And it's playing. Yeah, we've got these little I don't know what you call it bento boxes. Yeah containers All right, Sarah Nice to see you here. Nice to see you. Thanks everybody for joining us for out with lunch This is actually our first. This is our pilot episode This is our Chance to see if we've got a spot here on orca this shot this show is being produced by orca media in Montpelier, Vermont And we're really grateful for their production services Just right off the top no pets no politics. That's kind of a key part of the show So I guess we'll just get started with the agenda We'll introduce ourselves or do you want to introduce yourself? Yeah, I'd love to Well, thank you first David for Having me on this show such a great idea. I'm Sarah Wentworth and We know each other from all kinds of things, but just from being around Montpelier and also other media Ventures so Anyway, such a great concept for a show Because I feel like living in Montpelier. I'm always like really excited to know what's happening In our community and trying to stay connected But this is just yet another way that we can be connected to one another So real excited about this and it's like a great opportunity to have some lunch for the friends. Yeah, absolutely Yeah, we're both on our lunch breaks right now, although you're not working right now No, actually, this is my day off. That's your day off and you came in anyways. Yeah, that's gracious of you Actually, I'll take this off. Yeah We're okay on TV Um, great. Thank you for that introduction Sarah. I'm David Littlefield We started talking about the show about a week ago and we really just kind of brought it to life in the last five minutes here So we're happy to have you here with us. Um, I also I live in East Montpelier. Technically and But I'm originally from Maine and as you mentioned We both worked at other public media organizations in the state in our previous lives in our current lives as well And yeah, I feel like you and I both been interested in exploring What's possible in public media and this is really the culmination or maybe the start of that journey together Maybe a new chapter in that book. So Yep, great So this is a live call-in show We're gonna bring we got the number there up on screen if anyone wants to call in we're doing Questions and comments suggestions big theme for today is winter Holidays gift giving we are hoping to hear from anyone out there who identifies as a mother with suggestions of What might be good gifts this year for moms everyone needs to show a little bit more love to their mom generally speaking So that's definitely something we're looking forward to and also we're live on YouTube as you know So if you want to write in a question or comment right there on YouTube That's also a great way to reach us and someone's definitely monitoring those so Next thing on the agenda is what's for lunch? So you want to talk about what you got for lunch? Oh, yeah I'd love to I'm just gonna hopefully it's not too strong for everyone here in the studio Yeah, there's a lot of onions happening. Oh, wow It's a grilled cheese. Oh my gosh. I mean your basic grilled cheese. There's like curly fries. What's on the side? Those are onion rings that I had Prevee previously made, but I reheated them in one of those like panini pans Wow, yeah, like fried it in a panini pan. Well, it's like a frying pan that has a lid That's the panini press. So there's room around the edge. Okay for whatever That's cool. Well, yeah, it smells great. I know you guys can't smell it at home Or in the op when you guys wherever you're taking your lunch break, but it smells great I've got we've just got leftovers I got some leftover pasta with bread sauce that we made last night funny story actually about the salad We made these salads pre we had salad last night and then preemptively made a salad for lunch today But these bento boxes are kind of new to our family. We got actually got these at hunger mountain co-op and I'm still getting used to them and so I didn't realize I didn't have the bottom Latched so I just lifted it up and the bottom part fell out and it had this full beautiful sound there all on the floor and We did salvage some of it But our you know, we don't clean as regularly as we would like so we didn't want to eat too much food off the floor So we've got a I think actually my wife got that one unfortunately. Yeah, so kind of a bummer there Also, I don't know if my wife's watching right now But this is a minor criticism that I have of the bento box because it's metal I don't have any qualms about using a microwave and I would like to heat up my food Especially if it's like our pasta with red sauce can't heat it up You're still transferring it to another dish to heat it up And it's likely you just yeah kind of blew the whole concept so But maybe a gift idea for someone maybe I don't know wooden bento, but I don't know something you could microwave glass bento boxes Maybe yeah, that's a great idea Something to look into. Yeah, and I know we were talking about them if moms any moms that call in have Gift ideas that they'd like to share with us. We'd love to hear them. Mm-hmm. So there's the number up on screen 802-828-743-0.  Yeah, all right Next up no pets no politics We thought we'd just kind of jump into that Because that's kind of the it's a thrust. It's a main thrust of the show So we just thought we'd kind of clear that up right off the bat. Yeah I Don't care for pets I have two cats Hammy and gloomy off to bring in a photo next time maybe Hammy and gloomy we've had them for I don't know 10 years maybe they were okay at first and then we had kids we have to I we have two young children and Ever since kids came into the house. It's just like the cats have just gotten so much lower on the totem pole of like importance and Just this morning. Hammy threw up twice While I was making her breakfast Was it out of spite or was it a I think it was I think I hadn't gotten to her quick enough So she's like I'm gonna toss right now. I don't want to talk about it too much while we're eating but So that's just like an example, you know, those are just examples of why I don't really want pets in the house I actually like livestock and animals outside that can kind of take care of themselves But when you have animals inside that are a hundred percent dependent on your care When you like have human children, you're just like, you know, just not as prioritized. I don't know How do you feel about pets? Yeah, one question I had is it is this a position like, you know There's so much to talk about in the world like maybe We don't talk about pets in this show or is it an actual just you don't want to talk about your pets in particular So it was one question I had but didn't know okay. Yeah, I mean we are talking about my cats right now So that kind of blows that right out of the water. I don't want to spend too much more time on it but Yeah, I just I don't I respect other people enjoy pets. I just don't really want pets Do you want pets? I don't have any pets, but there is a squirrel that comes up on my porch Who actually I think will be featured at one point. You want me to just bring that up? Yeah, we might Why not? We can do whatever we want. Actually, that's that's the squirrel and I work at Red Hen And so I have all the surplus of old bread and you know, some of it was on the porch waiting to go to the compost and The squirrel was enjoying some of it, but he did make a mess which was unfortunate And I do have a photo of the mess, but he just kind of like ripped up the whole the bag And then there was some gourds in it, you know, so kind of a naughty fellow, but that's you know It's almost like pet adjacent. It's like wildlife, but it's like it's slightly domesticated And we actually have a compost update later in the show too. Yes. Yeah, we sure we get to that I'm just gonna back up again Okay, I think that's good on pets. Yeah, how about politics? Yeah, so I Think we're gonna sort of we're bearing away from any kind of We're not gonna say our position on any kind of political issue. We agreed on that before the show. Yeah Yeah, yeah for a multitude of reasons, but We think we would like to share information periodically, but it's purely For data purposes, it's data-driven. So it is just information and you can do with it what you will but It's just another Interesting symptom of a world that we're all living in and happening. So absolutely. Yeah. Yeah one one of us works for like a news Organization in their paid work and actually like can't talk about politics. Yeah, so it's very so that's the end of that Yeah, all right. We got a front porch report. We sure do. Oh man, lots of interesting This is actually one of our I think gonna be one of our most popular segments. Yeah Our front porch report today. I'd so this morning we have some some very A lot of interesting stuff going on You know know what I like about Front porch forum. I don't know if I can say that. Yeah, we'll say it I love that they have recently, you know Included the feature or they've updated their website to include photos. I noticed that yeah, it's a great So if people are you know selling things or you know, you don't have to use resort to Google Drive or yeah I'm Craigslist you can just sort of pop it on there and I don't know if folks knew that but I'm just a little tip But in speaking of that I saw there there was a really nice post Somebody was looking for twinkle lights So that goes to their holiday theme not Christmas lights though. Well, I think it's not a nomination. I think the person Said oh holiday twinkle lights of any size or color and they are happy to pay for them Wow, that sounds really reasonable street. Yeah, so Checking here before I buy new which is also a great thing for Or a great reason to use front porch forum because it's like we don't need to be participating in the The consumer rat race became sort of Reused sometimes one person is like well, I don't need this anymore.  