Hello everyone and welcome to the ninth event of the safe havens freedom talk series. This time in collaboration with women chapter international. My name is my time and I'm happy to introduce such as Timashi Monty, the editor of the English section of women chapter that come shumu hug communications director at the women chapter international and shupruti the hard founder of the women chapter international. And today they will have a conversation on the story of this platform and the challenges faced during its journey. And now I will leave the word to shupruti after we see the video clip. Today's meeting for today's, I'd like to say events and he talks in such events. It's really important for us to tell about us. I think because you're, you can say they're fighting for our rights to establish the rights and to talk about our rights. So I'm, as you say that I'm shupruti the hard I'm the editor, a founder editor of women and founder, you can find a chairman of women chapter international. Okay. In the very beginning, I would like to say I put women chapter how I established this women chapter and, and what was the purpose behind this. Maybe we can play our point in this. chapter, our slogan, our main. Choose a to our situation. It's a movement to change women chapter is the first word online feminist taking platform for in Bangladesh. But people say we don't that it is also the first ever feminist portal in the language in the interval. Though we are not sure about this but people's. And if you look at our history that the early 2000s was very important in in the recent history of Bangladesh. This country kept leaning to the culture of Islamic feminism, the state of women became even more difficult and it had ever been in the last. So as an activist and list here I want to mention that I have been working as a journalist for more than 22 years and I start my career in a newspaper. At the same time, I wrote a newspaper and BBC radio and online newspaper and online media on radio. So I just thought that I can as a journalist with my experience working different media houses that I can get a platform where only women will work and just we wanted to see the world through women eyes. So, and that time, as an activist and journalist, I was in full aware of the lake of a safe or platform where once women could open discuss the issues were matter of life or death to. Safety from domestic and gender or gender based violence sexual violence exists to information on their productive rights, etc. It is from this urgency that women after was born but there was another history also. We had a show back movement.  So in the late 2000s and early 2000s, but in the youth of the country to come to the to the streets, demanding justice for the crimes committed as a population during the liberation war in 1970 by the Pakistani army collaborators. And most of our know now connected when hitting the numerous pro Islamic fundamentalist political parties such as Jama'at Islam and Hepaz of the Islamic Bangladesh. The whole country woke up with the hope of a of new transformation or a new beginning. But unlike the spring movement widely known as the show back at the popular locality in the Bungalow she capital. Where they started like the reason for Egypt, or we call it project more chapter it made the word for this in in Bungalow. So this is known as shop. They told it opened people's eyes towards areas in the society desperately in the need to reform. So we started the movement and the fifth of February 2000 in the first I can recall that we were. Mainly 70 people maybe at this time is a very big but the other day it was the thousands of thousands that next day it was millions already so you can imagine the how big it was. And the politics of a puzzle fundamentalism in Bangladesh. Maybe you already know about that. It was emerging power of fundamentalism in Bangladesh while the progressive movement started to gain momentum in the country. In 2003, the fundamentalist political parties such as the Hifaz of the Islam also struck back. So they had their 13 demands during a rally on May 5, 2013, who gives an insight, such as to their vision of turning the country in Islamic Republic ruled by the sharia law. Here are 13 demands of just I don't want to mention all the 13 demands. But most of the teams were against men. So we women as a women were so. You are not scared, but we were so much angry because. The bounded that the women should go to the kitchen shouldn't study. They should go to the university with a male. And I say that with man with boys. So, of course, it made us very much angry. And we, we did it. It's a big really, and we tried to hold in the shop of movement. We tried to bring all the organization or other liberal or progressive organization into this really. Is a journalist filled such that a vacuum and this movement because something was missing. I felt that there was no connection between the organization. So I that is a journalist what I can do I can write to put on the street every so I decided to hit a platform. Where women can express their view opinions. Then they can raise their voices so. In May I demand until 20th in 2013 I created this woman chapter. So women chapter started its journey. So immediately following its inception became clear that which chapter had hit the right cold among youth of the country. Filled along felt avoid not all of the women, but progressive minded. With its unique and original content. And with young and fresh writers, it created a new standard even for the long established media here I want to mention another thing that means the mainstream media couldn't publish our articles so we couldn't write it because we were not a writer we are not a columnist. But we had our and we had our voice so there was no place for women chapter where we need space ourselves. So, when we created this platform everyone started writing their every women who wanted to write. Even even mainstream media when they saw the popularity of men's chapter they also brought changes in their policy. So, nowadays we can see the mainstream media loss women are writing in the mainstream media. And even they have, they have open corner for women writer. So it's a very positive things and the suspense to media there are lots of other families for coming out. So women chapter, we can see that the pain of others. I was not so easy to create this path. And it was a which after who launched a me to movement in Bangladesh in 2018. We are very much criticized at the same time with our polarity. And we threatened surveillance many times. Not only me as an editor as an editor and my writer also. Many of our writers talked right in the women chapter because the kids and bullying and all that have continued our journey. So usually women chapter English section in 2016. It's a we have been separate section before it was only one and the whole women chapter. And she just made that she wanted to cover as they did all the English section. Maybe later she will explain how she worked there and why she joined at this section and I can just change here that in this eight years journey. Women chapter has got two. One is international. One is national international award in 2014. The Dutch village is international. Selected women in the block category for the national award. We got based online activism and women chapter by a word of the websites and new polls of 16 different languages. It is a huge win for us because we had to beat and it was if I'm not wrong, it was Japan. So we had to beat them that time in train was so popular of the revolution. So it was not easy to this award. And in 2016. Really, I received the honor award. It's very prestigious award in Bangladesh. They gave this to 10 women for contribution in various. So into it does not in 2016 it was 2015. For my work in women chapter. And if I say about how because it was our army. So it had. Maybe you already don't know that has a ship and digital city. And to eat. All the draconian law in our history, because our government has did this act to silence us to silence. All incidents bloggers thinkers and all their voice. So it's very. Very much. You know, black day for that when they cannot do this digital security act. And the portal kept gaining popular among the progress. It also kept attract in the government that didn't appreciate its publications. It is in various government policies. As it kept ending backwards. It's pro Islamic fundamental allies. And as a result, first it's on official forces. Supporters various lobbying entities started harrisings writers and editors which already mentioned. And online by taking on a massive online campaign against them and when they didn't stop them from writing sharing their option. And freely, they change their strategy launching a full on legal using using these draconian digital security act. It's an available act. So, if you are at least under this act, you can put into jail with asking any question. So it's and women's and me as an editor and this is an editor and our writers, you know, we were this act. And there are some people, fundamentalist people. I don't say that only fundamentally. There are other people so who don't like us so they filed a case. Three cases I can call the file to three cases against us. And recently there was. And that submitted the report to the court. It means the police. We did an investigation against women chapter. We are hardly just sentiment.  