Let me know if you guys can hear me now great. Okay. Looks like we have audio. So let's try this again and Sort of start from the top for everybody So hello everybody, this is Rhiannon Chat Noir in world and Want to welcome you all to the 1130 keynote session of the Open Simulator Community Conference 2013 as a reminder to our in-world and web audiences You can view the full conference schedule on our website at conference.opensimulator.org and You can post your questions in local chat on the Ustream chat or tweet your comments using the hashtag OSCC13 We also have announcements for the meal break activities tomorrow Tomorrow at 10 30 a.m. Our silver sponsor Ava Nation will be hosting a meet-and-greet with their staff team on Expo zone 6 and silver sponsor Simudine will be announcing a new viewer for the Microsoft Surface and PC on their region at Expo zone 3 So be sure to mark those on your schedule and remember even if you're watching the stream You can come in world to the public expo regions with your hyper grid account And now I'm happy to introduce Cynthia Kalloyne whose keynote address entitled the Exodus to the virtual frontier the seductive lure of the mine space Will take us on a glimpse of the future of virtual worlds and what makes them compelling Cynthia as Lear Lobo is a researcher professor Software engineer and pioneer in the use of virtual environments for education simulation and modeling in 2010 her team won the $25,000 grand prize in the federal virtual world challenge She is a professor in the doctor of computing science program at Colorado Technical University And in 2009 she designed and launched the doctor of computing science in emerging media Degree to encourage research in virtual worlds and web technology She co-authored she co-authored two books a hundred and twenty presentations and numerous papers Mentioned 400 mentored 400 middle school students in Rambo Rambo pose virtual world Worked with will write on the TV show bar karma and co-hosted the Isti that featured Jane McGonagall She is also known as Lear Learay the insane in World of Warcraft. I have the pleasure of knowing Lear virtually for many years She's a fellow proponent of the Metaverse and one of my favorite elves and With all of that OSCC 13 is happy to have her here presenting today Welcome Lear Hello, everyone. Can you hear me? Let's do a little sound check because I can't hear anything Can you hear oh awesome? Well, welcome everyone I want to greet all our new friends as well as All of my old contemporaries from the virtual world You'll notice my title is the exodus to the virtual frontier the seductive lure of the mind space Great, you can hear Let's look at some barriers Often people say well, what are we going to do next? I mean we've accomplished so much and if you don't think we have and I know we we started a minute late, but Please realize back in 95 through 97 I was having to do vector geometry and plot the points and do the wire framing and do the rendering Calculate the lighting and shading and collision detection And I want to tell you that took forever, right? It took me a year to create a virtual space, you know with with a reasonable Fidelity nowadays we take for granted how how easy it is to fashion our objects to res that first cube and to deform it and um But our students and our newcomers if we're wanting to get widespread adoption Which is what I think of when I think of innovation. I think of invention That causes others who are not part of the process to adopt it Think back to lethal weapon. How many of you saw the movie lethal weapon? Um, remember when he pulls out the car phone and it's that big clunky thing with with the Handset that has a cable. Yeah the old ones that cost a thousand dollars a month to operate or whatever. They're very expensive Well nowadays we take for granted our smartphones and this processing that we have that's Similar to the mainframes that I had in the past while they may not be multi processors talk about powerful So we need to work on usability. We need to increase awareness We need to think about interaction and how people interact with content We need to think about cognition and how people understand and knowledge production knowledge consumption And then of course the installation procedure. There's still people who So complex installing a viewer, right? I I want to just use a browser I want to use jibe or a reaction grid or I want something simple Or like sun zoo would say I want a thin client. I want it running on my tablet or I want all these other things And so we have so many opportunities before us But we also recognize that these opportunities come with limits And we have to decide if we're going to go for complexity or stay with some of these limits And you are all participants in these decisions. It's not any single one of us who's driving this Now this scene here and you'll notice all of my slides show scenes from my class projects This is content that my students created students who had never been in a virtual world before Students who didn't have mad programming skills Students who didn't believe they were empowered that they would ever be able to do this and in 11 weeks or less They create these incredible spaces. The one you're seeing right here is is sleeping beauties castle And as you go through it, it's an interactive fiction Yes, and it's about 1300 primes and I it is in second life. I apologize I have to admit I I mostly teach in second life only because I need a stable platform That's always easy for students to get in and out of so that's on my wish list stable platforms easy to use tools great voice wonderful cadre of textures and and content etc And she uploaded these textures and worked on this and she lettered her doors So she has a b and c so the one of those storytellers kicks off and tells the story to the chat log And as you make decisions and interact with the magic mirror and and the queen and various story elements the huntsman It draws you through the castle And and you get more and more of the story and so you have alternate endings depending on how you want the story to unfold Well, when I think of the exodus I think of at first The fact that we were all gathered together and for the first time in my life I had a sense of everyone in the world Who was interested in virtual worlds and I found that magical and compelling I could go to conferences like the one that fleet and desideria started in 2007 the best practices in education And and I could commune with my fellow You know educators and I could also listen to business and commerce folks who are creating content that educators Desperately needed because you have to realize not everyone wants to create their own content Now my students have to because they're doing projects. I no longer give exams I do problem-based learning and activity based learning because the the learning retention is much higher Lightful will be able to tell you out in the audience. Yeah, well, I remember it fleet It was a wonderful experience. I couldn't raise content because somehow I I got added to the group plate So, you know what? I did I raised the student projects on my body And then I drug I edited it and drug them out So I showed merry-go-rounds and ferris wheels and all kinds of yes. She did Back in 2007 and so when I think of the virtual world and its maturity I think of each one of you. I think of the your accomplishments and how you have Fashioned what we know and and enjoy today, right? Every one of you has participated in it. You may not be aware of it You may not realize how important you are but you are So what was this exodus that occurred? I mean We had this affordance of all of us gathering together But it reminded me a little of the Tower of Babel in in a sense because When uh when linden lab announced their education rates were doubling and going to the normal rate Their timing was not good, right? The timing hit us right in the middle of a budget for school year and most school districts can't afford To double their budget in in midstream and so that caused a migration, right? That caused everyone a dispersal if you will not unlike the Tower of Babel And I apologize for the metaphor, but that's what it reminded me of That caused many of you to be very inventive To look at open source tools to look at different opportunities to check with third party providers To look at content creators and to start thinking about portability of content Some of you already had and you'd noticed that you didn't have academic freedom for your content The library of congress, I believe Purchased quite a bit of content in second life from educators And unfortunately they couldn't export it and so all of a sudden digital rights and legal issues became to the forefront So so we had many drivers and then of course the safe environment, right? The notion that we want a safe environment for everyone And everyone to be comfortable So so uh, that was the exodus Now robin teakland's here she and dominic power wrote a book At which they invited Andy stricker and Peggy she he of the ramapo project the eighth graders the sefern middle school project and myself to Write a chapter in and we wrote a chapter on gazelle shaft and mine shaft the notion that Community is important and i'm not talking about the community you grew up with or the community you were born into I'm talking about us The fact that we have merged into a community and we may be loosely coupled. That's my phrase for it because i'm a software engineer Um, the psychologists would call it. We're a weak tie network, right? We're not we're not co-located and we don't get funding from one another and yet There's a synergy that comes together, right? And here you'll notice. Um, I'm uh, not just building