Yeah, it can be someone's treasure. Yeah, I think that's great It's like a there's like a it's like a secondary like trading economy there on front porch forum Yeah, one thing I did want to highlight. I just remembered because I think of all the Holiday light strands that you know, they break every other year or whatever, you know, they don't work anymore It's like it's not worth your trouble. You don't want to throw them in the trash because they can get Worked up in like the trash Trucks and like their processing facilities and like really messed up up because it's like it You know like a wire getting tangled up in their machines. So last year there was a place in Berry Somewhere just like kind of on the main street Maybe by like resource or something where you could drop off for like a few weeks They had this like open whenever you could just drop off like your holiday lights I don't work anymore and they did something to process them or recycle them in a way that was Not as damaging to like all the machinery and stuff in the trash facility. So that's great Yeah, it's kind of like batteries like, you know, you have your container of batteries that you keep meaning to drop off Right Sort of like that. What a great community effort. Yeah, so thank goodness for that Good to know. Thank you for sharing. Yeah, but there weren't any hits back on the twinkle lights or it was actually posted today This is just yeah, this is fresh. Okay this morning. So we'll see how that evolves. But yeah, well if anyone out there Has holiday lights that they're not using Sounds like we could you could reply to that on the Montpelier front porch for him. Yeah, absolutely Just another reminder too. This is a Colin show<PHONE_NUMBER>. That's the number to call anyone's welcome to call We are reaching out specifically to moms if you're just joining us People who identify as mothers who might have ideas about Christmas gifts that either they would like to receive it You can be anonymous if you want Or if you just want to offer advice for other people who are listening or watching If there's if other people out there are thinking about getting gifts for mothers in their life Just any suggestions are welcome. So yeah, thank you for that. Yeah Okay, let's go back to our agenda here. Yeah Anything else on from porch my bed? Yeah, well, there's a few there's many interesting items But one and I want to highlight here the the heading is inspector Linley and For reasons of privacy we're not we're not gonna say no, we don't know but This is a free under the free items category And this post says I have seasons two three and four of this terrific series I don't know what became of season one a mystery Free to a good home. So so they're DVDs. I think no, I think they're probably DVDs But it doesn't specify here. So But the show is inspector Linley Looking for a good home. Yeah, if anyone wants to you know Binge a new show and you know, you know, have you seen the show? Excuse me. Um, I have not seen that. Okay. Have you seen it? No, I've never heard of okay I mean, it's I I'd be interested because I do tend to like Shows that are about detectives or inspectors or especially in the British variety So, yeah, maybe I'll reply to that one. Yeah, well someone else better jump on it quick. Looks like you're doing it right now Yeah, okay. Well, thank you Sarah. Yeah, thank you for your field correspondence there Next on the agenda Update on our children's book. Do we want to get into that? I'm conscious of the time we go about nine minutes left in the show I could we could table that too because I know we have a lot of holiday stuff We were hoping to get to yeah, maybe we could table that for next time sure. Yeah Curious if there's any YouTube comments up, but yeah, what are you gonna do? All right What are you reading? Looks like you're up first Sarah or do you want to break?  No, no, no, this is good So I'm reading this Terrific book. It's called under the snow, okay by Kirsten Ekman And this is can be found at our wonderful public library Kellogg-Hubert Kellogg-Hubert Excuse me And it's a mystery it's a one of your classics Scandinavian mysteries Takes place in Norway in the northern most region of Norway where the midnight Sun Happens yeah, and It's sort of a mystery a one of I'll just give a brief synopsis, but I won't give too much away An artist who works at a school in this region He mysteriously Dies he in the cold he's just found in the snow frozen, but he was a very well He was happy and we know they no one knows why so the Inspector and a friend of the artist Lindley. Yeah Inspector Lindley not Inspector Lindley, but another inspector They are embarking on this investigation. It's a very it's a I'm biting my nails on the edge of my seat I would highly recommend. I have not Finished it yet, but I will let you know Okay, and again you can find this at the Kellogg-Hubert library. Have you read anything else by that author? No, I never have although I did I wanted to see if they had written any Screenplays or had any movie because I thought it would make a terrific movie and I did find that she wrote one screenplay Although I can't remember the name of that movie. I think it's called the wolf in So we did sure sounds cool. Yeah, but the the wolf and I think it's from 2009 It does have an actor who I I know his face, but I don't remember his name and I think I did read that he actually got to speak his His dialect like he he got to speak Swedish I believe like in the way that and he never does that he usually does like friends. I switch man. Yeah Yeah, so anyway So yeah, we'll look forward to an update on that. I guess when you finish it. Yeah, yeah I would love to hear what you're reading. Yeah, actually my what bold disclosure? Yeah My wife took this book out from the library. This is $100 holiday by Bill McKibbin Vermont's own although. I think it's from Massachusetts originally But I think Vermont has adopted him the prominent environmental Activist Bill McKibbin. This is from 1998 so a little bit earlier in In his book repertoire This is the case for a more joyful Christmas So this it's a short book. I read it in two nights very brief He has this concept that I guess he's spread around for a while about the hundred dollar holiday Saying, you know, just try to aim to spend Less on the holidays. It doesn't even he's he's really gentle about it Which I really appreciate.  He's just kind of just trying to set a benchmark and this is obviously 1998 as well Just to set a benchmark to be more reasonable with the gifts that you're giving people and It's nice. It goes into like a little bit of history about Christmas and how we got to where we are now and how we celebrate the holiday going back to like medieval serfs and how serfs would go wassailing to the like local Lord and Basically, it was like the one day of the year that they could like pound on the Lord's door and like demand Like food and drink and stuff from like their Lord and the Lord just like had to do it like by their honor or whatever He'd like sometimes like money and stuff. So it was like this It was like this like drunken revelry kind of night where it's just like the power dynamics were like flipped With like the Lord in the serfs So that was like that was like an early Christmas like tradition and then as things Started to move into like the enlightenment and like industrialization and people were moving into cities and there weren't lords and serfs anymore There was still this like kind of drunken revelry Tradition or attitude around Christmas time by like the lower classes But now that people are packed into these dense cities. It was like Not as enjoyable as like being out in the countryside and like you know Like that basically the upper-class people were nervous To have these drunken mobs roaming the streets and still kind of like going after like upper-class people like for money or for handouts or whatever so So there was kind of this concentrated effort from the upper classes to find some other way to To shape Christmas tradition so it wouldn't be this crazy chaotic night and that's kind of when Santa Claus gets brought in and like the idea of like Christmas being at home and just like giving gifts to each other and just Like keeping it smaller and like contained kind of Came in I don't know. It was just interesting. It's just cool Yeah, I just think of Christmas as it's just always been this way, but that's not And you never hear that no that yeah, so that's that's pretty interesting to think about yeah Manifested totally and it's you know He brings in how like the major department stores now there's industrialization and people have disposable income You know Macy's and all these big department stores start like realizing they can capitalize on this and like get people to like get more Gifts and just how we're kind of have gotten into this crazy place where it's all about running around any holiday Movies are about running around and getting Christmas and you know, it's like frantic totally That's like the story that we tell ourselves about what it is and it just doesn't have to be that way So he just really advocates for slowing down You know basically trading money the things the time and the money that you would have spent on gifts and just trying to trade That for time like with your family and loved ones and just the simplicity of making gifts as opposed to buying them and that just If you're trying to spend time with your family around the holidays and like you just accomplished two things at once Because you made a gift for someone and you spent time with your family or whatever, you know It's not like radical, but it's just nice the way he frames it and like I said It's kind of gentle. Yeah, he's not like lambasting anyone and just saying like it takes time to transition Like if you want to do this like it's not just gonna happen in like one year It's gonna like take a few years to get other family on board and all that sort of stuff So I just thought it was nice good reminder. Yeah, maybe maybe that's a nice thing to remember for the whole year even yeah, like it seems like a symbolic of how we How we treat our everyday lives, you know It's always like you sort of transient transition into these different like seasons or It's like maybe we should just Well, I'm getting into my own views, but as long as it's not political. Yeah, I mean interesting to think about just Resting and and sort of looking in inward as opposed to always having to like rush around and do so many things Like let's just focus on Well, that's what I'd like to do. Yeah, maybe that's a good a good segment goal goal making Yeah, we could do that for the new year. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's great All right, we're gonna rush around a little bit here because we've got about two minutes at the end of our show So we're only about half a through our agenda. What's popping out to you here? What do you want you should do gift ideas? I don't know if we've gotten any callers from any moms or anyone<PHONE_NUMBER> I'm feeling pretty certain my mom's watching But that's okay. That's cool. All right Do you want to jump into gift ideas or ornament? Should we do ornaments? No, we could do ornaments. Yeah, let me bring that up here favorite ornaments Yeah, Sarah. This one's yours. Yeah, this one We actually picked this up at the antique store that used to be right on Main Street The three penny what the one? Yeah, the one that's now three penny and it's just a little like popcorn Sort of like an old-fashioned popcorn machine But I liked it because it kind of I love watching movies. It's like one of my favorite things. So yeah, I just sort of liked it for that reason and in a I'll just explain for the audience In a previous life when we worked together there was a popcorn machine very similar to this So it's sort of has a double connection there Yeah, nice Um, this is my favorite holiday ornament I actually just picked this up this year. This was from Bailey Road downtown and they have a great ornament selection Down there if anyone hasn't checked it out just really nice like big glass kind of ornaments.  We're at time here. It's 1230. So I guess that's the end of our show today. It's been a pleasure. Yeah, it was really nice I made a credit slide, but I didn't put it in here. So credit's real quick Sarah and I developed the show Zach Zorn was our director today Jin on was is the content manager and Christopher Christopher Viersma was the Programming or outreach coordinator and social media and this was produced here at Orca Media in Montpelier, Vermont No pets. No politics out with lunch. Thank you so much for tuning in and we will see you again Maybe next week. Yeah, we'll just check our schedules and get back to you Okay, thanks very much


