Well hello there you'd better watch out you'd better not cry you'd better not pout because I'm here with some spooky stories hello children it's Santa and welcome to another episode of the spooky Santa podcast I have new scary stories to share with you so be sure you have your parents permission before you begin to listen and I'll know if you ask them or not because I can see you when you're sleeping and I know when you're awake coming up in this episode the stench of Christmas by Lee's story it's one of my personal favorites I'll also share a scary story from Ireland it's called Mary Cole Hane and the Dead Man plus I have an extra special story that was emailed to me from one of my children on the good list Atticus in Wisconsin he's six years old and he sent us a very scary story now bolt your doors lock your windows turn off your lights and come with spooky Santa for another holiday chiller they say it's the smell that hits you first a stench that crawls into your nostrils slithers down your throat and tries to cut off your air but you fight fight to breathe struggle for a nanogram of oxygen to drag it into your lungs and live when the air catches you in your belly and your lungs swell again what's coming next will make you vomit with revulsion make you wish you hadn't taken another breath what's coming next is always expected in my family on Christmas Eve while other smiling families gather around the Christmas tree enjoying gifts and sumptuous meals my loved ones quake and wait in the shadows not touched by happiness while other families talk about the miracles of Christmas I'm wishing for a miracle I own for years for decades for two centuries in fact my family has lived here beside the bay and near the forest the ocean water here isn't brilliant blue but brown and money we live at the edge of the Mina's basin in a three-story house with rooms upon rooms upon rooms too many rooms too much money that's what got us into trouble in the first place it was my foremother who landed on these wild shores she was only 14 years old and she had been sent here from Scotland by her poor parents who hoped she would find work my grandmother arrived with nothing except for a single piece of amber a piece of orange hardened sap that fit into the palm of her soft young hands her hands didn't stay smooth for long though hard work chafed them chapped them cracked them and marked them for a life forever of labor she toiled day in and day out for over a year as a servant for an old woman an old woman who demanded everything out of my several times great grandmother according to her mistress my ancestor couldn't do anything right and did everything wrong that's why she turned to the amber a tool only to be used when nothing else worked the amber was a piece of magic from the old world used in the new world it had been pressed into my great great great grandmother's palm before she'd boarded the ship for Nova Scotia it was the only reminder of the family she'd left behind there had been tales about the amber whispers about its powers stories that had been passed from generation to generation it was said the amber could do wonderful things and undo terrible things it could make things good make things easier make you rich and your enemies poor but the use of the amber came with a price an overwhelming stink that tightened around the neck like a hangman's noose the fable of the stench was all that was left clinging to the amber just before my grandmother planted it in the damp dark ground one wintery day when the snow fell in wet clumps on the bare trees and the tide was on its long journey out to sea she put the amber in the earth near the old woman's house and waited then the pine needles covering the earth shriveled as a burnt orange mist quivered up from the dirt where the amber was hidden a hole yawned open and out of it came a stench that slid languidly into her mouth and nose her bony fingers went to her throat and she threw her head back gagging for oxygen almost too late she caught her breath dropping to her knees in relief she bowed her head her red hair fanning out over her fated blue skirt like flames and then it happened hideous in form it rushed out of the smelly fog and stood several steps away from her it was tall as any of the birches surrounding my grandmother the form had green eyes squished into a mustard colored face the creature didn't have a nose not that my grandmother could see anyway but it did have a mouth of bright red pouty lips behind the squishy plump cherry lips were rose upon rose of teeth big teeth teeth that were as white as new snow and as pointed as the tip of a knife she saw them even though she sat several meters away this is my first time to this side of the world the creature said pushing the words through his teeth grandma knew by the male voice that the it was a he she was surprised by the softness of his voice the voice of a preacher it didn't fit with the terrible viciousness of his body or the odor that pushed itself against her senses why am I here it asked I I stammered my grandma I heard you could help me yes the stench answered tell me what you need me to do I'm tired of being cold and hungry she said I'm tired of being poor and lonely I'm tired of living in this desperate situation I want to be rich I want to have silks the color of the sky instead of mossy dull green woolens I want to be able to eat a marbled steak instead of mushy peas for my supper I want a servant to gather wood from my fire I don't want to play the servant any longer ah the creature said you want all that without having to work for it without having the money work brings you you want the best without the worst I want the best money can buy she said there are many things money can't buy per the stench money would give me everything and anything said my grandmother emboldened by the thought of never having to stand churning butter for hours or chopping wood for days if that's how you see it then here are my terms said the creature every year at this time I'll come collect my fee how much do I owe she asked don't worry it's not money I seek it's something you have already my grandmother thinking the stench must be referring to the semi-precious talisman that brought him there nodded her head before speaking oh yes yes she agreed you can have the amber that's when the stench stepped closer much closer to my grandmother that's when she saw him closer much closer there were bits and pieces of moldy meat hanging off of him fleshy things that shivered in the wind rots and flakes that clung to his hands and neck and swatches of muscle blistering on his putrid face his form was so rancid it vibrated with stink a squeak escaped my grandmother's lips and she turned her face toward the water toward the brine that was fleeing the basin she wondered if the creature smelled her fear the stench laughed and my grandmother knew he did I'm hungry he said with a merry lilt to his voice you will feed me with your skin skin is a never-ending meal for me humans have many layers of skin and it always grows back from you I need a strip 15 centimeters a year enough to keep me satiated but not enough to kill you when your first child turns 14 he or she will make your payment until they have a child to take their place the cycle will continue for their descendants to every year for 200 years your children and their children will pay for your comforts now my grandmother looked down at her lap and smoothed her coarse gray linen apron with her hands her nails were chipped and ragged her knuckles were swollen to the size of a man's these were hands that would be enslaved to work every day every hour and every minute she lived I agree to your terms she said so softly it was almost lost over the rush of the tidal bore waves that force all the water back into the bay that her screams could be heard from the beach through the woods and down to the wharf where mr. school field was bringing in his nets that was Christmas Eve almost two centuries ago I turned 14 in March of this year it was a day I dreaded but today December 24th is the day that terrifies me I know what's coming I know what happens I've heard the stories I've seen the scars I've heard the screams my ancestors have been keeping score every Christmas Eve the stanch arrives to harvest our flesh tonight marks 200 years will the stench make an appearance among the ringing of the church bells have we settled my foolish grandmother's debt the best present ever would be if I'm the first one in generations to be spared I hold a little fleck of hope born out of Christmas cheer that the stench has had enough but I don't know I walk down the path and through the woods to a clearing near the water that's where the amber is still buried that's where a promise was made that is where I wait for the stench to find me they're right you know it's the smell that hits you first this next story is from one of the boys and girls on my good list Atticus he's six years old and he lives in Wisconsin in the United States and he emailed me his scary story at letters at spooky Santa calm here's his scary story I was swimming at night to see if I could find a sea creature and I did find one that night I saw it like a squid thing while snorkeling but when I looked closer it wasn't just a squid it had the head of a hammerhead shark eyes like a spider and arms like an octopus the legs were eels and when I first saw its legs up close one eel was holding a brain and the other was holding a heart there was blood all over in the water when I looked down there again I saw the body of an unlucky diver I tried to see what it would do if I got closer to it but it tried to kill me I was terrified and I swam away I got to my house where luckily I had a harpoon and I tried to use it but it wasn't very useful it kept chasing me and now it was more dangerous because it had my harpoon and it was trying to kill me with it then I got away finally and I didn't see it again except for one last time and it turns out it has night vision because it saw me very clearly in the dark it bit me on the leg and as the venom entered me I felt my leg turning into an eel and soon I became the same creature that is a scary one Atticus you have a very dark mind you do but you are on my good list hey if you would like to write a scary story for me to read you can email it to me at letters at spooky santa.com I'll read your story in an upcoming episode that's letters at spooky santa.com your parents can help you with that if you need them to this one is called Mary Culhane and the Deadman it's a scary story about a young girl in Ireland who is haunted by a corpse it's based on an old Irish folk tale called the blood-drawing ghost this story is also known as Mary Culhane and the Deadman here's the story years ago in Ireland there was a young girl named Mary Culhane her family was very poor and they lived in a white washed cottage down a country lane she had six younger brothers and sisters and spent a lot of her time taking care of them her father work as a grieve digger in the local cemetery next to the Catholic Church it was the only job he could get because he had been born with a bad leg one day when her father came home he sat down inside he was extremely tired after working all day I can't believe it he said I left my black-thorn walking stick back at the graveyard if I don't go back for it someone will steal it it was the last thing my poor departed father gave me before he died I can barely walk without it Mary Culhane was always a helpful girl always on my good list and she knew how tired her father was so she fetched her shawl and said I'll go get it for you daddy and she ran out the door before anyone could stop her at the time many people in Ireland were