community I like to hold dances at the end of my classes and many of my counterparts at the university are like wow How can you do that and I and I think to myself, how can you not do that? Um education is about informal learning and extracurricular activities and socialization and all the things that come together, right? And one of the components that's missing from online education is more socialization more opportunities for informal learning Think back to your early days. Did you ever sit around in the coffee house or or the pub or? Or a student lounge at school and and philosophize about life and have grand thoughts You knew everything back when you were young If you didn't you you're missing out I certainly did and of course now I just kind of chuckle at the notion So as we're building community in virtual worlds, we all have roles in this community. We're not passive We're all active participants in one fashion or another The people who foster business and look for sustainability and commerce are important to us The notion of the freemium model and how it attracts interest and how it builds to Sustainable systems Is important to us the open source developers our hats are off to you every time we we use a new feature in this technology I just drool and i'm just marveling at your accomplishments the suitcase. How many of you've used your suitcase here in open Open sim for the hyper grid, right? I certainly included librarians and and you notice I said curators too You could be both right librarians could be curators Many of you are curators you you archive and store content mystic mentioned. She loves shopping She's a curator of sorts right Absolutely and some of us. I love all these plus ones This is great. I've never had plus ones during a talk and this is my 121st talk What's interesting is i'm painfully shy in case you guys didn't know this and so These worlds empower us to to have a voice beyond our own limitations and that's something that's important to realize Now Lightfuls in the crowd and this is one of her builds from from a games and simulation class that we taught In january through march and this is pandora's garden and I love this shot I've shown it a couple of times at conferences. It's so mesmerizing I set the environment to the eye of malron You know for the for the daytime look because I wanted this rosy red to permeate her build And as you step inside you'll notice the students some of them are transforming because they've been participating in a game So some of them won wings and various other badges and other stuff And at the entryway she says knowledge is choices power And I always add to it knowledge is power as well But here she's giving a presentation and she's in the back center right next to pandora's box And she's opened the box and all kinds of chaos and negative things have permeated the world Things that we needed to be able to appreciate the things that we have and as she's giving this presentation It's not death by power point and I know you guys are going. Hey, but you're showing power point Well, she's transforming to the phoenix and you can see her She's the gold figure in the center back And I find that so amazing the fact that our students can do this, you know And they wouldn't have been able to do this a few years ago, right and and students on campus Their minds are just boggled by this notion that people from other classes can come guests can come and we can have this shared communion Now I'd like to put my camera in strange places I just want to warn you in case I ever visit your stuff, right? And here we're standing in engineering and I was thinking about how many of you've seen the movie metropolis If you haven't it's a wonderful movie by fritz lung What subjects do I teach? Ah I designed a doctoral degree program in emerging media AI and um That means I'm teaching web engineering web technologies Emerging media is not just about media. It's about the development of software and tools like open sim simulator It's about the use of virtual worlds. It's augmented reality It's the blending of web technologies and it's the implications of the cultural Shift that comes from their use So think of it as the tools the technology the media and the culture and i'm also interested in digital rights and privacy I would I My students hypothesize what will life be like now that we're giving up our geolocation and much of our privacy What will life be like in 10 years? Will it be like star trek or and you'll notice i'm showing an image here where some of the students have access to the l cars Database of textures One of them is a game designer and so they built this spaceship game, right? And as you go around through all the different departments You're collecting and and it's increasing your status and tracking your progress in the game But I put my camera in the in the floor Between the two levels because I was fascinated similar to the movie metropolis by fritz lung It's like 1929 26 It's a silent film that georgia morota set to modern music back in the what 80s Anyway, and in that story they talk about The utopian city above and then the worker city below and this notion of this is how how you create sustainable systems And so when I listen to my students presenting their work and their projects I'm not just looking at what's on the surface, but i'm doing some deep thinking about why this matters And I want you I invite you to do the same thing today and to think about the art of the possible and how you're creating it Your position in our community Now here i'm standing with a chatbot, you know and an alien and and of course we're in sickbay, right? And the notion of me being able to do this is very empowering I loved star trek when I was growing up and I loved all the science fiction But I knew that I was never going to be in the space program, right? I mean I I've I've collaborated with gene home on a couple of papers and a couple of simulation and modeling conferences for the ACM, but I know I'm never going to space, right? but here I can And I can bring my students too and you'll notice that Here they are and they're interacting with the chatbot and with one another A delightful looking she's wearing a grecian green dress in the back backdrop on the right And and so we can transform our sense of identity and and be whatever we need to be in in in the space that we're in And I know you guys are all aware of this. So I know you're thinking what are you going to tell me that's new Well, how many of you are practicing hudagaji? Uh, how many of you know what hudagaji is let's start there hudagaji is uh, the creation of knowledge And you guys are creators now. You may not be content creators. You may be idea generators AI you you have a cue there hudagaji And by the way, there's a wonderful site on the web, uh that tells you how to pronounce things How do you say it? Anyway, in this case my students were thinking about their their assignment And they were thinking about space and they decided to create a game And they also defined the learning goals the game elements and the pedagogy and mapped it all together beautifully Do you see how easy this is for an educator? I don't have to worry about grading the work What I have to worry about is stimulating and keeping up with my students. Do you see how beautiful this is? Oh hudagaji, that's constructivist. So you're creating knowledge AI For example, when you're an undergraduate or in high school or In grade school, we focus on pedagogy, which is uh, it means several different things But one of the things it means is the memorization of basic rules and facts Uh at the doctoral level, we don't go around memorizing things. We know how to look it up So um at the graduate level, we practice andragaji. How many of you are familiar with andragaji? And by the way, I'm a teacher. It's an occupational hazard, right? Andragaji is how adults learn through trial and error Most of you when you try these things out, that's right. You can always look it up But but what I'm interested in is how you'll retain it and use it AI So andragaji is how you model your behavior The fact that you don't read the manual before you use software you jump into the viewer you start changing the preferences and you have Courage yes, go ahead linda and ask any questions you have you don't have to raise your hand I run interactive rooms. So I love to spin off the ideas of everyone in the audience Now here I have some things for you to think about as we're thinking about practicing hudagaji, right?  