square foot of my house that shouldn't be a dining room, but is instead a shrine to board games. The thing you see in the middle is not a table, it is an altar. I even have a little prayer booklet that I keep on my phone that tells all the times I've ever offered up a game to the gods. Yeah, it's a little bit ridiculous. I love board games. I love what they do. I love the social aspect of them. I love how they let me connect with people. And this is a talk about board games. It's a talk about board game design. I'm not a board game designer, but I became interested in it and I want to talk to you a little bit about that. I also want to talk about the process of board game design and then I want to talk about what we as software developers can learn from board game developers and more game development.  Let's look at the specific game. How many of you have ever played code games? That's a good game, right? If you were there last night, there was a couple people playing various versions. I even saw somebody that had a signed box from the creator, which was pretty cool. But code names is a really great game, right? It's very tight. It's very well done. And if you haven't played it, it's basically two teams where one clue giver is trying to get the other members of their team to guess which of these 25 words he's talking about or she's talking about with a single word clue.  That's fine. It's a really cool game. I've never played it with anybody that hasn't wanted to play it immediately afterwards. And the first time that I played this game was like, man, this is so simple. Why did I think of this? This is great. I mean, it's the game of the year. And in contrast to that, there's this game. This is Mage Knight. Mage Knight is one of the most complex games on or game 8.com. It has one of the highest complexity rates. It's you're playing one to four heroes. You can be collaborative or competitive. You have 11 different scenarios that you go through. You're exploring all of this different land. You have to manage your deck of all your different things. It's like there are so many mechanics and ideas in this game. It's absolutely insane. The only reason why I really bring it up is because when I saw this, I thought how did anybody ever think of this? And it turns out, actually, the same guy thought of both of them. This is Vlad Yeshvato. He is the creator of both games. And when I saw his name on the side of both of these boxes, I was kind of amazed. Like, how did one person come up with these very different, very distinct ideas? And so that actually got me into the whole notion of like, what does it take to design a board game? And in a lot of ways, I was kind of surprised because he probably went through a very similar process for both games. I got really interested in how he did it. It also became interesting to me that, you know, the game like code names, you know, it's simple, but simple games can take just as long to develop and really, you know, make right as, you know, really complex games like Mageshine. So let's talk about what a board game is. For the purposes of this talk, we're going to find a board game as a set of rules and the needed components that deliver a fun and or interesting and or challenging experience for players. There's probably other things that fit into this category that you could say is kind of like a board game. But for this talk, this is kind of what we're going to be talking about. So that's what a board game is. How do you even start like with an idea for a board game? Where does this come from? Power of work? As a board game we can see. Inspirations can really come from anywhere. There's lots of examples of inspiration in a lot of ways. You can be inspired by theme. If any of you have ever played the pandemic, I know it. Yeah? Oh yeah, good chunk of the room. So it's four scientists versus all the viruses in the world. And when Matt Leacock decided that he wanted to make a game, he decided he wanted to make a game that was a system spirally out of control. That is the game he wanted to make. That was the theme and the inspiration for the game. Right? Who wants to make a game like that? That's not, that's not a thing.  No, a system spirally out of control. You can find, you know, inspiration from anywhere. He also found inspiration from the mechanics, though. There's a point in the game where the bit happens where you, you know, have an epidemic, and there are all the cards that indicate the cities you've already infected with all these viruses that you then shuffle and put back on top of the deck you're about to draw from so that you can infect those cities once again. Right? And it is, it is that moment when all the tension happens, and it's that moment when Matt Leacock realized that he had a game on his hands. So he found inspiration in that. You can also find inspiration, like, from the mechanic in the sense of, say, somebody wanted to just make a drafting game, and they noticed drafting is just whenever you pick something out of a set of things and then pass what's left to the next person and then you get the next set of drafting. And somebody goes, that's kind of like the conveyor belt at a sushi restaurant. And so they made sushi go. You can also just be inspired by your audience. I can say, hey, I really want to make a game that my kids will play. I really want to make a game that my coworkers can play at lunch. I really want to make a game of horrible people. Right? I mean, this is basically apples to apples, but you're not ever going to bring this out with your grandmother unless your grandmother is really cool. Right? It's a different, it's a different kind of thing and it's like based around the audience. So you can find inspiration from anywhere. And once you have inspiration, you really just need like some building blocks put together. So what are the building blocks and what are gates? First, there's really, there's really two different kinds. There's a rule building blocks or the mechanics. And there's a bunch of different kinds of mechanics. Oregon Geek, which is just a heavy website, lists over 15 different types. And you can probably find more, those are probably broader categories. But you also need things to represent states. And these are just the components. What you'll notice about all these different components, is that they're really simple. They're things that you probably have around your house in one way or another. You can find the more expensive components. You can find the things that are harder. But these things are really easy. And so there's something unique and distinct about that, especially for board games. So we've got rules. We've got components. Now we have to ask ourselves, is this fun? How do you know if the game is fun? Because you can't tell. I've learned this from trying a couple board games out on friends and it didn't work very well. The way that you find out if it's fun though is through playtesting. And that's really what I really want to talk about today. So what is playtesting? Playtesting is the primary way that you're going to be able to evaluate and improve your game. It's like, it looks a lot like testing that we're familiar with. You have an idea. You implement it. You play that idea. You observe the results of it. Your brains know how to make it better. You keep going. Over and over and over again, right? The tighter the cycle, the better. That's what playtesting, that's how playtesting works. And so when you're ready to start playtesting, and some people say, hey, how long do I have to be working on a game before I start playtesting five minutes? You start playtesting with yourself right whenever, as soon as you possibly can. Because the first phase of playtesting is just your ability to, your design phase, and you're just trying to improve the viability. I actually did this with some co-workers. They indulged me at a retreat where we all got together and we did like a 45-minute session where I had them basically invent a game. I gave them some paper. I gave them some dice, some tokens, and some index cards. It said, I want you to make a race to the end-style game where everybody has a token. They all go on some path and the first person to the end wins. Whatever that is. You define how they move. You define how they interact. You define what happens. But that's the basic mechanic. And they didn't spend 40 minutes thinking of a game and then play it. They were playing a game within five minutes. The goal was to get from their brain to reality as fast as possible. They're drawing out something very quickly. The thing that made them able to play the game four or five times in that, and that was really, really short period. By the end, my friend Chris here in the middle said he forgot that he was designing a game and just wanted to play it. It's really cool. Going back to Pandemic, Matt Leacock actually published his very first map of Pandemic. This is clearly on a sheet of paper. It's actually, you probably can't read it, but it's also got markers on each of the different nodes and they correspond to the different cards in a standard 52-card deck. He didn't use special cards to break anything in particular out. He just used the deck that he had and said, hey, I'm going to try this out. I want to see how this works. And he started playtesting this idea. And he found out what wasn't working. If you've ever played Pandemic, which so much you have, you know that there's not really any difference between all the different connections between places. And he clearly has blue and red connections and even some double connections here. And those mechanics got pulled out of the game. Because yet again, figuring out what a game is is an exercise and mostly saying no. And what you're proving during this design phase is just, hey, do my mechanics work? That's my big idea work. And when you kind of get to the point to where it's starting to all click a little bit and you really don't want to go any further without maybe a UI that some people might be able to appreciate even if it's just printed out on some paper, then you're ready for phase two. And that's got to playtesting. So got to playtesting is just, hey, I want to determine how other people are going to play this game and figure out what needs to be tweaked to make it more fun. Actually have a co-worker, his name is Jason Carr, who is a game designer for GMT games. I found this like infinitely fascinating. He was super helpful for this talk. And if he talked to me about how he does guy to playtesting, he'll go and sit down with people and say, hey, I have this new cool game because I got to sell it. And he says, we'd like to play with me.  