superstitious and nobody dared to go into a cemetery after dark by the time Mary reached the gates of the graveyard the moon was out and the wind was whistling through the trees she carefully walked around the graves making sure she didn't step on any of them because that would mean bad luck for her she spotted the black-horn walking stick lying against an old oak tree and ran over to pick it up unfortunately she was not looking where she was going and she fell into a freshly dug grave she got up on her hands and knees and tried to climb out of the grave but it was so deep too deep suddenly she felt something crawling up her back a chilling voice whispered in her ear little girl I have been waiting a long time for someone to drop by now that you're here you must take me into town to get something to eat I have a terrible hunger and an awful thirst on me Mary's heart skipped a beat she knew that the thing that was whispering in her ear couldn't possibly be alive she could feel its rotting fingers stroking her hair and its fetid breath blowing against her neck the dead things arms wrapped around her body and she could feel its rib cage digging into her back she was helpless and alone there was no doubt that the dead man would surely kill her if she didn't do his bidding she reached up to the graves edge and took hold of two clumps of grass then she pulled with all of her might she felt the weight of the dead man dragging on her shoulders somehow she managed to lift herself out of the grave with the corpse clinging to her back as she lay in the mucky grass trying to regain her breath the corpse screamed in her ear get up young girl get up and carry me into town I'll ride you like a horse Mary slowly got to her feet and with the dead man straddling her back she trudged toward the village when they came to the main road and saw a house the dead man hissed take me into this here house so that I may feed Mary climbed up the steps with great difficulty when they reached the front door the corpse cried out not here not here for I do smell the stench of holy water the frightened girl walked back down the steps and went to the next house again as they reached the front door the corpse cried out oh no away with us for I do get the stink of holy water here as well Mary walked on down the road until they came to a third house this is a house that has no holy water hissed the dead man take me into the kitchen and I'll find myself a bit to eat Mary walked down the darkened hallway to the kitchen there she let the corpse slide off of her back and onto a chair all that was in the cupboard was some porridge and some dirty water I'll teach these vagabonds and black guards not leave me anything let me on your back again Mary did as the dead man commanded her to do now he said take me up those stairs Mary was reluctant to go upstairs because she knew the family who lived in this house she went to school with the three boys who slept upstairs but the evil corpse dug its bony fingers into her neck and threatened to choke her to death she slowly made her way to the top of the stairs there in the pale moonlight she could make out the figures of three young boys lying fast asleep in their beds the corpse took out a sharp knife and slit each boys throat Mary turned her head and looked away she couldn't bear to watch the dead man collected their blood in a jug with the first drop of blood their breathing stopped with the second drop their hearts stopped beating with the third drop of blood all life left their bodies he took the jug full of blood and said take me back down to the kitchen so that I may feast Mary sadly walked down the stairs and into the kitchen the dead man took the bowl of porridge and poured the jug of blood over it and when he finished eating he took a spoonful of the bloody mess and gave it to Mary Culhane eat this he said no she cried you'll do it and you'll do it now he said and he wrapped his arm around her throat she took the spoon from his grasp and brought it to her lips the dead corpse picked up the bowl and began slurping and licking up the bloody porridge while he wasn't watching Mary quickly threw her spoonful on the ground the corpse put down his bowl we must hurry he hissed I must be back in my grave before the morning comes as they left the house the corpse began laughing insanely you know there was a way that those boys could have lived he cackled you see if they were to drink their own blood they could come back to life but all of the blood is gone and now there is no way on and on into the night they went the creature whispered in her ear telling her evil stories and disgusting things that no one wants to hear and no one would ever dare repeat the moon was going down and the sun began to rise they were close to the cemetery now when Mary heard a rooster growing what is that horrible noise screams the dead man Mary knew full well it was a rooster and that morning was fast approaching but she said it sounds like the bleeding of a sheep or maybe it's the move of a cow quickly shouted the corpse get me to the cemetery for I feel myself weakened Mary saw the oak tree she saw the open grave she walked slowly towards it just then the sky broke open and the first beam of morning drew across the sky and into the graveyard the rooster crowed three times the corpse let go of Mary's shoulders and slid down into the grave Mary Colhaine was now free of the deathly grip of the corpse she grabbed her father's walking stick and hurried home when she got to her house everyone was asleep she threw herself into bed and fell into a deep sleep a few hours later her mother ran into her room and cried Mary Mary wake up something terrible has happened in this town three boys were murdered last night Mary stirred at her mother could see that her hair was matted and tangled there were dark circles beneath her eyes her dress was dirty and it looked like there were blood stains on it Mary Colhaine headed into town when she got to the house where the dead boys lived she could see that the entire village was trying to console the devastated parents she went up to the father and said please please let me inside no Mary I can't do that he replied what lies upstairs in that bedroom is not fit for the eyes of a young girl to behold but you don't understand insisted Mary I think I can save the lives of your three sons Mary if you could save my three sons from the clutches of death I would be forever grateful he cried I asked nothing said Mary but that you let me go in there alone the father cleared the house and Mary entered she walked down the darkened hallway to the kitchen she grabbed the spoonful of blood and porridge from the floor and went upstairs she saw the lifeless forms of the three boys lying in bed she gently went over and put the spoon to their lips with the first drop of blood the boys began to breathe and with the second drop of blood their hearts started to beat and with the third drop of blood all life came back into their bodies and what rejoicing there was when Mary walked outside the three boys were alive and well the jubilant father came over to Mary call Hane and said you have made me the happiest man ever to live you gave me my boys back from the dead safe and sound what can I do to repay you well said Mary there's only one thing I ask of you always be sure to keep some holy water at your front door did you like the stories I told if so tell your friends about spooky Santa so that they can listen to and remember you can write your own scary story and email it to me at letters at spooky Santa calm if you want to learn more about the stories I've told or the authors who have written them you can find links in this episode show notes spooky Santa is a registered trademark of Marlar House Productions copyright Marlar House Productions 2019 now be a good little girl or boy and join me next time for more creepy tales from spooky Santa


Hello everybody and welcome back to The Average. It's that time of week again where we paint over movie covered books because we hate movie covers on books and I think a lot of people feel the same way. So we are going to be painting over Bridgerton today. It's a Netflix drama that recently blew up and it's super popular and I think it just proves that we're all super thirsty for Regency dramas. I am particularly so happy that the Regency era is back in trend because I really like those kind of like historical dramas and I just think they're really nice and like charming and just that era really says something to me. I'm even doing a little bit of a comic based around that era. Disclaim it if you don't like me painting on these books I would just go away because it only gets worse from here. So today I will be using my jelly paints but also I'll be using my little dictionary of colours that I got for Christmas and it's super cute and it just gives me like loads of different colour combinations that I thought I would just try and expand my horizons a little bit here and change the way of my purples and blues and just try to do something a little bit different. For Bridgerton I thought it would be a really good idea to paint them with this pastel colours because I think it definitely suits the tone of the book. Also they decided in the show to sort of go with that colour scheme as well. Not that I'm trying to emulate that but I think it does portray it quite well. The book is written by Julia Quinn and the Netflix show is written by Shonda Rhimes who also wrote Grey's Anatomy so I kind of like Grey's Anatomy I think it went off the deep end a little bit but that's a whole other story. So to get this colour combination I've decided to use my jelly paints but I wanted to make my own little palette here. So what I'm doing is I'm gonna get my jelly paints and I'm gonna mix up the colours that I want exactly and have an amount of that paint to use because I didn't want to keep mixing throughout and I thought it would be too much of a temptation to have the paints right there to dip into a different colour. So I thought if I premixed everything then I would only have those colours to use and if I desperately needed another colour I would have to get up and go and get it and yeah I think it would help me be more restrained with my colours. So I'm just trying to get together a little bit of a colour and all my jelly paints here are a little bit hard so I got these like cheap I got a bag of popsicle sticks which were really cheap like one dollar one euro for a bag of like a hundred so I'm just gonna use these popsicle sticks to stir them up instead of having to like do use one wash it use one wash it and it made it the whole process a lot more simple and a little bit fun bit of whimsy for you little whimsy for your Saturday I don't know what I'm saying I'm so sorry and yeah so I'm mixing these up and just trying to get the right colours. I kept making it way too dark or way too saturated and I realised that these pastels they're just like a sort of soft subtle lighter shade of white of this colour colour screen so it was a little bit difficult for me to wrap my head around because I'm used to having really deep vibrant colours and then I realised yeah you need to you need to chill out on the colours a little bit they're too contrasted I needed to add a lot of white so I got another jelly paint where I have a big pot of white and I used that to make these paints just a little bit lighter a little bit more fairy a little bit more Brigiton-esque yeah yeah just mixing all these up and I'm gonna take these popsicle sticks and wash them later so I just put them in water to like soak realise I was making more of a mess so I just took them into the sink to wash later. Now this is the part that I hate and I think most