I want to make a couple of things very clear first. One of those is I'm just a data scientist who happens to be blind. So if you were looking for an expert on research into students with disabilities in the classroom and things like that, you needed to bring someone else. But what I can do is offer a lot of perspective as someone who has been through a number of chunks of the pipeline for data science and some of the experience that I've learned both from myself and also from colleagues as well as some of the work that Drew has mentioned working with a number of people at organizations like BioQuest to actually think about some of this stuff very seriously and put together frameworks for making data science more accessible. And this is a very positive talk. So I'm gonna be talking about barriers but I'm gonna be trying to help you see that this is stuff we can deal with. So where we're going here, I'm gonna do a brief introduction, get a few terminology things down, not because I think they're the ultimate definitions but they're the ones I'm using. We're gonna talk about what disability is and we're also going to talk about the question of why we should actually include more people like me because it's worth asking and being upfront about. And then we'll talk about both social and technical barriers to people with disabilities participating in data science and some summary thoughts. So some introduction. What is disability? Disability actually has a lot of different definitions depending on the context. The first one that you will encounter the most often probably is the very legal and medical model for disability. This is the verbiage you will see in most federal and state laws that are protecting against discrimination for instance or establishing eligibility for certain things and that's what this definition is useful for. And it's any physical or mental condition that substantially limits one or more daily life activities. That's a lot of stuff. So disability is not deaf, blind wheelchair user. It goes way beyond that and I think most of this room probably knows that already. The more broad model that doesn't focus as much on what is wrong with you, how do we fix you, what do we give you is this social definition that says that disability arises from the design of the environment around people, not their specific impairment or difference. And like I say, both these definitions do actually have utility. The first one again for protections and for establishing who's eligible for certain things. But the second definition is a lot more useful in the context of instruction and that's where I'm really coming from in this talk is talking about training in data science and a little bit on the recruitment side. So these are the definitions that I'm using for terms. Again, I don't wanna start a fight about definitions. This is just how I'm using it. And actually I've already learned from things at this conference that this first one universal design, I actually had an attendee be brave enough to come out and tell me that they feel like universal design actually excludes them which is really interesting to me and something that I didn't know. And it's because I think a lot of times this term gets used very specifically. It has a very physical definition. It was coined in the 1980 by an architect and the idea is designing an environment so that it is most usable and most accessible by all people. I would encourage us to take a broader definition for it and look at it more as it is the pinnacle of inclusion. It is the top of the mountain. If I'm truly designing universally, it shouldn't have that specific definition. It means this works for everybody. That is a big goal and you don't have to reach it in one step like we just heard in the previous presentation this morning. So I would encourage you to also think about inclusive design, not as a state. Universal design to me is a state of things. It is when everything has become universally designed. Inclusive design is how we get there. And inclusive design is a verb. It is the thing you do. It's how you climb the mountain. And accessibility is one measure of how good a job you're doing at inclusion. And I wanna highlight that yes, I am focusing on accessibility here. I doesn't mean I think it's the only important measuring stick. Finally, when I say accessibility in this talk, I'm actually using a very narrow definition and concept of it. I'm talking about it from the disability context. From the context of how do, can I, can a participant with a disability engage with content and the learning? I am not talking about availability. Okay, so with all that out of the way, why should we do this?  You want us. When you look at people, when you look at what recruiters for training programs and you look at people hiring in this field or looking for, they want creative solutions to come, people who can come up with creative solutions to complex problems. They want collaborators. They want people who can communicate and advocate effectively. This is what we do every day. We come up with complex work around, complex, excuse me, we come up with work arounds for complex problems. You have to be able to collaborate with people, otherwise you're not going to get what you need. You have to be able to work with people. You can't just make demands. You have to be a good collaborator if you've got a disability, especially if you know you have it, and we're going to talk about that in a minute. And finally, you have to be a good communicator and advocate. And in a day and age when we're all talking about needing more science advocacy, meeting people who can communicate about science across cultural boundaries, community boundaries, we're good at that. So another reason, another thing is we perceive the world differently. This is obvious to most people in this room. Different points of view are good. This is my because the law says you have to pull a point. Our representation is growing and you do need to accommodate. What I'm going to help you do today is figure out how you can minimize how often you actually have to do accommodation. It is the morally right thing to do. And finally, because, and again, we've already heard that this shouldn't be your only justification for doing things, but I think it's worth including that inclusive design and inclusive teaching practice actually helps everyone, a rising tide lifts all ships. So let's talk about some barriers and some ways to fix them and areas where I think that there's a lot of opportunity for improvement. So we're going to talk first about some social ones and I'm going to go through these pretty quickly because whoops. Because this audience is going to be pretty familiar with some of these, I think it's important to show common threads and also highlight differences where they arise. So here's a common one. Low expectations. This kills everything. This is a non-starter. And it's a hard nut for us as a community to crack because it starts at K-12 or ahead of K-12. If a person's parents, peers, teachers, mentors don't think that a particular career or a particular path is an option for them, then neither will they. We are a logical species sometimes. So the fixes for this are simply to remember, especially in the case of disability, but I think this is true across the board. A lowered expectation is not an accommodation, it's discrimination. And what you want to do instead is adjust your expectations. You may have to go sideways. They may have to complete a different task, demonstrate a different skill, something like that, to show you that they've accomplished your learning goals. But your learning goal, your expectation, remains the same. The path may be different. So this is a big one and I still get this a lot. As soon as my disabilities don't take my classes, I'll be happy to accommodate them when they show up. First of all, you're probably wrong. A lot of people with disabilities don't know they have them and they shouldn't necessarily have to. And a lot of people with disabilities may not tell you because there's stigma. They don't want to walk up and say, hi, I had PTSD. Okay, that's not going to be a comfortable thing to do. I probably would, but you guys know that by now. So the problem with this approach is that it creates extra work for you. This idea of accommodate later, accommodate when it comes up individually each time. It results in duplication of work, extra work for both you and the participant. And the participant doesn't get the same learning experience that their peers are getting because you are both scrambling. So the way to get around this, it's not super straightforward. It's just, I mean, it is kind of straightforward, which is to realize that the need for individual accommodation is never going away. I'm not going to say that. That does have to happen sometimes. But you can mitigate the amount, or minimize the amount of time you have to spend doing it. By designing inclusively, and yes, I promise some concrete suggestions for doing that are coming. Basically, this is my trash can social barrier slide because everything falls into it. Assumptions are a problem. The two biggest ones are where people hear that they've got to participate with particular disability and they start trying to jump to conclusions about, okay, blind person must need Braille. That kind of thing, assuming that you can predict what someone does or does not want, or can or cannot do, and that goes back to expectations, those are a problem. The other one is what I've stressed before, which is not everybody knows, they've got a disability. And so there's an assumption that you always do and that you know what you need. So to get around that, there are several different sort of strategies you can take. The biggest one to take home from this, on the fix this side, is focus on your learning goals and then work with what kind of outcomes need to happen. To mitigate the impact of other assumptions, realize that considering multiple possible disabilities and trying to design around them in your design phase is great, but you don't have to think of everything. Inclusive design doesn't mean come up with your full list of disabilities and then come up with accommodations for each one. It just means make it so that those are irrelevant. All right, so let's talk concrete things. What are some of the actual physical barriers to participation in the data science field? Coding, excuse me, computers, in and of themselves can be a problem. You don't, not everyone with a disability knows which operating systems, which features within those operating systems or which third party software works really well for them. So the fixes for this are too familiar. First of all, when you are designing instructional materials, try to be operating system agnostic. Try to make it not matter what system I run your tools on. And start familiarizing yourself with the accessibility stuff that's actually built in to most of the common operating systems. Here's the ease of access panel in Windows. It's so expansive, because Microsoft has done a decent enough job that I can't even show you the whole thing in one screenshot. And it's got built-in rudimentary screen reading capability and for those who don't know who a screen reader is, the idea is I walk up, take your monitor away, and you can run the computer because it's talking to you. They've got magnification tools, ways to adjust color schemes so that they're colorblind friendly, all sorts of good stuff. And Apple people, I haven't forgotten about you. Mac has been doing this since the early to mid 90s when they did some of their first GUIs. They're good at it. They actually know how to do this. And this is under the Apple menu in the preferences. If you search for it under your little spotlight thing, you'll find it too. So, these are third party options. And again, you can get familiar with these. Familiarize with yourself with them, learn how to use them. The top two there, JAWS and NVDA, those are fully supported screen readers that, fully supportive screen readers that can read literally with no monitor, like I said. NVDA is free and open access and the learning curve is not that steep. I have never used a screen reader and don't know how it works is no longer an excuse because it doesn't cost $1,000. There's other software up there, Cursewild and so on. These slides will be available later that can deal with students with print disabilities. The most common one of those you'll know is dyslexia for reading in documentation, having it read out loud, formatting it in a way that works, providing highlighting is that reads and so on.  