And they'll say, okay, let's try this. He'll take a card out. He'll turn it over and write something new on it and say, let's try with this for this next round. Oh, that worked a lot better. Cool. I have a new data point. Now I can try that in a new game. So you're finding out if people have fun. This is when you're answering that question, right? You are absolutely testing the user experience at this point. This is one of the times that I was really impressed with what board game or with what playtesting could do because it really helps you figure out the things that are working in not just on a mechanical level, but on a user experience level. And once you get to the point at the end of the game where people are saying, you know, I want to play that again. I really like what this game is. I think I understand a little better. And now I want to play it. That is a great time for you to move on to the third phase, which is blind day testing. The goal here is just, hey, can people who are completely unfamiliar with this, you know, take it and play it? Because that's what's going to happen, right? You're going to sell this as a box. You're not going to sell you going around to a bunch of houses and showing them how this game works. The primary thing that you're trying to do is find out if they understand something. You know, can you read the rules? Is it understandable? Is it good? But also is it complete? Could you remember all the edge cases? Are there assumptions that you made? And this is, I've kind of like set this up as kind of this big, long, you know, waterfall type thing, but it's not. It's not quite as clean cut as that. There's a point maybe during blind day testing when you realize, oh, there's something wrong with how this works. I need to go all the way back to design for a little bit to kind of like work through what this needs to be. So you can go back and forth in these phases. It's not completely, you know, one thing to the next, just like it is. There's some, like I said, there's some blurred lines here, but there's not just blurred lines between the phases. There's also blurred lines in what you're testing. You're not just testing one individual thing. This is not unit tests, right? You're testing the overall player experience. You're testing the general thing. And you're testing the UX. You're not testing the UI, right? You don't need great UI in order to test this and make sure that your game is fun, right? UX can be tested without a pretty UI. In fact, you can even ship without a pretty UI. This is an example of that. This is a game called Glory's Grown. The top image that you see is the original printing.  There's basically a bunch of clip art with none of the backgrounds match. It's crazy. It's a top of the game. People enjoy playing this game. They have a great experience here. It just doesn't look good. So somebody else said, hey, I'll do a Kickstarter and we'll reprint this where it actually looks good. That's what the bottom image is. What you can test is for UX is without good mechanics. You actually have to have solid mechanics in order to really hit this up. So let's start to get into what I want to get at. What can we as software developers learn from game development? So first off, I think we can learn that inspiration can come valuable to remember that you can be inspired by your co-worker, that you see frustrated right there. I think it's valuable to remember that you can be inspired by someone in the board game that you play that you're like, oh, this was pretty cool. I think it could actually do something like this in the UI or the interface that we're dealing with right now with our users. There's no such thing as an invalid inspiration. I also think it's really cool that simple tools can tell us a whole lot.  In fact, you know, maybe you can do it with, you know, come up with some prototype and maybe that takes you half an hour. Maybe you can use a piece of paper and jot down a UI and go take it over to a co-worker's desk and say, if I showed this to you on the screen, where would you click? What if you could get done in five minutes, like answer some of those questions in five minutes? Rabbit user testing is possible even early in a project. I think that we as computer engineers often forget that. We think that we have to have it looking closer to an end product before we get it in front of the user. It's also valuable to remember that saying it pays huge dividends going forward. This is true not just for your, not just for the user experience that you have, but also for your application, right? When you say no to things, you have a lower carrying cost and over time you're actually able to deliver a better user experience to your users because they're not having to deal with so many things. You're saying no so you get down to the essence of what your product needs to be. The other thing that I think is really interesting is that UX and business mechanics are way more intertwined than we think they are. I think that we tend to think of like, look, I'm implementing this thing that has to be this way. Let's make the UI make up for the bad user experience. UI isn't UX. They just supposed to have user in the name. If you are a back end developer, you have just as much responsibility for user experience as the UI guy. Maybe more so. And it's your job in fact to push back on those things to say, this is going to give the users a bad user experience. Just to give you an illustration in the software world, if we did this, he was at a conference where everybody's going to their talks and they were doing something silly where you could go and get a caricature made of you. So, instead of having everybody wait in line, they let them use an app. This doesn't have any particular, there's no CSS, it looks really ugly. But it totally serves a purpose where everybody still gets to go to all their talks that they want to go to. And they still get to have their thing.  Just for no good reason. This was great UX and bad UI. We need to remember that. We need to think about delivering UX first before we even think about the UI. And finally, whenever you are there, you're thinking about delivering stuff to people. How much do you think is it fun? Are you delivering a fun experience for people? Are you delivering an interesting experience for people? Are you challenged? I remember my co-worker who said, hey, I stopped thinking about the game that I was designing and I just wanted to play the game. He was really just challenged. It was really just a challenging process for him. You can be challenged too. And if you're not challenged, why not? What can you do about it? And finally, are you improving people's lives? Board games improve my life. I have a better life because of it. I connected people because of it. I connected with strangers last night at the board game thing because of it. And I think that we as developers have the opportunity to improve people's lives. Maybe you're doing expert use software and you can improve all the people that you work with for internal stuff. Maybe you're making people's lives better because they just don't have to have as hard of a time submitting expense reports. Whatever. You're thinking about that and trying to make their experience a little bit better and make their lives a little bit more delightful. Thank you very, very much for having me. Again, my name is Mark Simonin. You can tweet at me at Mark Simonin. I do work for Citrix and we are hired. If you are interested in working for a place that thinks about their products this way, it gives engineers the autonomy to do this kind of stuff and think about things and push back and say, look, I work for this to have the best experience for from the people that are using this. You can come talk to me afterwards if you can talk to us in the booth. Thank you very much.


Good morning, everyone. What's everyone doing today? Jaira, I thought you left last night. Jaira's going on a trip. I really like Walmart, however, for those of you that like to get nuts and options, I would wait to make sure that it's gonna work. So I haven't called anything yet in this in the letter. I think it's better to wait. Let's look at the market. Are we gonna open anywhere in the range from Friday's bar? This is like touch and go. 272.27. I don't think we are gonna open up there about four more minutes. And is this churrickery dickery? If we don't open, if we just open right on the number, I think we'll hold. If we open even one penny under yesterday's Friday's bar, we're gonna drop today. Three minutes and 10 seconds. 40 cents away, 50 cents away. Who knows? All right, not gonna worry about that. This one here still could work. I mean, it's weak, weak volume, all of those things. Not gonna watch this though. WMT is surprisingly down quite a bit and did have one little pop this morning at six, but it just couldn't go anywhere with it. 107.51. So I like it, but we gotta make sure it's gonna work. Cause who knows, it might not. So I wouldn't do any options in this end of the open for those of you that like to do that stuff. Cause if the stock is gonna roll over, I will call an option in it sometime this morning after we're done day trading it, if we do, and you not have to get it at the top, it's better to get the confirmed entry because what if this doesn't work? This could flip here. If it does, we're not gonna short it. I don't think it's gonna happen, but it might because the stock's very strong and market is a 50-50 here today. Market has a very interesting week ahead of it cause we need to hold right of ways and flip back around and continue higher. And if we don't, then it'll be choppy trading for a couple of weeks for a couple of months. I don't know if it's gonna happen, but today, tomorrow, the rest of the short week is important for the market. What did I say the resistance was here? Good luck, everyone. I don't think this has a big stop. Despite the fact that it's expensive, I think it's gonna have a decent entry. If it sets up, we're lucky we get such a nice gap here. I don't know, it really is a Monday, even though it's Tuesday, let's take advantage of it. This doesn't work, I didn't like any longs. I will go look at the other one I rated. Good luck, everyone. And let's not get distracted by the market here this morning, even though I really would like to watch it just to see what we do. Just looking at the other end of that number. Let's try and look. It's really gonna try. 17 years? What do you mean biggest gap in 17 years, Barry? Up or down?  What do you mean? You mean down move? I'm thinking you mean downward. Right, so I mean we'll just see here. I'm just saying don't jump into any options trades for those of you that like to do that, it's better to make sure it's gonna work. Nobody knows until we see it. So 97.22, just check all the numbers in here and just wait. Oh my gosh, the market's gonna fall today. That is not what the market wants to see. All right, I think the market's gonna fall. So I'm on top of this. Let's see what we get. 97.50, stop's gonna be 65 and I don't have the entry yet. This is gonna work. So we're going to do by 65. Here, just take it now if you want it. I think it's gonna roll over. Wait, wait, I grabbed it. I didn't want it to drop, but I mean without us. Get the stop and it's 65. It didn't hit yet. Crap, I think it's gonna though. Come on, yeah. Eight, you can do it at 80. I already took it. I thought it was gonna go right there. I hope I don't get dinged out. 65, let's just double check it. No, it didn't do it yet. Crap, I jumped the gun. Here, I think it's gonna work though. If you're in it, you're in it. Get the stop in if you're not. Here, here, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Come on, go. 80, you can do it, stop's 65. Here, it's gonna go, whoo, whoo. Here, I thought that was just gonna go right there. In fact, let's put it at 70. No, let's put it at 75. I'm gonna give this every chance in the world not to take us out. I'm gonna give it every chance in the world to go just because the spread's changing there. Gonna give it every chance in the world. 