people hate but I'm using a nail file to kind of sand down the paper because there's a little bit of a like a shiny hint to this cover so it means the paint the paint won't stick very well to it if I don't get rid of it so I had to use a nail file because I don't have sandpaper and yeah just just moved on and I begin with the painting on the book it is a scary process everybody in the comments always tells me I want to do this but I'm too scared of ruining the book yeah same I sometimes I have so much fear I'm like what if I just ruin this but I think you can always just paint over it again or remove it with a cloth I think once you've done this task of sandpapering it down I think it's too late to turn back I've really got into this process of this one I really had fun with it it was so strange because I have a lot of pressure I thought oh my god this this book is really good and this show is really good so people are gonna come and watch us they're gonna be offended if I do a bad job and you know have all this pressure but in the end I just got really into it and I felt really like a vibe of being like sort of impressionistic and just going with it and making shapes and playing with the texture of the jelly gouache because it's so like thick I just left lumps of it there and then went back over it and just played with really like using textures and shapes and just block color in the beginning and I really enjoyed that process and it's something that I really enjoyed doing so it definitely helped the process of this for me to get out of my head a little bit to talk a little bit more about the book and the show I did watch the show first because I had never heard of the book before and I really enjoyed the show I really liked it I thought there were moments where it went a little bit too far in the like sexual way I think it was like you could have reeled that in a little bit I think it was it was good it was sweet there was some bits that I was like okay this was a bit cheesy but it's it's no pride and prejudice the original BBC series but it's good I enjoyed it and I think it's fun and the book is pretty much the same it's the same story I think all they did for the show is like give a lot of other characters a bit more plot because they needed to make an entire show out of it and obviously it's not just about the main character and the Duke it's it's about like other people like El Louise who is big character in the book and Pineolope and then there's also other side characters that they've made and have like a bigger plot for them which is good but I think the main story the book where we you know the original story in the in the series it seems like that's a stronger storyline than the side characters that they have like I'm genuinely not that interested in some of the side characters in the series but in the book they're not really mentioned so I feel like maybe they stretched it out a little bit too far but I don't know I don't know maybe it made it more enjoyable because when you go back to the main plot it was a bit more interesting in the show I kind of found actually the Duke and the main character what's her name I've forgotten her name Daphne Daphne that's her name the Duke and the Duke and the Daphne Daphne and Duke I found like the story a little bit slow at towards the end of the show whereas in the book it's kind of like that's the main plot point of the the whole book is that's them driving the story whereas in the show it's like and then you have the sister who doesn't want to get married and the brother who's in love with like a scandalous opera singer and you know there's like different sidelines oh yeah it was a good story I enjoyed it it's it's like the show it's nothing too deep but it's just fun and I think I try to emulate that a little bit in the way that I painted it with just going with block shapes and just this woman with her bride dress on with her back turned to us and holding flowers behind her back just I thought it was very nice and I was very much in the mood of painting like a bouquet because I just recently bought well ordered my bouquet online for my wedding that I'm having this year which is just crazy to me and having a little bit of a COVID wedding so it's gonna be really really small and intimate but in the end I think it will be very nice so it's just in the mood to like paint flowers and I thought it was very nice it was kind of reflecting what I was thinking about so I felt very drawn to this piece or attached to it and I do really like the way that it turned out in the end I used a another color I use this like darker shade of blue just because I thought it balanced out the whole color scheme of the the image because I thought there wasn't enough darkness to it like even though it's supposed to be a pastel piece I thought it just needed that little pop of blue to make things stand out a little bit then I went in with a pencil just a colored dark black pencil just to define certain areas and of course using a very loose style just really like dragging the pencil around feeling for the texture and just trying to hint at certain shapes and I think it really works well I like the style a lot and I know it's not probably to everyone's taste because not everyone really likes impressionism everyone likes realism in some senses when I'm painting on a book but I think this one I just really like it and I don't I don't know I don't know what do you guys think do you like it do you like the style I just think it's nice I really like a loose style I think it's just enjoyable to paint as well it's just nice and free and interesting and your eyes always drawn to something else and it's just like blocks of color I just I can't describe it but I think I really enjoy pieces that look like that I really for instance if I was to buy a painting I would buy something like this that was a bit more impressionistic because then realism because I just enjoy it more generally and it's my book so there you go that's pretty much it I finished it off by just taking the paper off and the washi tape off the side and that's pretty much the final look of the piece let me know what you guys think I really liked it in the end and I think it looks good I like the yellow in the back and yeah the outline of her just holding the flowers and I think it's really pretty is that can I say that I think it's pretty yeah I really like the color scheme I'm glad I went with this pastel soft scheme it's really something that's worked out and I'm really enjoying using my color dictionary and I hope that you guys will stick around to see me use it a little bit more in the future because I will be and if you subscribe then you will see that did you like my little segue into that please subscribe huh huh yeah anyway I don't really ask for many likes and stuff like that but if you did like this video please give it a thumbs up because it really helps like push the video to other people who might not have seen it and if you interact in the comments it really helps so if you could do that it would be a massive favor for me and thank you guys so much for watching I really appreciate it I hope that you like this book cover paintover I really enjoyed this one and there will be more book cover paintovers in the future because I just ordered a load of books and I'm really interested to keep on reading with you all if you want to join my reading book club we have a book club over on my patreon and I would just like to thank my patrons they are Keeley Lamon, Luzernia, Jordan, Luke, Illera, Hannah, Aztubalem, Jacqueline, Heidi, Steph, Eva, Lucille, Erica, Meghia, Tim and Charlotte and Alex thank you guys so much yeah okay thanks a lot bye


So welcome everybody. Thanks for joining our talk here today. I hope you're having a good time at Drupal Con up till now My name is Mieshko I'm co-owner of Golgorilla and I've been in the Drupal community for about eight years I'm a Drupal Con speaker virgin. So please be nice to me and and My love for Drupal started slow. So like like I said, I've been running Golgorilla for about eight nine years now But my background is more in industrial engineering and it's in analytics Google AdWords advertising. So it's not so much about code Like Dries said today in his keynote so the so the love of code changes into the love of Community and that's what's happened to me, but it took a while so From my background I'm more into advertising and the business side of things That's also why I today I represent the business side of things when talking about fixed teams so I'll be talking from a business owner perspective And Avelina here, which you will introduce herself will be talking from Scrum master perspective So I'll give the floor to you. Yeah, all right. So hi everybody I'm Avelina and Golgorilla or Mieshko was kind to hire me about three years ago and ever since then I'm also part of this had his big Drupal community and For most of our clients we work in an agile way in scrum method and then I act as a scrum master But we also do some waterfall projects so I'm also some kind of some how the more traditional project manager for smaller projects and Today we're gonna talk about Multidisciplinary teams how we implemented them And we're still actually implementing them and also what well especially with challenges We came across and we hope to give you some some solutions to the problems we came across But first let me take you Back a year later. Yeah, I have to click her please So first let me take you back a year ago because in 2015 I think Golgorilla exceeded about 20 employees and Along with his growth a lot of other problems slowly arising and became bigger and these problems Mainly about planning so we have a lot of we had a lot of resources who are planned along among a lot of projects and Which also led to scattered knowledge among all these people of these projects But also customers had a lot of different contact persons to talk to so there was also also not very entirely clear for our customers And also if you look at the scrum way of of managing a Big part of scrum is to keep a dedicated team for a longer period of time And also this is something that we were not always following Also, we were still working in a more traditional way of having departments like a design department and development department and these department didn't really Yeah, cooperate and Also, they were like these single islands in our in our company in our company basically So well at the end of 2015 we were like, okay, we have to solve these problems And how can we do that? We had didn't have these problems when we were smaller. So maybe we should try to become a little bit more smaller again and create sub teams where we have these small gorillas And this this is where the multi-disciplinary teams came in. This is not a new concept I think over the last years. We also visited a lot of presentations and conferences About this topic and I think well and the end of last year. This was the time for us to take the step and Well, we're currently not not there yet We're still I think we believe in two-third of our implementation and we're heading towards having more than two multi-disciplinary teams and also Yeah, I'm making the teams actual responsible for the revenue and their their sales basically so Just to give a bit more context because that's what I should have said on the first slide So so go girl has been growing like 30 40 percent a year for last Three four years. So at first that this is rather easily. Oh, if you start with zero, it's easy to get to one and etc But at a certain moment, especially around this 20 20 people Barrier it really started to hurt. So We had like pretty heavy business reasons for doing this as well. So