Everyone can do data science if you are familiar with things that can help them. So now I'm going to go back here to the rest of the fixes, too far for this. And once you've done that familiarizing, set aside time in your training, in your workshop, in your course to actually tell everybody about it. You don't have to find this particular group of students that need to hear about it. Tell everyone, you don't know who you're going to help. You may have people who may not consider themselves to have a disability but are like, wait, I can make that screen more high contrast? That's great because I have a really bad stimulus for instance. Okay, web accessibility and application accessibility. This is a big one. Not all things are designed excessively. Inaccessibility takes many different forms. They can be completely incompatible with a screen reader. It can just land on it and say, I don't even know what this is. It can be just poor choice of colors. It can be very difficult to read but kind of pretty fonts. No comic sans. So, you know, and it could just be poor layout, poor user interface design. This is a problem for everybody. And that's something that I hope is coming through as a common threat. So, the way to try to sort of address this and work through it is to design courses, design trainings to actually be as fluid about which applications, which tools I use to complete them as possible. Now I totally understand that your whole training may be on a specific tool and that's fine but try to find areas where there is flexibility there so that people can use what works for them, what they have experience with and what they've set up for themselves. Definitely consider accessibility when you are designing things. Get help. If you just start Googling for accessible application development or accessible web design, you'll get a flood of resources. A lot of them are strictly for vision but there's a lot more coming out for working with participants with learning disabilities and so on. So, the other thing is, and we've talked about this at this conference, this goes back to the last talk as well. Advocate for this with your peers. Ask them to do the same thing. We're preaching to the choir to some extent here. Go home and talk to people. Make this an expectation. So, another barrier is coding in and of itself. This is central to a lot of data science stuff, right? You're gonna code. And it's not that people can't access computers. We've just talked about that. That's doable. It's actually sometimes the ethos and the way a language works in and of itself. And through you might need to get volume. But I have a video to show you what I'm talking about. Here we have a small block of code written in three different ways. In each case, it does the same thing, creates a list of numbers, loops over those numbers, prints each element with the phrase, the number is colon in front of it. Each of these work and the first is written in Perl. The second is written in Python with tabs to show indentation level. And the third is written in Python with spaces to show indentation level. Let's just read through these line by line with a screen reader as though we were proofreading them and see how they sound. Number this is the Perl version. Blank. My at list equals left per N, one comma two comma three comma four comma five right per N, semi. Blank. For each my dollar item left per N, at list right per N, left brace. Tab print quote the number is colon, dollar item backslash and quote semi. Right brace, blank. Number this is the Python version with tabs. Blank. List equals left bracket one comma two comma three comma four comma five right bracket. Blank. Def print numbers left per N, right per N, colon. Blank. Tab for element in list colon. Tab, tab print left per N, F tick the number is colon, left brace element right brace tick comma, and equals tick backslash and tick right per N. Blank. Print numbers left per N, right per N. Blank. Number this is the Python version with spaces. Blank. List equals left bracket one comma two comma three comma four comma five right bracket. Blank. Def print numbers left per N, right per N, colon. Blank. For element in list colon. Print left per N, F tick the number is colon, left brace element right brace tick comma, and equals tick backslash and tick right per N. Blank. Print numbers left for n, right for n. Blank. Blank. Okay. So the first version, Perl, we get a lot of verbosity. It could be a little bit overwhelming to hear all those different symbols, the left braces, the right braces, the semicolons, et cetera. But at least I know where I am in the code at all times. Once I've heard a left brace, I know I'm in a loop until I hear a right brace. Whenever I hear a semicolon, I know that the statement ahead of it is finished. Contrast that with Python, where in the first case with the tabs, it's a little more pleasant to listen to. There's a little bit less symbols being thrown around. But we have to be really careful to listen to how many tabs are at the front of each line to hear where the definition of the function starts, where the for loop starts, where the things that are supposed to happen in the for loop start, and so on. The third version is especially problematic because we actually didn't get any report of how many white spaces were in front of each of those lines because it uses spaces instead of tabs. Turns out that reading line by line isn't going to give you that with a screen reader. The only way to do it is to go up to the line and arrow over with the right arrow key, something like this. Print for element in list, space, space, f. So there was two in front of the f? Print left for space, space, space, p. And three in front of the p in print. So I know that print is under the for loop, which is how it should be. And I haven't made a mistake. But you can see how each of these presents differences that could present barriers. And this is how the ethos of a code and even just the way it's written can present potential barriers to people with disabilities. So the way we can get through some of that is to be code agnostic where we can. Let participants use the code that works for them to analyze the data that they can. Or present multiple types of code, show multiple ways to do things. Have multiple modes of instruction and multiple modes of measuring it. Allow people to pick what environments they use to write their code in. Maybe they want to use just a text editor. Maybe they want a full integrated development environment where they can run everything at once. Try to provide flexibility. Flexibility is another common thread. Let's talk a little bit about mathematical notation. Mathematical notation itself can be a barrier. And I'm not talking about math. I'm talking about how it's written. Screen readers and computers in general have trouble interpreting mathematical equations just as written because they are symbolic representations of abstract concepts and discipline matters. And even if you can get it read out loud to you, then it's going to read similar to the example you just saw with the code. It's not going to read the equation the way you and I would read it in sort of a paragraph form description. It's going to read it from left to right, top to bottom. And even if that isn't the case, let's say it can say it all perfectly. Do you want to learn calculus from an audio book? So what's the solution for this? Well, maybe it's Braille math if you're a blind student. Guess what? A lot of K-12 blind students don't get Braille math instruction unless someone pushes for it. And even in that case, if I can write it, can you read it? No. So we need ways to translate it. So how do we get around this? I think having alternative text descriptions in words of equations that you are providing to participants is a great idea because it isn't doing any work for them. But it does allow them to take that equation and render it in whatever way they want. And finally, I think we as a community could work to come up with better ways to represent this stuff and maybe even apply computer vision to taking these equations that we write down and actually interpreting them into natural language. I have colleagues that teach models to recognize proteins by pictures. I'm pretty sure we can teach them to read math. So lastly is data visualization. OK, the term is the first problem. Visualization. We need to get past that. And this is where Drew and I have talked a little bit about trying to get people to call it data sensation and work with different ways of representing data. The past several hundred years is two-dimensional graphical representation that we pass around to each other. This doesn't work anymore. This doesn't work for anybody, let alone people with disabilities. And so the remedies for it, I think, we've got several things. First of all, again, this flexibility issue. When you are providing data that you want participants to work with in a training, provide it multiple ways. Give them the nice graphical representation, ideally colorblind, friendly, provide a representation that's just straight black and white in just lines because that's easy to render into a tactile, touchable image that's raised lines. Provide the tabular version. Maybe somebody works better with that. I often do. Provide the raw data so that I can render it however I need it to work with it. And we need to explore as a community for ourselves and for broadening participation by people with disabilities of using machine learning, using augmented reality, audio feedback, haptic feedback, so that's anything that vibrates or does anything by touch, to actually allow all of us to explore our data in more rich and interactive ways. And that will help everyone. Here we have a simple chart. This is how I have to look at graphs. What comes from isn't particularly important. It's just some data exploration I was doing as part of my research a little while back. What is important is that already you have probably gotten the key features from this chart.  But here's how I have to look at this in order to read it. This is about six or seven X magnification. And before I do too much work visually, let's just at least see if the screen reader can help me out at all. Can I get a value for this bar? No. Can I get a label for the axis? No. And that's because this is just a picture. It's a ping, like we'd output from our Python or whatever your favorite analytical tool is. There's no metadata that the screen reader can use to tell me anything about this chart, except maybe a file name. So I'll work visually. And this process would be similar if a little faster with a tactile image. Start at the bottom left, and I'm going to go over and up. And what I'm seeing is that as things increase on the X axis, Y is jumping, and that that jumping sort of becomes less severe as we get to a certain point. But what is that in relationship to? What's going on with the axes themselves? So this is transfer cost with dnl equals 1. And up on the Y, I have the mean number of losses. So what I can say now is that as cost of transfer increases, the mean number of losses is jumping up until it gets to a point where it doesn't jump quite as severely. But what about this particular point right here where the jumps become less severe? What's this bar about? So I follow it down to the X axis, and it's at a transfer cost of 7. I remember what that axis label is. So I come back up here, and it's just a little bit over this line. So this line is at a mean number of losses of 100. And we're a little bit over that line. But what's the scales? Now I've got to find this line, OK? That's at 80. So let's call it 105, 110 is the mean number of losses when the transfer cost is 7. This is how I have to go through this graph and you get the point. This takes time. So at the very least, we need to recognize that students who have to access data in different ways and look at it differently are going to need to spend. OK. So the rest of this is just two slides with summary points. And because we're close on time, I'm not going to go through them because I've been trying to summarize as I go. The key points so that I really want to hit are that you don't have to be a superhero at this. You can do this slowly over time. But every little bit helps. We need to demand it of our colleagues. We need to really encourage our funders, our NGO partners, our professional organizations to actually start thinking about this and recognizing it and funding it. And focus on learning goals, not specific tasks, and how they're going to be completed. Inclusive design does not mean design individually for each person and try to come up with all the things that you could possibly run into and accommodate as you go. It means make accommodation unnecessary. And with that, I'll take some questions.


