So you want to know how to hold the shot, we got two major things that make a huge difference. Where's the hand and where's the arm and we're going to talk about it in this video so check it out. Everybody it's Eric Johnson for Airtate Throws Nation and in today's video we're going to talk about how to hold the shot. Now seems like a basic video there's been videos out there but one of the things we want to look at is a couple of things. We want to look at the connection of how we're holding the shot and this is going to trump everything. This is going to trump what we call the chain reaction. If we don't hold and position the hand and arm properly in the shot it really doesn't matter what you're going to do because you're not going to be able to deliver the shot right. So one of the first things that we're trying to do is we always talk about we want to get that shot kind of up here on the knuckles we want to get the thumb and we want to get the fingers behind. Now this gets into rim weight a lot of people like small shots because they feel like they can put their hand around it. You really don't want a small shot. You want a shot that allows you to get your fingers behind the ball so that we can get this flick. So in today's video what we're going to do is talk predominantly about the glide shot put position in the arm carry. It's a super important thing. Now the arm carry in the rotational shot is going to be kind of up here. Now I know I just said we're going to talk predominantly about the glide but what we're trying to do is we're going to find that comfort spot where that shot's going to be up here and you're going to notice the crease of my elbow is going to be down but in the glide shot we're pulling the shot typically under the chin and we're going to see the elbow coming out right so we're down here. So one of the key things that we want to look at is that when we're in a full throw and you're going to see me and I'm starting at the back of the ring one of the things we talk about is creating alignment. So we want to practice you're going to see most elite shot putters and you're going to see what we call as they set alignment. So one of our favorite is Valerie Adams David Storrell looking at classic gliders like Warner Gunther.  You're going to see that the elbow is away and again where's the crease of the elbow where we're in this position. So the deal is why we don't want to see our arm like this or like this. Sometimes you see kids doing this or you'll see gliders right where you'll see your gliders holding the shot like this. So you're going to notice when I try to come out of this position and I'm here and my elbows here that's going to cause the shot to come out. Okay so one of the things you want to be focused on again is you're going to see how we've got this shot sitting in here and how we have the fingers sitting like this. Now you're going to notice that the ball is going to be sitting here. Sometimes the pinkie the pinkie is sitting a little bit to help some stabilization but you're more elite guys they're going to get that finger closer so that they can get more of this type of thing and so you're going to be able to put more force. That flick is worth an extra foot to maybe as much as three feet. The second thing we talked about is once we get that right we want to be able to understand that where it's going to go in the neck. This is going to be somewhat thrower centric right.  If you look at the glide legend Ulf Temmerman he was down here. You're going to notice where the elbow is though. So now what you're going to notice is when I hit that and you're seeing where the elbow position is so if I'm gliding and I bring that shot down and you see me here and you're going to see where that elbow is at. Now I'm in this position because as I hit the glide and this opens now I'm going to be in this position to pull in that nice linear strike position. So basically what we wanted to help you guys understand is that there's a lot of little nuanced details to holding the shot. It really is the first thing and what do kids want to do. They want to get in right away and why does that shot come out because if you learn the rules of the shot put the elbow has to be up. It can't come off the neck. You can't throw it. Well that's going to be because of how you position the elbow and how you're holding in your hand and this connection is what's going to be key. So this is why you'll see your rotational throwers. The big muscular guys they're going to see you're going to see this and you're going to see that that arm is level and in the glide you're going to see this kind of thing and you're going to see that elbow kind of here and they're carrying it more in this position so when they line up and they're going to move into the strike you're going to be able to get behind this point and push the shot through. How you hold and how you grip have a huge impact if you don't get these two things right. How the hand position is going to work and how the angle of the arm and where the arm is going to sit it's going to completely make learning technique next to impossible because you're always going to be feeling the weight of the shot pulling away it's always going to change how you move it's going to change your balance it's never going to allow you to strike the shot clean and if you're doing that then you're always going to compensate right because if your arm's out of position then what you're going to wind up doing if your arm drops well then you're going to be trying to position your body to get yourself into a putting motion which is clearly not going to help you develop a good technical pattern. So again this is this is something we talk about in the throwing chain reaction it's a real simple thing we teach a four part sequence how we're going to get everything set up and so we get everything in position and we've seen a lot of that so the elbow stays down and away and in the rotation it's up here because we have two different angles of release we're really looking at about 36 to 40 degrees in the rotational shot and we're really looking at 42 degrees in that range in the glide we want to be out much it's a higher angle of release so you're going to be seeing because it's a linear delivery and out and the rotation is about speed and a longer path to generate speed and power so those are the two things but you've got to get this hand position right you've got to get this elbow position right because if you don't it's going to be a disaster okay guys so hopefully start there hopefully you can go try that tip keep those things in mind if you like this video be sure to give us a thumbs up subscribe comment below and be sure to check out the throwing chain reaction system in the link below thanks so much for watching we'll see you on the next video


The Festival of Coins is brought to you in partnership with the Numismatic Guarantee Corporation and the Royal Mint Museum. Okay so welcome to the Festival of Coins and to this session with our festival partners NGC and PMG. We're delighted today to be joined by Colin Blyth. Colin's a paper money collector and has been for over 20 years. He joined PMG in 2018 and specializes in South and Central American notes. Colin's a life member of the ANA, the American Numismatic Association, and also the International Banknote Society. He's a member of the Society of Paper Money Collectors, Numis Coal based in Colombia, and the Cuban Numismatic Association of America. Colin's written many articles about banknotes for the IBNS Journal. He's lectured on paper money and today he's going to talk about overprinted banknotes. So really looking forward to the talk Colin. I will hand the floor over to you and thanks very much. Thanks very much Matt and thanks for inviting me to speak to the Festival of Coins and I know this is going to be predominantly a coin, a group of people here. So I thought I'd do a topic overprinted banknotes that may may find has some parallels to counterstamped coins. So I hope you find it interesting. So let me just show you what what I want to cover today and I'll start with just giving a brief introduction to paper money guarantee or PMG and then talk a little bit about why banknotes are overprinted and the types of overprinted banknotes or in other words the reason why are banknotes overprinted there's often several different types of reasons and then finally why you can collect these things and I thought I'd start by showing you can see these images on the right and to me this note embodies why you want to collect overprinted notes and you can see the note at the top right that's an 1892 $5 Canadian Bank of Commerce note it's very beautiful note in its own right but you can see in the on the bottom left here is an example of the same note that was overprinted with a Yukon overprint in around circa 1896 and that Yukon overprint was done to designate that these notes would circulate in the Klondike region of the Yukon and Yukon's in the northwest part of Canada borders up to Alaska and these Yukon overprints were done in the 1896 to 99 era where a big gold rush was going on in the Klondike region and about 100,000 prospectors poured into the region over this period and I look at this note and I can just imagine a prospector trudging up a snowy covered mountain with a backpack full of full of his gear with this Yukon overprint $5 note in his pocket to to buy supplies and I think that's that really summarizes that what makes overprint so exciting it's that emotional attachment it's having seeing that Yukon overprint really can transform you back in time when that note was in was in use so there's a there's a lot of this excitement and attachment to the note so I'll start by just giving you an introduction to paper money guarantee or PMG and PMG is the world's largest third-party authentication grading and encapsulation service for paper money. We've certified more than 6 million notes since 2005 and just to put that in perspective all the other grading companies out there combined have not created anywhere near that number of notes so the numbers certainly speak to the trust that the collectors have put into PMG grading their paper money and we are the third-party authentication service of choice for a lot of collectors out there and the locations of PMG they were headquartered in Sarasota Florida US have two secure facilities totally 82,000 square feet and the facility on the on the bottom right there is our is our newest building and these both these facilities have access access controlled walk-in bolts for secure storage of collectibles a staff of armed guards and hundreds of security cameras so the message there is when you're when you're valuable collectibles come into our custody they're they're both insured and and very very well protected while they're in house until you get them received back we have