No. Towards one specific region. And, and they did investigation to found us guilty. We are doing such things through our writing, and they have submitted their phone report we call charge sheet against us. Where they asked even the police who was investigator in this place. He has asked in Interpol to call Interpol. It is just so it's a huge investment, of course. Maybe now I can hand over to Smith, maybe she will say something. So to start with, I would like to share a bit of my personal journey because I think for activists. And when we want to share our messages why we are fighting for certain causes. It's important to share a bit of our personal story. So, I started writing when I was young, I used to write sometimes short stories but I was also sharing my political opinions at times. For example, during the Iraq invasion, I wrote a open letter to the US president because I condemned what was happening over there. And also I wrote an open letter to Bangla Bhai who was an infamous terrorist when I was very young, I was going to school at that point. And later on, when I was doing my graduation in India. This is the time when the Shabak movement happened so I was just a. Yeah, I was witnessing it from outside and we were also having discussion because in India there are lots of Bangladesh students and I was involved in youth led peace groups from my college time. So people would ask us about our opinion what do you think about the movement. So this was actually the turning point in the history of Bangladesh and if I talk about the last decade. And so this is the time when I went through a personal transformation because as I had a mixed religious background because of my parents marriage. I always identified myself as someone who is leaning towards the secular ideologies. And for that reason, for a long time I'm really the current ruling party in Bangladesh they were considered as the only savior for the country because the other party Bangladesh Nationalist Party Party already becoming famous, because of their direct connection with fundamentalist groups such as Jamati Islami and Hepazati Islam. So for lots of people who identify themselves as non religious or secular or humanist. Like the only option and that was the same for me and for long time I was having this plan to have the civil service exam and yeah serve the country from yeah serve the state, but in 2015 my ideologies were shaken because first of all the killing of the blogger started and the government instead of condemning the fundamentalist they instead blame them for writing things but it is freedom of expression so how a secular government can say that I thought to myself. And that's when I guess my blind devotion as a young young adult started, you know it be, it was shaken because I didn't expect that from Amilic which is the secular democratic government of our country. And then in 2015 I also had this awkward encounter with CP gang so CP gang is kind of a watchdog for our government. I monitor what people are writing against the government on Facebook and they were very active in, I think from 2014 to 2016. If I'm not mistaken because I don't remember the timeline correctly, but they would threaten the people who would criticize the government even if it's just a one sentence that I don't agree with this policy, or this particular incident before you know there are hundreds of people who are attacking you.  I was getting rape threats from the CP gang members so when I tried to protest that you, you can't use such vulgar languages I got rep threats as well. And as a result of that for two months during my vacation in Bangladesh I was really afraid to step out by myself. I wanted to request for in my office if they can give me the public transportation because I really felt uncomfortable stepping out because this incident went viral. The screenshot of our Facebook conversation was everywhere so I was just afraid. And, as I mentioned before I was writing from childhood and when I started my master's program I started writing about issues related to women. So, and I joined a platform called safety first for girls, it was founded in Zambia, and I was serving remotely. So, in 2016 I was approached by should be that if I would be interested in the English section of women chapter. And because I was already working on this and I was trying to develop my skills as a writer I took it up as a challenge and because this is the English section I thought it would be important. That I look for translators who can translate some of our best write ups from Bengali to English, so that non Bangladesh audience can also understand the wave of feminism in Bangladesh how the feminine women are thinking about the issues because every context is very different. And secondly I also thought since I had already built an international network because of volunteering with different youth led groups. Why don't I promote a women chapter amongst my own networks and a lot of people were enthusiastic about it they reached out to me with their articles and this is how the journey started and now it's been nearly five years that I'm working as the editor of the English section. So I have encountered a few challenges along the way. I think within few months of starting to work as the editor, I already got threats and criticism for publishing certain articles amongst my own network. Some people were not happy and that also impacted my academic life, because it also led to campus politics and why I was publishing certain articles, even though I tried to be as strategic as possible in the beginning. Also with the volunteers, yes, there were volunteers who out and there were certain situations where the writers kept calling me to remove the articles because they were getting threats within their family. And I also had a volunteer who was forcibly married off I don't know if it had something to do with her volunteering with women chapter but this was this happened all of a sudden that her family just decided to throw a surprise party on her birthday and the surprise was a marriage and she had no clue. And since then she didn't work with our portal and later consequences with this digital security act, which is which you can compare with the blasphemy law of Pakistan like in Pakistan, you don't even need to be an activist under the blasphemy law. Somebody can just use it for the taking a revenge on somebody mostly belonging to religious minority groups. Likewise in Bangladesh if the government doesn't like you on the Islamic fundamentalist don't like what you are doing. You can be charged under the digital security act and there are people who have been imprisoned for several months and even a year. And only few have been released and these are the people who are mostly having who mostly come from the elite backgrounds of Bangladesh who have people to back them up but what about people in villages who get charged under digital security or act or its predecessor ICT 57 act. And because now media is also under the pressure of the government so we don't get to know a lot about these people later on okay this person has been arrested but what happened after that did this person come out at all what happened to the families because being accused of hurting religious sentiments it's a it's a very dangerous situation in Bangladesh so yeah we don't get to know because newspapers cannot publish things as and when they wish and when they do their consequences so these are some of the challenges we are also dealing with ever since this platform was created and personally I don't feel safe to go to Bangladesh with all these cases because in past there have also been instances where people have been detained from the airport. And as I said it takes a lot of lobbying and you need to really have powerful lobbying to get you released, but you never know if you will be alive in the prison to be released. The current situation is just getting worse and worse and the government which is which still claims to be a secular democratic government they have they have compromised with the radical groups. Now a lot of these oppressive policies against women before it was just Jamaat Islam me or Hifazat Islam. Organizing public demonstrations on the streets that we don't want women to go to school or we want women to the kitchen but now government is I don't know how to say it in English like it's it's becoming part of the official policies of the country with child marriage with domestic violence. The government just wants to stay in power at the moment in Bangladesh so they will compromise with anyone, be it the Islamic fundamentalists in Bangladesh, or because India is our powerful neighbor in the region. So, to keep a good relationship with India, sometimes the government is silent on the matters relating to operation of minorities in India. But in recent times that have changed but yeah, the current party just keeps changing its narrative. It's about what suits them at that moment just to stay in power. Yeah, that's all I had to say. Thank you. Thank you. Maybe I'll take this platform for a little while. And then, okay, you have come to know about chapter and women chapters learning. Now, after eight years, actually, we were planning to move further. So, we decided to create an international. When I'm living in Sweden, you know that I was trained in 2015, 16, 17, so I had to move from the country. So, I came here in Sweden. Here, I was thinking that how we help women and other human rights, at least from such, and are, you know, what is, what's happening in Bangladesh. So, and that's why we created this international, maybe I can hand over now to she will explain very clearly how we started our journey and actually what's our plan to do in future. Thank you safe and then freedom paths for giving women chapter international and women chapter.com this opportunity to present our organizations here it's a great honor to be here today. So, should pretty and should just meet that has already given you quite a bit of background before we move on to