Okay. Yes well Creation is important. It's vital to um to our existence in a sustainable virtual world and you know why right? Buffy when you friended steven hawking or when he friended you on facebook That was an important day for me. I wasn't there But I was virtually and by my connection with you I feel akin to him and isn't that amazing how we can all connect over these kinds of moments The folks who are working um to extend moses and avatar scalability This is a project that needs each one of you because we're going for Uh an increasing number of avatars role playing for two hours At least once a month or once every two months, right? And so we need more and more people to log in and to participate The good news is all you have to do and i'm not stealing anyone's thunder I'm just giving you a little teaser for the for the later sessions. Okay All you have to do is is be a character and talk and walk, right? Interact and help us test the server Mick bowman the intel group kitty and the others Our hats are off to you for this effort with dug maxwell and the moses team For portability. I love my suitcase. I just love the fact that now we've thought about portability and interoperability It may not be the most Widespread notion, but it's so exciting to me the first time you experience it And and what you're seeing me wear is using the suitcase, right? So I find that a very viable Discovery and I want to see more of that kind of thing. Now, of course, we want to protect digital rights So we need a way to think about it and I know sun zoo is leading Research efforts on sunday mornings. I think it's either at 11 or noon Pacific time You can get involved. You can participate, right? So see sun zoo if you want to participate on that they're first looking at content portability and commerce A marketplace if you will So they're tackling that part of the problem space Gesture-based interaction is hot right now, isn't it? I have the leap motion and the connect and i'm busy studying how to support a variety of of behaviors with it and and to drive my avatar The virtual human interaction lab at stanford keeps looking at facial tracking The the fact that I would be able to frown or smile here and you'd be able to see it on my avatar I noticed several of you said hey, my lips aren't moving. That's not very realistic and you're right However, it's a little cheesy when they do move because if you saw me in real life, you'd notice that I I have I'm constantly grinning or smiling or emoting in some fashion and I tend to gesture madly, right? So I need not only these capabilities for facial tracking and motion capture But I need the ability to turn them off, right? To be able to have a have an expression that i'm not broadcasting So I need pretty sophisticated tools, right? I want the capability and I want the control now terrorist You can let me know but it was true You see you don't just want to be empowered. You want to have control as well Okay, now my love wouldn't it be great if every book and every movie had a virtual scene Had had something that kids and learners and even folks for social and entertainment could step inside And experience some part of the story We did that with of mice and men for the ramble project in seferne middle school and it was very empowering The kids read the book put it aside and then stepped inside the scene and they enacted the story after the book ends And they asked themselves, you know in of mice and men George kills his friend lennie who's who's simple minded To save him from torture murder. And so at the beginning of the trials 400 eighth graders 413 year olds said He's not guilty He's not guilty because he loved his friend and he meant well And at the end of four days of 40 minute trials where they thought about the testimony and they thought about what happened They all convicted and I asked them. I said, what changed your mind? That's pretty fast work to change your mind in four days, right? And they said, well, you know due process doesn't say he meant well It says beyond a reasonable doubt Did he kill his friend and he and he did but we'll recommend a lighter sentence because he meant well Now the point to the story is and of course that's featured also in the book the immersive internet in our chapter but The point to the story is that we have these transformational moments that take kids From from a complete reversal of opinion and a very mature line of thinking And we can do it in four 40 minute sessions, which is almost like magic if you think about it It's it's it's really fast. Yes What's amazing is on the fifth day the kids ripped out the um, and this is of course the immersive book notion again The kids ripped out The courtroom scenes they ripped out the benches and all and they created a conference For another school to come by their school and see their virtual world And they hung portraits of famous people and they put a little no card giver in it Where it would tell their book report their little biography And and I was walking through it. This is the fifth day, right? And I looked over and I said, oh, who's the there's a photo of a girl about two meters tall In profile smiling at at me and I said, well, who's this I didn't recognize her and one of the young women The 13 year old said why that's me and these are all the things I'm going to accomplish in the next 15 years when I become famous Well, I don't know about you guys But I was just it took my breath away and tears welled up because I'm not used to kids feeling empowered Uh, I know we have such mad technology today You kind of wonder why they don't feel empowered But I think they feel a little overwhelmed by it a little like they're in cruise control That media is there for socialization but not for empowering them and to see these kinds of worlds Causing young women to have vision and to think about their future and have a plan for it I I just thought was amazing. You know, um So innovation I I'm encouraging widespread adoption. So what do we need? Well, these are the things I want Okay, now. I'm sure you want even better things than I want I like machinima and I know that um That hikies here and she's running the camelot project, you know And she's going to be having a conference in february the end of february beginning of march that's going to focus on that So I welcome you to go to that. That's the seventh annual uh, sl languages, uh, annual symposium Um, I want oar's and I want them for all these immersive spaces I want them in fact, uh, we started packaging for Christmas as gifts for some of our family We started putting open sim on there and creating a few avatars inside of it a few regions We loaded a few oar's in it We created a little of our own content and then we started distributing it to family members to load Who had never been in a virtual world before so they could run their own and then of course hyper grid And then we could go visit them in their own space Do you know how empowering it is for a new user if they can install and use that within just a few minutes And I know you're all thinking ah, the instructions are out on the web What why can't they follow the instructions and install it from scratch and yet it seems so complex to them, right? What did it feel of complex to you the first time you put you created an open sim grid? What is think about it mic and then and then you could also go visit them for the virtual holiday, right? In their own space or figure out how you can connect with them and see I want to see more and more of these I don't want to think of them as as one-offs. I want to think of them as widespread and rampant I want to go viral with this because widespread adoption Means that we have to empower people who are not used to doing these things and make it feel so natural and so comfortable That they're willing to do it not unlike the smartphone Believe it or not the smartphone is actually very complex if you look at all the different apps and all the different You know if you've ever tried to get control of your smartphone That's when you realize it's it's complex, right? And you give away all kinds of privacy to allow someone to remote install And have total control of your device. That's what's so interesting about it But it is very useful. Absolutely. Now you notice I added assessment and that's because for education Without measurement without an understanding that these these spaces offer something that's compelling And and memorable It's very hard to tie to the educational system now. I'm not thinking of tests by the way in fact in my classes. Guess what I do To encourage my students and to help them get over fear Um, I ask them questions and and the answer in the chat log and for every answer they give me that spot on They get 10 lindens and I know it's only three cents Which is kind of cheesy and you have to realize I want them to have about 300 lindens so they can upload Textures and powerpoint slides and create viewers and start thinking about their content So I what I'm doing is seeding their budgets, you know, but um, but I want them to feel incentivized, right? So I'm not using sleutel although we can and we do in luar another open sim world in dream dream line metaverse But um, but instead yes this notion of reward sun zoo Most of us love getting some money and mystics some of my students After they've uploaded their work and created their projects will go and buy an outfit, right? And of course they feel so excited, you know to be able to customize themselves They then have a connection with the world and they are creators and being a creator is a powerful thing For the new media consortium. I used to teach little sessions sections on Uh programming for non programmers how educators who have no programming background can tailor their scripts Or be empowered to create scripts and to figure out what are these behaviors and how can I control them, right? And that's the notion of a simulation when all of a sudden you have not just a bunch of 3d scenes, right? And not just at interaction within them, but this notion of connection in the mind space And that's what I want to see We know why virtual worlds are on a decline Uh when there aren't people and there isn't interaction the connection between people and content and experiences Then something is missing, right? That's right Now I like social research too and here's this is myself and and one of my family members dancing after one of our classes I think these kinds of moments are important. How many of you ever participated in thompson learn thompson's learning There they had those sysco and uh microsoft certification classes They were thousand dollar classes their video content that they normally offer online and they brought them into second life in 2006 through 2008 And they charged maybe couple hundred lindens for a thousand dollar class and you could get a certification No one participated in that it was pretty amazing. Yes, buffy. I did too and I kept going by to