Daily Tech News show is made possible by its listeners thanks to all of you including Mike McLaughlin, Miss Music Teacher, and James C. Smith. Coming up on DTNS, why Amazon supporting EPUB is a big step is Spotify Island in Roblox, the metaverse, and the latest catch 22 in the chip shortage. DTNS starts now! This is the Daily Tech News for Tuesday, May 3rd, 2022 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. In Atlanta, Georgia, I'm Nika Montport. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chen. We have got good news, not as good news, chip shortage, but mostly good news. So let's start with a few tech things you should know. You may recall from previous episodes of DTNS that in December, the Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets, or NACM for short, ordered Apple to let dating apps use third-party payment systems, and Apple's been going back and forth about how to comply with that requirement. On March 27th, Apple said it would allow apps to either use a third-party system or Apple system, but not both. And it would require apps to warn users that Apple was no longer involved with a transaction if it indeed went to a third-party. Apple would also take a 27% cut of third-party transactions rather than the 30% it normally takes. And the NACM says, okay, that's an improvement, but they still consider the conditions unfair. So the Authority has fined Apple 50 million euros and plans to issue a new order to levy new fines. I'm sorry, folks. For months, Facebook has been sending us emails asking us to add our podcast to their list, and we just didn't get around to it. So this is probably our fault, but podcasters will no longer be able to add shows to Facebook as of this week, and the company will remove them entirely on June 3rd of this year. The Audio Hub and Soundbyte Services will close sometime in the coming weeks, but live audio rooms will continue by being folded into Facebook Live. A spokesperson said the move will help the company, quote, focus on the most meaningful experiences. What are you saying about podcasts there, Facebook? Meanwhile, in other social networking news, Twitter's rolling out a feature called Circle that lets you choose a subset of people who can see a particular post. You can choose up to 150 people to be in your circle, kind of similar to Instagram's close friends. Or like if Google Plus only had one circle. Or was a thing. And was still a thing. I liked Google Plus. I got no beef with Google Plus. Apple issued a clarification around its effort to remove outdated apps. The company had sent emails to some developers requiring them to update apps in 30 days or face removal. There were some uproar, of course, in the development community, unsurprisingly. Now Apple has clarified that apps selected for such removal have gone more than three years without updates and had not been downloaded at all or extremely few times during a rolling 12 month period.  Apple also extended the timeframe from 30 days to 90 days for a developer to update an app before it gets removed. DTNS listener Motang has been submitting great links to our subreddit for years and this morning was no exception with the news from G-Hacks.net that a Thunderbird mobile application is coming. Yep, the email client, Thunderbird Product and Business Development Manager Ryan Lee Sypes said on Twitter that a Thunderbird mobile app is on the way, did not give a date but did reference an APK, indicating that at the very least you're getting an Android version and maybe even iOS. Razer announced its next version of the Blade 15 laptop will be the first laptop to come with the OLED QHD 240 Hz display. Now previously you could get a 240 Hz LCD display or a 4K display, not one that includes both. Now you get the refresh rate and 4K OLED. The 15.6 inch display covers the entire DCI P3 color gamut has one millisecond response time and 400 nits of brightness. For those who don't follow those specs, it will look amazing. It will have almost no lag. This is a nice monitor. The new Razer Blade 15 goes on sale in Q4 of this year for $3,499.99. All right, let's talk some eBooks. Let's do it. Okay, so just kind of to set us up here, Tom. Goodeereader.com noticed that several outlets had picked up a story that Amazon will now support ePub. Now, if you're familiar and you're an eReader person, you might know a lot about how Amazon has not supported ePub in the past, but what's going on here?  If you want the backstory ePub launched in 2007, it's the primary technical standard for the International Digital Publishing Forum and has been supported for years by Sony, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, etc. But Amazon's Kindle, which is by far the most popular eReader out there, has never worked with the ePub standard. To get an ePub on your Kindle, you had to use third-party software. Most people use Caliber and you convert it to Amazon's proprietary AZW3 file, which is an Amazon version of Bobi, and then you would send it to your Kindle to read that way. This seems a way to make it just difficult enough to get books from other stores that you'll just keep shopping for eBooks on Amazon. I think that's a way people always thought about it. So what has prompted Amazon's change, you think? Amazon announced it's going to start doing the conversion for you, which is very helpful. It isn't as helpful as supporting ePub directly on the Kindle, which would be the most helpful thing, but at least you won't have to do the conversion yourself and it looks like it already works. You'll need to send Kindle, use the Send to Kindle email address, and then you can just email a DRM-free ePub. It can't handle DRM, but if you've got a DRM-free ePub, which you can get a lot of booksellers out there, you send that as an attachment to Amazon's, again, to your Send to Kindle email address, and then Amazon will convert it to a KF8 file, which is their own version of an ePub file, and add it to your Kindle. Later this year, the Send to Kindle PC and Mac apps, as well as the Send to Kindle Chrome plugin, will also add ePub support, so far just the email address is working, though. So if converting ePubs means you can't pull them off of the Kindle, you've got other readers, but the remarkable too, for example, is something that only supports DRM-free ePub formats in order to read books, although there are workarounds. I talked about that on my Live With It segment on the remarkable too, but what happens with these particular files in the Amazon ecosystem? Yeah, this is not just Amazon locking you in. Kobo does a similar thing. It turns ePubs into what it calls K ePubs for Kobo. That's because Kobo readers, the actual devices, use an SQLite database to manage books, and ePubs generally work with a different kind of database system. So the conversion helps them do things like highlight words, support multiple bookmarks, add annotations, things that the Kobo is able to do that aren't standard in the ePub. Amazon's likely making the conversion for similar reasons. However, Kobo will support an ePub. It just doesn't have all the features. It just wants to convert the ePubs it sells to K ePubs. Amazon is not giving you that choice. You have to convert it if you want to use it on a Kindle. So as far as this news, good news, I am a Kindle owner. The ePub thing was always like, hmm, it makes tinkering around with a different non-Kindle eReader a lot more fun for me than what Amazon is locking me into. So is the company changing anything else? Yes. Send to Kindle supports lots of other formats already, PDF, Word, et cetera. But one format it supports is going away, Moby. Moby doesn't support all the features that Amazon wants it to, which is weird because Moby's owned by Amazon and is the basis for the AZW3 file format. But if you have a Moby book on your Kindle, it'll stay there. It'll still work. You just won't be able to add new Mobies after a certain point later this year that they haven't said yet. Well, I for one welcome this change. I mean, I've got a library card, a digital library card. I support my local library and I have been able to using Calibra. I've been able to get various EPUB books onto my remarkable, but not my Kindle. And I just thought, ah, it's just, it's just impossible. So this sounds like it might be a little fancy footwork for some folks, but, but it is certainly opening up things more than, you know, even if you don't have a library card, it just, it opens things up more for all of us. This is a little bit out of my depth because I don't use Kindle. I do use my iPad for books, but it sounds like this is a way to, I guess, keep folks on Kindle, but make it a little bit easier without them, you know, possibly with Amazon still getting most of the profits. I know you mentioned that they are making it just a little bit less difficult for to keep people on use on the platform. So I think that maybe they're kind of hedging their bets to keep people engaged with Kindle rather than, you know, maybe trying something else. So I don't know if that's a huge selling point for Kindle users or not. Do you use iBooks on your tablet or do you use Kindle's app? iBooks. iBooks, yeah, okay. I think what's going on here is Apple bought mobile books or mobile pocketbooks. I can't remember the exact name and that's how they got control of Moby. And I think they were trying to make Moby supplant EPUB. And they tried for 15 years and it didn't work. And they've gotten to the point where the Moby standard itself just isn't catching on, isn't worth continuing to pour money into developing. So they are finally throwing in the towel and saying, all right, fine, we'll support EPUB since we can't support Moby. It seems like the point was we're going to sunset support for Moby. Yeah. So we'll add support for EPUB since we're not going to support Moby because you could get books from third-party sellers in Moby. And that was Amazon's point before. It's like you could still get them at third-party sellers. If they're going to get rid of Moby, then you couldn't at that point. So they kind of, if they were going to say, well, we're not being totally dominant, they kind of had to open up and support EPUB, at least in the manner that they are. Well, if we ever get to a point in history when we think, when did the metaverse begin in actuality? We might remember a moment like this. Spotify announcing that Spotify Island is coming to Roblox.  