offices in London Munich Hong Kong and Shanghai so truly a global footprint and unlike some other third-party rating companies out there that may have one or two people they're in their operating a small little location this is a PMG is not a mom-and-pop shop it's a it's a very large organization with a with a team of dedicated mismetists a lot of experts in many different fields work here so you can you can be assured that your items are coming under the the watch of very experienced professionals on paper money guarantee is part of a family of third-party authentication services that that are under the umbrella of certified collectibles for ccg and for those coin collectors out there you'll no doubt know the ngc name the name very well for our coin side you also may or may not know some of the other divisions but cgc which is certified guaranteed company does does very popular green of comic books and they also do a new division which which creates trading cards so like the pokemon card pictured here or magic cards and certified sports guarantee is is one of our newest companies and that's for sports card trading you may be aware that in July this year blackstone acquired a majority stake in ccg and they have a commitment to further expand ccg's geographical and product reach so we were a large company and with the plans to get larger in the future and i think collectors a takeaway is the is the deep financial strength of the company and so when you get a a coin certified by ngc or paper money certified by pmg there's a guarantee that goes with it and with the company is the financial strength to back up that guarantee so enough about the the infomercial there let's get into uh what what exactly overprints are so we're talking about collecting over printed bank notes so we should first start saying what is an overprint in itself and an overprint is an additional layer of text or graphics that's been added to a bank note after it's been printed and if you can see an example of the note on the right there's a there's the engraved printing is the main part of the note and this is high quality in intaglio printing it's made from a steel plate under high pressure after that note was made an overprint such as this was was then applied and most commonly these overprints are applied by letterpress or that's a relief type of printing so unlike the intaglio printing here which is engraved into steel plates so it's a recessed area where the it where the ink goes letterpress and relief printing is uh is a text image that is is to be printed on a raised area that's inked and then applied to the paper and so an example of of relief printing would just be a common stamp like this I don't know let's see this but you can see that the text and graphics have been raised above the face of the of the stamp ink is then applied and you can stamp the image down um you'll all see that in uh in a typewriter you have a a key that might have a letter e on it for example and that is strikes the paper as usually there's a rivet of ink between it but it's this is ink nonetheless it strikes the paper and the imprint of the e is left for letterpress you'll you'll often see that for the serial numbers so most notes that you'll have in circulation will have letterpress serial numbers it's essentially a wheel with numbers on it and there's several wheels all together that the numbers will line up to form a serial number you'll ink those they get stamped onto the onto the note and the dials advance the next number it's inked again and and so on um that's uh I I should just put I've got a little note here at the at the bottom um paper money collectors or bank you know collectors or sometimes uh use these terms very generically and uh so you may need here's uh say bank note or paper money or note and I'm all that's all meaning the same thing in a generic sense that it's either paper all in our money issued by various authorities around the world and I'm saying it's generic because sometimes what we call something a bank note that technically should mean is issued by an actual bank and most notes are but there are there are notes out there that for example are issued by municipal governments or provincial governments or uh by by companies so they're not actually issued by banks and yet sometimes confusingly we generically may say it's a bank note so sometimes people say well let's say paper money that's better but then that doesn't cover new types of substrate like polymer so then sometimes we'll just say notes so just uh if I interchange them forgive me but you'll understand it's a generic sense so now that we know what overprints are why are bank notes over printed in the first place why don't you just make a new bank note why are you putting these uh these funny overprints on them and I point out that overprints are issued bank notes unissued bank notes mark historical periods of crisis for celebrations such as a severe inflation regime changes or commemorative events so these are not normal situations often emergency situations they're one-off situations so that's that's the best way I can describe it overprints are not done in normal times uh in addition overprints are used to distinguish a bank note that is not able to be circulated as a not able to be used as a circulating medium of exchange and for example a canceled note it's been returned back to the to the bank the bank has redeemed it stamped canceled on it it's no longer able to be circulated no longer legal tender so to speak and I'll talk a bit more about uh specimens and canceled notes uh as we go on the the note up here is cool this is uh this is actually a note if you if you can see the date it's November 20th in 1918 and it's a government of Malta note it was produced during World War one and just before it got issued World War one ended on November 11th so you can see there's a very quick uh period here where it almost got issued but didn't they ended up stockpiling these notes then and as the World War two started so they between 1919 and 1939 Malta used British notes so Bank of England notes circulated in Malta but when the war World War two started there was a shortage of coinage and there was also risks of transporting notes from England to Malta so they decided to take these uh non-issued notes out of stock and over print them so the two-shelling note got over printed with a one-shelling marker to become a small changer or coins in the region so I want to talk there's there's many different reasons or types of over printed bank notes and I don't want to claim I've got an exhaustive list here but I tried to come up with a list that I think would account for the vast majority of over printed notes out there so the one reason you might over print a note is to change the denomination you might do it to change the name of the bank note or the issuer that's sort of the bank issuer or the note another over print could identify that it circulates in the specific region of circulation and that's that's much like the Yukon overprint that you saw at the very beginning and other and others more work for celebration or a commemorative type note and then you got to have a cancelled note that's that's been over printed to to say it's no longer valid for circulation and then there's specimen notes and I'll talk about specimen notes in a bit more detail but I think this note is very interesting and part of it is I I specialize in South and Central American notes I'm always going to find notes from those regions interesting but in 1933 the Nicaraguan government realized there was a shortage of notes in circulation but their records showed that there was a lot more notes in circulation that that was apparent so in other words they thought the there should be x number of notes circulating but they could really only see x minus y in circulation so in 1934 they issued an executive decree that required all the notes to be redeemed so turned in counted and then revalidated and this is the revalidation step you can see revalidado on in a diagonal red overprint here and that's to mark that the the note has been counted and revalidated so this is one situation where actually we're an overprint is is more common than the non overprinted note and that probably makes sense in this case this is a 1932 one cardoba note that would have been in circulation at that time which was then subsequently overprinted in 1934 but because the note would no longer be valid unless there was a revalidado overprint it was a tier of financial benefit to get these notes overprinted so ones that remain without the overprint are really notes that probably got tucked away by accident some are like maybe somebody left this in a book but regardless there is not very many of these 1932 notes that don't have the revalidado overprint on and in fact this note here the 1932 issue is the only note that PMG is graded to date so I want to explore that the different reasons that we mentioned here why most notes might be overprinted I'm going to go through each one of these bullet points and just give you a few visual examples I just want it to be fun and look at the different types of notes so the first reason why you might overprint a note is to change the denomination and during the 1980s there is a period of very high inflation in the caraba and in 1989 they overprinted the 1985 10 cardobas notes up here with a 10,000 portable note denomination and you can see that the the overprint hides the 10 it hides the DA score dobas down here and puts a new denomination and then seals however the what used to be the 10 and you know I find it interesting we're talking right now about the fears of inflation coming back and we're you know when you're seeing five percent six percent inflation you start getting nervous imagine living this time in Nicaragua your 10 cardobas notes is suddenly inflated to a 10,000 cardoba note between 85 and 89 that's as real inflation another example of denomination changes is from Colombia and due to a scarcity of coins in circulation the Colombian government decided to overprint 1942 and 43 one peso notes with a medial peso overprint and they did that on the left side and the right side of the note was printed then they sliced the note or cut the note in half and created half notes of medial or half pesos and those circulated like coins but obviously with the with the overprint on and here's another example of denomination change from Paraguay so the note in the the top right is a 1923 Paraguay 1000 peso note and in the bottom left you can see in 1943 Paraguay decided unlike the Nicaragua note that I showed you where they just started to add three zeros to the note and inflate that way Paraguay is going through the same inflation but instead decided to instead of adding zeros they would knock off some zeros so the 1000 became 10 and they changed the denomination from pesos to