75, now let's take a look at this situation. If I get dinged out, it's my own fault. If I get dinged out, it's my own fault. I don't think it hit 80. I jumped the gun, but I'm gonna retake it if it sets up. Or it did hit 80. No, it did. It did, I jumped the gun. I got a better price than that, but it did trigger. All right, so, but make sure you have the stop in. 75, I do think this rolls over. I gave it plenty of room here, but it did hit 80. I did jump the gun, but it did trigger. So, if you're in it, stop 75. If it flips me out, I'm gonna watch it. I still, I do think this works, but it didn't roll right through there. And if you did not do it and it sets up again, I'll give you another number. I do think this works, though. It stops 75 for me and I can't move it. But it did trigger. I jumped the gun, but it did trigger. I'm out. Just wait, wait, I just took the stop. Did anyone do it with me? I jumped the gun in the trade, but it did trigger. So, if you did it, you had to have the stop at 75. I'm gonna stay on top of this and watch it. Did anyone do it with me or was it just me? This isn't off yet.  Okay, some people did it, some people didn't. All right. Okay, 98. 98.15 is gonna be the stop. And I'm gonna go back into this, but I don't know where yet. But that's where it's gonna be. 98.15 and I don't have the entry yet. I'm gonna sit on top of this and wait. I do think this goes, and I think people just bought it there, but I don't think they're gonna hold. So, 98.15, I don't have the entry yet. Gosh, this is gonna go. Let's do 15, 97.15 if it hits. 15 by 15, it's gonna be a buck. Here, do it if you want it. It's gonna go, it's gonna go. A dollar, put the stop in. Get it at 98.15, it's got a $1.00. Size yourself for a buck. Make sure you do it right. 98.15, this is gonna roll over. Here, I'm gonna look at the option right now. I took the stop, I jumped the gun, but it still hit, it's gonna go. And I am gonna call an option at it now. This is very tricky though, because people are long in this, but they're not gonna control it. The stock isn't gonna hold itself up. If it was a failure, we wouldn't have redone it. Let me just look at the option prices here. Stop is 98.15, I think we're okay with that, with the spread. Where are we here, 97.30. It's gonna work, it's gonna work. It's fine that we took the stop. It's gonna roll over and it's gonna have a big move. And I don't know if there's any place to lower the stop. I don't wanna get taken out, but 98.15 is where I have it. Here, it's gonna go. Man, this is a crazy call. It's gonna work. We did the right thing though, taking the first trade. It's gonna go. Here, I gotta get an option trade out in this right now. Hold on, people, just let it drop. You don't even have to have your hand in the keyboard. If we hadn't done that first one, we might not have gotten it. So that's the reality of the place of trading. All right, hold on here. Here, Walmart, just let it drop like a brick. Hold on, I gotta get this out. Crap, my computer. Just let it keep dropping. I don't think I'm gonna take any more. We have plenty. What's today's date? Today is the 20th. Okay, Walmart, let's look at the targets here. First target's gonna be 95. Hope everybody did it. Let's try and make some money today. We had no choice. There was no way that we could have done anything differently. It could be right here right now without if we hadn't got it. It's gonna roll over. 94, Walmart, 95, just let it keep dropping. And people bought it.  I saw the way it was. Here, we'll look at it in a minute. So let me just get this out and just let it drop. Just let it go to zero and everyone should be shorted. And I think that it was fine that we did the stop that it was, you know, it could have been smaller, but you know, it is Walmart. Here, what a nice trade. Just stay with the trade. Just let it go. Do, do, do, do, do, do, do. Let it drop, 95, 94. It all depends. Let's go to the market. Okay, where are we going? We're gonna look at that and we're gonna look at this and we're gonna look at this situation and the market's gonna desperately, desperately, desperately try to hold today, but I don't think we opened where we should have opened and let's go with what I said in my head. So low was 270 to 27. We opened, I think we're gonna drop today, even though we're green right now because we didn't open in that bar. And Barry, I would do this Walmart option. I would do it, do it, do it, and everyone should have done it here. What a great trade. So sometimes you do these things, you're aggressive because the gap was good, you get stopped, but it could be here right now if we hadn't done it. Could have just gone do, do, do, do, and it didn't. So we took the stop. Let's just see. I mean, it went 25 cents over the number and I gave that so much room. I gave that so much room. How could I possibly have thought to give it over 98? That would have been crazy in town, but I'm sure some of you didn't take the stop in it. This might not have worked, but it didn't fail right away just because it pooped us out. It wasn't a failure. I didn't move off of it. It's a good trade. You can get out of this whole thing here if you want. If you want to, you could. It just dropped a dollar plus. I don't even know what the low was. 95, 70, I'm gonna try to stay with the trade. So you're back around positive today. If you did the first stop and you did this trade, you get out right here. I'm gonna try to hold it. Why? It's red.  I don't know if that's true or not. I really don't know if that's true. Let's look. No, it's not true because look. Then I read this one here. That was the day the market fell. It was a pretty big move for Walmart. 104-ish, 97. That was a $7 move down. The gap itself wasn't large but the move in the, here, Walmart. Here is everybody in it. Is anyone out of it? Quala bear got out a half? 95. Here, let's see if we can get down to 95 and if it doesn't break it, we're out. I feel like 95 is a good, solid number. This market is so tricky. Whatever happened to the other one? UBNT is working to, actually, what's happened to this thing here and this is gonna work too, even though it could take a couple of days or pay basically this week. What was the other one here? This, this one here. This one here looks good. This one here looks good. This looks good. This could have even set up again. Man, this is lower. Just didn't have to make that massive, massive move initially even though it was a positive trade into the drop. It's, this looks very good lower. You know what else is out this week? Up to the facts. Walmart, here, everyone pay attention. 95, who doesn't break it, I'm out. I call it today, Walmart, ugh. Man, I'm so glad I didn't move off of this. Convection, 100%. And it wasn't that there was anything else good today. I felt that this was not a failure into the open and I stayed with it. Here, who's texting me? All right, here we go. Walmart, this is a good trade now. Come on. Barry, you didn't, you got out? That's okay. Good trade for you, Barry. Here, Walmart. Boy, I'm shocked that it's a Monday or a Tuesday or whatever the day it is, because we never get trades like this in the first day of the week. It's a sign. It's a sign it's gonna be a good week. 95, 25, 95, 21. Oh, you stinker. Netflix are up nice too. I'll look at those in a second. I thought everybody get out of those. Here, I didn't know anyone was still in them. My question to everyone that about that on Friday. I'd know no one said anything. I didn't thought everybody was out. Oh, Bloomberg said it's the biggest gap diaries for Walmart in many years. Well, that could be true. That means nothing to me, but. Say lovey. I'll look at Amazon in a minute here. Netflix was the one that I thought was gonna be the massive one, which it is. Ay, ay, ay. Well, Netflix will be the biggest trade that I called recently, which I said last week. There you have it. Oh, Debots is still on Netflix and Ed. There we go. This is one more chance to make one more break and then I'm out. I still think the market's gonna fall today. If it doesn't fall today, it looks like it could tomorrow because I'm still gonna go with what I said. We didn't open in the range from Friday. And although we're green at 943, here we go. Walmart. Here we go, Walmart. Here. Here everyone pay attention if you're still in the trade and see if it breaks 95, if not, take it. In the morning move, 944 and what a huge call. And that's why you can't just position yourself to do one trade a day, people. Here, here we go. Here, it didn't break 95, but I think it's gonna, I took it. It's probably gonna go right now. I just didn't want it to bounce up in the 50s. Here it's gonna go right now. I'm already out. I'm already out, but I didn't want it to bounce back up in the 50s. It's a beautiful trade. Beautiful move. Yay, yay, yay. I still think it goes. I think it goes all day. So 9504, I thought it was gonna break this, but I did not want it to bounce into the 50s. I still think it's lower. That was a great exit though, because if this does bounce right here, it really was a great exit. 945, here is anyone still in it? I took it, it was just an incredible trade. I think it's lower all day, but I couldn't chance it. Here, let's see if it breaks 95. So let's just go, here. Is anyone still in this, or what are you doing with it? I don't think it sets up again this wording. You either got all of it there, you're holding it all day, which if that's what you wanna do, that's what you wanna do. It looks like it could be even lower here. I just didn't want it to bounce back up again in this area here. Actually, I didn't even notice this here. This was 75, but this was a great bar to get out if you did. If you are still in the original trade, I don't think it goes anywhere near here. The stock will stay red today, it will not flip now, it's broken. Call the option for those of you on the letter, it looks lower, it looks great. Is anyone still in the day trade? You could watch it here into 10. It's gonna try to break 95, I didn't wanna chance it. Had a great move in this. Here, here, it's so tricky. Gypsy still in it, quality bear is out. Steve got a great exit, terrific. All right, let's look at the Amazon because I haven't looked at that. Who'd said nice quality as it was? Actually, if we hadn't gotten it where we got it, we wouldn't have gotten it. I can go back and look at that one minute. I don't think it's set up at all after we took it the second time. Amazon still looks good, holding very strong, but again, more difficult than Netflix to get over and make a new high. So Amazon is fine, it's a positive trade, it looks very, very strong, it's moving up today. I'm just saying this is gonna be the big one. And so if you got out and that's okay, there's no place to retake it. So right here, this is back in the 50s. Yep, look at that. If we didn't do it where we did it, we wouldn't have gotten it at all. Holy crap, it's very aggressive in this today. All right, but does anyone have any questions? Let's go over it. Any questions from anyone about anything whatsoever? Everyone should be up nicely today. And basically, let's see if it's out for tonight.