it's not only about, you know Implementing a methodology. That's that's rather hip like agile but we had a hard time staying profitable especially in 2014 it was a rough year and I Think in the end. It's difficult to like grow quickly and also keep revenue up and and keep some money at the end And this was was really starting to worry us And as a side note, I always had an ambition to build something that's a bit bigger than myself as well So so when we had this company would was like more traditionally structured in departments We had like a marketing department design department development support It always felt like, you know, you were at the top like the puppet master You had to manage all the strings at once and once you removed yourself You know, it would stop moving and this didn't seem healthy to me doesn't feel right and also I think it Neglects some of the talent in the company because people don't have the room to grow into their full potential So so there were like both emotional reasons and also like long-term business reasons for trying this and doing this So, you know, this talk is a bit of a beginner level talk, I think at least that's what we promised But just to get a feel of the room Let's do a show of hands. So who is in there like a project manager role or a scrum master role Okay, so that's like one third of the room. That's nice Who's the business owner? Okay, wow, so that's another one third What what represents the others coders any coders even coders came nice job guys and Just just to give an indication because I think Like company size is also a factor in this So so how many people are you like one to ten was a one to ten Business, okay a bit less than like one fourth and then ten to 15 Yeah, and 15 till 20 or more Wow, it's quite a lot of you guys So you basically solved all our problems or maybe you experienced and did later on we can talk about this later you know so so as a as a structure of our talk we have 20 or 50 minutes left at the end to get into more details depending on on how Technical you guys want to get and if you want to talk about tools and stuff like this Back back to this slide, so why should this be interesting to you In my opinion, I think we should have done this earlier It's always a very bad idea to reinvent the wheel again. So if you do this In our experience you end up with a wheel that looks something like like this So it's not the most modern wheels will be crappy It will break So preferably if you can you would like to have something like this, you know much better wheel But believe me they didn't do this by starting at zero. No, they iterated on the existing design and made it better So it's think I think especially for the like smaller companies It's good to start thinking about these issues as early as possible So To sum up for scrum masters, we'll be giving some suggestion how we do can you can do planning and accountability That's something we found is important And for business owners, I'll talk a bit about KPI select key performance indicators how you measure your success very important And how you can use those tools to be to build a sustainable Drupal agency business in the longer term, okay, so So we're gonna touch on four challenges which we thought would be interesting We guys in the first one is the roles of team members how to organize them because it's not simply like Like adding all these people in a team and that's it. You also have to literally become multi-disciplinary It's not just adding these disciplines in a team So what we did is Approach it agile as we always do so we started to Implementing it step by step so we could also learn of each step and adapt if needed to the next step So this is a go gorilla and what we first did our first step was basically create two teams and Each team consists of our developers or front-enders and our project managers So we split them up as as first step And what we tried for a couple of months is how to how the developers in front-enders would collaborate in a smaller team exchanging their knowledge and also learn how to benefit from each other and The project manager starts to experiment a little bit on the reporting How do we show how billable we are and how do we show? How much capacity we still have available? So Next step for us was to add the designers. So we have interaction designers and graphical designers We also split them and added them each to a team and And Yeah, again, we started to to learn how to collaborate with even a discipline who is even farther from your normal daily job So that was as a code and also. Yeah as a project manager So there was already something we had to learn and we started doing this for two months and also Started to learn how to collaborate Between the teams because it's not that we don't want to have any collaboration anymore whatsoever We still have to spread knowledge between these two teams So we have set up some several events where these teams cooperate with each other exchange knowledge and all kinds of things Well next step would be to add marketing to the teams and we're actually right in Front of this are you calling it at the beginning of this step? So we're not there yet and marketing can already has a use part in our customer projects But we also expect that the marketing can help the team to promote themselves Which can also be a very beneficial if if co-griller wants to hire new Developers new designers so that we're actually out there and and telling how cool we are what we do and what kind of team We are and I think that would also Be a very beneficial Well next and maybe the last step step Is to add sales or sales activities to the team. So we're not quite sure what this should be But in the end we're hoping to yeah to go towards this figure and to see Or actually to give the responsibility to the team in terms of revenue sales and all these things So but we're not there yet I think we hope to take a step in this in the beginning of 2017 So for us it was really helpful to take it step-by-step up till now and I think the biggest The biggest thing for us was learning that the collaboration between these team members It is not happening Just from a split second you have to really invest in it. You have to learn what can benefit Another team member. So this is really where we paid the most attention to in the past month. So And I've been looking at it like a more company-wide situation. So if you take like 2014 and 2015 I already told you we had this department. So we are like pretty traditionally structured With the end result being that almost all accountability Was right at the top if you really looked at it. There were like no Reporting mechanisms for for people working in the departments or at least maybe there were some reporting mechanism But there were no no no real consequences when when things go Not how we plant them. So This had a yeah, this this effected Basically all the responsibility was that was at the management level and and we everybody behaved accordingly Because you know that that's what what what you destruct your supports So we had like quarterly reviews with the company, but we didn't really share financial information as management So we were not really keep you I focused in that in that way So it was really easy for people to and I understand that you know, I'm not blaming people It's like the logical consequence that that there were the beginnings of not my problem culture like I would like We could say so so people were just thinking well somebody else will solve this issue and in the end The bill somewhere ends up at those guys at the top and we'll see what happens And basically that's that's my fault, you know for structuring it this way So I don't blame people again I don't think it was a terrible company to to work at or that we are disastrous bosses But you just end up in a situation that works like this And I think it's important to to if you can't prevent this and be ahead of this by by doing it differently That's that's basically the The story here So now when you have these two we have two teams furthest in forming There's much more responsibility within the team and We have a few key Ways in doing this and I think this is something I would if you if you take away anything today That would be nice to think about this. So so We use I think you can call it the all hands meeting is which is every six weeks And every team is now responsible for presenting its key PI's and our basic key PI is Billable rates So so we the teams report on their efficiencies instead We used to be born like a revenue focused company, but that doesn't really tell you much about profitability at the end In our in my vision. It's more important to focus on billable rates If we will go in more into detail about how high these rates should be or what what is the consequence of this? So let me see and So, yeah, so these this all hands meeting it's getting more popular that you hear about this Many companies, but I really feel the key difference is that not the management is reporting like afterwards about those Key performance indicators, but the teams do it themselves, you know And when you end up with a much more transparent business as a whole because now nobody can say well I did not my problem. I didn't know and you have like once a year a discussion about the financials No, you'll see potential pitfalls or any issues much much earlier Yeah Yeah challenge to is about managing several agile projects within a smaller team Because Well, when you have a smaller team, it's you also a bit less flexible than we were before like a project was there And we said, okay, this guy has some time this guy has some time We'll yeah squeeze them together and here is the project team But now we have to fit it in these smaller teams So that is also a challenge and what you try to do is sell springs to customer Customers and try just to schedule them One at a time. Oh, yeah, keep forgetting this story So and schedule them one at a time and what we do is we communicate to to sales Basically, what is our available capacity and what kind of project would fit in there? And of course, you cannot steer this but this is something we try to to to inform sales about the wood it Doesn't need to be a more development Focused assignment or should it be more design a focus So this is also something we try to communicate to sales so that they can actually find the correct Or actually the right project which will fit in the team and Sometimes we also have to do smaller waterfall projects and what we try to do is well schedule an extra iteration in between sprints and just squeeze as much as fits in there so we can have this a bit more structured instead of That it flows through our springs and that is more parallel. So we try to avoid Working parallel because we're still one team. So we have to Yeah, also work as a team and focus on the same goals as a team Yeah, then the fun starts because when I see this And I think well we have these empty spaces. It's like two teams and I have this very nice Three week project which I could potentially do in one sprint Then I'll just squeeze it in there like over team one and team two. I'll just Push it in there and like make money. That's nice, right? And we used to do this a lot, you know, even at the at the beginning of the of the of the teams as well but even more before When we just had individual members everywhere and this almost always ended Not well, not maybe not a disaster, but it was it was not pretty The results were like project overrun lower quality deliveries than you actually would like But maybe most important when you'd like deliver this This project there's again you're back at this situation that there is no real responsibilities