to Guarani's and I guess Guarani's was supposed to sound like it was a Guaranti or or new a stronger than the than the pesos but it's a somewhat amusing to see that the the pesos actually no pesos farete which is a strong peso so I guess it wasn't that strong after all and here's another example of a denomination change this is from Cyprus and unlike the the Colombian one that I showed you that was the medial peso it was sliced in half these one shilling notes from the British administration of Cyprus they cut the the right 40 percent of the notes so it's just the right half and it's only the 40 percent of the note and they overprinted just the right half they didn't use left and right just the right half with a three psts overprint and that was a stop gap for small change and I don't know this for sure but I'm gathering they didn't cut 50 go into the middle of the note because they didn't want to cut King George the six head in half in in doing so that was probably why they have the the right 40 percent of the note so then we'll move into the into the next reason or a type of overprinting and that's to change the the bank name or the issuer name and I've used an example from Colombia this is a 1908 Colombian albanco de serra one peso and after following world war one there was a shortage of cash in the area and for this reason and and to save money in 1919 Banco Lopez overprinted the the Banco de serra note they put a new date on here you can see 1919 out to the top where albanco de serra was they've overprinted that albanco Lopez and this a little bit hard to see but it is there it's the l Banco and then Lopez and they've they've also got they've also cancelled out the the names of the the initial signers at the bottom and this is a really cool note from china because it's a there's a lot going on with it so not only is there a bank name change at the top but there's also a denomination change and they've even changed the branch of issue at the bottom so you can see up at the top it's a russian chinese bank note that was changed to russian asianic bank and you can see china chinese here has been covered with asianic the 100 teals denomination here has been overprinted and they've to cover it up and they've added $100 as the new denomination and then the atiantsin branch at the bottom left has been covered up and they've added a harbing branch so that's a really cool one to get because it's a not an example of a lot of different reasons why you'd overprint the note and then here's another example of a bank name change but i used this as an example because this one's not quite as clear or easy for the collectors to see and what happened in this period this is from Paraguay and in 1879 the the fledgling republican paraguay was struggling to set up a financial system which included setting up some banks to encourage business in the region so with the government's encouragement a small bank albanco del paraguay started and this is started by two gentlemen with a capital of only 10 000 pounds so you can imagine there's there's not a lot of deep pockets there um but they're they're trying and they lasted long enough that they could actually issue um a really popular nice looking series of bank notes in 1882 the dated 1882 and it's an animal series and very very popular collectors but by the time 1883 rolled around the bank of del paraguay was in serious financial trouble to the tune that they they had to be saved and acquired by a bank of national the paraguay and rather than the bank of national the paraguay withdrawing the albanco del paraguay notes at the time and and issuing your own notes uh i think bluntly to save money they decided instead simply to to put an overprint on the back of these notes in uniface there's nothing on the back of the note so this is the back of the note they put a uh an overprint on the back and the overprint act says bank of national and has the dates 1883 so what this overprint has done is it's now guaranteed the note and identified it as a bank of national issue and rather than the albanco del paraguay and that's why you'll see on the pmg label even though the notes as albanco del paraguay here it's a it's a bank of national issue because of the 1883 overprint on the back and i wanted to show you this is actually my favorite note in the series it's the 20 centavos note and this is uh the the same 1882 albanco del paraguay note you can see the bank title here and the uh what is the date the date is date is up here so that that was from the original issue of albanco del paraguay this one like the example i showed on the screen the 10 centavos example was overprinted on the back and you can see there's there's several stamps on the back which is common you see different bank stamps in this era you'll even see it on modern notes but the bank stamp the stamp you need to look at for this purpose is the middle stamp that's a bank of national 1883 overprint and that's why this one has been identified as a bank of national 1883 issue by pmg so the the bank bank of national circulated these notes these overprinted notes from 1983 to sort of 1883 to 1886 and in 1886 finally got around to issuing their own notes and here is an example of the note and see if i get the reflection off but the notes are essentially identical except if you look closely at the bank title here you can see that's a that's bank of national del paraguay rather than just albanco del paraguay and the date has changed to an 1886 date so this can be a very even though it's a beautiful series it also can be quite challenging because you have a period where you have 1882 issued albanco del paraguay notes then in 1883 when they when banko national took them over banko national you can find these notes that are over printed with banko national so you can have two types you know this type that's just the 1882 note and you can also have it as a bank of national issue with the overprint then as you move into this type with the 1886 banko national note that they continued on until 1890 and in 1890 they too went under some serious financial troubles such that the republic of paraguay had to bail them out they took over issuing bank notes and private banks ceased after 1890 in paraguay but there's actually a period here in 1890 where the republic of paraguay over printed these notes with an 1890 overprint so those are technically republic of paraguay issues so it's it's fascinating it also you know it can be great opportunities for chair picking because there's not a lot of people out there that unless they specialize in this series we'll know all those differences so hopefully maybe if you pass one of these at a bourse table in the next year or two it may catch your eye and here's one of my favorite reasons for overprinting a note it's to identify a specific region for the circulation of that note and the example shown to the right is is a pakistan note but it was an indian note that's been over printed with government of pakistan and pakistan separated from british india in 1947 as part of that transition during 1948 and i've got here april 1948 indian these indian notes were over printed for exclusive use in pakistan only and this was a transition until until pakistan got their own series of notes from thomas deliru in october 1948 and they were subsequently demonetized in pakistan in 1949 but what a cool piece of history there the uh and collectors know this not only is that overprint or scarce it's just very very popular so the indian note is of course popular in its own right but you have this overprint on it and the scarcity and value jumps significantly because of the demand notes with those overprints and us collectors out there will instantly recognize this note this was a this was as a precaution against the japanese invasion and occupation of hawaii in 1942 the us specially marked 1934 a series us currency with a hawaii overprinted you can see hawaii is over printed here and then on each side of the note on the face and that overprint was done in the event of a japanese invasion the overprinted currency could have been declared worthless those were cautionary measure fortunately that didn't happen and there's still a fair number of hawaii overprints out there for collectors so you can still buy these at fairly reasonable prices in the market and what a cool piece of history so i'll jump over to africa and if you look at the if you look at this note after the separation of rewanda and barundi in 1964 a barundi overprinted these 1960 to 61 500 franc notes with with big barundi overprint and that was for exclusive use in barundi and another another example here is this note from uruguay and for a brief period the banco de republic of oriental actually overprinted some of their notes to to recognize that these were branch office issues and you can see montevideo here which is the capital the main central area of uruguay all those notes coming out of the main bank were not overprinted but in more the remote regions of uruguay there was branch offices and they for brief time applied the the overprint the head office then decided you don't need to do this anymore and and that ceased so we see this in 1888 the lower denominations like the one in the five days so those those were ordered to be pulled out they still allowed the higher denominations to be overprinted but there wasn't very many of these high denominations anyway so either the overprint or the non overprinted in a higher denomination like that is is actually quite rare but on the on the smaller denomination ones having that overprint is extremely valuable because it only lasted for for several months where they did those branch office overprints and it can be confusing for collectors of uruguay to to know when an overprint is valuable or not because the 1887s the earlier issue of banco national and in uruguay it was it was very common to to overprint notes for the regional distribution areas and you can still fairly easily find overprinted notes but as you moved in now into 1888 1899 where the banco de republica oriental is issuing the notes any overprinted notes from that issue are extremely scarce so again it's good to keep in your mind if you see any republica oriental notes that are overprinted it's probably a good idea to grab those and then find out later what you have so to move on for another reason that overprinting is done it's uh it's it's a celebration or a commemorative event and i've got an example here of a bermuda 1994 $100 note uh this was an overprint on an 89 series and you can see right here uh the bottom left is uh is an overprint commemorating the 25th anniversary of the bermuda monetary authority in 1969 to 1994 and another such example of a commemorative note or a celebratory notice from shown here it's a Costa Rica 1971 10 colons and that's got the overprint at the bottom left commemorating the 150th