more details about the women chapter international, or what we address as WCI. So, let's watch a quick video that kind of captures the essence of this transition from the portal to the organization. So here it comes. And also the video will have a little bit of a message from two of our other board members who couldn't be here today. So here it goes. My name is Camilla Carlson and I'm a board member of women chapter. And I have been a board member from the start. And I live in Sweden. And I think this, the work who women chapter is planning to do is very important. And we are in a lot of, we have connections in a lot of other countries. And it's specially important for the children and for the jungles. So this work is very, very important. Greetings from Bangladesh. I'm Monju Nahar. I'm a founder member of women chapter international. I'm taking immense pleasure to introduce you all with women chapter international. Actually, women chapter international as your organization isn't new, but its journey has begun since long time through an online portal, women chapter raising the discriminatory issue against women, marginalized people, and also developing the capacity of women writer to write the women issue, gender issue and identify the issues that has created discrimination among the marginalized people and women all over the globe. So that is the basic point of starting point of women chapter international. Later women chapter international took its restoration from Sweden with the aim to create a just society. Our focus on to reduce the discriminatory practice against women and girls in different countries. Primarily we focus on Bangladesh as you all know that Bangladesh is highly class based and gender based society. So we are focusing to reduce gender bias violence and especially during the public period we are focusing on early child marriage, safe pregnancy, safe motherhood and also domestic violence. Along with this, our dream is to work all over the globe and people like you, the similar minded people to fight together to work together. So that is the brief introduction of women chapter international. Thank you. Finally, we created it. And what are some of the areas that we want to work in. I am. We had a presentation prepared for reviewing but after all this PowerPoints, I thought, let's just talk and share our ideas with you instead. And then I started writing for women chapter in 2014. I also felt some backlash from people around me. I got some threats as well. I no longer, I do not have any cases filed against me but when I do go back home. I do have to deactivate my social media, I cannot move around freely and people would steal our articles and publish them with distorted titles that would make it look like we're trying to insult the sentiments of people, people's religious views. So things back home in Bangladesh to say the list is not very conducive to creating an environment where you can write or share your ideas freely. And you would imagine that country that is 50 and celebrating its 50 years of independence would have more freedom for its women. But unfortunately, things started going backwards. So we realized that we needed to create a platform that will have the organizational structure and will be able to have that global force that will give us the freedom to work freely will give us the freedom to work on the policy level will give us the conversation across the globe and do lobbying if necessary from one government to the other to network with other similar organization so that this issues can be addressed. And as you know, with globalization these issues are not only limited to Bangladesh. All South Asian countries have similar issues, when it comes to human rights abuse, when it comes to gender based violence when it comes to women suffering because of not having the basic rights as human beings so we wanted to work in those areas. So women chapter international was formed as an NGO, it is registered in Sweden but we plan to work, not only in Bangladesh and Sweden we want to work in African countries we want to work in the Bangladesh and North America we want to work in Europe, and we have started networking with a lot of organizations all over the globe already. So some of the, some of the issues that we have addressed already, and that are very important to us are, for example, rape as a war crime. If you're familiar with the history of Bangladesh, you know that it is one of the countries that has the highest amount of rape committed during its liberation war in 1971 highest in terms of what has been recorded in history. So, we started working about working around that topic, and then we realized that because of that trauma that has not been addressed properly, those, those survivors were not given the support that they needed that trauma has been handed down to generations to their descendants. And people are still suffering as a result of that. And this is not an unique issue to Bangladesh. So we started doing this webinars where we connected to survivors from Rwanda Genocide. We started connecting with people from Europe from possible from Poland from all over the world. And we want to continue on that road, we want to work with survivors of sexual violence we want to create a support system for them. We want to make sure that they have a rehabilitation program so that they can also reach their potential as complete human beings in the society today. We want to address issues such as female genital mutilation. That is a very, very serious and a very real problem in Europe today. So we talk about feminism in Europe, because it used to be such a very white collar feminism, even 20 years ago, when you talk about third and fourth wave feminism. It has gone way beyond those basic things. But if you look at today's Europe because of the globalization, the, the population and their needs have changed. If you look at the demographic today, it's not any longer that particular population that would relate to those fourth wave or third wave feminism, right, so their needs have become much more basic. So we felt that there is a vacuum there. There is a need for those crimes such as honor killing such as honor, honor based crimes such as forced marriage. Those things that are very, very real threat to South Asian diaspora all over the world. So we want to make sure that those things are addressed and that we can work in the policy level. We want to make sure that we work with, we create that support system so that no one, no one can ever fall to the crack ever again. And it's a very women chapter international is a very new organization, and we have only completed our first year. And to be specific, it's been only 15 months or so. So it's a very new journey, but we do have a lot of dreams and we have been connecting with some amazing organizations, and we have been getting a lot of response from the diaspora from the Bangladeshi diaspora from the African diaspora from all over the globe, and we want to continue on that path. We want to make sure that those without the voices, the survivors of war crimes, the survivors of those trauma that couldn't voice their stories because because of the shame because of the stigma that is connected to them. We want to make sure that their voices are heard. We want to create that platform globally, not just within Bangladesh, we want to make sure that platform exists wherever it's needed. Be it Rwanda or in South America or in Kosovo or it can be South Asian community in Toronto. We want to make sure that everybody gets the support that they needed. So that is where WCI wants to be there. And we hope that everyone will help us and guide us on that journey. Thank you everyone. Thank you Shumu for clarifying that what we actually want to do in future. And I want to just add here and I want to take this advantage, this program and that we have started our new venue with women chapter intentional. And we registered in June, 2020, so 15 or 16 months already. So but in this pandemic, we were not sitting I'd, you know, we were so many network have done and we have done so many webiness. And of course, you know, we don't have any for this, don't have any budget for this. We are doing it, you know, with our ambition. I don't know how to explain that. We have loved this work and what we do, it's a chapter internationalist organization, but what's the difference in other organizing with women chapter international is that we would be, we focus on domestic violence and for marriage, child marriage in our south Asian countries and south Asian diaspora all over the world and trauma course, trauma war rape victims and rape victims. So we have lots of other, you know, perspective to do so. Here is the difference when other organization with women chapter international that we won't focus on women things what you know don't do other organizations so we maybe women rights device we we feel the pain. What is happening with women all over the world.  Thank you so much. Thank you safe happens you free dogs for such a program. It was a immense pleasure for us to introduce, you know, express ourselves. Thank you. Thank you all. I think it's been a very rich and informative talk. Thank you again women chapter international and also our web partner how round and the freedom talk series is a concept closely connected to the annual safe havens conference and it focuses on the issues regarding threats towards artistic freedom, free press and intangible heritage. These talks are organized by the safe havens freedom talks and sponsored by the Swedish Institute. And the next freedom talk will be in collaboration with the artistic freedom initiative very soon. Thank you again for joining us today and have a good day everyone.