So because a few individual made it nobody was really hands-on for for the end result And then it's really hard to follow up with the customer with something is wrong Or we want to make iteration or next version So my biggest tip is how big the temptation gets just don't do it You know, just don't start squeezing in stuff across teams Projects across teams because there are better ways of doing this So so if you come up with this type of situation consider like Either extending the team and by this we mean like hiring new people But this might be dangerous if you don't want to commit for long long long term I would actually recommend looking into Acquiring like a partner Drupal agency that works for us. It works really well You could look into nearsharing it for example and the reason why I prefer working with agencies instead of freelancers It's even a bit more stable, you know, if the agency has a few bit more resources available And you will not end up with a freelancer which disappears or it's busy on a different project when you need them the next time So instead of like trying to squeeze stuff in Horizontally or vertically in this this case Try try thinking about expanding or maybe do some like flexible expansion of your teams It tends to to work much better and the team just absorbs a new team member if it's a few people Without much pain in our experience. Third challenge is about reporting as At Mieske kind of already introduced We are at the moment really focusing on our billable rate And we also set a target for this per team one X X every team has the same target so what we do is we say 75 percent of our time we should be billable and 25 percent we can spend on Yeah Spend on personal growth and we can either do this in on in a personal lever But you can also look at us as a team if you want to visit a conference or if you want to learn some Specific thing in in the course or those kind of things. So we call that of course R&D but The 75 percent since we also told that the teams are not responsible yet for their revenue and their sales We like to keep this figure because it really focused the team and to get used to these targets but also is the most important thing is that we that we learn to be more efficient and especially in in go girl Our projects are I think the majority of our projects are heavily development based so once in a while our designers have less tasks to do and By adding them in these teams as well We are now making sure that the entire team is responsible also for this designer that he has work to do So they are looking for new things and they are being creative in a different way What work and I help with what will benefit? What will benefit if if I help around in this team and explore tasks beyond the yeah the border of your of your normal daily jobs, so think of Helping testing or create some documentation or help out with a customer because they had a lot of questions those kind of things So it's really paying off to see that people are Yeah, helping each other and making sure everybody has enough work to do so Told you about our like six weekly company meetings. So so I told you it was really important to do take this take this home So emphasize again, and we do really do strict reporting on billable rates in those weeks And actually sometimes we are a lot above those billable rates, but we know what is a healthy like Down down level which is at 75 Maybe you can explain everything why we're above a hundred, but That's maybe discussion for a different time But you know there's a few things we still need to learn and I think if you start looking into this type of structure You should look into them as quickly as possible And that's also looking ahead because we're approaching this a bit like a accountancy Based system, you know, so you look only in the past which is all nice It's better than doing nothing certainly But it gets interesting when you can predict this to a certain point and look ahead So if you see problems when you bill ability will drop to unhealthy levels or if you're just too busy So you just cannot do any more projects And this this still has proven a bit hard for us to Look ahead and this is the next step. We are working on so not only reporting back But having some kind of way of predicting this like two or three months ahead And then, you know, what's important to tell in terms of results because I was telling that this is about building a sustainable business in the end At least it's for me So so in 2015 we we did about 85,000 euros of revenue on Per full-time employee and we were like with 18 people So that's close to $100,000 That that's okay, I think it could be higher, you know if we are pretty young team if you if you If you have wanted a room for growth, it should be a bit higher even still And now when we look after we implemented this Our situation is a bit different this year because we are investing heavily in a distribution as well But if you count those hours as billable, I think we see about that we are about five more percent more efficient And grown like 20% in our team size So so that's like pretty in my opinion is pretty good results because we had always trouble keeping up growth and sustaining profitability now we actually increased both so so it From what we can account for now. It does work. So I really recommend it and Just like as a final remark, you know, it don't it seems like I'm only in it for the money But in my belief Those billable rates are also important because it says something about those 20% or 25% in which you don't need to be billable So it in the end it drives innovation as well You know just working for clients 2047 will will not always yield the best results in the long long run so Yeah, I think it's important to think about how much time you want to spend on Innovating your company and for us this seems to be healthy levels I know about levels which are a bit different. So I know agencies that press up up to 85 or Or even higher when they work on like full-time agile projects, but this seems to work for us for now And seems sustainable. Oh, I didn't mention that we are actually achieved 12% profitability in 2015 on on this That's an important thing on this 85,000 euro revenue So it is a healthy business But I think as the owner you should keep those metrics in mind and see if you can Come up with something that works long-term. Yes Yes, so look into the yeah, okay Back to Aveline Yeah, so the fourth and and last challenge is is growth. I think we have mentioned this a couple of times Because when at the beginning of the year we said hey, you have you all have 25% of your time Which you can dedicate on personal growth or team growth Well people were like, okay, what should I do and there were not many Ways or they were not very creative in in these things So one thing we came up with and is how we call it our developer journey and can also call it designer journey, of course But twice a year Developer in this case sits down with a few of his team members and and just discuss a lot of Technical skills, but also soft skills and and and they discuss whether this skills already performed at a more junior level or a more senior level and level and yeah, we have some terms for that on the right You see infant and Silverback and growing, but it's just a major thing and Based on these on these on this feedback from his team members This person can set like a plan in which he wants to focus on the coming six to twelve months in this 20% 25% of his time Well, and as I said He can do it on a on a personal level so he can just follow his own path and and and make sure that he Learns a lot and if he wants he can share it with his team But what we're actually seeing now is that people are trying to To Cooperate with other colleagues who have the same interests and are interested in the same focus areas So we have some small groups of people who are very interested in security or performance and they just Schedule their own time and make sure that they set some goals or learn new things all kinds of things in these focus areas and The nicest thing is of course also that they can even spread this new knowledge in their teams Yeah, this this last one is I think also interesting because this really touches upon like a long-term Vision because I think what is important to align personal growth with like Collective success of the company if you somehow manage to do this You will be doing well in a long time a long term and but this this might be harder than than it looks because Yeah, so we have two things, you know, so we have like salary salary So most people like to earn more when they look are more experienced And they're right right for it But this doesn't always Align with making more revenue, especially what we have seen and this is something we could talk about once we're At the end of the session is for instance, we used to charge like junior media and senior rates for people To our clients and and then if you do that, it's possible to align more experienced people with with actually making more money So then they can get more experience that you can charge more Etc. But in our experience the market is changing a bit and people Tend to like flat rates at least in our business in the Netherlands and some of our international clients So what happens then that this no longer aligns So if you charge like flat rates and everybody is moving in those journeys to like higher senior level salaries, then you in the end it will not compute, you know, so so you will start the better you're at your work the Relatively less profitability you will achieve. So so this is something We really need to think about and our answer is actually we decided to Implement one flat rate. So there are like no differences because nobody wants to hire like a junior person But we do have a like a pretty aggressive growth strategy So so our answer for aligning those two is to keep on expanding those teams, you know So so the more experienced people break off. They potentially can form new teams and you feed The teams with with new people And this is interesting because in my way did in my vision. This is the only way to actually do this But you do have a you cannot implement this system and just say well, we'll just stay at 10 or 15 people I think it will it will not work in the end. So if you move to this Team structure be prepared to to look for growth, you know and our pace was about 20 to 35 percent a year I guess it's it's interesting if this is a sustainable rate. It seems so but But keep this in mind So we're at the end of our talk let me summarize you the key takeaways We have for you. So if you're interested in this type of Structure for your company think think in teams not layers of management and and departments like we used to have in 2014 So if you have capacity issues like like I showed you like trying to squeeze in projects across teams Which is really unhealthy. Don't don't do it Consider expanding your teams either temporarily by hiring Freelancers or maybe setting up some more sustainable agency Corporations with other Drupal agencies I Think it's really critical to our success in a way those six If it doesn't matter if it's six weeks or eight or whatever But these all all hand hands-on meetings in which you discuss Important performance indicators for us its billable rates make sense a lot. I think And last but not least think about how we will align personal growth and like professional growth of people With growth of your company and revenue because those not always align and then you will run into problems in the longer term So I think we're good on time so we have quite a lot of time for discussion I I Have like one first question prepared for