watch people dancing while they're studying Now I know we're running a little Close on time. So I want to show you a little bit of research. I want to show you things you haven't seen How many of you've been on pro quest? You and my for the dissertations database not everyone has access to it. So I wanted to show you Do you know how much research there is in virtual worlds? over three thousand six hundred and fifty two different dissertations discuss it and research it And two thousand nine hundred eighty of them focus on education So those of you who aren't educators, you may wonder why we keep talking about it That's because we are building The business case for why these worlds are compelling and why the world should participate Okay, so yes, and I think this is very encouraging every once in a while One of my students says oh, there's nothing out there and every day And this is why librarians and curators are so important Every day I'm in these collections looking up more and more and I just marvel at how many voices Have risen and and or have taken up the call You know and and you notice Five hundred and ten of them are on higher education. That means most of them are not necessarily thinking of university education They may be thinking of adult education. That's continuing education or nonprofit or they're thinking about our kids Our future right now They've gotten away from 3d worlds from calling it that and three hyphen d is kind of outdated That's why I included it there. They're only 38. They refer to them as 3d worlds. And I thought that was interesting So gazing into the future And I love this slide because this is my brain on fire in 2006. I ran a little informal study I have have you guys ever done quirky little studies by yourself Maybe not for the benefit for for humanity, but just for yourself And one day I was interested in whether avatars had brains So I started I went into wireframe mode for for a few months and I Studied everyone around me to see if they had a brain and it was kind of interesting And I I even showcased a little talk for the new media consortium on it Now in the in the book of the chapter we wrote this is an edited changed version of those projections I teach futuring and innovation so to answer your question I teach computer science. I teach the entire software engineering life cycle I teach students how to do game design and how to do How to use grady butch's uml right to to do 2d depictions of software's behavior And then I bring them into second life and I have them build their vision Actually create it and then I have them experience the timing issues And one of them had a sensor on a capture the flag game and it was going off like 20 times a second So it was spamming the chat log and of course they couldn't tell when they looked at the 2d diagrams That talked about software's behavior, but when they saw it in second life and they saw it Misbehaving then they were able to fix it rerun it and then test it and play the game and that that was very empowering right So I want you to realize that we've accomplished some of the things in the in the one to five years But they're not widespread and when I say widespread, I mean major adoption More participants more schools seeing the benefit I spoke to the CACTA organization, which was mostly college presidents and provosts and people who are planners chief technology officers and it folks And they all want to embrace virtual worlds, but they find it very complex in how to start an open sim version They need us to demystify the complexity to make it easy for them to figure out How do I install and use this? Okay, so we need to rethink how these things are done I know they're very easy for you guys, but they're not easy for folks who have no background in it Uh, you'll notice in my six to ten years I'm very interested in adaptive learning, which is different than assessment and lessons. It's more about knowledge construction It's more about what do I know and what do I what don't I know? I participated in a national science foundation grant a few years back that had an intelligent tutor That would essentially kind of monitor your behavior And if you didn't understand something and it was pretty complex what it was doing It would it would show you a graphic of it of the mathematical modeling It would show you a little instructional thing like the wikipedia thing that someone mentioned earlier And then it would also show a video and if you didn't get the sense of behavior and problem solving and how it all How it was deconstructed the task and the subtasks It would then send an alert to your instructor saying that joe doesn't get it at this point Please cover that better Wouldn't it be nice if we only talked about things that were mysterious and uncertain? And we didn't waste time in what we knew and that's the notion of adaptive learning is focusing on what's fresh And and and mysterious right and figuring out how to help people build to comprehension Okay, so uh, and then I'd love to see educational mmrpgs, which are massive multiplayer online role-playing games You notice my original slide slide said i'm lyrae the insane That's because of jim bailey and and his family helped me to get the insane title as a community We did an insane amount number of quests and reputation over a five month period to win that And it felt like a major accomplishment Now I would love to see those kinds of spaces not just in the world of warcraft, but for education um ancient space is out of oxford and the university of Southampton was Was building They had their first year ancient greek and civilization students building Maya models of rome and ancient greece The goal was to create an mmorpg that that new students could step inside do quests and actually go through an archaeological dig Actually experience. What is it like to do this and think of it as a completely constructed student game Constructed by students for students right and it was a major undertaking and naturally I'm not sure they ever finished They had quite a few models and quite a few piece parts It but that vision is sustainable and I'd like to see more people pick it up Imagine what what our youth are going to experience based on our successes. Okay Well, how can you help to change shape the future? In it You see all these bullets here and I love these wordles because they make me think a little differently about the subject Technology advances certainly we need but we also need tutorials and we meet them from people Who understand what it takes to be less complex to be very clear To reach out and to communicate to different Communities of people and to broaden our gazelle shaft our own community I would love to see More metaverse like spaces where we have our own wiki space where we are so aware of one another that we can reach out and touch one another And we can share our content Now if you guys have any questions at this point, yes, you want better hair and I don't blame you I love I love I love all the content associated with identity because it stimulates our mind space It makes us feel more comfortable and it makes us feel lively and engaged All of these things are important. You'll notice moses is on here the open source development all of that All of those things are here But we also need scenes and games and lessons and library collections and much much more But remember we need a sustainable future and this means we need our business users We need folks who recognize that if everything always stays free You know and I love free. Don't don't don't get me wrong Someone somewhere has to eat though, right? And so we recognize that we need a a foundation of free content And then we need some sort of ecosystem that's sustainable, right that recognizes the craft persons Let's see ellie's adding here talking about the barriers to adoption. Absolutely. Um for cloud party It has healthy participation There's no mad rush to join when I first joined at ellie and I have to admit I'm a bit of a philistine, right? I'm in seven different worlds And then I um I sit on 45 research committees and then there's moses. So I have to admit I'm spread a little thin ellie, which is my barrier to cloud party Oh, so you're saying it got your attention sally and chimera See the nice thing about cloud party is the fact that if you can dream it up you can participate in its evolution, right? And that's uh, that's part of the charm The difficulty for me is I needed tools that make me look good really fast and I don't mean my hair and my clothes, right? I mean as a mad content creator I feel like a magician. I feel like the wizard, you know who has to whip stuff out have holodex kicking off Has scenes that are that are compelling that pop out and then go away You know and I need um, I need all those affordances because I'm kind of spoiled That's the problem with technology that enables you is it kind of spoils you a little bit And so um, you need a little bit of time You know to help with the evolution of new tools The business aspects are critical sally because First off we we need a sustainable future and sustainability Cannot always be free now. I'm not saying that open source tools won't always be free. That's not it at all And by the way, uh, we have a defense coming up Jason Murray has been validating the top 1 percent of the projects on source forge and he uh He's used several measurements and he'll be giving a doctoral defense a final defense on that on september 14th I'm so proud of him. We're seeing such growth in the open source field And I know all of you who participated say, oh, it's always been growing But now we're getting confirmation and use by the dod by business by by all of these Users who have traditionally stepped back and said well, that's community grown. How do we know it has integrity? So now we're looking at validation Thank you, reanna, and that's my last slide. I want to thank you all for coming Does anyone have a last minute question before we move on? Now I'll have these slides on slideshare. I have to upload them and I'll give you the URL where you can find them In case you want to copy and yes, you're welcome to use them to redistribute them to use them and their entirety or in part And uh With my permission That's good. And here's the URL there you go reanna and thank you very much everyone Yes, and thank you lear. I'm sorry. Um, you know, we were running a little late over everything in the start to No worries, but thank you for a wonderful keynote Always great to hear your point of view and hear more hear more about your work We'll be starting our afternoon sessions immediately following this and you can see what's coming up next on the conference schedule at conference.opensimulated.org Thank you again lear to our For presenting and um and also to our audience and then everybody enjoy your afternoon sessions. We're gonna swap out of here