Right, welcome, welcome. Thank you so much for joining us for the first webinar of the year for Parsons TKO. We really try to develop some topics around things that are really actionable for your organization and your role so we're really excited to be able to share technology road mapping 101 with you today. We also wanted to let you all know that we have designed a workshop around the subject matter that we'll be talking about today so we'll be sending out some information afterwards in the follow up to get some more information from our team about how that workshop could help you or your team so I want to introduce the gentlemen who will be leading the discussion today. Eric Rojas is our senior strategist and John Harrison is our technical solutions producer. They both have a wealth of knowledge and you'll be able to contact them directly afterwards as well. Feel free to drop any questions or comments in the chat. But if we don't get time to address your questions will make sure to follow up with you directly afterwards. So welcome take it away. Thank you nerd us and welcome everybody nice to see some new and familiar faces here today. I'm Eric Rojas. I am a senior strategist TKO. I'm coming to from sunny today to come apart Maryland just outside of DC. And yeah, I come from a background of higher ed and museum marketing technology. I spent my beginning my career at a few universities doing marketing there and then also about 10 years at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum here in DC. So joined persons TKO a while back and really pleased to be working here and with all these folks and seeing all these new faces. john you want to introduce yourself. Hi everybody I'm john Harrison solutions producer at Parsons TKO. I have a background in marketing technology working with nonprofits mission driven organizations. Most recently came from enterprise community partners but I've also done work for a RP and a couple of other nonprofits as well. I have a background and information technology instructional technology. So this topic is definitely top of mind for me. Thank you Eric. No worries. Great well then we'll get started here. Feel free to submit a question the chat if you'd like. We'll try to come back to those towards the end. We do have a few or one or two. We'll be asking a few questions here and there so please chime in when you get a chance. So we'll be talking today about the different types of road mapping projects we've done before, and also you know what our process is, you know, how we interact with with mission driven organizations in this capacity love nonprofits education institutions advocacy organizations trade associations. You know, how make how we can help work with your technology stack and make it work better for you and your staff and organization. So we're excited to get started and devil and tell you all about it. Again, you're here for a technology road mapping 101 story for success. There's a little bit about our company philosophy here at Parsons TKO, which provides a framework for how we work right and how we design our roadmaps and how we look at yours right. It's rooted in this sense of interconnectedness and based on people and systems that power your organization. If you're like many of us, you know, you might be naturally change focused right whether intentionally or unintentionally right. I like this model because it provides that framework for formulating and modeling right that that change in a replicable and innovative way. The roadmap is really a way to drive this concept forward over time, and it channels your current and existing structures into that path forward so looking towards the future. Many organizations do evolve organically right when it's not too organized, and this might be successful if you're fully staff and you have that clear vision in place. But a lot of times you have to create vision and really push you know and encourage and collaborate with staff to get there. All these pieces together help you know figure out where you're where you're going. So, why might one might want to watch a roadmap. You might have a change in leadership in your organization a change in strategic direction. You might have a new tech team that or a new a new unit that's come on board effect that's effective change that change might be tough. Usually, it can be, you know, think of like an educational institution. And you might want to increase your, you know, business goals like attendance or accelerating them. And this roadmap process to help by clarity about how to reach those goals. You know if you've already achieved this kind of growth and you've outgrown clearly the platforms or systems and processes you have in place. And you want to make sure you can support that and support your existing place a roadmap is a good time, a good experience for that to figure out where to go. And we recommend this kind of multi year planning tool to find that next milestone to empower your new or existing strategic strategic plan. So, going back right if you've already grown and plateaued. And that's all about consolidation to right so like figuring out a way to harness that the end and sit with the change that you've already used or got to, and then, you know, determine where you want to go next. So yeah, roadmaps are appropriate for these multi year experiences. So certainly, you'll need to plan ahead. There are many steps. So breaking these phases apart into more digestible incremental pieces makes it easier to do right so we start usually with your current state and that sense of you know where you are right now in the uncertainty, and then move towards those near term priorities, the, you know, what's up in the next 90 days, next year, right, and then we look beyond that to right so that future clearer vision that we have to get to. So if you have any doubts about your next steps, you need that clarified vision to get there. So many outcomes can be cloudy, and your next step might actually be pretty vague right so you need to prioritize the path to get there, just by that amount of data and systems and complexities in front of you. And so, you know, that's how we look at our different, the different tool sets and pieces in front of us but, but when it comes to change and how we, you know, engage how you engage with your audience, progress is, you know, not always it's, it's progress is forward, but it's not always upward right. It's ideally forward. It's, it's about maintaining that consistency of progress and then consolidating your efforts. So when change takes hold, you have these moments when you need your teams to get used to it. That's okay right you need to find that time to sit with change. Everyone needs to feel comfortable to move on to that next phase, and you need to give people the space to get there and build that into your roadmap to people have that sense of change capacity and endurance right or finding ways to consolidate that that that endurance. So, you know, you've got to make sure you can sit with that value of investment to really feel it to, you know, the new process is coming in, or let's say you have a new email platform that's been launched, and it makes things easier for staff to get stuff out the door, feeling that change makes it makes it work. So in this diagram here like that that dark green is that potential value, the colors but even the face three different phases, and containing realized value when you invest in that you recoup it and those flat lines don't necessarily mean that aren't investing monetarily, you know, but you're the people that there will see the benefit. This is also helpful for a lot of organizations with a lot of turnover, you know, changing the way that you grow, excuse me. And investing in the way you grow provides for that continuity so building in like redundancy documenting tasks. Building a way for people to get adopted to platforms along the way. It really helps new staff or transition plans right so finding and consolidating around that everybody else's individual journey along the way. So two maps provide this structure and a guide for yourself, and for your organizations right organizations involved all of your work together. We make sure that that process is as organic, and make sure it's something that you can go right we want your organization to grow the way that it's supposed to grow, you know, like a naturally rooted idea. You have to stay in step with the way you work. It should be a plan that introduces these clear improvements along the way to that teams can get on board with. For example, if you're maintaining your website, it's helpful to have your guiding vision and site. So you can align with partners and tune towards their needs, as well as your audiences needs to right so communicating your path. It also needs your audiences goals, and your colleagues goals to. And here's like a high level view about how we envision our path to a roadmap. You know we, we start by assessing establishing these nuanced strategic goals for your roadmap. This can be really challenging. So, you know we work with you to refine and keep them relatively but the guiding path for you. is to your stakeholders as well learn their, their struggles, what their aspirations are, and, you know what their manual tasks are with what's automated. Sometimes we learn a lot more in that process to and then we, you know, annotate all this and, and hold on to it to use it for the rest of our research and recommendations along the way. In the state analysis, we provide like a tool kit for documenting and exploring your current architecture and your technology. And then we'll take a first pass at documenting those critical processes, the way touch points of how you interact with your audiences, and then help you continue to add to these lists. And then the assessment structure you know as you grow. I forgot to go back. One step we also talk inventory all of your systems as well so every technology that platform that you use, whether it's something that someone spun up on their personal credit card and then bill back to you. And that part of that interview process is this is this us out, where all those different tools and the things people rely on to get their jobs done tracking all that so we know what we're using is very helpful for this process of solidate and. And also just yeah keep track of what's going out a lot of organizations don't really know where their outreach is the what one end of outreach could be doing. So being able to track and keep and keep an eye on and also work together to create a one voice, so that organization is here. Going back to that current state. Right so we will consolidate that and see what's happening right now. The future state is the vision of where you want to go, you know what kind of services do you want to offer. How do you envision supporting your staff with all these technologies and technologies that you might want to implement the future to. How do you want to communicate your audiences. How do you want to learn from them will help you dream this vision. So, and then the final piece the roadmap itself is that connective tissue, summing up all of what we've learned and how you can get there. John, did you have anything you wanted to add here. Yeah, I would say like in doing, especially the stakeholder interviews with different organizations. While I've been at Parsons TKO it's, I think it's really enlightening for our clients to, to find out like you know what are the systems what are the processes who are the people that sort of own and manage you know all of these key systems that that your organization is running and it's very enlightening for a lot of a lot of the leaders and core teams that we work with on with our clients to find out that you know they're not just using 30 systems are using 150 systems and many of them might be redundant so it's it's definitely an eye opener for all the organizations that I've worked with so far. Yeah, we find that that sprawl tends to happen and sometimes might have those redundancies where people have their own versions and nothing's talking to each other so getting track of all that is helpful right if even just to see how you're operating now. Indeed. So, again, kind of going back to that sense of decision fatigue, you know how do you figure out where you're going to go there are so many options available. And we're already dealing with a lot right now to, you know, we're not going to say a roadmap is