May I start by saying that it's a great privilege for me to be here today as the chair of the University of London Center of African Studies at SOAS, University of London. I'm here representing both the Center of African Studies and SOAS University of London at this unique joint centenary dabbaboo lecture to collaborate with the centenaries of our two esteemed universities, the University of Fortale and SOAS University of London. Both universities were established in 1916, one in South Africa and the other in London. Our two universities have worked on a very long way in the past 100 years, making major contributions to human development in Africa through education and high-quality research that has and continues to have considerable positive impact on the continent, but also build on it. As the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London, SOAS prides itself as the only institution of higher education in Europe that specifically specializes in the study of African, Asian, and the Near and Middle East. At SOAS, we have the largest concentration of experts on Africa outside Africa, covering a wide range of disciplines from politics to development, governance, law, languages and cultures, arts and music, history and economics, anthropology, and religion amongst others. We have also welcomed students from all over Africa throughout our history. Our notable African alumni include the distinguished African-American singer, actor, and leading campaign agnosticism, Paul Robson, who studied Swahili and politics at SOAS in 1934. Others include Madame Luisa Diaz-Gueva, former Prime Minister of Mozambique, late Dr. John Athermilds, former President of Ghana, Justice Mohamed Iguis-Kutibi, former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Nigeria. And from South Africa, we can mention amongst others Mr. Betidia Karago, the Governor of South African Reserve Bank, Mr. Graham Olete, late Joseph Mathews, the son of Zee, Zee K. Mathews, Professor Diane Huckabee, and an Articulavist at Fortary University, who obtained an MBA in History 1965 at SOAS, quite serving as the ANC representative in its London office. We also have on our list of South African alumni, Niko Franklin-Axel, the former Mayor of Ghana, and Professor Sidney of the University of Ghana. Through our teaching and research on Africa, we have over the years been asking challenging questions about the big issues facing not just Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, but about our world generally. We ask questions about equality, democracy, governance, access to water and food, about rights to education, about culture, religion, society, languages, art, and music. Asking questions is fundamental to everything we do at SOAS. For our centenary celebrations, we have launched a new global campaign on questions worth asking for the next 100 years in relation to our different regions of specialization. For Africa, we are choosing the question, how can Africa play in the 21st century, as the big question was asked. At the beginning of this century, in April 2000, the World Bank released a report on Africa titled, Can Africa Play in the 21st Century? Which is a question of whether we believe that with the abundant human and natural resources with which Africa is endowed, it can certainly play the 21st century. So the question should not be whether, but how. And this is why we have chosen how can Africa play the 21st century as the big question worth asking now. Our academics and students across our different disciplines will be asking this big question and others of questions under it into our next centenary. As a university, we have committed to strengthen our engagement with Africa into the next centenary of SOAS. This joint centenary Jebago lecture is a significant step in that regard. And we hope that this will be the beginning of bigger collaborations with the University of Potter in our journeys towards our next centenaries. We perceive that the University of Potter shares many things in common with SOAS University of London, including the strong commitment to Africa. It is interesting to note however that the bridge that links the University of Potter and SOAS University of London was actually built before the establishment of the two universities. In the student and academic life of the late Professor David St. Dunn Tango Jebago, the great South African academic and writer. DDT, as he was popularly known, attended the University College of London between 1906 and 1912, where he obtained a bachelor's degree in English. He returned to South Africa in 1914 and was appointed as a founding faculty member and the first black academic member of staff at the University of Potter in 1915, prior to the opening of the University in 1916. His reputation grew as an academic and writer at the University of Potter until his return as Professor of Bantu Languid in 1944, having taught here for about 30 years. Rhodes University conferred him with a honorary doctorate degree in 1954. Amongst his notable works were The Black Problem published in 1920 and The Celebration for the South Potter Papers published in 1928. It is a recognition of this great man and his role as the foundation bridge between our two universities that this joint centenary lecture is named The Devil Who Lecture. And we are so honored to have another great African scholar academic and writer, Professor Angiobulo Ndebele, to deliver this collaborative lecture. I must in that regard acknowledge the role of Canon Collins Educational and Legal Assistance Trust in brokering this collaborative 28. So as partners with Canon Collins Trust on different events and scholarships related to South Africa. And we hope to continue doing so as part of our continued engagement with Africa and collaboration with the University of Potter into the future. Actually, in April this year, to the next month, we will be hosting the Oliver Tambo Lecture in London organized by the South African High Commission. Oliver Tambo himself was an alumni of the Potter University here at one point. Therefore, we believe that the University of London and the University of Potter have so much in common in relation to our engagement with Africa and in relation to contributing to development of the continent. To conclude, I would like to thank my colleagues, Dr. Kai Easton, who represents Canon Collins Trust Actuals, for initiating this collaboration and being here. I would also thank my colleague, Ms. Angelica Vachera, who comes to this for overseeing all the administrative elements on our side. Finally, I must also thank the Vice Chancellor of the University of Potter and our colleagues here, especially Professor Paksha Khursode of the Faculty of Law and Ms. Melisa Manangide of the International Affairs Office for the kind hospitality and connectivity accorded us since our arrival here. We hope that this collaboration will move both universities forward to change the face of Africa for the better. Thank you all very much for your attention. It is always incredible to be able to learn the commitment of an institution to move into nations of the world and be able to develop, establish, and then release leaders. Just as the University of Fort Harris so is the University of London to transform those nations and to create within them the desire to see lifelong learners released. So I'm very excited to have heard and learned of all the things that you're doing. Thank you so much. We now have the pleasure of having Callan Pollan's scholar, Douglas Sedanian, who's going to join us now at the podium and come on and tell us more about this. Thank you. Thank you for being here. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. For the sake of privilege, please gentlemen, allow me to say all part of our talks here. I would like to thank you for supporting me to continue to address you at this important meeting, where I'm honored to be the recipient of the RAPI Scentilas Seminary Scholarship offered by the Callan College on behalf of Callan Pollan's trust in the teachers. Thank you for continuing to support and encourage higher expression. Your kindness and generosity is greatly appreciated. It is my hope to serve in a political position where sometimes in the future, I might have even where sometimes in the future, where I might have even more in a place to help with expression and underprivileged to attend education in the name of Caritas. Beyond the sustainable fate of relief, the scholarship has created a set of ground to network with the various Callan College Party and Organizations, alumni and fellow scholars. Through these networks, as scholars, we've been exposed to a set of views on different schools of thought, elevating our understanding of key concepts in that interaction of social justice. Without further ado, let me turn to the history of the Callan College Trust between Forte and Callan College Trust. Please forgive me, sometimes as a lawyer, I plan to find myself speaking in Latin and lawyer to understand why. Callan College Trust was a great reader of books and novels. He also, it is reading. I got to discover some things that your parents don't want you to see. But when you have time, you rummage through boxes and bits and then you find a treasure that you never thought existed. The treasure that I found was in my father's garage in a wooden box in which a treasure trove, a treasure trove of banned books because if a resource had discovered those books, he would have been in trouble. But nothing stopped young people from confronting Callan College. So I read those books, not hearing them, where I was subsequently it was a pleasure to share that experience. I actually read that. So I'm making connections to time. Two of the books that I discovered which I have read again recently with great pressure. One, written by Nomi Tababuna whose relatives are here today. What a wonderful coincidence that this has happened. And I'm able to see the people that are connected to one post-apocalyptic as most distinguished authors. When you read the Oka people, for example, who are coming from Islam, from Islaman to Forte Aeste and we saw Merda's little yellow drift. And she stands at the first part of that book describing in great detail when you read her interactions with her father, the description of the natural environment, family relationships. She describes everything with so much detail that we are actually there when she talks about her father. She talks about the visit to Forte Aeste as we enter the gates of Forte Aeste. I kept on saying, where would she have gone when she visited the Zamanis one day on this campus. And she describes going to Ushobi at Amis and describes what it is like to interact with people in the shops. And I kept on thinking to myself where is that shop? I wonder if it is still there. And so it is that right now that will connect us in this room. And I am so grateful and honored to see Normie Tabar was registered here and also that to have been chosen to speak today at the inaugural lecture of the post-post-post effect in honor of each other. One hundred years of history is a theme of time that is part of what my talk is about today. And so I begin and I begin this lecture by dedicating it to four men and their families. Here is who they are. Mr. Begginer Moelá Mr. Kengwan Moelá Mr. Dain Sikaka and Mr. Dorda Ngor You may not have heard of them until now. I too did not know a thing about them until I unexpectedly came across Mr. Kair S. Shtorez only that writing about them and their demise. In his account, Mr. Citroë, an academic at the University of the Ridge Orchestra, combines academic research with the imaginative, imaginative sensibility of literal art of the kind that you know and reach above with a so-called act. Citroë's approach then uses it to tell a story of our times. In that story, we can descend on the large angers' history, sweeping events that have affected millions of people in their various national contexts. Such as in Sadako, and from time to time, people get swept into conflicts with global dimensions far beyond their imaginations. Such was the impact of the first and second world wars of the 20th century. And before that, before colonialism, we had our pre-colonial large angers, so-called drama of various kinds. Events of this nature kept our attention almost totally because of their telescopic dimensions. At the same time, as it draws our attention to the wild angers, Citroë is also able to zero in on the detail of the experience to let us have a look with something close to graphic insight into the intimate, microscopic, personal elements of individuals within their families. Their interactions with their neighbors, with the natural world, and the institutions created by humans around them, such as schools, churches, clinics, stars, and all sorts of institutions. I can't contemplate today a story that is a minute DJing against the spade of its reprimandability across the vast suburb and landscape, affecting millions of people over time. It is a story in which social intimacy between people, sharing a local, close, geographic space, are simultaneously shattered and broken by habitual actions which they deploy to keep one another at bay, despite the necessity before them for close detection. Such distancing behavior has long become the sociologic that drives how power and powerlessness among them interact continuously. To the benefit of one over the detriment of the other. Over time, we trust the mutual suspicious, define their interactions, describing what is possible or