anniversary of the independence 1821 to 1971 and another reason for applying overprints is to cancel or withdraw money from circulation i mentioned council before you could actually have a rubber stamp or stamp that a bank the note has been redeemed by a customer might be a bit raggedy they're just taking it out of circulation they would often put a cancelled stamp on it to indicate it's been redeemed and withdrawn so it should no longer be circulated as a medium of exchange and so in other words not legal tender but this is a cool uh overprint and and collectors this is a this is a bank of England one pound note and it's affectionately called the guernsey overprint by by collectors and this was a world war two overprint it was a it was done before the german occupation forces arrived into guernsey the local officials overprinted an estimated 5000 pieces with this overprint that says withdrawn from circulation september 18th 1941 and that was to to stop the legal tender notes falling into the hands of the german forces that could be used elsewhere so that's that's another great marker of a moment in history and highly sought after by collectors and you can see with 5000 pieces having been overprinted there's still availability in the market to be able to find what these and now I'll talk about specimens that's another reason you may see an overprinted note and specimens were made by the printing company to give to the banks or to the tellers or other other people that are looking at the note to give them an idea what the new design will look like to approve it to acquaint the tellers of what's what's coming down the pipe and you'll see unique identifier over printers primarily being the specimen overprint so that indicates it's just an example note you can't spend it specimen notes also can have other things on it like canceled or perforations or it's very common to have zero all zero serial numbers such as this one and here's a specimen perforation in the center of this note as well but it's really the overprint that that stands out specimen meaning this is a this is not a note that can be spent so why collect overprinted notes at all and I think as you can see as we've talked for for me what really comes out is that record of history here it captures a moment in time a very unusual event and collectors can have very deep emotional attachment to that event just by looking at that overprint it brings you back that event it's also a great record you can see as the country went through the non overprinted to the overprinted note you can see a transition in history so that that no doubt in my mind is the number one reason for collectors wanting overprinted notes also there's there's collectors that collect notes by theme so you can have a you might collect by by country you might collect by denominations a lot of a lot of different ways you can collect and there's nothing right or wrong about whatever way you want to collect but overprinted notes there there are collectors that just concentrate on collecting overprinted notes and then I put this third point rarity it's I think it's it's human nature to want to get things to collect things that are unusual or scarce or rare and overprinted notes will often fall in this in this category um I I'd say the uh I put it as an example here this uh this is an Iranian note and in the 1978 to 79 uh revolution revolution that happened in Iran in 1918 the new 1980 sorry the new regime overprinted the the notes from the late 70s and they covered the shawl of Iran with uh graphics and they also covered the the watermark which was also of the shawl with the the lion and and sun symbol and that was done to discredit and disgrace the the former regime and the and the shawl so it's a real moment of history recorded here and I'd like to end here at the last slide and this is a I've got a title here trust in what you collect and overprinted notes are are really cool and they're they're sought after and because of that you will often get people trying to fake overprints either with you know creating a rubber stamp or using an inkjet or laser jet printer print on top of a normally issued note so collectors have to be very diligent to understand and look at the characteristics of these overprints and that's where PMG can really come in we we do deeply understand what the characteristics are of these overprints and once it goes in a holder we are guaranteeing that that overprint is authentic and that's backed up by our guarantee so for collectors that are putting a lot of time energy and money to collect and overprinted notes they want to they want to make sure that that when it comes time to sell or when it comes time to buy that they know what they're buying is a genuine overprint so that's a that's a good little reassurance for collectors to know that that really is authentic when they buy it in a PMG holder I thought that when I told the graders in the PMG grading room that I was going to talk about overprinted notes I asked them what's your favorite overprinted note and the I tried to concentrate on the the senior graders so these are what we call finalizers so there for example might be three people graders grading note they'll each put their own opinion on what that grade is and the finalizer will then do the same thing he'll grade the note but he then looks at the grades that the other three graders gave and ultimately decides what the grade should be so for example one person thought it was a 25 one thought it was a 30 and it's one of those notes that's right in between the finalizers expertise we'll look at that we'll look at the note and determine which grade it goes and the I would point out to these the finalizers and the graders at PMG are there's a lot of history majors there they they get a real kick out of out of looking at these notes and especially then overprinted notes that come through and the the graders there these finalizers I want to ask what's your favorite overprinted note a common consensus was this victory overprint and this is a Philippines victory overprint so it was done in 1944 and the victory overprint was to to celebrate the liberation of the Philippines and Japanese occupation and that was done right on October 20th 1944 when US general Douglas MacArthur returned to the Philippines and another really cool part of this victory series as you can see on the front of the notes says victory series number 66 and what is that 66 for the the second president of the Philippines and that was Manuel Luis Quezon he died at 66 years old in August 1944 so just prior to the liberation of the Philippines so that was a recognition to the president of the Philippines putting series number 66 which which matches his age when he died so it's a really it is a really cool overprinted series you've got just just the sheer joy of of victory and the liberation of Philippines showing up here and the recognition of of their the president up there so just I can see why it's one of the favorites and I'll stop there I I just the little purpose just to give you a very general overview of overprinted notes I I hope you enjoyed it especially the the coin collectors out there I hope maybe you might even consider looking and starting to buy one or two overprinted notes your collection of somethings of of interest to you so thanks very much and I'll turn it back over to Matt thank you Colin that was great really interesting some really nice designs I love I love some of those banknotes what can I ask a few questions here firstly what's the appeal with the South American and Central America is that just something that you've chosen or is that particularly over overprint particularly common in that region I think a combination of both now it is I've tended to probably have a little bit more overprints from South and Central America just because I know them I just have an attachment to them collecting there's overprints from many different parts of the world so there's probably more skewed there because of my interest in them but you're also right that there was a lot of chaotic things going on in South and Central America during that period and and I mentioned that overprints happened in times of crisis and there was there was no shortage of crises then and so probably percentage wise there's a lot more overprinted knots on that region as well yeah yeah it's fascinating region just just from that short you know presentation you can tell there's just so much to explore one thing I was wondering it are there many overprints that are still discovered are there new discoveries being made I you know that that's something that never ceases to amaze me is the discoveries that are being made and not just for overprints across across the whole board we I would say you know every year we get one or two new notes that we've never seen and that's probably even an underestimation I mean just in the last couple months there's been two notes that are very very rare notes that have showed up one from Venezuela that that we didn't even know existed before but a lot of research into it and it was in a very unusual time period in Venezuela we confirmed that the signatures were correct we confirmed that the the denomination the region was correct and it's so exciting when things like that happen so yes that that's also can happen for overprinted notes and I'm sure there's varieties out there we haven't discovered yet and that's that's the the one amazing thing about getting to work at at PMG is to be able to see some of these things come in and then you do a double take and say how did this show up you know it's been hundreds of years where where has this been how did it show up but these things are still happening so I have no doubt there's probably more overprints out there that we're not aware of and we're we're always looking anxiously for things like that to come in so we can identify new notes and and you know with PMG's expertise in identifying notes we do have the confidence to be able to put you know if we can if we can work backwards and find historical records and verify this note to the to our to our opinion existed we will put our money on and guarantee that so you know we we do take the time and look at look at these unusual items and I I mean that's that's one of my favorite parts of the job is strange things going on yeah excellent okay and is there is there any are there any resources for for overprints you know their lists or anything like that that people can kind of refer to or you know start so they can start off or is it just a case of exploring it's it's probably a case of exploring more than saying there's a catalog just exclusively for overprinted notes but I suggest you you can go to the country you're interested in and there's lots of catalog country catalogs or or general catalogs so the sort of the most collectors will know out there the