Inside of this little cedar branch is semi-dry. Breaking it apart. I don't know, baby. This is the moment of truth. I think we got it going. That right there, y'all, is just an instant feeling of everything is going to be okay. It's Christmas time. It's time for faith, love, hope. And I'm not going to let this evening of not seeing Jack Squat get me down. Part of the reason I love it out here is this is a big place. You know, it's a lot to manage. And there is plenty of instances where we don't have corn in all the feeders because there's not many of us out here. It's a huge place. It's like 2,500 acres. And there's always a mystery to it. You get deer that you've never seen before. You can pattern deer. It's big enough. It's like fishing a big lake. Try to figure out the fish. And that's part of the reason I really like it. It's low fence. There's not giant deer out here, but there's always a surprise. There's always a mystery to it. Try to figure things out. So there's no exception for today. I went ahead and I took that pop-up down. And we're just going to have to move it somewhere else. And I'm going to go check cameras here in a little bit. I'm going to drive around. One's a cell cam. One's non. We're going to pull the card and see what's coming in. Feels good to have a fire go, guys. We're going to be all right. We're going to leave pig tracks. Place the knife, but I could just stick it.   All right, what do we get here? We got a buck, a little six-pointing, it looks like, and a doe. One doe, little buck, but not promising for the deer. Where are the big bucks? Where are they? Where are they? I don't know. I'm going to have to wait for a camera update because we are in the middle of nowhere. Service is not great. It's probably going to take it a few more hours than usual. So you'll probably check it in the wee hours of the night. But I'm going to crawl into the adventure wagon. I've got the zero-degree bag laying out on the canvas cutter with a fleece blanket, makes it nice. Just finished warming up by the fire. Got the toesies and the hands all nice and warm. So we're feeling good. But as of right now, I don't know what I'm going to do in the morning. It's going to depend on the trail camp picks that I get in the wee hours. So I will see you guys in the early light. It's almost 6 o'clock. We have the camera update. Unfortunately, there's nothing juicy. There's nothing juicy. I actually didn't even get a picture in daylight, which is insane. I came out here because all the bucks I was seeing on public land were at night. And I see one buck at night, 7 p.m. And he's not even semi-mature. He's probably not even 3 and 1 half. I don't know where to go now. Please be a random deer that just hears the corn this morning, frolics into the forest. Hail Mary right here with the bow, trying to get it done. If not, in the first 45 minutes, I'll probably start itching, get down, and we'll think about something else. But for right now, we're trying to get an arrow bloody. All hope is lost. I was changing my lenses out. And like 100 yards away, there was a deer. It just blowed. I guess it saw me 100 yards away. And then this heavy fog has rolled in. We've had this foggy mist come in here. I actually was pretty optimistic when I first got in there. I heard this behind me. It's a little lighter than that. But that usually means a deer is walking on some broken up rock. So I knew something was coming in. And then I heard, whee! We all know the sound. I didn't even get to look at the deer. Smell me right away. And it was sort of a softer whee! It was like a warm-up. And just continued on 200 or 300 yards down the way. I saw two other whitetails get scared by her across the way. So now a new game plan needs to be formed to try to get a deer. I don't know. A big buck's just not going to happen for me this year. Just not. Temperatures are going to dip down in the teens. Things are going to get a little crazy in the next 24 hours. And that's about all I got before I got to go home. We're going to spend some time with the family for the holidays. That's it for today's video. Thank you guys for being here in the frosty, great outdoors. And hopefully, in the next 24 hours, we're going to get that harvest buck to take home to the fam. So stay tuned for it. I hope you're having better luck than I am in the great outdoors.  Stay safe. And I'll see you on the next one. Put some mosquito here. Get this party started. Toasty makes preparations out of the field.