At the end of the day, the better you are at developing and honing your messaging, the better results you will see. Welcome to the We Are Slam Show where you'll learn marketing agency insights, best practices, and ideas to help your business grow. My name is Tyler Kelly. I'm the co-founder and chief strategist right here at Slam Agency. And today I'm going to reveal to you my top five copywriting secrets. Now, when I think of a good advertisement, the first thing that comes to mind is good copy. The words that are on the page, the message that you're communicating to the end user, to the buyer, to the prospect. This is something that has been near and dear to my heart for a long time. I've always loved to write. As a matter of fact, I was an English major and I chose that major because I wanted to do more writing. I actually didn't realize that there was going to be so much reading, which at the time I didn't necessarily enjoy, although I do now. For those of you that have been here to Slam, you know that our library is just massive and books are key leaders or readers. But here's the thing, back then I just wanted to write and I wanted to hone that skill. And so I became an English major and I learned how to write more effectively, more persuasively. And then I created my first website. And part of that experience was learning how to build a website back in 1999. But more so than that, it was how to develop and craft a message that would get people once they were on the site to pick up the phone and give me a call. And by doing that, I knew that I was tapping into one of the secrets of human persuasion. And here we are 20 years later and I can tell you that developing a skill for copywriting, learning how to captivate, motivate and inspire people to action with the words that I write has been one of the most critical skills, one of the most beneficial things I can learn in my professional career. And so today I'm going to reveal to you my top five copywriting secrets so that you can take them, use them, and become a better copywriter. Because at the end of the day, the better you are at developing and honing your messaging, the better results you will see. Now here at SLAM, I've had an opportunity to work with all kinds of copywriters. And so what I want to say is it doesn't matter, you know, who you are or where you're starting or where you're not starting. This show is for you. If anything, if you are a seasoned copywriter, then maybe it's just as a reminder. And if you're looking to get into the business, trust me, this is the place to start because not everyone knows how to communicate effectively. And if you do, if you're able to craft a message, a winning message, a message that converts, then trust me, you're going to be a lot better off than your peers. So the first thing I want you to know about copywriting, my number one secret, not in any particular order, but my number one secret is that copy is not about being creative, it's about converting. So get this idea out of your head that you have to be colorful, that you have to have this creative prose and it has to be poetic. Here's the thing, you're an advertising professional.  What that means is that you have one goal and one goal only. Your number one goal as an advertiser, as a marketing professional is this, to make sales. And so what that means as you put pen to paper is that you have to get people from point A to point B. And so as a copywriter, it's not about having the prettiest copy. It's not about necessarily being grammatically correct, although I love good grammar. What it is about is about making sales. And so I want you to keep this in mind, a good offer is an offer that converts, not necessarily an offer that sounds correct. Now one of my favorite books that we've done a show on this is Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins. This is what it looks like, if you're not familiar with it, go back and find the show where I talk about this book. And if you haven't already ordered this book, do so. This is one of the keys to learning how to become a good copywriter. Okay, so check this out, chapter two, Just Salesmanship, here's what he says. The only purpose of advertising is to make sales. It is profitable or unprofitable according to its actual sales.  And I'm not talking to people that are writing Doritos campaigns, I'm not talking to the AB copywriters out there, I'm talking to marketing directors like yourself that are working in industries where you have to go in every day and figure out how you're going to increase your revenue to small business owners, to startup founders who are trying to figure out how to make people not only more aware of your products or services, but how to create that demand for your products and services, so much so that people will take action, action being that they will purchase your product or service. And so here's the thing, let me read it again for you. The only purpose of advertising is to make sales. He goes on to say that literary qualifications have no more to do with good advertising than oratory has to do with salesmanship. One must be able to express themselves briefly, clearly and convincingly, just as a salesperson must be able to do those things. Okay, so this is good copywriting, this is good advertising. The first key here, my first secret that I've just revealed is it's not about being creative, it's not about being poetic, it's about converting. So I want you to keep that in mind. Number one, good copywriters know how to get people from point A to B, they know how to increase conversions and how to get more people to complete their offers. Number two, and this is specifically for those of you who are writing for online audiences, which I know for the most part many of us are. Okay, so this doesn't necessarily apply if you're going to write a television commercial or a radio commercial, but it applies to those who are writing copy for websites or in blogs or in advertisements that people are going to read. And here's the secret, people are not readers, they are scanners. So you need to be able to write scannable copy. What does this mean? This means bullet points, numbered list, making certain words that you want to stand out, stand out. And how do you do that? By making them bold or italicized, changing the color, underlining them, using your headings and snippets and paragraph intros and breaking up paragraphs so that they're easier to scan. 90% of people, they don't read content on the internet, they scan it. In fact, what they're doing is they're looking for certain keywords, they're scanning for keywords. And the reason why they're doing that is because they want to make sure that the page that they're on is relevant to their search, is relevant to their problem, is relevant to whatever it is that they're trying to figure out in that moment. And so rather than spend two or three minutes reading paragraph after paragraph after paragraph, what's happening in the famous F-shaped pattern. If you haven't heard that word before, look it up, Google it, F-shaped pattern. In a famous F-shaped pattern, they're looking at your website and they're scanning for keywords. Okay, so you have to learn how to write scannable copy and how to take copy that may not be scannable and make it scannable. Make it more appealing, make it more noticeable to those people who are scanning the copy for keywords, okay? The number three secret, and this is a big one, like I said, they're not in any particular order, but you have to know your audience, you have to know who you're writing for, you have to know what motivates them, what gets their attention, you have to know what their pain points are, you have to know where they're coming from, if where they're searching, there's so much that a good marketing director, a good marketer, a good marketing professional understands about their potential customer. And if you're thinking to yourself, well, I don't actually know much, like I know the demographic, I kind of know the geographic area where they are, so I'm able to do some advertising and I'm able to most of the time have a pretty good result, meaning that if I put out $50, I'm going to make $50 back. Well, in reality, that's not a good result, but that's for another day. But here's the thing, you have to know your audience, you have to know not only where they are, but what they're searching, what their pain points are, and how your product can, once they've implemented the solution that you provide, what does their life look like after that? Because part of that is communicating that. A good ad always communicates the