you guys if you're a bit shy and then We can maybe expand and just talk about all kinds of things you you think is interesting so Just to just to start One of our things we haven't solved yet is about a question about sales so Maybe somebody wants to tell about how how he or she integrated sales into their Organization in a team like structure Because we don't really sure how to do this yet So anyone I see a bunch of people shaking their heads like no Sorry, maybe you could Yeah, thank you so much. I'm sorry. I'm Eric Hi, I might have a clue on how to address these kinds of topics because many of them are related to Not the functional role of team members. I'm a designer or I'm a developer or whatever but more in in terms of People roles their theory for example theme role models from from her team blanchard that discusses on what kind of people are in a team or should be in a team to have a Successful theme for example, you need plans that people that come up with ideas all the time and you know But you also need bureaucrats that write them down or raise objectives or things like that So maybe if you look at more People skills within your team That might be helpful to address sales as well because maybe Your developer might be a good salesperson at least for some clients or some projects Doesn't need to be a different person Yeah, so that's an interesting point. So if I understand correctly you say it's also about the soft skills and maybe somebody could develop these roles within their main Role as a developer or a designer or whatever But still then then, you know, you have to have revenue and sales because in the end if you don't the team will fall apart So so I think the key is where the responsibility lies, you know So I have somebody at the front. I think that it's It's very hard and it's all on the management in the beginning To to make sure that if you put the salespersons into the teams, that's a very good idea But not to give them too many hats Because it becomes a problem when you have a salesperson who's also involved in the process of producing And and he won't be able to focus on selling the next project Which is why I don't actually agree that that to Develop the team members into salespersons would be a very good idea. But on the other hand by placing the salesperson into the team he can take on some what of a product owner role and become more technical and and as technical product manager, which I am now and previously I was sales an account manager and and my problem when I was a salesman and not integrated in the team was that I didn't have the technical Understanding that I really needed to understand what had to be done when I sold stuff and and now that I'm more Involved in the process. It's easier for me But then I lose track of the sales stuff because I have to make sprint reports and Manage the next week sprint because I keep getting more hats. So it's It's kind of like okay. Now you can do more stuff. You don't have to do more stuff But it's nice that you know that stuff exists That's It wasn't really solution-oriented what I had to see I was more problem-oriented No, but I think it's a really good idea to integrate sales into the teams because We all it's often it becomes us versus them when it's the developers versus the sales teams because sales teams Don't have the understanding of what it's like to be the developer. Yeah, and they think well, this sounds easy It's only a bit of code. We can do that Tomorrow, no problem Yeah, so that's interesting point. So but your point is basically opposite to what we heard that First there are like lots of fingers at the end of the Room. Yes. Yes So I'm here. I'm responsible for sales and marketing and partnerships at an agency called manifesto I completely agree with your point. So I joined the agency when there was 18 of us about a year and a half ago There's now 40. So we've grown pretty rapidly and I Initially started the company having come from a background in recruitment and please no one throw anything at me So I had absolutely zero technical knowledge and my natural transition into that sales position was To work in kind of an account management account direction semi project management Basis get to know a little bit more about it and I've gradually moved out of that now and I run basically sales Alongside our CEO for manifesto and you're totally right having too much to do leaves you with too many things to do We found that something that's been really really important to us in our new business is to have a decent marketing strategy So a lot of the way that we do sales isn't so much cold-cooling. In fact, I do very little cold-cooling There's no active attack towards a product. It's more Education every base. So we host a lot of events and we put a lot of content up on our website We do lots of blogging and we do lots of thought leadership and it's mostly network based So we keep our relationships close to our heart and that's why having come from that background in account management I think definitely helped in terms of bringing new business in for manifesto Yeah, interesting. Thank you To more people at the back. Well, we have the time no problem. Oh, yes, sure. I'm Woody. Thanks a lot for the talk It's really interesting. I Have many questions, but the two of them that are more important Is there any magic number for the team size that's one of them the other one Is there any bonus system for the team for the team lead? Well, I'm not sure if there's a magic number, but we like to keep it around nine people max Also kind of depending what kind of disciplines you have in your team But I think if it exceeds beyond that and then you have to see if you can split it. Otherwise Yeah, the other Problems which I talked about will yeah Come up again and where's the responsibility and too many people to spread knowledge and to collaborate will also lead to these problems again Do we have a bonus? Well, I think we should That's a really good question we talk about this a lot, so yeah, what can I say about this? Well, I think it's it's a good idea I would really love moving there I think we are not up to the level of accountability to make this actually happen because Like you saw we have like targets for efficiency like billable rates And we look mostly behind us how it went if if we like more depth at actually planning for this in the teams itself You know now Mostly the planning is done by me and the co-co-co owner if any planning Once we get there when you when teams are actually responsible for the future I think it would be a good idea to look at some kind of bonus system But but now I don't actually as a business owner I don't think they actually have enough as a responsibility yet to to to be like Entrepreneurs like mini entrepreneurs inside of a company, so but I think you're back to different But in any case I think the bonus should be to the team in my opinion and instead of a single person Because that was what we want to achieve you all have the same goal So in my opinion would be a bonus for it for entire team Thank you. Hey, my name is Shailesh. Yeah, it's a similar problem. We have now about hundred people company The way we try to address this issue is verticalize them So we had healthcare media publishing as verticals and the entire team is responsible for a particular target So they're responsible for a target and the team co-owns the target and then right behind it So there is a mix of subject matter expert also within that team and that's how they've been growing from about 50 people Okay, that's an amazing achievement. Well, we actually are doing something a bit similar So I didn't want to like throw it into the room already beginning but We're trying to do like sales meeting next to next to our all hands-on meeting and at the moment. It's meant by the scrum masters and what we call consulting project managers and We identify like opportunities for upselling with Existing customers which just tends to be a bit easier and they're really hands-on, you know Because they know the project the client in detail and it's easy to identify like opportunities to grow but also we Share the like the sales targets and try to build areas of expertise And so also to get management involved and say well, we have these opportunities guys What do you think should we proceed on them? We have a few criteria on which we judge business opportunities and if we should move forward some them or not But that's the beginning of a structure, but it's still like emerging. I think in our case We still have like the maximum of 10 minutes left And if you've got more than enough staff for a number of teams, how do you select those teams and Do you rotate them so that these guys aren't always working in the same teams? well We actually let the guys decide on a teams themselves. We had like an Yeah, we had like a setup, but we discussed it with every team member and see and in the end Also, some team members switch because they rather want to be in team 8 and b because they're already worse on customers and projects already divided among these teams and Do we rotate them? Yeah in the beginning. We said let's look into After six months see if we need to rotate them. Well, that was too quick But we are going to have these discussions in in a month actually to see if we want to rotate them and I think it would For the teams it will be very beneficial But we also have to look into what does this mean for our customers and our projects and the end on knowledge Yeah, you mentioned that you have different teams, but basically working on the same kind of matters for example two project teams that have a billable rate as KPI have you noticed any kind of Competition the motivation effect and if so, how do you battle it? Yeah, I think we noticed it especially because one of the teams so that the figures of being 105 percent billable We're actually true because one of the teams is pretty stuffed at some months And the other team is working on our on our distribution. So we're actually not really billable So yeah at the beginning these figures also could raise some Yeah, I'm not sure how to call it But in the end it was just about being transparent and at the other team Okay, even though they're not that billable and this moment while the company has chose to build this distribution So we know that we wouldn't be billable But by explaining what kind of work we do and and that we're basically doing the same except It's not billable and that we're just as busy and that made sure that the teams were on the same page again So yeah, there was some friction. I think yeah Do you evade the trap of not my business when you have a different teams basically competing each other And then having to do the knowledge sharing a k.a. Well, this is not my stuff I don't need to care about it, but instead working with the team spirit keeping those So-called mini teams as a one big team and having the common goal Well, that's one of the biggest challenges in the data to Had to make sure that the team is all Fighting for the same goal and that's very new to us, especially well across these disciplines We used to start with the design and then the development and when we are at the part of the development the designer wouldn't basically care anymore and and Yeah, I think we we also have these these meetings within the team to talk about it to say hey We've noticed that the designer has less to do what can we do about it? We noticed this that this goal is not achieved by everybody So it's just a matter of discussing it on a monthly basis and being transparent and try to be honest to each other Yeah, and yeah, I tend to I tend to agree that transparency is a very big part of this So like I mentioned, we