standard catalog of world paper money so that's that's probably a good place to start you can go through that and you'd be able to find overprinted notes for that country by by reading the descriptions in there you can also there's things like the banknote book which is which is very good and in terms of discussing very much giving a lot of detail on why these overprint happen so I'd say that's an excellent source as well one good source is banknote.ws if you go on there it's it's a very cool site that's got what I like about it's got color images of all the notes and you can flip through there and be able to see some of the overprinted notes but you know one of the unfortunately one of the best ways is is through specialized catalogs so actually if you wanted Columbia you'd get a specialized Columbia catalog you want India you get a specialized India catalog so those are available in the market but it's expensive so if you're just interested in checking it out I would stick to you know maybe more general general catalogs like the standard catalog of world paper money or just go into free sites like banknote.ws and check those out. Excellent okay and I think you answered this question during the presentation but it struck me that with overprints you know if an overprinted version of a banknote is worth a lot more then there are going to be people that try and forge that overprint so I guess you know how's the best way to kind of avoid those forgeries? Well you know it's a bit of a cliché but they always say buy the book before the note that there's a reason why that cliché exists because it's true and educate yourself before you buy something and that's part of that education process is understanding what a genuine overprint looks like and you know someone could just you know take a create a new modern rubber stamp and overprint it and you need to know the exact difference between what a letter press is what an intaglio print is what the you know certain rubber stamp the characteristics what what are the height the dimensions of the letters was there any little notches so it's very similar to coins you know if you know perfect coin if there's some feature that looks a bit off you're going to be wearing there's probably a reason so but it takes time to educate yourself and you know a lot of the new collectors especially on a valuable note you don't want to risk spending the five thousand dollars or something on a on a raw note you're not a hundred percent sure if it's genuine or not and that's where PMG can come in that collector while you're going through that learning curve at least if you're spending that kind of money you can it's probably going to be a lot safer for you buying something through party authenticated at least you have that comfort yeah excellent okay well that's brilliant Colin thanks so much for your time and for all your knowledge and sharing those notes with us it's been really good I would encourage everyone to go to the PMG website the addresses are on the screen now and thank you to PMG and NGC for being our partners with the festival of coins thank you so much Colin it's been great thank you so much Matt it's great to be here brilliant speak soon bye bye bye don't miss the festival showcase for more supported


I'm so impressed that y'all stuck it to the end of the day. Woo! I'm so glad I lost, because I do realize I do a lot of work camps every year. And I do realize that it is kind of exhausting by the end of the day. And if you're not tired, I want to know what your secret is, because I'm exhausted. But seriously, thank you for being here. This has been just amazing, and having you all here today has just warmed my heart.  Some of you have traveled really far to be here today, and for that I really 100% truly appreciate you. I think it's pretty awesome. Marco, I'll hug you again later. Costa Rica, guys. He came from Costa Rica. So this is a panel discussion. This discussion today is about contributing to open source. And all the people that you see here on this day are part of the open source community, as you are as well. And some of you contribute probably as much or more than some of us here. But the truth is that we all contribute in a great way to everything that goes into creating an open source community, the open source project, which we think of as WordPress the software, but I think of as open source community, WordPress the community. And so we all think about the different aspects that go into creating everything that is WordPress, because WordPress is more than software. It's the people that make it. Poetry is code. Code is poetry. I always say it backwards. Code is poetry. There's so much that goes into creating this. This isn't Microsoft where we all buy something every year and we can complain or not. If you don't like something about what's going on, you have a voice to be able to help make change. Every year there's releases. There's top level releases. There's minor releases. There's all kinds of different release squads. And to be on a release squad, you don't have to even code. I'm on a release squad right now and I'm doing marketing because I'm not a developer. I do have a plug in the repository. I'll tell you about that later. Okay. I invited you with that about this much. But seriously, there's so many ways that you can contribute to the open source project. And so what I wanted to do was gather some people that I know near and dear and I know how much they contribute. I don't even know all their stories and how we got started here, but I wanted to let you hear about some of the opportunities and some of the stories about open source and the contributors that are here today. But what I want to start with is I just want to put on the line here. Have everybody introduced themselves to you, what they do with WordPress, maybe where they work, where they're from in the world. And then as they pass the mic back, I want to hear how they got started with WordPress and what their first contribution to open source community was. Hi, everybody. Oh, I'm louder. I'm Nightie Chakrini. I'm a full-stack WordPress developer. So at my full time, I co-op. I'm also one of the make marketing team co-reps. So I can do the marketing. And I also organize a WordPress Meetup monthly for Columbus afternoon. So I am a feedback organizer as well. Hi, my name is Jonathan Burgers. I work at Blue Ghost. I'm part of their commitment to the Fight for the Future program. So I'm just a full-time to contribute back to the WordPress core. I was recently in the <IP_ADDRESS> release squads as a coordinator. And I'm frequently involved with minor security releases. I'm probably better than Massachusetts. And I am the lead organizer for the WordPress Boston Meetup currently. Okay, fair. Yeah, that's true. Hi. She got it up right. We gave it to the one person who has the longest voice as well. I'm going to do my best. So my name is Shanta. I'm the project liaison manager at Codeable, which is a platform that hires WordPress freelancers. I've been in WordPress since 2010, I think. The first contribution I made was 2012, the first WordCamp I ever attended, which was Toronto. And I gave my very first talk. Since then, I've given over 40 WordCamp talks. I've lost count now. And I am a lead organizer for the WordPress Hamilton Meetup, where I am from. And we're talking about WordCamp Canada. It's not official, okay, Kevin? I promise I didn't say anything otherwise. We are looking at doing WordCamp Canada, and I'm on the lead organizing team there. Hello. I feel like I want to try to pull this way out here because my voice is not quite like yours, but anyway. I'm Kieran. I am a software developer. I have a piece of software called Dragon Teach that helps students, help instructors teach their students WordPress. And I've been doing WordPress stuff since probably 2008 or 2009, maybe, where somebody came to meet us. We were hosting their site, and they were like, we want to do something. I was like, what's this WordPress thing? But yes, I largely freelance or contract my work to do WordPress builds and stuff. Hey, everyone. My name is Marcus Burnett, and I am from the Orlando, Florida area. I am on the community and events team at GoDaddy, the domain hosting company. And so I get to travel to WordCamp and talk to people and share a bit about what we're doing in the WordPress space. I also started a site called the WP World, which was built to help connect the community to each other and to work camps and businesses, to WordPressers and all of that. So building that. I'm also one of the co-reps on the WordPress Photo Directory team. And so if you haven't checked that out, it's a great library of free photos to use for your projects. And so I'm one of the co-reps there and moderators and help facilitate folks being able to share their photos there. And I've been working with WordPress for, I don't know, since 2015 or 2016 or something like that, but not really part of the community until really the onset because it was like the worst time to be part of the community, but it was all online and we got to connect with each other and it's been really great to start to see people in person again. Or it was the best time. Or maybe it was the best time. It was the best time. Any time is a great time. And I didn't introduce myself, which I realized I didn't. If you haven't met me, I'm Michelle Brichette. I am one of the lead organizers of the local Meetup. So if you are in Rochester, we do have Meetup every month. Usually the first Monday of every month from 6.30 to 8.30 p.m. For the last few years, we've been online. We're still online right now, which means that we're getting people attending from all over the world, which is really cool, and learning through the local Rochester Meetup, which I absolutely love. I am the director of community engagement for Seller WP and Liquid Web. We have a whole bunch of plugins that I help on the marketing team and help by going out and talking about. As far as the open source project, I work with Marcus on the photos directory. So if you go to WordPress.org slash photos, you'll see how you can contribute photos to the directory. I'm one of the moderators, so I get to say yes or no without your photo on the zip of the directory. We put most of them in. But it's a fun project. And then I also contribute to marketing as well and community as well. So I do a lot of mentoring of work camps and organizing work camps and speaking at work camps. I think this is my 75th work camp and probably my 50th time speaking, which is pretty cool. Absolutely love it. It's one of those things that I absolutely love. I suggest you apply to speak at a work camp because it is literally what opens doors. I'm happy you're here. I think my first work camp ever was in Buffalo in 2015. And it was, I couldn't believe that I was sitting there learning from like some major people in the WordPress community for 20 bucks. Because in 2015 it was 20 bucks the whole day. And they gave me lunch. And there was a party afterwards. I was like, I'm loving it. It's way. It's way. It was pretty amazing. We have to declare I don't know how much going across the board. That's right. I was like, yeah, but I want to ask you, how did you get started? Well, I did go first. So I came to fame in WordPress as being the editorial director of the Master WP takeover. So that's how a lot of people met me. And we came in pretty spicy for those of you who were subscribed to Master WP.   