not possible. I can't complain to you then, the relationship between a well-renowned school in the Midlands of Nassau on the one hand and on the other are non-citizens, denizens of a certain kind who have subsisted in the shadows of the greatness of their vicinity. This story came into my life one day through the internet. One moment there was no story to speak of. The next moment there it was. I sensed therefore a profound democracy in this unexpected encounter. It set aside any suspicions of the willful intent on my part that I could relay them with suspicious motives. It enabled me to contemplate the story with curiosity such as young people who have everything to do and the edge to take on the journey wherever it would take it. So, to enter the website of peer-to-required private school for boards in the Midlands of Grinneka is to experience something close to an epiphany. You encounter the very sense and essence of the education embodied in an institution. Three website screens in their website let you into what this school is all about. This school you read is deeply traditional, refreshingly contemporary. One. Two, this school has a plan for each year to go on. Three, and this school is a world-class campus, the Christian whiteness of its buildings across the estate is accentuated by the lush surroundings of Grinne, the manicured lawns, fields, and every new tree. It is beautiful. Hilton College has a secret as part of its greatness. It has subsisted the shadows in which the four men who have already met and their invisible families have lived for some eight decades in their lives. On the 24th of February of January this year, 2017, there is Khakan, 1087. On the 21st of March, 2017, Human Rights Day, the England boy last turned 86 years old. Of the four men of our dedication, these two are still alive. But we're just suffering wounds before them as they come down in their lives, tick-stired, and the horizon gets closer and closer. As they get closer to the end of their lives, their debts, their savings, according to the story of this account, might just solve a new land issue for Hilton College, while they are still alive, they prolong the burden of its complications. Here is a summary of events related to this reflection. As a consequence of the British conquest of Pozzolonna Tower and the possible dispossession of concatigals, the descendants of our four men and their families, and many other families with their communal locality lost to Hilton Farm and ultimately to Hilton College, the land on which they had lived. That was early in the 1880s in a series of military and political developments and an unfolding administration of conquest by the British government. Since the beginning of the 19th century, we have learned from swallows such as Colin Bamley, among others, about the dispossession, displaced dislocation, and dispossession of people forced by the British conqueror to become wage laborers in towns and cities, sharecroppers or labor tenants on white farms, often on the very land that was taken away from them. It was against the legacy of such historical context that the relationship between Hilton College and those who had lived in the shadows was established and has evolved. It's totally right, and I quote from him, somewhat extensively. When Hilton College was established within the Hilton Farm in 1822, Muaylaz's parents and great-grandparents formed part of the greater workforce within the farm, some of whom were absorbed into the workforce of the college. What was particularly unique about this arrangement is that the black workers who had lived on the farm before, which was acquired by the individuals who eventually changed its education for it, had an arrangement whereby they had to work for free in exchange for a living space, their rights to grace, their rights to have cattle. In this arrangement, the farm or college would simply issue an instruction to an individual for them to come to work at any time, at any point, for no compensation. And for the longest time, both the College and the feminist operated under this arrangement. Even the declarations of Nelson Mandela in a speech he delivered at Hilton College in 1996, when he said that his government would ensure that the rights of labor tenants would be recognized and would be given ownership to the land they had occupied for generations. That did not prevent what eventually was to happen. In the face of Mandela's assurances, that's why in South Africa, many farmers began to be evicted from their farms laborers who had lived there long enough to be at home and to be protected by the legislation that was coming. But Hilton did not do anything so crass. The nature, but the nature of arrangements and incentives between Hilton College and the families that encouraged many families around the college to relocate to Hawick, a nearby town, is a story that still has to be told, followed up by young researchers working here to find out more about that. But the closure of Hilton Intermediate School, very interesting school whose purpose was created in order to educate the children of the workers based on the estate, will not have made things easy for the four families that decided to remain on the estate. To ensure their rights, they were labor to submit their land claims in terms of the Labor Charter Act of 1996, the year of the adoption of the new South African land. Interesting things then, so to come together. This, when this happened, this was 83 years after the native lands act of 19 June, 19, they did by which hundreds of thousands of Africans were dispossessed of their lands by the Union government in the collusion of the British government and which became as South Africans who lost their land who became a salt like yours to write, pariahs with the land of their best. But the travel of our men and their families were not about to end. Their land came applications where among 19,000 claims submitted in 2001. As of now, 16 years later, the land came to court, has not only much deliberated on the claims, but the relevant department of rural development and land reform, according to default, lost or misplaced most of the 19,000 claims. That was submitted by the families on time. They simply, might simply do not know what happened to the documents. And for those documents which are still around, they seem to be unable to remember what the documents are all about. The big issue is not that the department has lost the Hilton case, but rather the reality that the department does not intend on processing the claim. From 2001 to 2013, the Hilton family wrote repeatedly to the department to ask them to send these claims to the land claims court. While a moment's delay, it could turn out to me to settle the legal issue by default through the death of the claimants. But let us have hope. Two days after this lecture on the 35th of March, and that's two days, following an instruction from the land claims court, the Minister of Rural Development and Land Reform has to appoint a special master to facilitate the labor clearance land claims process. We wait to see what the agency government will do two days from now. We will come to the aid of the dispossessed or we allow the logic of colonial dispossession to continue to run its course. 23 years into the new constitutional democracy, we wait to see how 217 years of history in the locality of an asset, in the midlands of Zulatau, will play itself out. For now, find a spot in your mind to pack this story that I've shared with you for a while and consider the moment when South Africans, all of them equally influential, adopted the constitution in 1996. I will invite you once again to ask the end to think of the 31st of March, what is going to happen in the next two days on this matter. When our constitution was adopted in 1996, which was a heavy moment, the consultation process that had led to this story, the conclusion was vast and it encompassing the reach. The process had been designed to meet as good as the outcomes that were intended. All of us were consulted. The consultant did some way or other. The broad national consensus behind the adoption of the constitution there was an indication that South Africans strongly desired to have something like a constitution, something to be a sovereign commitment that guided signals the beginning of the new phase in history. On the 6th of April, 2017, five days after the Minister of Rural and Land Reform would have decided on the matter of the special master in the Pan-Indian case, note these dates. It will be 344 years since the case that John Fenrick landed on the Cape of Good Hope to begin the phase of history that our constitution in 1966, 344 years later, was intended to formally bring to an end. This constitution then won't set a framework for new relationships These will be based on a green set of fundamental values and principles from which it will be derived the rights, the privileges, the benefits, the duties and responsibilities of the shared citizenship of all of us in India and beyond. But the question, the kind that needed to be thought and the time in which to think that the question needs to be answered and always begs to be asked. How do South Africans begin to live together as people on the basis of a new document? No matter how aspirational or inspirational it was, when for over 150 years they have known one another largely across the crude binary significations of master and servant, task master and laborer, ruler and the ruler, the civilized and the uncivilized, the literate and the illiterate, the educated and the ignorant put all these people in one room of a country and say, live together now, we have a new constitution. Within this crude world of binary significations relationships between political and economic groups were fundamentally transactional in a manipulated kind of way such that the direction of power and influence was predetermined in one way from powerful whites in control and powerful blacks under control. And at this point I'd like to say to you that each time I use the word white or black in relation to people, imagine that I have put quotation marks around them because I don't accept anymore the use of these words to refer, to refer to people. We are much more than what we have been taught to think when we do black. And that is the basis on which I adopted this practice. Imagine the quote unquote around black, white or whatever in reference to people. Having to know one another a people without predetermined identities in a new constitution of democracy and to become socially, politically, economically, culturally well led into a new national community was one desirable a condition that would not simply be declared into being. It needed a great deal of work. What was that work sufficiently and rigorously identified by all of us at the time the constitution was adopted? How would we undertake it? Exactly how? And with what? And by what means? And over a period of time what was intended to yield these results in ways replicable far into the distant future. Another question needs to be asked. On which segment of the North South African population would the burden of agency and initiative fall in the bringing about of the new society? Who of all these people were caught in these binary simplifications? Is one of these to take the image? Who? Was this question sufficiently asked? The Brazilian educator of my undergraduate youth and his power of theory in his seminal pedagogy of Congress answered this last question rather definitively. Those who embark on a self-literation course not generations of studying analysis like Professor Jamburenti-Lehler has delivered. But let me try.  