a vacation, but it leads to a destination, you might wish to go to the beach, you might prefer mountains. But so the roadmap is really that journey between how are you, you know where you are now and how you get there. I would like to just step in and provide this sort of real world analogy for what a roadmap and a future state vision is because I know this can be a difficult concept to grasp at first but it helps when you're talking to others within your organization to try to sell this effort, for sure. I think of like a Disney world analogy right. So the roadmap might include a stop to visit relatives. Perhaps you want to go camping at Yellowstone. And there's some questions that you need to ask when you're when you're planning this future state vision of this destination. Do you have the right vehicle, you know, is it packed with the right things to take along your journey. Do you have a tent do you have sleeping bags, you know, do you have the route optimized so it's scenic and and beautiful but also not exhausting for your kids and the people that are going along with this journey. And I think this is where Parsons TKO can shine and help you sort of find that next two months you know the next quarter the next year or three, and making that journey as valuable as possible as you're getting to that future state destination. You have packing camping right all these different pieces and getting to your place. Don't try touch on that a bit, but that's that's certainly part of how we envision your path. You know and so before you even find that path that first part of it here as we were talking about, you need to find the way you're going to get there. And this might be limited by your capacity by sheer just ability right. You might need to walk. You might need to run you might need to take a train right. Your time might be limited, you might have more time to be think so. You know it's really helpful to have someone out there, like an organization like Parsons TKO that has experience in this kind of work, where we can help. And we find it's really helpful for organizations to learn what they're already good at. And sometimes you need another set of eyes to learn and to see that perspective. We help you discover your secret sauce so you can learn how to make it. And you know help make different aspects of your outreach better right so you can make your email marketing better which levels up marketing in general, and help you reach those organizational goals. If you need help convincing your C suite executives, we help you find that right path there too. So how do you again how do you process all this information, we help you distill that wealth of information in front of you to focus on those aspects that lead to progress. We're going to copy and paste a link into the chat here to a blog post from from Nick Parsons who's joined us today as well. So we've got from recently a recent blog post I believe, about how to create sustainable change through the process so you'll be to reach out if you have any questions about it, but we'll step. So now we'll jump into our road mapping process how we look at road maps. It's firmly rooted in our engagement architecture philosophy so we'll take a walk through that. So where do we start right, we start really with empathy. What does this look like you know we want these to be conversations, every organization is different, and we need to learn the way that you speak to do it internally to right you might have those that speak differently, knowing, knowing how people use terms, what, you know, how people communicate what will call certain systems or, or ways they work or products even this can separate pretty quickly when you're when you're siloed so talking to people stakeholder interviews feeling out their aspirations and motivations. We also want to learn about who might be impacted by any change along the way. And if that you know if you're scared of that change or if they're excited by it, you know what skills might they have to learn to continue to succeed. We work internally on these, you know, we're sorry, excuse me, how do we work internally on these aspects, you know we build consensus and allowing that space for conversation to grow. So part of our interviews might be, you know, start out as a question but it really turns into these natural flow, where we, you know, so sound like, what are people looking for, where did they, what, what do they want to see. Where do they want the organization to grow and where the pain, pain points or challenges the moment, you know we identify these different allies or champions you might be along on this journey as well as they will help us get the change and your organization get the change down the line. So, knowing what their motivations are, where they're excited to jump in and help enlisting help is always great to have people are excited by the process, and they want to help, you know, they should, they should be able to. And we don't just think about, you know, that the tools that are at your disposal but also the ecosystem of tools right and how they're implemented and used. So, for support, you know, this might be how our tools and platforms right service by your IT department, who manages those features, who owns or administers each software software. What departments is it are they in how and how do these interact you know they're supporting mechanism through the integrations in place or are they just manual processes that manual integrations right we're just pulling the levers and uploading and downloading and and facilitating list transfers right. What integrations are impacted by any change or something need to be redone. What is the place to redesign rearchitected. This might impact your organization strategic goals like fundraising.  You know, tactically, we're thinking about, where's the best home for your organization's projects, you know, on the web right content management systems, landing pages, micro sites.  Do you have control over them. Do you want control, are they centralized or users using them themselves, all of these pieces of, you know, how people use your toolkit and who owns them right are really critical back to that support mechanism to, you know, if it is supporting an outreach tool, you know what does that structure look like, if marketing is supporting it, if fundraising is supporting it, who is the person in place who administers, are they well supported, and do they have the skills to do that. You know, is your software setup in a way that allows end users to do that self service work or is it all centralized. So, looking at those aspects of how you use your toolkit, your platforms in place is really critical to seeing this bigger picture. And I'll point on this too. What needs to change and what is driven by the change of your, your contracts in place with some of these soft pieces of software some of them are licensed based off, you know, annual licenses some of the three year contracts. There are other requirements to, if you have an end date, and you need to renegotiate, we need to know that needs to be part of this conversation as well so knowing what those timelines look like and what restrictions you have. Now, next part here is the process oriented part of our roadmap. These are processes that is the, the ways you get to your goals, the steps you take to finish a product. Are they optimized, are they, you know, are they way they are because of technology problems or skill or the way we've done it. You know, we like to look at that it's and assess whether or not those can be optimized. It preserves that expertise in place by trying to remove those difficulties that you might experience so that's what we're focused on here. There's a distinction between, you know, that internal expertise and focusing on more impactful change, not just because of, you know, the software doesn't connect. So, you know, going back to john's kind of camping analogy, a trip to Disney World, I'm going to buy default for I say Disneyland because I'm from LA but like, you know, well, overall with it right. Think about how you pack for that trip. Especially like when you get there, you know you need to plan ahead for the luggage the food the water the thing to keep your family sustained right and comfy. Make sure you have everything packed, then you got to play a little bit of Tetris and get everything into your car and make sure it fits and then be able to unpack on Tetris it and take it, you know, out and out for the night so you can keep everyone comfy and it includes all these pieces right. These are all part of your processes, and we help in and help you identify those within your organization. That might be what steps are taken to build, and to build an email. What does that look like from the perspective of different organizations are different parts of your organization. That's what we're looking at here and what we try to document. So yeah what will need to be learned when your skills change. And yeah, what will change right by this. And then we look at your strategic goals and making sure that the skill the tools you have in place the people are also part of that part of the roadmap as well so this might be branding and website and your alignment with your website, make sure that all those disparate channels, whether it's again email or social or, you know, direct. And these follow your branding guidelines so you're speaking of one voice unless there's a clear reason not to. These might be fundraising goals. So back to the point. There's a great opportunity about how technologies might impact that fund those fundraising strategies, again, making sure the timing is right, making sure that the products that are supported by your fundraising platform. Actually, support the task that you need to get done in a streamlined way. If you're an environmental organization, or a contribution based one, your outcomes might be firmly rooted in land acquired right or or served or adapted for public use. So make sure that's part of the consideration here as well. And since many mission driven organizations lack some commonly lack sufficient resources, some of these unmet needs tend to revolve around these gaps so we'd like to talk about these needs first and then see if there's a role for them already. You know, we look at these different forms of resources staffing doesn't necessarily need to be full time. Now think about a vendor or a freelancer consult something that's a little more flexible to provide those spaces. And you know, many of you come from organizations with inspiring creative experiences that drive your audience engagements right. So many ways you interact and the touch points you make, you may have a really great email newsletter inspiring fundraising campaigns that encourage people to give or regular and exciting and compelling online events. Some of the more innovative folks have found ways to capture data and analytics based off these interactions right, a finding way to funnel that we're very interested in that. I'm interested in how each of these align with your work and how do you create those impacts and how do you capture track them. Where is this data stored. How do you report on them. We want to find those individual touch points and the type of channel they're on. And you know where that which part of your audience those are as well and the metrics that align with them. I'm interested in those moments where those communications or outreach moments cross departments across channels, those tend to shine a light on some of the more exciting, and also difficult moments right when you have an event, and then there's also a fundraising opportunity what is the handoff look like that look there. How do those interactions occur. Are they smooth. Are they disruptive. What does it look like from the audience perspective. These, again, these tend to be the hard moments. So, you know, we, we like to look at those and uncover why exactly they might be hard and how to make them a little better. And then, now we looked at to, you know, how does, how does the roadmap, you know, shape the way your organization works. You could be actively doing all of the different things already. So, you know, there's a lot of conversations but without a guiding vision or an endpoint that you have envisioned. You may end up with a lot of incomplete work and not clear direction. So we want to create a space to talk about technology, and these interactions right and make this really