What is Roblox? What's happening here? Roblox is an open world platform where users can create and play games. Very popular with the younger set of folks, but people of all ages enjoy it. Free to play makes money off in-game purchases using its in-platform currency called Robux. Get it? Because it's Roblox. Spotify Island, which is a Spotify project, obviously, is going to be a place inside Roblox within it where artists and fans can play games, also get exclusive content, and also buy artist merchandise. You know, an artist that would be popular on Spotify, for example. There's also a new playlist on Spotify called Spotify Island that's available to stream. So you can, I don't know, get familiar with some of the music that you might hear inside the experience. The new Roblox area features a concert stage. No performances have been announced yet, but that's probably forthcoming. And you might recall Fortnite has been hosting concerts since 2020, and last year Roblox partnered with Sony Music to bring more artists to the platform. So this whole metaverse thing has been in the works for a little bit. The merchants will get in-game items that can either be used in other parts of Roblox and also special artist merchandise. Artists, if they're participating, will get to keep Spotify's cut of the sales minus the cut that Roblox is going to get. Multiple themed islands will make up the area, so it's kind of like Spotify Island's plural. It's not just one island, it's several. Spotify Island destination, though, in Roblox will actually consist of a central mainland surrounded by a collection of themed islands so players can explore and interact by walking or running or jumping or touching things, picking up various objects. The worlds themselves feature a color palette centered around Spotify's shades of greens and oranges and purples mixed in. It's probably going to feel pretty familiar, especially if you're already a Spotify user. Fans can also create music at a virtual beatmaker station powered by Spotify's soundtrack.  K-Park will be the first themed island featuring Stray Kids and also Soon Me. And Spotify Island includes a stage with a big screen behind that one would think would be meant for virtual concerts that they'd like to do in the future. The company didn't provide any details on that, but based on what has worked in the past for other companies, one would think that would be the case. And if you haven't already, you can try out the experience at Roblox.com. I did just that. I jumped in and I was like Stray Kids, huh? You got some K-POP in there. All right, let me check this out. I could not find the themed island, so I don't know if that's user error probably is. But it was dead simple to install Roblox and get in and start playing. It's a very simple game. And it was kind of fun, you know, running around collecting music notes and everything. It's still very Roblox, though. Nika, I know you have family members, younger family members that use Roblox. It's not particularly a sophisticated adult feeling world, right? Yeah, that's the interesting thing is I'm not sure it'll be interesting to see how this all kind of paints out because typically Roblox, this, you know, virtual space, Fortnite all is typically kind of catered towards the younger set. So it'll be interesting to see how having multi-generational folks in one type of environment is going to play out. That seems to be, you know, a fairly interesting concept, but yeah, he's 10 and he's in that world and, you know, having a good time as a kid. So it'll be interesting to see how it translates between the age groups as far as usability because the way a 10-year-old would use, you know, this virtual space I would think would be different for someone, say, maybe 20 or 25 or even a teenager, maybe 15 or 16. So it'll be interesting to see how they adjust this Spotify island to accommodate the different types of users that they'll have in the space. Yeah, this is, I feel like Roblox, if it does end up being some hub of the metaverse or some area of the metaverse, it ends up growing with its audience, right? The audience that is either under 10 or in its teens eventually grows up and becomes adults that still like it, you know, and the platform might grow with them. This is obviously aimed at the younger side of Spotify's audience. It's not aimed at me, but it's establishing that, you know, hey, here's a place, if you like music, where you can integrate your Spotify with music. And even if you're 18, I could see you saying like, oh, okay, I'm too old for all of Roblox, but this part's kind of cool. Yeah, I mean, it depends on the artist, right? You know, that'll be a big part of whether or not. Jay Park and Morani, not just Stray Kids. Yeah, I mean, I feel like I could get behind something like this if it was a concert I really wanted to watch. Yeah, especially on the concert series part, I could see, you know, that maybe being the divider depending on who the artist is that's on the main stage, the type of, I guess, demographics that you would get. So who coming to Roblox would cause you to be like tempted to install and go watch them? Beyonce. Beyonce? Oh, yeah. Yeah, okay, that's a good one. I didn't want to fool you right for the top. Yeah, yeah. The whole production space. Nika's like, hmm, have you heard of Beyonce? I'm going straight to the top. I'm not doing any interviews yet. No, that's good. Yeah, that's, I can't top it. Can't top it. All right, Beyonce, you've heard Nika's call, please. Yeah, let's get on the Spotify Island, everybody. Folks, maybe we could get Beyonce on the show, doubtful, but do you have any ideas about hosts and guests from other podcasts and shows that we could have on this show? Let us know. We're looking for ideas. Check out our guest survey and put in your recommendations. You can get there at Daily Tech News Show dot com slash survey. Go check it out. The chip shortage. Oh, the chip shortage, Sarah. Oh gosh, I know, I know. Instead of lamenting what we've all been, you know, our long suffering nightmare for some years. You know, maybe, maybe there is a little bit of, I'm sorry, my, my watch is calling me. Maybe, maybe there's a little good news to come. Chip shortage. What are we in our third year now, more or less, it's reached a bit of a catch 22. What is happening, Tom, that is delaying the end of this nonsense? Yeah, one way to end the chip shortage would be to increase capacity to make chips. So we've covered a lot of efforts to do just that here on the show. TSMC, Intel all have big plans to make chips. More than 90 chip factories are expected to start production globally between now and 2024. But to make more chips, of course, you need the equipment to make the chips and chip making equipment. It turns out uses chips and you see where this is going, don't you? If there's a chip shortage, you can't make enough chip making machines that would help you get out of the chip shortage because you can't get the chips to make the chip making machines. The timeframe on chip making machines has stretched from a few months to two to three years right now when you order a new machine. For example, a chip testing machine which just checks newly manufactured chip functions, that's a key part of chip manufacturing, requires 80 specialist chips. However, if you get those 80 chips, one machine can play a part in making 320,000 chips a year, many of which could be used in making chip tests, making machines. So, you know, if you get those 80, you can start cranking out a lot more. Okay, so if someone's like, huh, never really thought about the fact that chip making machines were needed to make chips and those chips that would end up, you know, in my iPhone, for example, would be that chip that needs another chip to make the chip. So, couldn't we just prioritize making the chips needed for chip making first and kind of get through this bottleneck? Yeah, chip makers have asked for just that and in some cases are getting it. Microchip Technologies CEO told the Wall Street Journal that it is treating chip equipment suppliers with priority the way it once treated medical device manufacturers with priority in the early days of the pandemic saying, look, special situation, we're going to change the way we do business here. So, okay, is that the only thing that is keeping the shortage going? Do we have other things that we need to consider? Even if we just got all the chip making machines priority, the shortage is also exacerbated by disruptions in supply. We've talked about that before, the chemicals and substrates you need to make the chips come from parts of the world that are in war right now. And just the supply chain in general is disrupted. There are also challenges finding enough workers to staff your new factories, not to mention