On behalf of the University of Fortale of Management of the University I sincerely thank you for the hard work that you put into the task. I would also like to thank the members of the Javava family for agreeing to that we should introduce this event in our calendar of events at the University of Fortale. We thank you very much for giving your blessing. Professor, Dr. Mr. Jamburenti-Lehler who is our Deputy Chair of Council my sincere thanks to you for making the time. I know you've run a very busy schedule and those are the Council members who are here present today. Professor Baderin and his colleagues from SOAS and to those who represent the Canon Corp. Educational and Legal Assistance Trust. Incidentally, back in 1989 when I was about to embark on my fieldwork for my PhD research I was honored to be awarded a scholarship through the Canon Corp. Trust which also in those days also worked in conjunction with an institution that was called the Africa Educational Trust. Every time I was doing my PhD at the University of Fortale in the United Kingdom which I understand is now the cultural capital of that country something that pleases me very much. I did of course of 10-night PhD the following year in 1990 so yes it is true I do look much younger than my actual age it was 1990 was what 26 years ago almost 27 years ago the registrar, Professor Somniso what can I say I mean you are the chief whip you know when it comes to managing and directing such operations and indeed once again we are pleased to see that this one as well has been implemented efficiently. President of the South Sea our sincere thanks go to you we are aware that Professor Leverle I think we should mention this as well as to other guests that day we are in a very short recess which is our winter recess at the moment so many of our students are not with us right now but I can see that the SFC President did manage to coordinate efforts sufficiently enough for us to have a significant presence of those students who ever made and have not gone home during this short occasion so thank you very much for that to the teens and academics of the institution thank you again also for creating this occasion and I understand that we have in our midst Professor M.G. Matomahuru who is representing Walter Sulu University now I would like to make a special word of thanks to Professor Leverle you know Prof I'm the scholar of the land question perhaps not one of those who might be regarded as very distinguished scholars because we did have spent a fair amount of my career doing other things I have delved into civil service I have delved into the private sector but now I'm back in academia and trying very hard to revive my scholarship so when you spoke so eloquently about the land issue that relates to Hilton College I started thinking and imagining that you know that is but a microcosm of something which is being replicated across the length and breadth of our country we have so many thousands of families and claimants who are waiting to see justice finally being done you spoke of what happened to those who were dispossessed of the land that is now where Hilton College stands back in the 1880s but we saw from there in our country a seamless continuum of dispossession which straddles both what sound referred to as the pre-1913 period and went beyond 1913 and so again the question arises why is it that in our country we decided to impose literally impose this cut of date of 1930 because had that not happened the Hilton claimants perhaps would not be claiming as labor tenants but they would be claiming as the original owners of the land because they owned the land before they were dispossessed in the 1880s but if their claim is valid as is based on this cut of date of 1913 then the historical aspect of their claim would not be recognized it's only the more contemporary one where they became after which they became proof that it really was fascinated by your articulation around the concept of the binary simplifications that were confronted with in our country indeed when you cite Paolo Frey that touched the map and I recalled a particular quotation from that great scholar which we used to rehash our own days of youth at university where Paolo Frey says the historical and ontological vocation of our past is to become more fully human in fact that is precisely to a very large extent the gist of your lecture today then there is this Arabalo that has been sparked by a treat by one Mrs. Helen Ziele according to her the slogan should be apartheid is dead long live colonialism it is truly an obnoxious thing to say but proof I'm not summarizing your speech and that's reflecting on some of the points that you highlighted so there are so many other issues which I'm sure many of us will take home with us and which will enrich our understanding of the challenges that our country faces as well as the ways and means that need to be adopted to address them for example this whole point that you make about a criminally syndicated government project whose aim is to support the vision of our constitution another one is where you refer to to us the end of your address anti-tribalism how can we ensure that we consolidate and generously cut the gains that will need since 1912 by our people in going away with a cancer of tribalism which more often than not takes other mutations such as xenophobia and so on and so forth how do we guard against that so with having said all that Prof, I really thank you more sincerely for having raised our institution today and for having shared with us such profound and indeed highly educational thoughts and analysis thank you very much


The choir state police command has paraded the chief medical director of a private hospital, Dr. Ayodeli Joseph, for gross misconduct and rape of a victim who is a nurse. The commission of police, Paul O'Damma, disclosed these at the command headquarters in Elonging the state capital while parading the suspect. Paul O'Damma added that Dr. Ayodeli allegedly committed the crime while performing surgery on the patient who had been sedated. On the 5th of May, 2023, one female victim, the name is we held for obvious reasons. It knows by profession reported to the police that she went to Ayodeli Hospital at number 290 Somere area, Lagos Road, Eloring, for surgery. The chief medical director of the hospital, one Dr. Ayodeli Joseph, during the treatment, sedated the patient, which led her to become unconscious. Before the sedation, fearing enemies have, the patient activated her telephone and placed in a vantage position to record the surgery, unknown to the doctor before the expected surgery. She woke up from sleep after the surgery to find herself fully naked. And when reviewing the recorded video, she discovered that the said Dr. Ayodeli Joseph had an unlawful sexual intercourse with her while she was under sedation and unconscious. The patient is not true at all because the lady said may help and the lady is in a position to now want to confess. And by the time I bring the letter, the lady wrote because he is collecting ransom. He is doing that to collect ransom from us. She has collected close to 500,000 Naira from us. So, definitely is a kind of a setup to try and collect ransom. That is another way most of these people in this country are frustrating doctors. Ten other suspects were arrested and paraded for various crimes ranging from armed robbery, courtesan, and to being in possession of psychotropic drugs and substances. On 26th April, 2023, at about 2300 hours, operative attached to anti-robbery section of a quarter state command raided a black spot around Gambari, Oboro area and discovered at Oboro a criminal hideout. Where five suspects were arrested with incriminating items such as dry leaves suspected to be Indian M, some quantity of hard drugs, ice, value about 1.5 million Naira and other dangerous weapons. Investigation conducted reveal that the arrested suspects are members of a secret court that terrorize innocent citizens around Ilorine area. Hello, hope you enjoyed the news. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.


Hello, beautiful souls. Welcome back to Art of Awakening. My name is Ona and this is the weekly reading for the week of September 11th through the 17th, 2022. And we just always remember that we are living both in temporal time and in the eternal time. So if you're coming to this video at a later date, there's something here for you. Okay, so I'm going to share in this video the channel message for this week, a little piece of artwork for this week. And also I will be doing a spirit animal reading on Facebook this week. So I'll leave the link to that in the description below. That will be a reading to support the energies of this week. All right. So let's start with a little overview of what's going on this week. We are just coming out of the full moon in Pisces. So we're still at this moment in that kind of portal of the full moon will be releasing those full moon energies throughout this week. And so what I'm getting is that there's a lot about subtle energies this week, the very subtle, etheric energies that are moving on the planet that are moving within our bodies. And the message for this week really does have to do with being aware of the subtle energies and working with them. So just go to go ahead and read that message to you and they also gave an exercise so if you are looking to work with these energies they have some suggestions for you. Okay, so here goes. Watch what you are calling in at every moment you are calling in something. If you live in a responsive universe, you are a magnetic being and you like all living things are dynamically changing being any change to your field will attract the appropriate response from the universe. It may it can be subtle you may not be aware of it some of these responses may be so subtle as to be unnoticeable, but rest assured they do take place and their effects add up over time.  It is the stillness within you that attracts a steadiness of mind and emotion. When you are constantly turning the dial, you move the target before the universe has a chance to take aim. You attract as chaos, uncertainty and confusion, because that is what you were putting out. Okay, so then they gave me this exercise. They say, pay attention to the state of your body, your body's little asks for rest for water for movement for physical contact with other beings. Does your breath, the state of your spine, the small muscles of your face. Is there tension in them, or are they relaxed. Does your breath flow from deep in your belly, or is it shallow and light. Okay, so a couple of thoughts on this. What I'm really saying is that it is the vibration that we hold right the the presence our own presence that determines what the universe is going to be sending to us. And at any moment in time that we can be holding a higher vibration of presence right a higher presence or we can be embodying a lower vibration of lower presence okay for each person that's going to be different right. So you're being on yourself for a while be 10 years ago. What was the highest vibration that you could hold then might be your lower vibration now. But at any point in time we're going to have this, you know, ability to either embody our lower vibration or our higher vibration Okay, the way to move between those is going to be activity so we either have stillness, a lower vibration or stillness higher vibration or we're in this active mode okay, we need the action right to move us from that inertia state the lower vibration into a higher vibration but once we reach the higher vibration, we need to hold it there okay and so with this exercise they're we need to really have that awareness in order to train our mind and our body to move, you know, to keep holding that higher vibrational state. Okay, so that the motion is necessary, but what they're also saying it is, you know, the ability to hold a particular state of vibration that allows us to attract what we're going to attract okay and so I feel like what they're saying is, it's through the awareness that we're able to choose which vibration that we hold, but they're also warning against you know that that state of agitation, which of this is necessary we need that fire that movement, you know that that ability to move and shift and change the dynamic aspect of us. It's necessary for going to move out of that inertia state right that state of lower vibration but once we start hitting there what we need to do is train ourselves to get into stillness and a more higher vibration okay, and if you have a lot of that fire energy you may find that you kind of settle into that state of activity right if your mind is moving a lot, or if you are, you know, constantly planning right, or even a state of anxiety, it's really important to be aware that that constant action can become this vibration of constant action we can actually get stuck into that state as well, and that is the state that attracts confusion, chaos, uncertainty, and if you look at the greater world as a whole, we've have a society that really places a lot of emphasis on action on a kind of constant, constant action, right, and look what is kind of happening in the greater society there is a lot of chaos, uncertainty and confusion. So the encouragement this week is to be really really aware of what state what vibration, are you bringing in and to work with that fire energy to calm it down a little bit okay. So a lot of it is really about awareness and being aware of which static states are you inviting or which static state is present in you okay that's going to be a static state of this lower vibrational which would be maybe a hunched posture, it could be a kind of a breath that's tight, it could be you know tension in your face.  Okay, and so the invitation is first of all to be aware of what state are you in, and then if changes needed to gently correct it right. But otherwise, there's a tendency to either stay in that kind of lower vibrational state or to be bouncing all over the place right. And that's what they mean when they're if you're bouncing all over the place. Then that's where you're just attracting this energy of chaos, or uncertainty and confusion, which in itself in the activity kind of brings you down right. It's always in order to bring yourself up to this more static peaceful, harmonious state. Eventually you train yourself to kind of be there right but in in in the process you have to actually train yourself by always being aware and then bringing yourself back up. All right, so if you would like the spirit and we're meeting for this week and join me on Facebook, and we're going to actually go deeper into this idea of working with this, this fire energy this Rajas energy of change. This Wednesday in my souls of fire show, we're going to be delving into that as proteins to financial wealth. And if you're in business specifically your revenue. Okay, so if you haven't subscribed yet, hit subscribe, catch me then on Wednesday. And until then remember you were born to be free.


The Holy Land. It has awed and inspired and consoled the faithful for centuries. Holiness is here in the land in the light in the ruins and houses of worship. Let us take you there each week as we uncover the rich and fascinating history of man's search for spirituality in this ancient land. Join me each week for The Holy Land Uncovered.