after effect, okay? You have to know that before state, as Ryan Dice famously has said, the before and after state in creating offers, but you have to be able to understand the before state, but then provide a vision of the future that places that user, that buyer, that potential prospect in that after state that they desire. So my secret number three is understanding your buyer. Inside now, you can never go too deep in understanding the psychographics, the attitudes, interests, and opinions of your potential customers. This is the data that you need to be able to build a complete profile, a full persona in order that you're able to communicate with them in a way that captivates, motivates, and inspires action. Okay, the number four secret that I want to reveal for how to become an amazing copywriter, how to really do copywriting at that next level, how to level up when it comes to copywriting, how to captivate, motivate, and inspire people to action. Here it is. You have to understand your USP, your unique selling proposition, okay? Now, I want to take you back to marketing 101, and I want to talk to you about brand positioning, okay? When we think of USP, we're talking, we're kind of in this ballpark of brand positioning. What is a brand position? The brand position is how your brand, how your company, how your business, how your product, your service, how your offer is positioned within a certain competitive set within your customer's mind, okay? What this means is that in my mind, if I'm your potential customer, in my mind, I have several different options in terms of like providers of solutions to my problem. And you're one of those providers. And so I have these frames of reference. And my brand position, the way that you're positioned among all these other competitors in my mind, that is how your brand is positioned. And the key here is, it's not what you say it is. The key is it's what I believe it to be as the consumer, as your potential prospect. And so as a copywriter, you have to learn not only how I perceive keyword here is perceive your brand and how it ranks. And then you have to be able to take what you know that I am thinking or perceiving about your brand and craft a message that motivates me to think differently or that reinforces what I'm thinking about your brand. So this is brand positioning, this is marketing 101. So when I talk about USP, this unique selling proposition, what I want you to think about is how are you different than your competitors? But also, how are you the same? Now, what I mean by this is that you can't be so different that you don't fit in the box. Okay, if I am looking for band-aids, and you have completely positioned your line of band-aids so far out there that I no longer think of you as band-aids, then at that point, you're no longer relevant. At the same time, you have to differentiate yourself so much so that I see a clear difference between you and your competitors in my mind to solve my problems. Okay? And so this is key, the USP, the unique selling proposition. You know, if you Google it, there's some gurus out there that might say, you know, this isn't really relevant today because the USP is something that's just not attainable, that there's just so much of the same stuff out there and everyone's just doing the same thing. But I would beg to differ. I would argue with this because I would say that there's always a place of differentiation and as a good marketer, as a marketing professional, you have to find it. You have to find where are we different, whether that's in our vision, our values, our purpose, how we connect to the community, where are we different and how can we communicate that in a way that shows our difference among that frame of, among those competitors in the consumer's mind in a way that is going to captivate, motivate and inspire me to become your customers. Now, here's something that you can do right now. You can go to your top five competitors' websites and you can take a tally of all the, you know, descriptive words that they use on their website which explain who they are and what they do. Okay? Take a tally. Every time a certain word is used, like for instance, highest quality. When that term or that phrase is used, write down highest quality if it's first time seeing it and then, you know, do a tally each time you see it on every competitor's website. And here's the thing. Anytime you see a term, a phrase that's used more than twice on your competitors, like among your competitors, I want you to challenge yourself to think of a different way of communicating your brand to your customers because if you use the same words that everyone else is using, highest quality, lowest price, like these types of things, guess what? You're not going to be able to stand out. You're not going to be able to communicate that USP and you're not going to be able to differentiate yourself among your competition. And what this leads to is it leads to a brand that really has no brand position. And if it does, then it's lackluster. Okay? So that's number four, the USP, how to become a great copywriter. You have to keep in mind differentiation and unique selling proposition. Number five, this is the last one. Number five, the fifth secret that I'm going to reveal to you today on how to become a master copywriter is this. You have to ask for the sale. In your writing, you have to create and provide a CTA, a call to action. We said in number one that you have to think about conversions as your primary goal. In all of your writing, sales are what matter. How are you going to get people from point A to point B? If point B is the sale, then you have to ask for it. Somewhere in your writing, you have to say whatever that next step is. People want to know. People want to understand what they have to do in order to progress in the buying cycle. And so you as a copywriter need to be able to clearly communicate and articulate that and do so in a way that it's not a secret. It's not confusing. There's no gray area and you're very clear. You're very clear because this is what people need.  This is what it is. Do it. Ask for the sale. Make it happen. Know that if you don't ask, you won't receive and in writing and copywriting and creating offers that will convert, you have to ask for the sale. So these are my top five secrets for becoming an amazing copywriter for leveling up your copywriting game. Now if this is your first time tuning in, do me a favor. And if you're on iTunes, subscribe, then rate us hopefully five stars and then leave us a review. If you leave us a review, I'll be sure to shout you out in a future show. Thank you for doing that. And if you're watching on Instagram, TV, IGTV, Facebook, YouTube, any of these areas, leave me a comment. Let me know what you thought about this show today. And if you have any tips of your own, be sure to leave those in the comments as well because we're all growing, we're all evolving, we're all optimizing to become better professionals in this world that we call marketing. So thank you for tuning in and I will see you next week.


I know that this market has been very volatile. And then this morning, we made money really quick. And you wanted to go back after something right away. And I swore. No, no, I didn't. But it looked like sometimes when we were doing BA, and it would look like it was set up again. So that's what something like fried and look at that. No, I'm talking about the spy this morning, though. But that's what I mean. It looked to me like it was setting up to go down again. Like it was just. But you just made your goal for the day. You made your goal for the day. And five minutes and last week, I closed the room. Things have been halting. Look at BA today. Things have been crazy. Like you did don't do anything other than what you would normally do. No. And you know me like, so I just follow you to the ladder. That's what I do. But sometimes, like with all the things going on, I'm like, oh, maybe I wonder if she sees that. Or I wonder if I'm right. Like I wonder if I was right. I do see things sometimes. But I also know that every time you take a trade, your potential at risk for that trade to not working. And once your goal is in for the day, then your goal is in for the day like we did it. That was perfect today. And I wasn't even going to do anything. And then we reversed. So then we did it.  Like I know. All right. OK. So what are you doing with the options here now? As far as I think this way. So I have a lot of options. I took, I was in a couple from last week that I was holding. So the slide that cues the banks, all the banks. And then what I did today was it looked like everything was headed down again. And they had just, they just rallied back a little bit. So I took another contract. So I mitigated the original price that I bought it at last week. OK. So you did last week's trades. You went right on out. Actually Friday into the close, things started going positive. I don't know if you noticed that or you were watching. I didn't. Friday into the close. That's when no, it was selling off. Because I actually, what I did on Friday, it was Thursday and everything started to rally. Yeah, the puts were going positive Friday into the close of my head call. That's right. And only one that I was really positive a good amount was the spy.  