demand keeps growing. Chip industry sales past $500 billion last year and are expected to almost double by the end of the 2020s, even with inflation and possible recession. The increase in smart devices, the increase in industrial automation and electric vehicles is expected to keep demand for things that need chips still pretty strong. Susquehanna financial group estimated that lead times on chips averaged more than six months in April. New factories are coming only this year that produced the older chips that caused initial shortages for automakers. So good news there, the chip shortage in vehicles might start to ease up, but that will not ease the shortage for cutting edge chips that has developed in the meantime. So it sounds like we're not getting out of this anytime soon. No, not for a couple more years. You know, listen, I bought a new iPhone last week. I had to. My other iPhone, anybody who listens to DTS knows what happened to it. But you know, I mean, chip shortage in the respect of me needing a particular device that was available to me, I am not touched at all. Nika, have you found chip shortages affecting your life? Not directly, but I do work for a company that uses lots of chips. So I, like I said, it hasn't impacted me directly but indirectly. For sure, I can see we're not just, you know, the lack of materials but then when you throw in the other things such as, you know, you need manpower need the chips to machines to make the chips that type of cycle and then, you know, materials needed. So I see it as something that may not directly affect me right now. But in the long term, especially with the expectation that this chip shortage is going to extend another couple of years. Who knows, I think at some point it's all really going to have a direct impact to our everyday lives. So it's unfortunate. I don't know what the remedy is, but it's, you know, results of where we are right now. So it's, I don't know. I don't know what the solution is. It doesn't look like anybody else knows the solution is either. It's a complex problem. And, you know, prioritizing the chip making will at least keep that from spiraling and extended it more. But then you just got to get the factories online. You've got to, you know, bring society back enough that that workers can move around enough to get the jobs and you can train up the skilled workers and hiring practices need to open up to people who are certified, not just people with college degrees. A lot of stuff we've been talking about on the show needs to happen. So the pieces are there. It's just going to take time. Speaking of time, it's time again for Tekin Wall Black where Nika Monford shines the light on a black technology leader you might not have heard of, but maybe you should have and maybe has directly impacted your life. So Nika, who are we highlighting that today? Today in Tekin Wall Black, we are highlighting Kunlei Olu Kutun. And, you know, it's very interesting conversation that we just had about chips. This guy is one of the folks who is foundational type innovator. He started as a professor in cadence design systems at Stanford in their electrical engineering department. He was the leader of the Stanford hydro chip multiprocessor research project that led to the first multiprocessor chips with support for thread level speculation. So yeah, thank you for threads. That's a good one. Yes, yep, yep. And the next thing, you know, after he led that team, he ended up founding a company called Afra Web Systems. And this particular company, again, in that chip domain, they built high throughput low power server processors for IP traffic. And this pretty much set up the next generation of IP access infrastructure. And it was so popular it made billions of dollars that in 2002, it was acquired by Sun Microsystems. So as this company was acquired by Sun Microsystems, of course, he made the transition over to Sun as well. While he was there, he was the chief architect behind the ultra spark T one processor, which if you don't know is a multi core multi threaded multi microprocessor design tongue tied there. And it was primarily used in the Niagara chip. And it's one of those things where again, the kind of the theme of this year's taking while black has been foundational innovators. And of course, that's obviously he's in that space, and not to you know, straight too far, he again founded another company along with the co founder, Samba Nova Systems, again, next generation computing platform for power machine learning and data analytics. So he kind of transitioned out of the chip space which he pretty much kind of been the innovator in that space. And you know, as I think many of us already know machine learning AI is pretty much top billing in our tech space. He went on to find found a company that pretty much focuses on that. Today he is back at Stanford, and he is the leader of the pervasive parallel lab, which essentially is is a laboratory that focuses on machine learning AI, and, you know, how that works into our society, not just on the technical aspect, but also in the bias and ethics realm as well because there's no AI machine learning, it can easily teeter on some bad ethics if you aren't, you know, one of those people who are focused on all aspects of of AI so he really has been, you know, a leader, innovator in, you know, multi core multi threaded chip multi processor as well as leading into the AI machine learning space. Yes, tons of yes tons of, you know, honors he's fellows at ACM I triple E has 12 patents written more than 150 scientific papers written to books so he is definitely one of our foundational leaders in the space of chip creation and AI going forward so pretty cool lots of work done in the space and innovation so you know, thanks to him, we have some multi threaded processors. We had the, we had some web servers for tech TV calm way back in the day that use those ultra spark T ones they they were they were nifty they were interesting designs and being a and working on that problem of, of making sure your training data set matches the population that your algorithm is going to serve. That's a huge one so. Yeah. Man, what a career. Thank you for for for highlighting that for us cool stuff. For sure. All right, let's check out the mailbag Sarah. Mark wrote in with some thoughts about what the new Twitter might be if it changes at all. Mark was saying, I was wondering if Elon plans to split Twitter into two pieces, for example, the hose, and then interfaces. The hose Mark says would be treated like a utility, it would charge as such, like any other communication utility not over the public airways. It would be treated as a common carrier, mostly free of moderation. The interfaces portion would be open to whoever would like to contribute to the hose, and also to moderate it. This could be a rich third party ecosystem of adding to and reading from the hose. Mark says this would free the host purse a portion of Twitter from the moderation conundrum and spread that over multiple interfaces that could cater to various groups, interests, countries, etc. Yeah, I, I don't care who does it. I like this idea. In fact, mastodon kind of does this. And, and the only knock on mastodon is that they do it in a way that is a little more complicated for people to wrap their heads around. And then that is easy for for a lot of people to adopt.  I got on mastodon, but a lot of people find it a little more daunting. So, so making that system work easily where you can say, hey, we you decide which moderation plan works for you and then use that version and Twitter is just providing the like, like you say the fire hose of data. I feel like that's an interesting idea, especially if you make sure you get rid of bots and all that other stuff that are promised. I don't know. This is this is good, Mark. I like this. I like the direction you're thinking anyway. Yeah. Thank you, Mark for the email. And if you have questions, comments or ideas, you can always send them to us feedback at daily tech news show dot com. Also big thanks to you, Nika Monford for being with us today. And let folks know where they can keep up with all that you do. You can pretty much find me anywhere on social media. I am at tech savvy diva everywhere. You can also head on over to the snobby west cast dot com for our podcast, get latest episodes. And if you want to get a little extra, you can join our Patreon at patreon.com slab slash snobby west where you can watch our show live, but our show is produced and published every Friday. Excellent. Well, thanks for being with us today. Always good stuff. Thanks for thanks for bringing the knowledge. Thanks also to, of course, thanks also to a few brand new bosses that we got. We are on a roll in May y'all. Lee Bridget, Luke and Rodney are all our new patrons. Thank you, Lee. Thank you, Bridget. Thank you, Luke and thanks Rodney. The four hopes people of our Patri apocalypse. What's. I was trying to do four horsemen of the apocalypse, but it's really kind of, you know, daunting. Hope people. I was like, yeah, Lee Bridget, Luke and Rodney. We'll just call you Lee Bridget, Luke and Rodney. Thank you. Thank you. New hope. Yeah. There you go. Reminder there's a longer version of the show. It's called Good Day Internet. It rolls right through right after DTNS and it is available at patreon.com slash DTNS. Reminder, on this show, we are live Monday through Friday, 4pm Eastern, 2100 UTC. Find out more at DailyTechNewShow.com slash live. Join us if you can. We'd love to have you. We'll be back to it all tomorrow with Scott Johnson. Talk to you soon.