I'm going to have to do something about it as well. So if I had a concern about contributing or, you know, not saying anything for those listening, I would be mortified. It might come to me and say, well, what are you doing about it? And I'm like, so I decided I really want to be a part of the community and also some wonderful people like Michelle say, Rhee Courtney Robertson. They pretty much showed me I was going to be a part of the community. I'm just kidding. I love them, but I had wonderful people who were like, if you want to know, we'll be working hard. Trying to pinpoint the exact kind of to the point, but I remember I spoke at Work Camp Providence in Rhode Island in 2012 and before that I was mainly just building websites and stuff for clients at a small agency and at that Work Camp it was a contributor day and so I really have the curtain lifted as far as how the sausage is made and, you know, this community of people, they're everywhere and they all just kind of fix bugs and it was kind of cool. And I'm always down for challenges or figuring out what an issue is and trying to fix it, which I guess makes a developer in most cases. So I learned at that Work Camp about contributing and I actually just passed my 10-year anniversary of my first props to my first credited contribution to the Work Camp. So yeah, that was kind of that. I'm pretty sure I started there. I'll go since I already got one. Yeah, so I worked as a designer first, somewhat of a developer for an agency in Orlando for over a decade and then I left there and I kind of switched gears in what I was doing. When I left there, what I had done for 10 years was work with agencies or with our agency as a designer developer what I really wanted to do from that point was see how I could help other agencies do the stuff that I was doing and so I started working as a support rep for a company called Skyverge, which was acquired by GoDaddy and I really got that like itch to help other agencies, other freelancers, other developers and designers do the things that they were trying to do through that support rule. I got to find out a lot of the different things that they were struggling with and you know, part of that on top of the things that I already know that agencies struggle with because of working in an agency for 10 years and so I really got the itch there in that support rule to really help be part of the community to help other agencies to help other people in the WordPress space just kind of face some of the challenges that they face day to day and then after being acquired by GoDaddy I kind of moved out of support and more directly into this community and events position and it's allowed me to be able to contribute to the photo directory be able to help other folks like Morgan Robertson that was mentioned is on my team as well be able to help support her as she does to contribute back to the community as well so I feel really lucky and blessed to be able to do that and to be able to help the people that were me when I was working at that agency for a decade. All right. So my first interaction open source was probably like in high school I had a friend of mine who was like, look at this free VSD thing that I can wrote on my computer and it was just like this is all free the whole operating system and it's like he just coughs back just like people just give this product out there and just make the world better in that way and that was really the like you look at it as like I wanted to do that I love developing stuff I love building stuff and if I would totally do it and not get paid for it I kind of can't pay my mortgage unless I get paid for it so there's that but I would totally like give my time to what I consider making the world a better place right and so I know in early 2000s I put a PR into it in on this weird edge of edge case on a communication like a checks on communication thing and you get the greatest response because they did not like the way I wrote it but but it was like it was like I'm just trying to contribute most recently my I have a piece of software that I'm going to use on our videos here that will turn that I wrote and it's up on GitHub and it it turns around the videos it's up on WPTV really quickly so that is I don't know that's sort of WordPress is the money sort of like I'm going to contribute to the community do the thing that I love and hopefully make everybody so my is probably less selfless or yeah less selfless like I said I gave a talk in 2012 and at the time I just started teaching at Sheridan College and so for me I was trying to build my resume I was trying to build my accreditation put myself out there as an expert if I'm supposed to be teaching this stuff if I'm supposed to be whatever I need to put this on my resume and one of those ways is speaking so I went to this I actually got a speaking part in the word camp because somebody else decided they weren't going to sign the media release so they got canceled so there was an open spot and I did a case study but the other part of me is naturally a teacher right I love to impart knowledge I love to help people out in learning how WordPress works or whatever the thing is so yes I did it with the intent of sort of building my own resume but then I realized and someone put it to me it's like well you're actually contributing you mean by getting up here and talking like people are actually going to listen to me and that's contributing and I'm like yeah that actually contributes to the library I'm like oh so I was actually contributing before I really even knew what it was the other way that I would say I'm actually also on the training team I forgot to mention I do it a little less formally than say people like Courtney but she usually puts me on some kind of sort of specialized thing on contributor day it's like I need you to sit there and you sit there and I just pick your brain okay Courtney sure so three times I mentioned Courtney's name does she appear just checking yeah and the last way that I'd like to say that I contribute is that I drag other people into this and Jones is over there somewhere yeah yeah he's over there yeah I drag these people down from Canada and you know just get them to do talks and get them to do things for the community and mine was after I attended word camp Buffalo that year and then I was bit by the bug I attended word camp Toronto where I like to teach Shanta that she snubbed me beautiful she was an organizer she was good to me and I was just like awestruck by all the people there and I thought I want to be involved and so I applied to speak at word camp Buffalo the next year and I was it was the last time in my life I could do that it was the very last time in my life that I ever had a posture syndrome because here I was walking on to the stage and it was a literal stage like this one talking about the hidden elements of word press that aren't really hidden but so many of us don't know about and I was like I've been using word press for a couple of years I'm going to get on this stage and I'm going to talk to people about what I think are the hidden things that I've discovered that they might not know about and they're all going to yell up and yell and posture you know what you think I think about that's not the way it is doesn't work that way and instead what happened was I got off that stage and 12 people followed me out to the happiness bar to ask you more questions and learn more from me and I thought you don't have to have been here since day one to contribute you don't have to have been here since day one to know things to help other people and so I was like well I'm going to want to speak more of that because I kind of like this and I started to try to speak more places and then the next year I suggested that we combine word camp Rochester or Rochester into Buffalo before we even had a word camp Rochester and Buffalo was like no thanks so I was like well now what so instead we started word camp Rochester we started organizing and I helped organize word camp Buffalo I helped organize word camp Rochester and then I started organizing word camp US and then I started speaking more then I got a full-time job and word press before I knew it I had an entire life because of having stepped on that stage the first time and being able to know that the things that I can do even if I'm not a developer can help contribute to other people's success man I was in I was all in and that's what it was for me and that like it wasn't coding it wasn't bugs because I can tell you if it didn't work but I don't know why right that's not my thing but to be able to share to teach to bring other people to lift other voices that's what I think about it and that's where I have spent most of my time in word press so that's why I gave up and just for the record in Canadian fashion I have been apologizing to her ever since and she's married to Ashley so I accept it by the way I could keep asking questions on the panel but I do want to give you an opportunity I mean I will go on until the very better end unless you all have questions I would rather that you ask questions of any one of us from anything you've heard about how we contribute so that we can answer your questions about how to get involved here so if you have a question and can I just say something? Mary Ann, yes I just wanted to say like this is the first in-person work camp I've been to since 2019 and that was the last work camp Rochester we did 2020 online but this is the first time we've done it in person and I just wanted to say how it was wonderful today it was so great and this was really it was such a great day to reconnect with people Thank you and we had so many wonderful people contributing and that's what made it so amazingly awesome great contributions today it was wonderful Thank you Sara, how do you how do you balance your work life and family life with volunteering I don't have a life so I'm going to tell you else I don't know if I have a difficulty it's just me and my husband I don't have too many people and he's a workaholic as well but I actually have I do a lot of work I do I have days and times where I refuse to do any work I don't care if it's an emergency I'm not doing the work because I don't want to burn out and I don't want to be stressed