I think it was, I think it was 280. And I got out of that. I booked a couple hundred dollars profit. I just had one contract. And then so at $3.55, I took another one. Friday you did this. I did that on Friday. That's right. Everything else wasn't green enough for me to want to get out. I wasn't up enough. If it's over $100, then I'll consider getting out of it. But the queues, it was like $50. So I'm like, no, I'm going to hold it. But the spy was up enough for me that I had taken earlier in the week with you. It was the 280 put that I got out of that. And then I took a 260. No, a 228. I took a 228 put. OK, when did you do that? I did that Friday at $3.55. So what I do, I did that a lot with BA. I get out if I'm up like a couple hundred dollars. And then I quick take another one. OK, all right, all right. So then meanwhile, today's trades, did you do? Did you get out of any? Did you hold any? Are you in them? What did you do? No, I was wait. I really thought we were going to have a big sell-off when it was heading down at noon. So I just held on, and then everything went up. And I'm like, what's going on? And then I found out that Schumer said we're close to a deal. And I'm sure that's why it went up. No, but then we're dropping again now, though. Yeah, I'm watching it. I'm not out of anything yet, but I'm watching it. Well, you could with the fast flow, yeah. I'm still up in that. I'm still up. I mean, everything. OK, so you did today's? I did. I did not do Amazon. And I did not do Google. Some of them were really expensive, I know. Yeah, and Google was $30. But I was in enough of other things. I still have all the banks. OK, what you could have done is waited for the big sell-off in the banks, which I said the banks are going to have a big sell-off. Or you could have taken everything off really quick within that one period. Like when they all went, then you could have just gotten out of them all, even though they weren't all 100%. You could have just wiped them all out in one swoop. So that's another way you could have played it when I do that sector. But it's fine if you're still in them. Either way, they're dropping or they did drop today, too. But anyways, long story short, just don't start to get piggy about things or lose conviction. There's two things. One, don't get piggy about things. And two, don't lose conviction when you're listening to the news. Because the problem is if you are, it's like two things I'm trying to explain. If you're getting piggy listening to the news when everyone's saying fear, anxiety, and the world's going to end, then you want to get a piggy about stuff. And you don't book any profits when you're up. Then the other extreme is if you listen to the news and you listen to some things that say a deal's going to pass, once this passes, we're going to rally, this is the bottom. Then you may kill things unnecessarily and then take losses and things that are going to be going to work. So it's like everybody's kind of in this different quad mire here where you really just have to get your head on straight about whatever you're doing. Because if you're listening to the news, then you could be thinking one extreme or the other. And you really have to focus on the charts. And you really have to focus on the gap analysis. And you have to focus on what we're doing. Because if you're not, you could think one extreme or the other extreme. And so either one is problematic. Like be normal as far as what we look at in the charts. And if you watch the news and you see it getting in your head, then I'm not saying don't be aware what's going on. But the reality is that shouldn't be the driver for you. Because I do not have 100% conviction that this market is going to rally once a deal get passed. And the reason that I'm saying that is because of the fact that the market has not rallied on anything that has occurred. It hasn't held anything. No, no, yeah. And you're saying that this morning, even in gaps up, it never holds. We start down. It goes up.  And it goes up for a minute. And then it's back down. So yeah. So no, I have not lost conviction. And I tell you, the time that I did it, what solidified it for me was two weeks ago when we had the big sell off when I made all that money in one day. Well, it wasn't one day. It was options over week. I didn't close out of anything. I held it. And it paid off. Yeah, it paid off. Yeah. No, that was the day. That was the Thursday. That was the Thursday when we collapsed. And we opened in the morning. And then we tanked. Yes, I was in Philly. I was in Philadelphia. And I said to Ben Thursday morning, I said, I'm out of everything. I was up $17,000. And I can walk away. And I'm good. Yeah. And that was five. I did a great job. How much did you have at risk to make that $17,000? You've been doing one contract of everything? Yeah, but sometimes I do two. It depends. When I bought those spies and cues and a JP Morgan, so they were a little bit cheaper today. And I saw that it was like you always had to go with the watch the way that it's going. I saw that I had started down. So I picked up another contract to mitigate my money. And that's what I did. I think that week that I made all that money, the usual spies and the cues, I'll definitely take a second contract. Yeah, well, they have been pricey, too. And it's really limited. Yes, they have. But yeah, OK. All right, so that's fine. Yeah, that was fantastic. I mean, what has Ben saying about this? I mean, the amount of money that you've made so far this year.  I'm like, look, I got this. I'm good. Don't start telling me to get out.  Because they'll say, well, you know, you're red, but there's some money left in the auction. I'm like, no, I'm not doing that. I've done it too many times where I've killed it. And then myself. Yes, exactly. So I'm not doing that. I would rather kiss a goodbye than to lose that chance. Yeah, and then that screws. It actually strengthens your conviction when you continue and you just believe in it, believe in it, believe in it. Now, Bowen, let's talk about that. Let me just pull up my chart for that. I personally wasn't even paying attention at the moment they halted it. Then I saw it. Then they halted it. Like, I'm looking at this here now. When you look at the chart here, I understand that it had a pop after the news, which I thought was odd, too. But again, we don't play news. I didn't call any new ones in this today. Again, the one need to work so it doesn't. But I will say this, though, that this to me is not a big rally. Just so you know. I know as far as you say, well, it just rallied $9 or whatever. But literally, this is nothing to me. This stock looks dead. It still looks dead. It looks dead as a doornail. And I wouldn't be surprised if this falls tomorrow. I don't know why it's rallying on news. It's bad. But we don't play news anyways. But anyways, long story short, this to me is nothing as far as the rally. I know it rallied $9. But this stock has lost more than 50% of its value in the last two weeks. And I mean, the only thing I was just trying to figure out. So either there's a lot of activity of people buying the dip or selling, and that's why it popped. You have shorts covering. You have shorts covering. And you also have shorts covering. And then also, you have people that like to buy bottom. So that isn't going to end anytime soon. So that's what's happening there. And there really weren't any days in there so far that that's been happening in that stock. So I guess I'm not surprised that that's happened today, except for the fact the news was bad. My anticipation was that it was going to fall after the news. But again, it doesn't matter. Because again, it's either going to work or it's not going to work for the Boeing 1. Really, that didn't do anything this morning when it opened until then the news didn't. No, it didn't. Yeah. So I did sell a little bit before noon and then. But I thought, but it seemed like it was lagging behind like the spy and Apple. Maybe because there's more people that are willing to get out of those. I don't know. Like Boeing isn't going to rally and have a sustained rally and then have the markets going to collapse. Like that's not going to happen. Just like you're not going to have the banks collapse and not have the market collapse. Like do you know what I'm saying? Like it's just you have to kind of. Yeah, no, I'm in for the ride. I got one of my puts and I'm just in. I have an Apple. I have one Apple that I bought this morning. I have two BAs. I bought one last week and I bought one this morning. I have a city. I have a diamond. I have, let's see, a Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan. I have two, Microsoft. I have one, the Q's. I have two, the spy. I have two and Wells Fargo. I have one. OK, all right. Very good. So I'm pretty much spread out and just waiting. You know, like I maybe would have gotten out at 11.35. But I was working out of line. No, I mean, I'm not, you know, in these kind of situations, like, again, either you have a plan of action where you're going to get out at a certain point of percentage or you're going to wait for more of a move. And I think that's something that you have to think about what you're going to do and what the expectation is and how the chart looks. I know, like I said, there's two different schools of thought going out there right now where people are seeing the extremes. And you kind of like, for me, like, remember the message that email that I sent? It was the day before. It was the 12th. It was the Wednesday before. I said, make the market pay you. Yes. Make this market pay you. And then it was like I ordered it to happen. Like I waged magic wand and it happened immediately the next morning.   So, you know, and I believe that because what really, I mean, so as of today, there's no injection in cash. We're still all where we were a week and a half ago. You know what I mean? So it just makes me, so no matter what comes out of the media for a minute, it might make something pop a little bit, but it doesn't change the weakness in the chart. That's right. That's right. So just stay focused. Continue booking money. You're so far ahead this year. Like the world thought you would be. There's nothing you can do wrong. So just as long as you stay focused on, as long as your risk is normal and you keep booking money and you stay focused on the gaps, you can't either, you can't make any mistakes the way I'm calling these trades, Jackie. Right. No, I know.  