used to do this quarterly reviews or maybe even yearly reviews that really doesn't work So then people get like surprised at the end of the year. So what have you been doing? You know, you were like not billable or whatever So but if you somehow make this like an easy subject to discuss regularly It doesn't emerge as an issue that much and a different thing is that we started to count our We somehow we always have the ambition to do our own projects You know like modules or whatever and we separate those but do count them as Um On top of the billable rate because obviously that's time spent Being productive very productive even giving back to the community one could say So so that Especially when you're working on a distribution or example that aligns those billable rates more to like a realistic expectations Instead of just saying well, you're at 20 because you spent your time at modules That's strange So Yes, please the war like questions at the back Would you be so nice to come forward? Yeah Dear question that you have before I think you should ask the teams If you empower your teams to decide themselves You should ask the question that you just ask us from the teams Because if they're not for it, then I think it's a bad idea If they don't want to wear many hats like you said, they won't take it It's it's bad idea to just push the idea But if they're open to it, maybe it can even vary from team to team It doesn't matter if one team wants it and the other one doesn't why not Why can't being just some teams and not in others? So that's my opinion on that. Um, I also have a question for you use showed a lot of numbers and talked about the teams, but Did you measure how the changes that you made, how the people felt about the changes? Did you measure happiness or? Spirit or did you get any numbers on those? Short answer is yes, I think I'll get Evelyn to answer this one, but first to get to your first one first Yes, you could Try to place this responsibility into the teams to make their own decisions But in our experience This maybe goes a bit too far at the beginning because you know Like I said, people are not Entrepreneurs some of those people choose not to be entrepreneurs like like a conscious decision And we shouldn't pretend they are And if you try to ask to make them those decisions They basically force them to to take on a much bigger role than they Used to have like like only six months ago So maybe I maybe I think we might get there, but it will certainly be slow So that's that's my opinion on on it And I think there is like a responsibility for management that certainly as well to make some Some good effort to solve this I'll get about the happiness question to you Yeah, we don't have very strict metrics, but we do do it in Different ways the the one team is is more evaluating it and talking about in the meetings that we have as a team And just evaluating Yeah, not on specific metrics actually and the other team is actually like I think it's actually on a weekly base They they vote the happiness they had in that week So they are doing some more metrics like but that's within the teams. It's a different how they solve it So I think we answered all of your questions Excellent. Well, that's about right. We have like two two minutes left So just as a reminder, there are like sprints on Friday if you're the few coders that are in the room be sure to join them And be sure to give feedback on our talk So you can go to the page on Drupal.org and there is the possibility To give feedback and we'll post our slides over there And so you can look back if you find anything interesting I haven't talked about Gogarilla much I skipped some of my lines at the beginning I saw But um, yeah, maybe interesting to know we have like a big project that's open social If Alina is wearing it, it's a distribution for building online communities You might want to check that out and you can you can reach us at Twitter, so that's our Twitter addresses or you can also email us at our general address And we have a booth downstairs Oh, yes There are almost 10 of us here at DrupalCon And we man the booth at 906. So if you want to follow up or just have a chat or whatever You can walk by Yeah All right. Thank you for your attention and have a good week


Working off of our previous MIME idea for the present continuous, now we can use the same idea for the past continuous. The key difference here will be that while the student is doing the MIME, the students in the audience are not able to guess what the person is doing. Rather, you'll have them stop first, then have the group making sentences for the past. So, a student may get a card such as drawing, driving, cooking. They do their MIME of the action and they stop. Only then can we have the rest of the students make their guess using the past continuous tense.


I loved the University of Maryland for multiple reasons. Number one, when I came here and looked at it, it was the most beautiful hospital I had ever seen in my life. The flow of the hospital and the design is really great. And the atrium, when you walk in there, it's like the old building brick wall is still visible. And then they added this glass ceiling where you have lots of natural sunlight. Welcome to the University of Maryland Medical Center. Our goal is to train fantastic physicians and take that care to its best level wherever they may go next. And I don't think anyone that would become a resident here would ever leave thinking, you know, I wish I saw that. It's all here to learn from. I truly think that if you can train here and do well here, that you could go just about anywhere in practice, just based on the amount and the severity of disease that we see. Between the trauma and transplant and cardiac and pediatrics and surgical oncology, you just you see everything and you see the bread and butter, but you also see the people that have had bad complications or they have severe comorbidities. We provide an extensive amount of very subspecialized care.  With faculty that complement that learning for the residents and fellows. As a resident, you really get to take care of your patients. You really get to take ownership. You know, you're the person seeing this patient multiple times a day and you're the person really running their care. In the operating room, you're really getting really good experience with the attendings walking you through the procedures and you're getting to operate really from the first day. The clinical resources and the resources to provide patient care are quite wonderful. They meet all the state-of-the-art care. There are many people advancing care into new domains of which each of the residents and fellows become a part of that work. I just feel like we're really like well supported. Like if we need to consult someone like super specialized, like we can do it. We have EPIC. EPIC is probably the best EMR. Like when I went on my interviews, that was confirmed that it's probably the best EMR you can have as a resident. We also have the resources of the entirety of the University of Maryland medical system. In our interrelationship that even though trainees would come to the University of Maryland medical center, we have other sites that provide added experiences to the core experiences that add to their learning. So not just learning from an academic medical center, learning from our community partners, learning from outpatient care, learning from great faculty who are also committed to the learning that is there as well. For my program, the emergency medicine program, at least the faculty are fantastic. We work with them very closely. The faculty are really dedicated to teaching residents and generally fostering their careers and that's a huge focus here. It's definitely encouraged to do research. You don't have to. You do have to take part in like QI or quality improvement projects. But it's, I think most people do end up taking part in it. There's lots of opportunities to do so. The faculty are very encouraging and very open to resident participation in their projects. And yeah, if you're interested in what they're doing, they will 100% take you under their wing and guide you and help you. There's such a wide range of facilities for research. There's other educational programs here. A number of my co-residents got masters in clinical research. That's one of the big advantages here is that you have all of that other sort of mechanism and infrastructure around. If you're interested in a certain other area, it's very accessible and very available to you. We definitely work a lot, but I do have time to enjoy the city. Well, there are a lot of young people here in the city. We have graduate schools. We have like the Under Armour headquarters. I love Baltimore even though I'm from a rival city originally.  I got married in medical school. My husband and I, we couples match here. This was our top choice. So we're very happy to be living in Baltimore. And I was living downtown for the convenience of walking one block to work. And we moved a total of eight minutes away. And it's funny how it's kind of like a different, totally different world, honestly. We actually have a backyard, which isn't something I thought we were going to be able to have living in the city of Baltimore. But we like it. Our dogs like it. I think you get all of the sort of perks of a larger city as far as restaurants and things to do. I'm an outdoors kind of person, and there's a lot of places to go hiking and biking just outside the city that are really easy to get to. I like to run a lot. That's kind of how I clear my head. And Baltimore is a great running city. Running next to water is always a great, a great time to clear your head. So I really appreciate that. So that's the number one thing I think ultimately that's always in the back of my mind is when I get done here, am I going to be a competent and safe surgeon and someone who's going to be able to do, you know, the best job for my patients, but also, you know, be prepared for a career in academics and research and teaching. And I think I have hit the jackpot.


This study found that elderly patients aged 80 years or above who underwent mechanical thrombectomy had a higher success rate than expected, suggesting that age alone should not be used as a criteria to exclude them from receiving this treatment. Instead, decision-making should consider their premorbid misses and the severity of the stroke on the National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale, NIHSS, especially in the age group over 85 years old. This article was authored by Massimiliano Cernalliero, Carmelo Stanca, Andrea Galbiotti, and others.


Monaco, Monaco is probably the most well known street course in the world. Monaco is very smooth, Monaco has got a great tarmac. It is the smoothest of all street circuits that you can imagine. It's neat, it's well prepared, been here for a very long time on the calendar. The only challenge of Monaco is that the race in the 60s and the race in 2020, the cars change a lot. Obviously the racetrack hasn't changed because Monaco is a tiny city and there isn't that much room to change the circuits. So, qualifying lap in Monaco is absolutely stunning. The downsides of Monaco is once the race has started. As I say, those new modern Formula 1 cars, they go so fast, they're so wide, they're so long, their overtaking becomes almost impossible. So, your race is on Saturday, your race is in qualifying and if you start first, you have high chances to finish first, unless the weather plays. Talking of the weather, when it rains in Monaco, it is very, very hard. Monaco is definitely one of the best track in the world in the qualifying lap. Race is the same, it's just a bit harder.