concrete. So, you know, in the past I worked when I worked in one of these organizations, I was part of a cross across our department, excuse me, cross departmental technology team that we started. I was I was a junior member at the time so I can't take the full part of it but if I was one of the founding members of this of this group, where we just started talking. You know, and I was on the email side of the house, but I had my hand and broader digital. It brought it team together with technology stakeholders and marketing, and it was a wide range right it was production folks, senior staff. Very just created a space for communication, which we find is a really great way to create a force for change along the way. John, do you have anything to add here. I think this is this is a great segue to really talking about what are some of those common hurdles that you know that organizations experience with standing up a roadmap. Great. Yeah, please. Yeah, and I think, given that we have some time I'd love to invite the audience for some participation during this section. Especially if you have some experiences to share because we love listening and learning from from others other people's experiences so let's go to the next slide. I'm probably wondering why don't organizations have road maps, you know, and, and this is really a lot about change management, but some of the common barriers that we've seen based on, you know, the interviews we've done with stakeholders and organizations in large, you know, we see sometimes you know there's entrance structure and trench structures so we see fences sometimes set too high for collaboration between departments. And maybe one department doesn't know that they're preventing another department from from being productive or getting getting the message out that they need to get out, get out using the technology at hand. Sometimes governance and accountability is very clear at the department level, but not across departments or at the greater organization. So you can get folks on board with your own team, you know, but how do you sell the roadmap this change to others. Sometimes you have executive sponsors for instance that may be skeptical they want to understand the return on investment. They want to understand why we need to change why we're doing something we've done for so long for perhaps. Another one is, you know, building capacity, you know, how do you find the time for your core team for your internal stakeholders to focus on planning the roadmap, you know, so that they can actually think about the pieces and parts, you know, with our help of course at Parsons to help build that roadmap. So I'd love to pause here and, you know, invite the people that have joined the webinar, you know, if you have any experiences hurdles that you'd like to share within your organization. You know that you've experienced when trying to plan a roadmap or even just any kind of change management and give it a few seconds if you want to either speak up or post in chat that would be awesome. Anybody any takers. Can I have a quiet punch. Okay. Okay, Karen. I'd say our issue is we're growing faster than our systems can support. Yeah, that's, that's definitely, that's definitely one that we see a lot of working with an organization right now that, you know, wants to pivot to an entirely remote resource. They want to hire more people. They want to, you know, support more neighbor nonprofits and so on. And we're working on a roadmap with them so you know thinking about thinking about like, do you have the systems in place to scale. I mean that's a big one right. Any other folks. Emily, we have a very small team that's used to doing things the way that they've done them. Yeah, and I have a slide on this so that's a great one. I'm going to go back to Patrick. There's interest in the roadmap but unlikely to adhere to it from leadership, very much putting out putting the cart before the horse without intentionality type of leadership. And that's, that's a great one that's one, one challenge we're, we're dealing with right now with a couple of clients is really selling the roadmap and the future state vision to the executive leadership because they're the ones that are going to provide air cover, and they're making this thing a reality and, and, and providing the budget and, and, and all that stuff. Yeah, and learning to slow down. Great, great one. Yeah, so let's go on to the next slide and talk a little bit more about this. So what's some of the resistance to change that we've seen, you know, that tried and true becomes the way that it's been done, you know, constituents of your organization. It's a high bar of expectation for how digital interactions and technology should serve them. You know they're used to this from the pandemic right. It's a ripe opportunity now for nonprofits to catch up with the Instacarts the Ubers the Amazons and so on. And really bring those digital first experiences into the nonprofit mission driven sector if they're not already there, because that's what people have come to expect, you know, I think, to get along the lines of generational change you know this is an opportunity to lean in on the great resignation that we're hearing a lot about right now, you know, no doubt many organizations are hiring new faces. Many of them are digital natives. We work with orgs that have you know up to four or five different generations of employees you know from boomers all the way to Gen Z. And the outcome of this is that some of those entrenched silos are going to start to degrade because there's new ways of thinking and new expectations of doing work. And, you know, we found an exciting trend in our staff interviews that we've done that these newcomer newcomers all almost always know of new ways to work, you know they view systems that work better than the systems they've inherited. You've seen the power of data right so this is all stuff that can help bolster the case for your roadmap. Can your organization explain why it's done the way that it's been done I mean that's a big one. You know, if not, can you learn from your new staff and bring their ideas along into this journey. So make sure that these new people, you know, that have diversity of ideas and so on, have a seat in the vehicle. And how do you build capacity into the roadmap so the effort feels attainable and possible those are really really important. And Parsons TKO is expert at this. How can you make space for creativity and innovation as well as you're moving along this roadmap. So budgeting I mean that money is a big one right you know we've heard from some organizations that building the technical sophistication that constituents have come to expect can be expensive right. So getting consensus on the order of operations what we're paying for the priorities and and everything like that is top of mind. But you know time is money, you know new systems and processes can be costly. So how much can you fit in your vehicle as you travel along the road, how many folks are along for the ride and can help right. Parsons TKO has worked with several clients to sort of help democratize their efforts a bit more so there's a shared sense of ownership and costs, so the value can be made more clear to your organization. One of the things that we've explored with several clients with great success is like building coalitions to help make the case and build momentum. You know, often these are things that haven't existed at organizations before and I'm talking about like technology working groups technology stewardship committees and so on. And they can be a part of the core team that Parsons TKO is working with but it could also be subject matter experts in your organization. You know, these people can help to find what new systems need to do they can set goals, you know, and they can work across departmentally to potentially share in the cost of standing up these systems, and making integrations more useful like, you know if you're trying to integrate say a marketing platform and a philanthropy platform, and you're currently working in silos. The roadmap is an opportunity for you to come together and and and bring value to both of your teams and sort of break down some of the things we've talked about. Also, you know you're going to have better data out of this roadmap. You're going to have fantastic reporting and dashboards that that can align with your organizational KPIs, both your departmental ones and perhaps your organizational ones this is something that a lot of organizations don't think about us. How can, how can this roadmap bring value and tie into your strategic plan perhaps or your mission. So these groups can also help bridge the understanding gap, you know, between departments and I know we talked about educating executives and address those sort of gotcha moments that might not be so clear to to a department or to a leader right like. Why should I do this what's the return on investment. We, we have done this you know we can bring this to you to your organization. Also you know if a time consuming manual process is prone to errors in your current state, or perhaps the metrics are really hard to get at and extract and understand the roadmap can shine a light on the way that it's been done and provide a spark and appetite for for new change. And you know we were also helping organizations I know some folks are say well, we're too small for roadmap right. Well, we've worked we've done small road maps for for for smaller organizations you know and some of the things will help with smaller organizations thinking about what kinds of things are free for you to use right now what kind of things can you demo what can you try out. You know, in the CRM and email outreach world, for instance, you know many products are free to try out or given at a significantly reduced cost. And Parsons is really good at understanding the limitations around what those systems are and making sure that you have a plan for scalability around using these platforms so that your future state vision can be supported. And it's not compromised by the limitations on something that's related to your budget. So, you know, camping analogy here is like you know if you're glamping in a cabin right. That's a very different set of equipment than you would take in your car for a backwards tent camping where there's bears in the woods right. So this is the kind of thing that we're really good at helping out thinking about the planning the budgets tools and the resources needed to really make that roadmap most successful. Yeah, and I just wanted to jump in here to, you know, part of the providing that spark and appetite for change right the roadmap helps bring that momentum as part of that process right when people start to hear about a roadmap happening. They generally want to be a part of it. So there's also like a cultural force that happens that that can help make that, you know, case and change hearts and minds along the way right, making sure that people are aligned with it. And if they want to be aligned with it can be part of that process so yeah the technology working groups that can be in place. Getting different people involved in different places where they can step out of their day to day work and think about the bigger picture or the next place it's inspiring right so thinking about that and providing those spaces help get people along on the journey. Thanks Eric and I think we're almost there right. Yeah, we are so thanks folks. I can't, I can't wrap up here today without any, any funnies so you know you can't really change the past, but you can plan for the future. So, if you have a roadmap with you helps you where you want to go. Yeah, and we're hoping everybody gets the back to the future. I know we've shown that to some people and they've been like what's that. Look it up if you haven't yet. So now it's a time you know for you to start preparing and thinking about your own roadmap. Let us know if you need any help at all. We're happy to be part of your journey, and you can reach out to us anytime if you have any questions or feel free to jump in right now if you have any open questions at all. Hopefully to drop any questions and we'll be here for a few more minutes. Thanks again for joining us today everybody. We know your time, your, your rest period during during lunch hours or morning hours is tight day every week is busy so we appreciate that you were able to join us for this brief period of time.