out and that for me is the weekends and that's also my night so I advise people to have like some no some heck no that you schedule where you just not have to work that usually helps me got it and I say I wouldn't say that the balance is really what I have but it's really more of a priority like my family comes first and I'll know when I've been neglecting them long enough that I need to put everything else aside and be able to focus that time on them and so yeah I don't know that I don't necessarily say that it's a balance but it's really just like prioritizing and making sure that like I'm getting stuff done but that I'm getting things done in order of importance to me yeah I so I have two small kids and so it's always you know 4 o'clock to like 6.30 is the time that I always try to disconnect and I've been trying to be more conscious about putting my phone away and not having it around the distraction of you know because you have your phone in your pocket we all do it we all work we all you think it's something you know yeah you pull it out to look up something or we can notice something and then before you know you're on it for 10 minutes right you know when your watch is buzzing all day yeah I do I keep all my devices on silent and I focus modes to really limit the the stimuli but at the same time I recognize that as a more senior contributor leader in the community I do get called on at some points to work and so for example when a release is going out I'm one of the people that's able to actually package that release and get it ready to do well and there's not many people that have the time and that ability to do that and so it's it comes in ebbs and flows and like you said is knowing when to take a break and so there might be days where you know I go I get the kids to bed and then I come back and recently there was a good example of this is there was a security release on a Tuesday and there was some unforeseen ways that people were using blocks in the wild and so people that were well short codes within blocks and so there was an issue with the security fix where certain ways that short codes are being used they stop working and so we got to Thursday and usually we don't do any releases on Thursday or later because they look at the updates about if there's more problems what we do people are giving up their weekends and their time off and it got to Friday and it was very apparent that we had to fix it because the short codes and blue weren't working so people that had stores their carts weren't showing up and it was just it was more impactful than we had thought at first and so it ended up you know it was a Friday night and it was me and a dozen other people and it was much later you know but I think that we finally pushed that release out at 2 a.m. on Sunday morning and so there are times where as a sponsored person I call upon to give that extra time because it's important it's necessary and so I always try to my work is very supportive about all of you work late or you work at a work camp all weekend take a day take a couple of days but yeah it's definitely have those times that you need to you are very concrete about but also be open to flexibility and work with whoever you're sponsoring by or whoever you work with to take time off can I ask a question about sure if you have a 2 a.m. release for core and you know whoever I'll be going to the core or do you have a QA process and I know this is not exactly a QA process with open source like we would for sure that I won't get too deep into it because I don't want anybody else to have a thought with that but with any security release there's a security team and no security fix is going in unless several people thoroughly review it with this one was very very important because we had to make sure we fix the additional bug without reintroducing the original bug that was in the release is going out there's they're called release parties and so in the core slack there'll be people that you know people like me will build a package and say here it is let's test it make sure there's a break there's no fatal errors makes it people will try to explain security like can't do it forget it yeah well in some case most people most of the time they don't know what the issue is and they're much more comfortable with the level of testing we'll find it next time I was going to say I'm going to go back to the original question as far as balance goes in my nine to five job obviously I deal with WordPress itself not as much some of our our actual staff members are the members of the community team I'm on the training team I'm on the diversity team as well as this goes on and on and on and we contribute in different ways and in different volumes again for me a lot of this is very selfless I enjoy this almost every vacation day that I have taken has been off the back of a work camp and let me be clear my job does not require me to go to work camps like some of you guys here right like you have to put up tables and do whatever some of our staff to do work I didn't I took vacation I still wore my codable stuff and yeah I work for codable yeah you want to go and talk to that guy over there for that person I did it on my own vacation because I love doing this so to me I took vacation time even though I wasn't necessarily speaking at these events but I volunteered out or whatever and I got to travel suddenly I said a lot of it comes back to being it's not entirely a selfless act like I just forgot and I would just find out the balance was different for everybody so I don't have kids at home anymore my daughter's 31 she lives in another city I have cats at home who could care less as long as there's food in the dish and so what I do to feed myself is I go out with my camera as I take two digital cameras with me I drive out to self-life refuge I spend an hour driving a mile and I take pictures of eagles and egrets and flowers and birds and insects and I get home and I'm so excited to see what's on that SD card and how can I make these pictures a little enhanced and how can I make sure that okay I'm going to be honest and say my horizons are always crooked but you will never see because of the crooked horizon because I edit those close enough to the crooked thing but how's that crazy long lens that you had work out for you I have seven more now so we'll talk about that I have I spent paid too much money on cameras and I don't have grandkids either so it's all good but so my house looks different for different people but I would say find something that feeds your soul I also have five podcasts that I work on and I will spend a day interviewing somebody over zoom at another part of the world and I'm excited about that and getting that edited and transcripted and posted to the internet makes me ridiculously happy and if that if what looks adjacent to work to you is also what makes you super happy then it's balance and it's okay so I know somebody else will bring her another question yes how do you come up with the subject for your talks that's a great question so how do you guys come up with the subject for your talks here you go first I'm pretty sure this one is like you should totally do a talk on that Shanta tells you it's so I'm going to make that even suggest suggest verbally suggest encourage me I encourage to do a talk on something I've given the grandkids a little one talk and and the way I decided on that one was I just picked the thing that I felt like I knew the most about it was about WooCommerce a lot of my job like I said I worked for a company called Skyverge that was all WooCommerce plug-in support and so I picked something that I felt like I knew enough about to teach somebody something I didn't need to teach everybody everything I just felt like I needed to find a way to teach somebody something sponsored person in the community part of being privileged with that with that blessing is to serve as a community servant and a steward so sometimes what I usually do to the major camps is I'll submit one talk that's I might be less excited about but it's I know it's an important topic I know that it's something that a lot of people benefit from deep and then something that are more shallow and those more shallow things more often will have a greater reach and a much larger effect even the talk here like it was about the plug-in API and hook API and that's something I've been using since I started using WordPress and it's pretty I'm pretty desensitized to it but it's such a foundational part of WordPress that anybody that's newer to WordPress should use and so it's really important to get topics like that out there and then the other talk I'll usually reserve for something I'm more passionate about I've been working on I was I was fortunate enough to speak at Work in Asia about I was one of the main people that migrated all of WordPress organizations testing to get a job so just picking in and doing that work and talking about what I learned and what the challenges at scale of a project that of our size encounters and doing that is interesting right but less people may choose that talk but it's something I have a great value of presenting because I was sort of deeply in the there there are a couple of ways that I come up with the talks one is I was teaching at the same time and so some of the things that I was teaching in classes I thought would translate well into a talk and you know if I give in that WordPress 101 is one of the most typical ones I did and I would go to a bunch of different places and do that same talk so sometimes and then I would find something else or go back the next year and do okay remember I did WordPress 101 last year we're gonna do 102 this year and sort of do that the other part is when I started teaching a slightly more advanced program at a different college I had to come up with a curriculum and so at Sheridan we were teaching them not necessarily to be developers but we were teaching them to respect the developers and to understand their thinking and what not whereas at Mohawk we were teaching them to be web developers so I was teaching these people like they're gonna have to learn about you know at the time you know custom post types and ACS and wait a minute I don't know how that stuff works oh crap I guess I better learn okay so I actually went and I learned how they worked and and I'm like wait a minute it's confusing and I actually had a conversation with some other really amazing WordPress talk people Charles Schult and Dan Beale gotta arrest him and I said I need to understand how these things work I just conceptually and they put it really clear in my head I did a LinkedIn course from Mortimer and Henderson A got a little Canadian and and I learned how they worked but then I tried to teach that to my students at Sheridan they would know that I was talking and I noticed in the WordPress community