There are so many Persian-American Canadians that want to see Iran bombed and lose. It is so confusing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've had conversations with them over the decades, right? They're low IQ, they're idiots, right? And the only reason, like for example, in every nation you can find traitors to that nation, every nation, every culture, every peoples you will find traitors to those peoples, right? There were Jews helping the Nazis commit genocide on Jews during World War II. There were Armenians helping the Turks commit genocide on Armenians during World War I. There are Arabs helping Israel commit genocide on Palestinians, right? In every, throughout history, you will find traitors to your nations, right? Many of the Iranians that, because there's an Iranian sect, fanatics that were banished from Iran, their cults, their puppets of Israel in the United States and they were expelled from Iran and many of them ended up in Iraq, they have a base in Iraq, right? And some of them came out to the Western world, right? It's the same thing that you saw with United States invaded Iraq. I had a conversation with the Iranian when the United States invaded Iraq. We're sitting on a table in a bar, right, a local hangout. And the guy turned to me and said, oh, United States should do to Iran what they've done to Iraq, man. There was like eight of us on the table.   People are like, why is Chichu getting so pissed? Three years later, three years later, he came up to me. I hadn't seen him for a long time, came up to me and said, hi, Chichu, how are you doing? I said, I know you. I go, you're the guy that you wanted the United States to do to Iran what they did to Iraq. And he goes, no, no, no, I didn't say that. I go, you're that guy, right? He goes, yeah, I was wrong. I'm sorry.   It's not enough to say you're wrong, right? You need to make amends, right? Admitting that you've done something on that level or supported something on that level, it's not enough to say, I'm sorry, I was wrong. It doesn't cut it. You have to make amends. So for example, right now 90% of Israelis support genocide on Gaza. Support 100% genociding Gazans, genociding Palestine, right? When this is all settled, some of them were realized, holy fuck, we were committing genocide. We're as bad as the Nazis, right? They will, they will. Okay, trust me, they will, right? But it's not enough for them to come on and say, I'm sorry, I, we were mistaken. Not enough, not enough, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And you can forgive them when they say, I'm sorry if they sincerely mean it, right? But you can't let them off the hook.  But you got to make amends, right? Maybe for two decades, every single one of them that supported genocide needs to go work in Gaza, building back people's homes, right? With their hands, right? Maybe that's what it'll take. Maybe they'll have to commit to generations, couple of generations of their family rebuilding Palestinian homes. Maybe that's what it'll take. It's not enough to say sorry when you're committed atrocities or supported atrocities. It's not enough. You have to make amends, you have to make amends. Okay.


Welcome happy Friday. It's another episode of the nonprofit show today is ask and answer and you know what that means fundraising Academy at National University is here to nerd out with us. So today we have an amazing guest she's been on before Adriana O'Donnell, who's also a CFRE which means certified fundraising executive. She is director of philanthropy at San Ysidro Health and I'm going to ask you to say all of this over again. Also a trainer at fundraising Academy welcome. Thank you for having me this morning. Happy Friday. Happy November. I can't believe that we're here. So again, my name is Adriana O'Donnell. My pronouns are she her hers and director philanthropy at San Ysidro Health here in San Diego, and I'm proud to be here representing the fundraising Academy and to answer these questions as best as I can. Well, thank you we're thrilled to have you back before we jump into this conversation I know we talked about this in the green room chatter, but tell our viewers and our listeners. What today is where you are because you're in San Diego. Today is a very special day for us it's our national philanthropy day celebration for San Diego. We're expecting 800 people from all over the county to celebrate in community. You know recognizing our donors are supporters everyone that makes San Diego runs and honors our missions. It's our first one since 2019 so the excitement is in the air, you know, that's where I'm heading next. I can feel the excitement from here so I'm really, really glad to have you part of today's conversation. Hey before we jump into our conversation I want to remind our viewers and listeners. I'm Andrea at ransom your nonprofit nerd also CEO of the Raven group. And again just so thrilled to have our guest here today to nerd out over these questions we reserve all of your questions or viewers or listeners, as well as our social media We receive a lot of questions in that platform as well. We save them for Fridays or I always say that it's our Friday because we're going to have some fun. But before we jump into the questions. We want to send some gratitude to our presenting sponsors that keep the show going and growing we're marching towards 700 episodes. As Julia thought this would be a two week stint and we're coming up on actually it'll be our fourth year. So we're just, we're just moving and grooving, but thank you to Bloomerang American nonprofit Academy fundraising Academy at National University. I'm Andrea Harris, your part time controller staffing boutique nonprofit thought leader and nonprofit nerd. If you haven't checked these companies out.  Your mission is your mission so I do encourage you to surely check them out. And he as I mentioned 700 episodes, you know where to find us by now, Roku, YouTube, Amazon Fire TV, as well as Vimeo so if you have a smart TV which I think most of us do sometimes I think my TV smarter than me. Just say the nonprofit show and we pull up on your, your TV there as well as your podcast so you can listen to the nonprofit show also wherever you stream your podcast. So go ahead and queue us up on those. Download us like us review us thumbs up all that good stuff and you know really looking forward to to continuing the service and to be of service so it's been a lot of fun and I'm glad to have you also in the hot seat Adriana thank you. Yeah, happy to be here. Well the way this rolls for again most of you probably already know this the fry a ask and answer it again thank you to Fundraising Academy at National University for underwriting this for us. I'm going to read the questions allow. I'm going to ask you Adriana to answer them, and then I might say yes and to some of them depending on on what they are. So our first one actually comes from your community, Samantha might be celebrating with you today for National Philanthropy Day in San Diego. Samantha wants to know, we have a similar name as a nonprofit in another state. And we've actually been dealing with some issues lately. We have had a couple of donors mix up our organization with this other one, and it's created some big headaches, as you can imagine. Do you have any suggestions. Yes, I do. Well, I really feel that you need to consider your name. And I think maybe the easiest suggestion I have is to add your location. You know, like sunny Seattle health obviously it says where we are, but if you are XYZ nonprofit in Phoenix, or of, you know, San Diego County. I think that that would be helpful to donors to differentiate where you are located. The other is perhaps consider a tagline. Your permissions are a bit different, and that's another way to differentiate it. Your organization without having to go through the legal process of changing your name. And then also, when your donors are considering donating to you if they're not doing it, you know, person to person if they're doing it through your website, then maybe considering adding exactly what impact. Their donation is having on your mission, where you're located, like another safeguard. And then obviously probably the hardest thing is to consider your name and if it really truly represents what you need it to represent for your mission, and then have that conversation with your leadership and board and perhaps, you know, it's an opportunity to think outside of your current name. You gave some really great solutions, I feel like they're very like basic and I love that because it speaks to how simple these solutions can be. Oftentimes that I'm just as guilty, I tend to overthink what the answer needs to be, you know, how many humane societies are there in our country. There's a lot right but humane society of San Diego humane society of Phoenix humane society of Fort Lauderdale. That is a great example. I started my career in chambers of commerce with C six, none of them are related right like they're not under their same umbrella. They're all collaborative, but if you go to a greater Columbia Chamber of Commerce that's very different than you know the Greenwood Chamber of Commerce. And so, I think there are a lot of names and that's that can be tricky in fact Adriana. I was just looking at at a website for an adaptability organization so they help provide sports outdoor sports for individuals with, you know, disabilities, physical disabilities. And when I first looked them up I pulled up one in Colorado, and I was like, wow, look at this it's super cool. Well I wasn't looking at the right site. Right, and then I was like, wait, I don't. This does not look like our area, you know, like our geographic area. So, it's easy to happen right I think it's really easy, but your solutions are so simple and I think it really speaks to the point that we don't ever think it I love love love your tagline right like let's make sure that we put that tagline in there so that if someone does think of us as another organization, we can, you know, clarify that pretty quickly so great solutions to that. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. And maybe you'll see Samantha today at lunch. I do, and I hope this is helpful. Yeah, I know this is fantastic and definitely something something to consider. So let's move to name withheld now if Julia was here she loves these name withhelds, and also city withheld so this is a double using. We have a new director of marketing, and they want to move all of our communications to impact versus emotion. I'm on the fundraising team, and I think this is a huge mistake. Help. We see the white flag waving right so okay director of marketing, they want to move all their comms to impact. I guess narrative, as opposed to emotional narrative that's that's how I'm reading it. What say you Adriana. Well, I have a question back, and you know we did discuss this earlier and why, why can't we do both. So I really feel like this is a matter of being able to communicate very clearly with your marketing team with your new director of marketing, and sharing with them, you know, your, your history and donations and how people react whether this is for a direct mail whether this is for your annual report impact matters.  