Over 1,000 years ago, the Anishinaabe people lived along the Atlantic coastline of Turtle Island in North America. They were visited by eight prophets and given seven prophecies to follow, the third of which directed them to travel westward until they found a place where food grows on water. When they arrived in the Great Lakes region, they discovered vast beds of wild rice, or manoman. As the story is told, Nanobusu, the cultural hero of the Anishinaabe, was introduced to rice by fortune and by a duck. One evening, Nanobusu returned from hunting, but he had no game. As he came towards his fire, there was a duck sitting on the edge of his kettle of boiling water. After the duck flew away, Nanobusu looked into the kettle and found wild rice floating upon the water. But he did not know what it was. He ate his supper from the kettle and it was the best soup he had ever tasted. Later, he followed in the direction that the duck had taken and came to a lake full of manoman. He saw all kinds of duck and geese and mud hens and all the other water birds eating the grain. After that, when Nanobusu did not kill a deer, he knew where to find food to eat. Manoman, or wild rice, is a gift given to the Anishinaabe from the Creator and is a centerpiece of the nutrition and sustenance for our community. In the earliest of teachings of Ashina-Bag history, there is a reference to wild rice, known as the food which grows upon the water, the food. The ancestors were told to find. Then we would know when to end our migration to the West. It is this profound and historic relationship which is remembered in the wild rice harvest on the White Earth and other reservations. A food which is uniquely ours and a food which is used in our daily lives, our ceremonies, and our thanksgiving feasts. I'm sorry I made you guys suffer through my narration skills, but I thought that was a nice little story to tell. Wild rice is a grain that was used commonly by the Native Americans, the indigenous people to North America. The rice was typically harvested by knocking the seeds from the grass shoots into a canoe as wild rice grows on water. From a nutrient perspective, it is much better than other grains, being higher in protein, minerals, as well as B vitamins. They are similar to oats in a sense, that both oats and wild rice have a unique nutrient profile. Oats also have a much higher vitamin content than other grains, and oats have a particularly high fat content. Now, keep in mind, the caloric expenditure used to gather this rice far exceeds what was needed to hunt animals. So this rice was eaten on special occasions or when hunting was unsuccessful, as spoken about in the story. As with all quality plant foods in our modern world, they tend to be more expensive than animal foods. So why would I spend $10 to $15 a pound on wild rice when I can buy a pound of fatty beef from Frankie's Free Range Meat.com? Because this food, from a culinary perspective, is so interesting and delicious, I decided to show it to you guys. And there are a lot of people that keep asking me about rice or incorporating carbohydrates into the diet. And when you have a plant food grown in a wild environment like this, it creates a truly unique experience. From the flavor to the preparation to even how it looks.  And keep in mind, all of our hunter-gatherer ancestors incorporated plant foods as a source of energy in their diet. So although it's not an ideal source of nutrition, it was present in all of our past dietary history. So we have wild rice here. Very unique coloring. It's pure black. If you take a look at it, it's a little bit of brown hues here and there. But for the most part, it's just black grains of rice.  The earth, like a swamp, like a freshwater swamp. You really smell nature in this rice. And rice is a grass seed. All seeds are high in anti-nutrients, more specifically phytates, phytic acid. Phytic acid is storage for the phosphorus in the plant. And herbivorous animals have enzymes that can break down this phytic acid known as the phytase enzyme. Humans can ferment and cook foods to reduce the phytic acid content. So duck and geese might be eating this food raw. But what we can do is ferment it or boil it, or a combination of both. So here is just regular dried wild rice. I threw some on my Amazon shop for you guys if you want to check it out. It's relatively affordable, but you could probably get 50 pounds of white rice for the same price of a couple of pounds of wild rice. I actually planned on making this video like four months ago. So I have two fermentation bases of wild rice that have been fermenting for four months. I don't think this would be safe or really a good idea to consume at this point. But honestly, if you rinse it off and boil it, it should be good. The reason I fermented this wild rice was to lower the phytic acid content. And over the course of four months, there was little change outside of the first two weeks. In the first two weeks of the fermentation, the rice grains expanded greatly. If you look in here, you know, most of the rice bursted almost as if it was being cooked. So the rice hydrated greatly throughout the fermentation process. And the smell changed a bit. It does not have the same like yeasty and super pungent, whiny aroma of flour. But this is really funky. There's a bit of mold growing on top here. I'm sure you guys could see that. I really don't want to spill this anywhere. But you could see there's like a mold culture growing on top.  See, imagine that thing floating around in your stomach. So we have this mold culture on top of the wild rice. And yeah, we could just pour this off, rinse off the rice and throw it in the pots of boil. And if you do consume this on a regular basis, I do recommend some type of fermentation to reduce the anti-nutrient content. All you do is put equal parts, water and rice in a jar. Let it sit at room temperature for two weeks and then you can boil it. I'm not going to use these. You know what? You guys probably want to see me use this, so I will. We'll boil both of these. I'll do them in separate batches, obviously. It takes about 45 minutes to cook. You put one part rice to two parts water in a pot. You wait till it gets to a boil and then you cover it and simmer it for 45 minutes to an hour. This rice takes a very long time to cook, upwards of an hour. And that's just to make it soft. So I will see you guys in about an hour and a half, two hours. I will have both of these rice products completely cooked through. So we'll have the regular wild rice and the fermented wild rice and we'll compare how they look, the texture and the flavor. Here we have the fermented rice and there's a bit less water in here because the rice was very well hydrated. What's interesting is that one of those jars had the mold on top, but the other one didn't. So interesting how two rice cultures fermenting in the same temperature had a different bacterial growth. And this is just the regular wild rice. One part rice, about two and a half parts water. I remember cooking this last time and I did have to add a lot more water to it. So this might actually be three or four parts of water over the entire length of the cooking process. This is where you would add a bit of salt to the water. So you definitely want to season this ahead of time and add salt to the rice before you cook it. I'm not going to because we're tasting this from a culinary perspective and I want to give you guys an idea of what it tastes like without salt. So both of these are simmering so I'm going to cover them and lower the heat. And boy there's that fermented rice smell funky. I got a whiff of that. Smells like cheese and rice combined. The rice is done cooking. Here I have the fermented wild rice. It looks a bit mushier, has a very funky smell to it. The regular wild rice looks more as you would expect wild rice to. Has an earthy smell. Very pleasant actually. I'm not really looking forward to trying the fermented one. So you guys might be wondering why consume wild rice? Is there a benefit? It's still a grass seed and all grass seeds are grains. So it's not like wild rice isn't a grain but compared to rice in general, the way it's cultivated there aren't really concerns about pollution or as much mismanagement of the soil and of the area where the rice is grown in. Same thing with wheat. Out of all the carbohydrate sources of grains, wild rice seems like a pretty good bet. So do oats. I think oats and wild rice are probably near the top of the list. Then you would have heirloom varieties of things like rye and wheat. But all of these grains need to be fermented properly in a certain way in order to be consumed. If we were to go into things like sweet potatoes, bananas, fruits, maybe even white rice, each of those foods would have to be addressed on their own and there are pros and cons to each. Sweet potatoes might look really good on paper but if you eat a sweet potato and it comes out looking like a sweet potato and you don't digest it, then obviously this might actually be a better source for you. I think this depends a lot on genetics and ancestry and heritage.  