that there was a lot of confusion so I just did a talk on and I think it was called WTH are CPTs and ACS and and was just explaining in sort of basic English how I did it along with some some of the level of application so some of it is about what I already know and what I think some of it is what I had to learn and what I learned from that and the other part that could very well be depending on when you work in what questions are you getting asked a lot right? you usually write a blog article on it well maybe this should be a little bit bigger than just a blog article maybe that should be a talk Michelle is making me do this so you're like here yeah it's interesting so I have a lot of different interests and my mind goes a mile a minute and my mouth does too and when coming up for my talk I know a lot of people might know of me or might have seen a Twitter rank from me but they don't know exactly what I do and how and why I do it and again my mind works down up crazy I can tie a lot of things together and they make sense which I hope my talk this morning makes sense because I can talk to you all about my grandmother and my family but also my ideas of how to get more people contributing so that's why I chose my talk because I can tie so many things into it but also this was my first talk and I wanted everybody to know who I am and why I do what I do this thing that's interesting to me might be interesting to other people and then I also look for gaps so what are some things that aren't being talked about and I do a lot of talking about DEIB so diversity equity inclusion and belonging I do talks about like hey maybe somebody else wants to learn how to do a podcast so I'll teach her how to do a podcast or hey I learned these new things how can I share that and so and I also do mental health talks because I have dealt with mental health issues my whole life and I want other people to know it's okay and normalizing mental health and conversations around mental health is important so for me that's it I want to interrupt questions and I'd like to go to Jonathan for a second I don't know that everybody knows what it means to be sponsored so could you talk about that yeah so I don't remember which year but at a point in time Matt Malawake the co-founder of WordPress he put out a challenge to anyone that makes money off WordPress or enjoys WordPress or uses WordPress at all to contribute 5% of their time or their resources back to the WordPress program and that could be plugins it could be you know fixing bugs it could be translating different languages and the goal there is to prevent the tragedy of the comments where everybody takes and takes and takes and nobody's replenishing for other people that come after them and so many companies there's a fire compulsion program now if you go to WordPress.org slash the number 5 FDF you can see more about that but essentially it's a way for people involved in the space to give back time through people hours or monetary for sponsoring work camps to help continue to foster a growing project and you know as as the project grows and scales we need more and more of those people to kind of step up and give that give that time and that contribution to help make sure that WordPress is here for my kids my young kids maybe so you have 5 minutes left so what I want to do is start with Marcus Badon and say what's your favorite thing about contributing to WordPress? so I'm on I contribute to the WordPress Photo Directory team and my favorite thing is seeing what other people share like their photography from all over the world I just love hopping in there and part of the moderation process and a lot of it is just really really good and so I love seeing just everyone's contributions and the info from all over the world that's a hard one I just like solving problems and stuff so it's like when I see I see like there's a need for something you know if I can speak and I can you know feel that need or if I can build a piece of software or feel that need that's my favorite thing give me a chance to talk and be a talk that's true yeah no it's not like but you know to what you were saying earlier Mary I'd like to the things talk that I gave was the first live word camp talk that I'd given since Rochester in 2019 and being at a word camp for me it fills my soul okay being the type of personality that I am I just look being around people and so you know the last few years have been a little difficult for me I'm not exactly back up to par with you know people time and everything else well I mean you know as much as I like being around people like I don't like being alone so for me it's about the travel I get to do it's basically an excuse for me to travel you know to come down and do some shopping or whatever but just to do that traveling bit it's an excuse for me even when I was doing it before before I was working for the current company I am I would still take half day off and go to a word camp or you know and it's seen those people right a couple of years ago I got diagnosed with thyroid cancer and I literally got the diagnosis two days before I was set to organize or to do the day of the camp right and I said yeah like I got this and they were honestly concerned this is my friend circle or one of them that to me is the best thing ever for me it's seeing the doors that were pressed opens so you know I've been fortunate I've I've I've never been to Europe I've been to Europe three times now from doing this job and just seeing being able to be a part of that and you never know as a contributor what's going to resonate with someone else my first word camp talk I was talking about was just about plug-in development and I saw someone four or five years later and they said oh I got this thing now this business I'm helping clients and it was all it was all thanks to your workshop that you did and just the way that you explained it just clicked for me and since then I've been I've been running with WordPress and so you never know what doors and what it's going to enable someone to be able to do in their life build a livelihood travel meet people in different parts of the globe I probably would have ever had friends in Australia or Europe or Asia and I have in all of those places I have I have very good friends now and it's just that's inspiring to me and you know I like contributing but that makes it even more and I leave these work camps and I just I can't wait to get home and I know I said I take a day off when I do extra things but I sometimes just want to stick that day and just get back to work and collaborating with everybody and that's definitely my favorite I'm a learner and I am a life-long learner I want to learn doors of life and when you're contributing even if you don't fix the issue of the problems you're learning and that's my favorite thing I've learned more contributing than research in the work-risk community I thought in a way but yes when you contribute you learn a lot you need to learn about the solution or you learn about the person or you're just talking about something you might want to learn even more about and get better at so every time I go in and I get to contribute I get to learn and more enlightened person and also again since it's the end of the conference charity begins at home I opened it with that I love open people WordPress definitely changed a lot of things for me and I want a lot of people from my community it's absolutely the people but also knowing it's not just that there's so many amazing people and I've made so many amazing friends that I get to see them all the time it's knowing that I make a difference and that the things that I do in WordPress makes a difference whether it's I made a really cool tweet and I got used by WordPress.org like that makes a difference to me right or knowing that I raise money and help people get to work camps that makes a difference there's so many different ways that every single one of us can make a difference whether it's small or large and it all works to the good of the whole community and these people here with me today at the stage are part of what makes a difference and every single one of you because you came today are part of what makes a difference and makes this community great and keeps it moving forward so I think we're at time we are one minute over time so I want to say thank you to all of you thank you I'm going to have to appropriate you and my friends that bring you butter charts and comments well yeah there's all the Canadian treats that I was going to say you're welcome


The Independent Marketplace Association of Nigeria has attributed the constant upward jump in palm price of premium motor spirits in the country. Things is the submission of the Ip Man at the ongoing investigation into the continuous rise in the palm price of petrol in the country since the announcement of the removal of subsidy by President Bona Mertinobu and his inaugural speech to the nation as soon as he was sworn in on 29 May 2023. The increase has affected the prices of goods and services across all sectors with many Nigerians forced to devise other ways of supporting themselves and their family. Petroleum is an arguably the lifeline of the Nigerian economy and any increase in its price will undoubtedly result in ripple effect on private goods and services especially food stock. Statistics show that Nigerians spend an average of 80 percent of their incomes and food alone. This is why we fear that this recent increase will further push Nigerians deeper below the poverty line. While responding to questions from members on the reasons for the constant price increase, Ip Man blamed on the rising price of crude oil in the international market, subsidy and the equalization fund removal as well as the constant falling value of the Naira. Not only is the issue of increasing the price presently we have a very huge amount of money under the NNPC custody whereby this money they refuse to release this money to us to continue into the business as at the same time they refuse to give us the product. Then one funniting is about the issue of equalization just like the honorable has asked. This equalization has really increased the fuel price in the northern part of Nigeria and other parts of the country. In that removal of society there was no place allowed even when we begged them here that you can leave subsidy we can even do internal equalization. They refused. It will take this house again to see because what this one will create is that many people will lose their work a lot of businesses will close because in thinking how to still remain in business will proceed. Electric vehicles should not be considered by this committee the only sustainable alternative that matches the purchasing power of a country where 150 million people living in multidimensional poverty is compressed natural gas which is 100 domestic.