That's quite large. But you know when you're looking at numbers you also have to humanize it, or else it's just numbers. So emotion. It matters for donors individual donors corporate donors matters. So being able to marry both of them is something that that should happen for your organization I think that puts your organization in the best light. I encourage communication. I encourage, you know, being very intentional about messaging. And I think that at the end of the day your director of marketing and you are working towards the same goal, raising awareness and support for your organization. So I think it's all about collaborating, communicating. And I hope that, you know, you can do both because that's how it should be in my humble opinion. I love your win win solution. I'm all for win win and and my response is, is the same. Why can't we do both when we think of storytelling, right and we think of impact storytelling emotional storytelling. We find the success is in the blending right it's blending all of the ways of storytelling. You know we also have some super accounting nerds that join us, you know, from time to time. They talk about data visualization when it comes to numbers and their storytelling in statistics right and so I really think name withheld city withheld. It's a beautiful blend of all of these components to really tell that emotion, perhaps, you know, with that impact and those stats and, and there's so many ways to blend that I started my career Adriana as a grant writer. There, I was, I was taught in that process that you're blending right the data, the stats the facts into the emotional heartstrings the person you're humanizing this right so we can see that impact from the human perspective and that's always where I stand is how we encapsulate the entire package and the entire picture, so that it does speak to all of these elements so that's, that's what I'd like to build on to your answer. And if I may just add one more thing. I feel sometimes that we need to, you know, really connect with our colleagues. So, if I can suggest, take them out to coffee, you know, bread with them to talk to them about your goals. And, and also, you know, how you'd like to communicate for your organization I think that that will go a long way as well. Great point. Yeah, great point that return on relationship is always so good and you know, having that that direct open conversation because you're right, we're all working towards the same goal. So how do we get there and develop those those win-win so we wish you the best we hope that these answers help to resolve what you're working towards. So we're moving over to Detroit, our friend Zach over there. We are reworking our volunteer policies, and we're questioning if we should have an age limit. For example, we have a lot of teens who come and serve, but one of our board members thinks this is a liability, because they are not of legal age. Good question Zach, Adriana. First of all, I want to say hello to Detroit.  And I feel that depending on what it is that you're asking your volunteers to do, you know, is it, I guess my question back to Zach is it isn't problematic right now to have teenagers come and help you. And if it hasn't been, but you're worried about there being a situation where it could be a liability, then perhaps consider a chaperone program. If it's with a high school or a middle school, perhaps that high school or middle school can help in that regards. But I know that I can speak for my organization and for things that are not clinical. Then we do welcome and appreciate volunteers that are able to carry out the duties that we're asking of them, and their parents do sign off on a permission slip if you will, to help support us that day or in that particular event. So I hope that that is helpful in a way. But again, volunteers, it's like that resource that's really hard to add a dollar value to, but it's so invaluable because you're essentially growing your supporters and your donors and having them so close to your mission from an early age. So I would hope that, you know, that's encouraged. Yeah, you're building a fantastic pipeline. You know, there are so many organizations in our country and I love this, they come from a place of civic engagement national charity, charity league is the one that I had at my tip of my tongue obviously I tripped over that but National charity league. And then there's so many schools that also require their students to participate in community engagement at some level. And I think there's a wonderful opportunity to do this, I talk often about my son. He's 12, and he's been very involved in the community at all ages and stages of his life right. I love Adriana that you mentioned that's chaperone project or are perhaps you know if it's not their parent, it's their school advisor. It's someone that's coming in, you know, but I also think when it comes to photography and maybe Zach this is where your board members coming, you know, it comes to the legalities within the liability.  What are the things that we need to make sure that we can daughter eyes and cross our T's like, you know, a photography policy, which means we perhaps do have to, you know, have a have a parent sign off on the use of that. So I hear you and I always come from a place also of like, what's, what's allowed, because we're a very litigious community. So let's do look at our policy and let's find out. Okay, what is acceptable and let's work our processes to, you know, include that. I'll be clear with you, Adriana, let's get them involved early and often because that's building a future pipeline of supporters. Yeah, so. So yeah, have fun Zach I hope that that that helps to answer and I'm curious Adriana, do you have a Detroit connection. I don't I just like it. I just want to say hi to Detroit. Detroit from San Diego. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, Maria in Miami, Florida sends in this question. I recently watched an episode of the nonprofit show where you discuss the issue of cybersecurity. The guest was amazing and cybersecurity insurance was specifically just discussed. Do you know the approximate cost of this type of specialized insurance. Well, this one, this question here really. So, I full disclosure, as far as technology and cybersecurity at our organization, we do have a still team of it experts that that do this work for us because we are providing healthcare services, which comes with our own regulations. So, I know that it is very important it's something that we take very seriously, and it's just built into our operations the way that we do our business. So, I would say, giving you that that information and from my personal perspective I would say, I don't have an answer for how much it would cost because I have not done the research. But I would encourage you to talk to your network. Look at your local societies, whether it's associations fundraising professionals, or others, and ask the question, Hey, does anyone have a cyber cybersecurity insurance and how does it work. I feel like that's the also an, you know, advice for Zach and Detroit as well. Use them as resources. Who are they using. Do they have any recommendations are they similar to your organization. Are you looking at the same type of services, and then also do research on, you know, the internet and reach out to highly recommended insurance options and connect. Yeah, absolutely. And thank you, because this was a huge week for us nonprofit Power Week, we talked all about cybersecurity, I thought it was going to be a yawn fast but it wasn't. We, it was so enlightening I had no idea that there was a specialized insurance for cybersecurity, because like you Adriana, I am a fundraising person right and so I'm not an IT person so much so that anytime I get an error message message on my technology I panic. But I will call out our executive producer Kevin pace who did some personal research on this and again as you said Adriana, you know, go to your peers, do a quick Google search. And what Kevin pace pulled up was approximately $1,500. Now that depends on your organization, the size like, you know, there's always different kind of all a cart options that you can check. But what Kevin found again Kevin's our executive producer, it was approximately $1,500 for the specialized insurance. Now, the other thing we talk about often is the cost of a cybersecurity attack and let me just tell you the cost comparison. Get the insurance. It's way more, you know, of a good practice to get the insurance so that you can be prepared because I also hear it's not a matter of if it's a matter of when, you know something like that could happen and it really could take down your organization sadly Maria. So definitely look into this if this is not in your budget. Get that in there. Get that in there for sure I think it's it's worth its weight in gold. Yeah, so, but I'm right there with you Adriana this is not my wheelhouse so. To the experts. And I will call out again that was a nonprofit power week with I Bailey we had a phenomenal guest. Kyle Hendrickson that came on and we nerded out with him all week and again, I thought it was going to be a yawn fast, I was, I was very surprised it was not he had my attention day in day out and I learned so very much so Maria, check out that that power week as well. It has been fantastic you are a ray of sunshine and again thank you for serving our community. I believe that we're all connected and what we do in our local communities impacts the nation and impacts the globe. So I know we're neighbors you're in California, I'm in Arizona, but what we do really impacts the world so you serve as director philanthropy at San. San Ysidro Health, San Ysidro Health and you're also a trainer at fundraising Academy we absolutely love them and are so grateful to have their support day in and day out here for the show. And you've got a big day today because you said it's National Philanthropy Day in San Diego. Really, it is and as mentioned the last one was in 2019. So we're all excited to come together in the special community to honor, you know, our supporters, the people that contribute towards our missions to better our community. One thing about San Diego is that we are a binational area. So you just have such a diverse pool of people coming together to celebrate. And that makes it even better to I feel sometimes we don't take the time to celebrate. So it's really exciting to do that today. Yeah, I love to celebrate the small wins the big wins and all the wins in between so have fun celebrating absolutely and celebrate yourself also because what you do is a big accomplishment. Check out fundraising Academy that's fundraising dash Academy.org check them out. We're so grateful to have their support day in and day out here to be a presenting sponsor for the nonprofit show, but also to help us with these fry. Yay. Ask and answer episodes. So again, shout out to all of our sponsors. Thank you to Bloomerang American nonprofit Academy fundraising Academy at National University and you met Adriana here. She's part of their team. Also want to thank be generous your part time controller staffing boutique nonprofit thought leader as well as the nonprofit nerd. Now's a good time to check out these companies unless you're attending an event like Adriana is but check them out because their mission is your mission and they're here to help you move forward. So thank you for your time your valuable expertise and happy Friday. Thank you, Jared. Thank you for having me. Absolutely. And for all of you that joined us, have a restful weekend. Join us back on Monday and until then, stay well so you can do well. See you on Monday.