It is a very great pleasure to join you at this year's International Energy Summit, and I'm especially pleased that I have the more exciting role of opening the exhibition and being able to walk around and see the current local and global developments in the sector. The theme of this year's summit is, as ambitious as usual, global perspectives for a sustainable future. And I don't think we can really expect any less, given both the caliber of representation at these summits every year, and perhaps more importantly, the share importance of the subject for the socioeconomic future of our nation and our world. In the past few years, I've had the privilege of chairing our government's energy transition working group, and in that capacity and working with a strong interministerial team and several energy sector players, many of whom are in this room, it has become increasingly clear to me that Nigeria has a crucial and strategic role in delivering the sustainable energy future that Africa, and indeed the world, must have in the next few years. Second is that it is the key sector, the key sector actors, such as are gathered in this room today, who must do a lot of the heavy lifting to get us there. The truth is no other sector of our economy is as crucial to the transition to a more sustainable future as the oil and gas sector. There's no other sector, at least as far as our own country is concerned. But what is that future? Let me say first what it is not. It must not be a future where Africa remains at the bottom of the food chain in the brave new world of sustainable energy. Certainly not, but we must admit that today we have the largest number of individuals without access to power, the largest number of people without access to clean cooking fuels, and we need rapid industrialization to get millions of our people out of poverty. And we must do all of this without worsening the global warming situation, which is why some of us have argued that there is a need for some clarity as to where we are in the transition journey. And what we need to be doing, because there are two existential crisis for us, Africans, and of course our own country, Nigeria. The first of course is global warming and all its implications. And the second is the energy, the lack of energy access, the energy poverty that we have, and which has also, which also results in millions of our people being extremely poor. So there's no question at all that for us in this part of the world, both must go simultaneously. We must think in terms of transition to cleaner fuels, to renewable energy, and at the same time access to power so that we can also have access to development for our people. And that is why some, you know, and I'm sure many of us in this room would agree that gas must remain an important transition fuel. Gas cannot, we cannot accept the position as has been offered by some of the global north countries that gas is one of those fuels that must be defunded, or that gas project should be defunded in order to enable, you know, faster progress towards the clean, towards the renewable energy transition that we expect. So we expect that we on our part must think in terms of both. We cannot simply say, well, this is only about renewable energy and transition to cleaner fuels. For us also, gas is crucial. And the reason why gas is crucial is not just because we have such huge amounts of gas. It is also because it is possibly the only clean cooking option for us. And clean cooking is an important aspect, an important component of the entire, of the entire clean energy agenda. It is crucial. We cannot, I mean, we in this part of the world cannot do without it. LPG is crucial for clean cooking. So even when we talk about renewable energy for clean cooking, we also think in terms of LPG and all the other clean cooking options. So the future is not in Africa. And I think that this is also important. We must not see Africa as the victim. And we must not continue to repeat the notion that Africa is a victim in this whole process of sustainable energy or the journey towards sustainable energy. We are not, in fact, the victims. We can, in fact, become the principal players. It is our nation and our continent that will drive the next stage of global economic progress. And we can do so by becoming the first truly green civilization in the world. How? How can we achieve that? First by recognizing the opportunity early and intentionally developing all the potential around our natural resources, including natural gas, of course, solar and biofuels. We must, in particular, leverage on our renewable energy potential, work actively on green technologies, carbon removal, and green manufacturing. And we have a young and resourceful workforce that can enable that to happen very quickly. And quite frankly, it is the energy sector working with governments that can muster the human and material resources to move the needle on this kind of ambition. There's no question at all in my mind that Africa is the place where we can sensibly and economically go ahead with green civilization. Nowhere else has that potential. And the reason why that is so is because everywhere else at the moment, we are the lowest emitters today. And because we are the lowest emitters, and we have possibly some of the largest natural resources that will aid that journey, we can do much more and we can be much more effective in developing our own agenda for a green future that will benefit the world much more than starting that journey elsewhere.  So if you are going to do anything in terms of a green energy future, you should start from a low emission base. And that low emission base is here in Africa. We have the natural resources to do so. So if we focus on our strengths today, if we focus on those natural resources, we can certainly move very fast. And I think we've started well. Our energy transition plan is bold and innovative. It calls for the ramping up of solar cells. And we're going to be doing about 5.3 gigahertz per year until 2060. That's a plan.  The production of over six billion liters of biofuels annually to green as it is the path to e-mobility. And the transition of at least two million Nigerian households annually to cleaner cooking fuels, such as LPG, and electricity every single year. And I think these ambitions are achievable. They are completely achievable if we set our minds to it. We are also part of the important initiatives around carbon trading. And I believe that this holds important opportunities, especially for those of us who are in this room, those of us in the oil and gas sector. I have in the past year been working with a very dedicated team of individuals and companies named the African Carbon Market Initiative. And the point of this committee is to open up the tremendous potential in carbon market trading. And I think that this is something that we really ought to work on very seriously. We also have the Nigerian Carbon Market Initiative. And we think that this is a win-win for everyone. It's important for the oil and gas sector because there are so many carbon market trading opportunities in the sector. And also, barely two weeks ago, I'm sure many of us followed that development, the Nigerian Sovereign Investment Fund, as well as VITL, launched the Carbon Vista Joint Venture Fund that would invest in carbon emission reduction projects in Nigeria and promote the Nigerian Carbon Market Initiative. And the fund, the initial fund, is for 50 million U.S. dollars. And they've challenged the rest of the industry to put some more money into that part so that we can achieve the objectives that we set for ourselves. We have a long way to go. But I very strongly believe that we are well able to achieve all the targets that we have set for ourselves. For me, I think the private sector must clearly articulate its own sustainable energy ambitions in alignment with the energy transition plan. I think it's important for the private sector to sit down and say, this is our own plan. And this is how it aligns with the energy transition plan. And I think we need to work very quickly. And so in a few minutes, I will have the privilege of formally opening this year's exhibition, the Energy Summit exhibition. And I hope I look forward to seeing the new technologies and the new opportunities that the sector has lined up. So I wish you very, very fruitful celebrations as we go through the rest of this week. Thank you all very much.


Here, let me say something to you about the difference between destiny and meaning. We have taught a lot. I have taught a lot. There's a lot written about destiny. It's a great subject. I think it's something we should speak to people about, especially in this day and age and the troubled world that we're living in, to inspire people to believe that they have a destiny and that there is a huge idea for their life that I believe God invented and God has for everyone's life. But what I've realized about destiny is that destiny, however powerful, however predestined it may be, meaning, the meaning we give to a thing that happens to us in life, actually has a huge effect on destiny and I would say is actually more powerful than destiny. Destiny, of course, is a very powerful thing. It is decided for every individual before they're born. I believe that we are all born into a destiny and the idea in life is that we try to figure out what that destiny is. But what I've also figured out 40 plus years in to being interested in and being a student of destiny as it were in people's lives and in my life is that through life things happen to us and many of those things often are beyond our control and that is certainly true in the troubled world that we live in now. Imagine if your life was involved in one of these terrorist attacks or one of these plain bombings or some natural disaster, things happen to us in life and bad things happen to good people all the time who are at that time living out their destiny. I'm totally believe that they are living with a sense of destiny and then boom, something huge happens to us that derails or detracts or perspons or knocks back our sense in us, a momentum in our destiny and what I realize is that the definitions and the explanations and the interpretation that we give to what happens to us in life that is the meanings that we give to what happens to us are actually more powerful than destiny because I believe destiny is chosen by God but meaning is chosen by you and me. So the meanings we choose if we choose a wrong meaning to something that happens to us or happens to someone close to us or happens to something somewhere in the world the meanings that we take from that determine our destiny because if the meaning we take is a wrong meaning is a faulty flawed meaning is a wrong interpretation based on the negativity we feel or based on how badly that affects us then the meaning determines what comes next. So what we what we make a thing mean in our life the meaning we decide a thing has determines which way we go next and determines the company we keep and determines our internal conversations and determines our new paths of thinking and what that brings into our life so to to have a wrong faulty flawed meaning and you'll all know this from your life anyway it's not it's not a new thing I'm telling you but the importance of it perhaps and the ability it has to hijack destiny perhaps is a new idea for you to have a faulty meaning sets all our life on a trail often as contrary to where our destiny wanted to take us so a faulty meaning can derail us from the track of momentum in our destiny we were on and take us on a completely different direction we can get back from that many people and perhaps you have spent a lot of time weeks or months or years in a expression of life and on a track in life that you had to get back from that you had to recover from and get back on track with your destiny and it's like you lost months or years in between that's what I mean if you track it back to the place where it went wrong it's that we had an incident and occurrence took place that caused us to come up with a meaning a definition an analysis an interpretation that governed the outcome that was faulty as well so I want you to know that destiny and meaning need to work together we want to make meaning as serious and as forensic and as thoughtful as we are about our destiny because meaning is more powerful than destiny we decide meaning god decides destiny but a wrong meaning can derail our destiny and our progress in life so think about that today what meaning are you giving to things in your life right now and is that meaning accurate is that meaning reactionary is it not thought through because you haven't realized that the meaning you give it the meaning you walk away with can enhance or can severely hinder your progress in life destiny and meaning