So and it took us five minutes, Melissa. It's like the good old days. Five minutes. That's what we're going to do all week, which I'm thrilled about.  Are you still working your other job? Or are they close to your work? No, so I retired in October. I remember I told you I wanted to. Because what happened was my youngest son. I thought you were still doing part time. Part time somewhere, I thought. I was working part time at two different places. And actually, I was a head and neck nurse practitioner. So like this whole thing would have been, we would have seen a lot of it, right? Because they swab up the nose. And it's sore throat. And but you know, it's crazy. And you might think I'm crazy, but I think that this went through my house already back in December. The virus? Yeah, because my son, Seamus, who's 20, he's 24. He was sick for two whole weeks.  And he had fever, sweat, sore throat. And then my dear had it. And we all had varying degrees of it. And I said, you know, when they start testing for antibodies, I really want to know because Ben goes in the hospital every day. They have a patient in this hospital that has it. He hasn't had an interaction, but we've all been knocked with healthy. So I don't know. I think went through my house. So when your son got sick, though, he did get better. He did. Yeah, because he's healthy. He's a young, healthy guy that works out. You know what I mean? He was on his back for two weeks straight. Wow. Yeah. And then Deirdre had it. She thought she had my Deirdre is 18, went to her date dance. And they went to get Chinese food. She thought that she had food poisoning. But at last three or four days, she had all the GI symptoms. She had sweats. She had fever. So who knows? Who really knows how long this has been around? Yeah, interesting. No. And then I was really, I was trying to text you today about what Israel is doing is they're saying, keep all the businesses open. Whoever is prone to pre-existing condition or has a fragile immune system, they should quarantine. And then all the businesses are open. I don't know what they're going to do. Well, I think they're going to do that. Because other than that, this is going to destroy our economy. It's going to. Yeah, it's interesting. So you retired from all your nurses' jobs in October. I did. I'm done. Yeah, I am. I stay at home, mom, just like I always wanted to be. And a trader. I'm a trader. That's right. Well, that's great. I forget now, when did you do the class? Oh, gosh. It's over a year. I, the class, I believe it was September of 2018. Yeah, 2018. Yeah, it's a little over a year, yeah. Yeah. So every day I learn in the class and I know more now, I feel more comfortable and I kind of know how to mitigate things. And so, yeah, I mean, I'm just, and to go over my, I love going over my notes. Sometimes I wish you'd offer a quick, like some sort of refresher course, not the whole two-day thing. I know, I'm like, honestly, I was planning on lecturing this morning. Because I said, you know what? This week I'm going to have the room open. I'm not going to have any trials. And then if we don't do anything, we'll do lectures. And I could have done that last week. But actually, I was trying to get, I was out last week trying to get stuff. I was like, I didn't have last week to go out and get stuff because things are getting worse here with people running around. So I like, I needed the time last week to go out and get my own supplies. Yeah, you did. And just, you know what? Every time you pull back, your focus is that much stronger. Like, we had a couple of Mondays where there was nothing else. So you didn't, we didn't trade.  And you came in and we just were boom, boom, boom. And that's what you've been now, you know? Same thing. You said, you need to take a step back to take two steps forward. Yeah, exactly. Absolutely. Well, you're doing fantastic. Keep it up. Tell Ben to take a chill pill.  Like I'm always watching and looking and because, you know, it just solidifies everything that goes through my head at that moment. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, this morning was wild. I don't know if you looked at any of that stuff this morning while it was going on. Because I woke up early, I saw it, and I was like, oh, we're down big and awesome. Like, wait a minute. And that's the thing. Sometimes I always think to myself, OK, here comes a sell-off. And then it somehow, in the middle of the night, just bounces right up. It's like, this is crazy, crazy. But don't you understand that's not going to continue. Right. It's not the big money. I understand that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.  It's people that are home doing it, you know, and trying to buy those dips. You know, people know, the kids' friends will know I day trade.  And you know, they're buying this, they're buying that. Even my mother said, oh, how are you doing?  We love when the market's down like this. Yeah, they don't understand that you're shorting. Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah, that's cute. That's funny. Yeah, so. Well, listen, you're doing great. Stick with everything. Thank you, Melissa. Do you see anything interesting? You know, always send me any articles or whatever's going on. Yeah, I try. Yeah, I didn't say in my bar routine in case you wanted to. I saw that. I'm like, I'm running out of space here between the stocked up paper supplies and food. I'm like. But I was worried about you because, you know, New York City is almost like, it's like ground zero all over again. Well, honestly, I know you're alone, so. Well, and they shut down the city. I said, I can't, I don't need anything, but I'm going to go out one more time. So I wrote a paper story. So I went. So then I said, I didn't even need anything, nothing.  So I went back to CVS. My timing is impeccable, not just for trades, but for toilet paper. So I walk into CVS and they're unloading more toilet paper at the exact moment that I walk in. So then I got more. I got more. And I said, what do I need? Light bulbs, cleaning supplies, Windex. I try. I loaded up everything, went to the checkout. I had no bags to take it. They were sold out of bags again. Oh, that's annoying. Yes. And then I said to the girls, the same girls before, I said, can I have another one of those plastic garbage bags? And she said, well, you should have brought the one back I gave you the other day. She said, can you believe it? And stuff, and they don't want to give me a plastic bag. So I said, well, I can't, I have no way to get this home. So then she gave me another one, but she expected me to bring the bag back. I'm like, like, seriously, like that was hysterical. So then I could barely carry everything across the street. And then I got in, I said, you know what? I just needed, I was going to go back one more time. And I went back one more time, and again, as soon as I came, just for stuff. I'm like, I don't need to leave this apartment, probably, at least until like September 1. Amazing, I think, I talked to my mother. My mother's going to be 89 on the 31st. She still works, right? So she's, I said, mom, you really don't have to go. Oh, well, they scale back for hours. And there's only three people in the office, and nobody comes in from the outside.  You know what I mean? So it's in the grand scheme of things. And she's healthy, she works that. But today, she said, your sister called me.  I'm like, oh my God, that's six people. Yeah, yeah, that's getting transmitted. So I'm really not going to go out. I don't, I have everything I need, I'm not going out, but it is interesting because before I know the market here, real estate wise is going to tank. And it's going to be very interesting to see what happens. But I'm positioned well to give advantage of it whenever that is, but I think it's going to tank. I'm seeing this out ahead of time. So it doesn't matter if rates are low, like if the market's going to tank, it's going to tank because some people are not going to be able to, one, people are going to want to spend money to buy a big property. And also people, some people are going to default that are in loans right now. They're going to do just what it is. So you'll have your pick of whatever apartment you want. Yeah, that's exactly right. Because you'll have cash. So I'm just saying. Cash is king. Cash is king when the streets get bloody. Oh my gosh, Melissa, when this is all over, we should have an America Day or something and the whole world should celebrate. I know, 10 months ago. Now you're like, I wouldn't get 110 billion dollars. I'm feeling two weeks ago, it was a ghost town.  There's nobody around. You were lucky you got back. I know.  Like literally, like, seriously. Well, the good thing about Philly and Buffalo, they're really not that far apart. If we had to rent a car, we could. Yeah. I mean, it's an hour flight, so it's easy. But yeah, we went out to dinner every night. We had a great time. So that's got to hold us for a while. No, everything's closed now. So you wouldn't even be able to do anything. Yeah, well, a lot. I've been trying to patronize, like, so I cook and then one or two nights a week, I try and order out to patronize the businesses that I pick up. Oh, that's nice.  Well, good for you. All right, I'll see you in the room tomorrow. All right, I'll see you in the room tomorrow. And tell Ben to stay safe. Yes. Where is Matt? Hold back for my option. Don't touch. I'm listening.