Come on, Manny John! I asked on Twitter just now what people want me to chat about today on Vlogbrothers, and a bunch of people asked me questions about college, and so then I was like, hey, you got college questions? And oh my gosh, they did! Lots of them! So let's see if I have any useful wisdom to impart, despite the fact that I haven't been inside of a classroom in a decade and a half. Kate asks, how much plasma would I have to sell to pay for an engineering degree?  Second, a lot! Like, way more than you have! You're gonna have to harvest it from other people, which I do not condone, but you're here to solve problems, girl. Do I go to a college 1,500 miles away that I love or one nearer home and help my parents with my million tiny siblings? So I hope you understand that we're all assuming you're a roach person now. But, dear roach person, it is commendable that you're so committed to your family. Oh, I will say a thing here. One of the great benefits of college, and this isn't something everybody wants and not something everybody gets, is being able to break off a little bit from the whole life that has been constructed around you, and then seeing what life is like when you build some structures for yourself to kind of see who you are when you're on your own a little bit. But also, family is important and I'm totally useless, so... Should I major in something that I'm passionate about, or something that's more financially secure? Oh, creepy girl, I tell you what. We don't know what's gonna be financially secure at all. Like, what career, what skill set is gonna be useful in the future? It's changing real fast right now. It seems to be kind of a lie that we're telling ourselves or we're letting colleges tell us that, like, this is a job training program. It's not. You are learning how to be better at stuff, and that's gonna be useful in getting work and in doing work.  You have them precisely because you don't know which ones are gonna be the ones you need. Life is not a job training program. We are not in college. We are not on Earth to get jobs. What I hope is that we are on Earth to solve problems for ourselves and for other people. And education helps that, whatever kind of education you get. Favorite class you took. I thought about this for a long time, and I have decided to say anthropology because it was just amazing for me at that point in my life to see how many different ways there are to be people. Why is it so expensive? I made a whole video about that, actually. It's complicated. Your mom goes to college? She does not. But if she did, Thomas, I would support her. How expensive was it? My school, in 1998, the first year I went to school, tuition was $22,000 a year. I got some scholarships, and so it was about $10,000 a year for me. In today's dollars, that's around $14,000 a year. Tuition at Eckerd is now $42,000 a year, but 97% of students get financial aid. In what ways is collage different from, say, decoupage or scrapbooking? Is journalism dying? No, no, no, no, no. Suddenly journalism is having a revival. People are paying for it again. And my last question, hey, cool decorating ideas? Well, it turns out we have a back-to-school sale happening at dftba.com. Also, we've made a nerdfighter backpack for the first time ever. Like it does, derives a nerdfighter crest. It's subtle. I actually designed this in partnership with Spiral, which is a company that makes really cool backpacks. We made, I think, 500 of them, and then there are no more after that, so we'll see how that goes. Also got this new hoodie going on, which is super comfy, and it's got these things. And as for decorations, I would suggest getting a frame like this at Michael's and getting yourself a poster, dftba.com, currently on sale, because it's back to school time. How would a poster on you all totally cool? Framing it is like, what? Who is this classy dude? I hope that that was in some way maybe a little bit helpful for people. John, I'll see you on Tuesday. Hey, also, Parade Magazine made a video about me and John and our history on YouTube. You could check it out. It's funny and cute. There's a link to that down in the description as well as to these things and also to the video that I made about why college is so expensive.


Hello, my name is Satish Kedika. I'm a vascular surgeon at Jersey Shore University Medical Center. I chose vascular surgery because I always wanted to do a procedural base field. It's very rewarding to get immediate results and help patients. It's stressful for a patient to see a vascular surgeon and it's very important for us to realize this. My personal care philosophy is to simply just do good, honest work. I think it's incredibly important that patients get a safe, durable result. It's incredibly important that patients are happy and it's important that patients maintain a high quality of life. From our perspective, it's a rewarding experience to see the patients from the beginning to the end. We see them on a regular basis. We surveillance them. We make sure they're okay. And with that, you develop a very close relationship with the patients, with their family. I want you to know that I'm here to help you. I can help you through your critical situation and I have the resources and capabilities to address your full spectrum of peripheral vascular care.