Interference-List-Coded Aperture Correlation Correlation Holography iCoach techniques have revolutionized the field of incoherent imaging, offering multi-dimensional imaging capabilities with a high temporal resolution in a simple optical configuration and at a low cost. The ICACH method uses phase modulators, PMs, between the object and the image sensor which encode the 3D location information of a point. This article was authored by Ravi Kumar, Vijay Kumar Anand, and Joseph Rosen.


Hello my people, welcome to the SCORE channel and welcome to my hometown, the city of Pittsburgh. I arrived in Pittsburgh just in time for the first day of classes at the University of Pittsburgh. I wanted to hear what actual students thought about the university, so I talked to 10 students to hear what they had to say. Let's meet our people. I'm Christina Kasper. I'm a freshman. My name is Joseph Dullabatch. My name is Maeve Goldstein. Hi, my name is Dallas. My name is Victoria. Hi, my name is Claire. I'm Chris Matthews. I'm Casey. Christ. Biology, pre-med. I study political science and economics with a minor in philosophy. Bio, maybe something like pre-med. Linguistics, Italian studio art and global studies. I'm actually a chem major right now. I'm a first year engineering student. I study Italian, linguistics, education, kind of lots of different things. I'm getting my master's in PhD in French studies. I'm studying business here. I'm studying English writing and potentially going to double major in education as well. And just like how great they are in the sciences, I've always heard that. And I love the city when I visit it, so I really thought it would be a good fit for me. Really enjoy the campus and everything. Pretty much the campus, this area, all the different aspects, the city and the classrooms and just how beautiful the buildings are.   I think it's a beautiful place to grow up and a beautiful place to study. I mean, we literally have a building called the Cathedral of Learning. The Italian department is wonderful. Everyone is so passionate about what they are teaching and that really makes the whole experience a lot better. Basically, I actually got a decent chunk of scholarships from Pittsburgh and it gave me the opportunity to go out of state without breaking the bank. Here, you already know everybody. It feels like the school is really big, but honestly, the campus isn't as overwhelming as other schools. You can, everything's very accessible and you are able to be in the city without being in the city like other schools. The NYU is smack dab in the middle of the city. We get to be outside of the city, but also get free busing through all of Pittsburgh, so if you want to have that city life, we can go do that. I had some other options, but the institution and scholarship and honors program definitely drew me here. I think the idea of being in the city was really exciting to me. Hershey's kind of a small town, so I was looking for something different and it just seems like a lively, diverse community and yeah, I'm really looking forward to being a part of it. I really, I mean, obviously the Cathedral is beautiful. I really like the people here. They just are always willing to go have a picnic or do whatever, explore the city. And I've had really great professors, especially in the Italian department. It's been, they're all so sweet and down to earth, so I really like that. I really like the city, the campus and all the cool programs that Pitt has to offer. I'm excited to learn this year. Pitt's just a nice school. I like being in the middle of the city. I think it's within walking distance, so I can just, you know, walk 10 minutes from my dorm and have a whole bunch of restaurants available to me. And also, I think my favorite thing about Pitt is the people here. Despite being online, my first year I've made a lot of really close good friends. I'm involved in quite a few different clubs. I am an officer in one of the clubs, actually. And I just feel like welcome here, you know. It's going well so far. A couple of my classes are virtual, but they should be in person all of them soon and I'm really excited. I'm a sophomore, so this is my, I actually just had my first in person class a couple minutes ago. So how's it feel? Well, like I'm an actual college student. Yeah, you had a way to get that experience up. Yep, yep. I'm waiting for my first class. It starts in about half an hour, so I don't have any experience yet, but I'm looking forward to it. I only have one class today. It was an 8 a.m. lab and it got canceled, so my classes don't start until Monday. So successful first day. Yes, I think. Didn't screw anything up. Yep, yep, pretty much. Really come visit as soon as possible, like coming here and realizing how beautiful the campus was and how nice and genuine the people are really made it, like, such a good fit for me, I thought. And I'm really liking my experience so far. It's my first day of classes. I originally didn't plan on going to Pitt. I came and visited the campus and kind of fell in love with everything here. At that point, I kind of knew that's where I wanted to go, so I would encourage you to kind of get out if you're applying and come see and actually, like, realize how beautiful the campus we have and how great of an atmosphere it is here. Write down everything that you did in high school. Don't leave anything out, get involved. Every little thing matters. Speak your truth. I would say apply early. I applied pretty early and then found out and I was like cruising for the rest of it. Don't stress, I guess. I don't know. Apply anywhere. Honestly, don't not apply somewhere because of money because, honestly, at the end of the day, there's probably a chance that you will get a better financial aid package than you think you will and it just doesn't hurt. I'd say start the application early. I think one of the main reasons that I liked the Pitt application was because it was rolling, so I found out that they got in pretty early. So definitely work on it early and be yourself in your essays and that's probably the best advice I would give. Come in with a very open mind because I went into my undergraduate experience thinking that I was going to be an actor and that did not happen. But it's okay to change your mind and follow other passions, so as long as you come in with an open mind, you can really do whatever you want. I would just say visit the campus, see what's about, see if you'd like to fit and go Pitt. I'm trying to remember what the Pitt application was like. I applied to many colleges. Express yourself. That's really generic advice, let me explain. At Pitt, there's a really wide variety of people. This is a very diverse, large place and you will find your niche. So don't be afraid to show off the aspects of yourself that you think are weird. That, oh, no one else is going to like watching cartoons like I like to. You're wrong. No one else is going to like D&D as much as I do. You're wrong. That sort of thing, just don't be afraid to put that out there, especially in your application because Pitt likes people who are go-getters usually. Or just, I don't know, just be yourself in every sense of the word and have fun with it. The essays are pretty fun. Okay, better advice. One of the things I really love about Pitt is that there's so many options. So my advice for applicants would be to seriously dig through the course catalog, look around. There's really something for everyone. We have over like 25 different languages taught here, which was one of the main reasons I wanted to come here. And all of the teachers are so passionate about what they do. So you really can't go wrong. Subscribe to the channel because next week we have a university episode for Pitt that you don't want to miss. Oh! Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And ciao!