I really don't want to try this. Why do I do this for you guys?  Like three month old fermented rice. What am I doing? Alright, so it's not as bad as I thought it would be. The flavor up front, like the first flavor you get on the palate, it's pretty bad. But then it mellows out and tastes like wild rice normally does. Has like a slightly off taste to it because it was fermenting so long. That would definitely digest better than regular rice, probably more available to the stomach. So let's try the regular rice though. Now this tastes a lot earthier. It really tastes like a swamp, to be honest. And it's actually really good. I don't think there's another plant food that really tastes this good just being cooked like this. A grain that is. Like if you were to take wheat berries and boil them, I don't think they would taste this good. Very complex. The real best flavor to describe this is like earthy, foresty, almost like damp wood. I don't think this form of the rice would digest very well. Very high fiber. Seems like it might cause some issues for some people. So I would definitely be wary when eating this and keep it separate from fat or protein the first time you have it. Even without salt, plain on its own, it has a very unique taste. And if you were to cook this with like chicken broth and add some butter to it, I'm sure it would be amazing. Chicken broth, butter, salt. Overall I feel like this is a pretty good replacement for rice. I don't think wild rice would be a food that our ancestors would have fermented necessarily. I think they would have just boiled it and eaten it in soup. So you can explore the fermentation process to reduce the phytic acid, the anti-nutrient content. But in this case with how the fermented version tastes and from a logistical standpoint it doesn't seem like something that would have been fermented. I would just go with the regular boiled version first if you guys want to try this. As I mentioned earlier, this wild rice is on my Amazon shop. They have it on Amazon. I've seen it in just about every supermarket. So if you want to try this now, you can run out to a supermarket, pick up a bag. As I said, it's usually pretty expensive, like eight or nine dollars for eight ounces. So keep that in mind. Very long cooking time as well. Let me know how you guys like this and what other recipe videos you guys would like to see in the future. I was thinking maybe a healthy pizza recipe, a healthy burger recipe, mainly showing how to make the doughs and the burger buns using a high quality flour. Also maybe like a recipe how to cook moist chicken. I don't know. Let me know what you guys think. But thank you guys for joining me today. If you could please like the video, subscribe and hit that bell icon. Share it if you can. Recently we've launched Frankies Free Range Meat. My goal being to provide you guys with high quality nutrient-dense animal foods at an affordable price. So if you need an accompaniment to your rice or you want to support the future vision of me providing you guys with even high quality plant foods, we're looking to do raw honeycomb, things like this, wild rice, maybe some heirloom varieties of wheat in the future. I want to be able to provide people with high quality plant foods as well, not just animal foods. Although right now animal foods are the priority. We definitely want to do things like this in the future. You can also check out Frankies Naturals, minimal ingredients, minimally processed cosmetic and hygiene products. Go to frankiesfreerangemeat.com to check out the high quality animal foods and frankiesnaturals.com to check out the hygiene and cosmetic products. Thanks again for joining me guys and enjoy the rest of your week.


Abstract broadband photodetectors, PDs, with low detection limits are important for next generation optoelectronic devices. A new 2D bilayered lead iodide hybrid parafskite, 2IPA, was developed that addresses this challenge. This material has a minimized dark current, excellent electrical properties, and a narrow band gap, making it suitable for detecting both broadband weak lights and X-rays. The resulting high-quality single crystals have high responsivity and significant detectivities, making them ideal for detecting weak UVVS light and X-rays. This article was authored by Shurhayu, Pampanyu, Jambawu, and others.


Welcome to Digital Asset News. My name is Rob and today I want to talk about is a big giveaway. I want to start this year off right because let's be honest, 2022 was just downright awful. So when I get everything on the right foot, I want to give you guys a bunch of things that lead you to success and I want to do it in a very productive way. So we're going to talk about the giveaway itself and some of the things that are going on right around this time in the Digital Asset News universe. So first things first, everybody happy new year. Let's be honest, we had a rough, rough last year, but I think there's going to be better times ahead. It's just if you're still here, you're definitely not a tourist and it's going to take some time, but I think over the long haul will be okay.  We just want to start fresh, especially, of course, with this year and in that vein of talking things, we all want to start fresh, even myself. So starting Thursday, January 5th, we'll be doing a live stream and it'll be me, Guy and Ben from the Cryptiverse and Guy from Coin Bureau and it'll be every Thursday just talking about the things that are going on the crypto market and the things that we see and where things are potentially going. So look out for more information about that, we'll start fresh and we'll do things new. So on top of that, what's this mean for you? Well, this means for you is I want to give away a bunch of stuff and what I did over the last month, month and a half, I've been contacting all the people that I usually work with and I said, look, I'm going to do this giveaway and because everybody's big in a new year's resolutions, let's start giving away free stuff for people who walk and it's a very simple thing. So we're going to use the Sweatcoin app and it's very simple. I want you to download this free app. I want you to walk in the top 30s who actually who have the most steps will win. It's very simple and even if you don't win, no big deal, you still get the app for free and it's going to pay you in these sweat tokens for free. So here's how it all works today, say January 1st, right? It's my memory service, right? So again, download, walk, win. It's very simple. Here's all the prizes and again, I want to say thanks for all the sponsors who gave up a lot of time and effort to make this actually happen. So if you're at first place, you're looking at a thousand Sweatcoins and we're going to go over all these things in detail in a bit. You get a Ledger Nano X, Lifetime Token Metrics membership, a Coin Ledger premium membership, a 10 cent premium subscription and a one shield folio stone book. Second place, 500 Sweatcoins, pretty much everything the same, except you're going to get a six month premium membership into the Cryptoverse app, which is what I use all the time and steal all of Ben's information. Third place, you're going to get all that stuff plus actually an Arculus cold storage device.  I'll talk about those things. Fifth place, pretty much the same thing, a little bit less, plus a ladies NFT and then six through 10, the same type of thing, but we're going to do random drawings for the Meld Bank Manager, but you are going to get a thousand Meld tokens. Everybody's six through 10, you're going to get one ladies NFT, more things, a tumbler for my trust, a little less tokens from the 21 through 30th place. For some reason, I had this twice. I needed to delete one of those. Again, walking is man's best medicine. If you want to get in shape, I mean, you can do all the things that people will tell you, hit and go to the gym and join the gym and be there for 30 days and then let your gym membership lapse because you don't go back again. It's true. It's what's going to happen. We're going to start walking. That's the easiest. That's what's kept me in shape. Look, I'm pushing 50 and I feel fine. The reason for that is because I had two great dogs and I would give them a walk every single day, about an hour or so. I think that's what keeps people in shape just walking around. Here's December's winners. Again, usually what we do is we just, the top 10, they get 50 sweat coins every single month. This is what you're looking at. 400,000 to about 250,000 steps was the top 10. Now, below that, you're going to like 30,000, 50,000 steps. If you can do that per day, I mean, a thousand steps a day, you might be at the top 30, just saying. Also, this website, there's a link in the description. You can find it. Let's see. Yeah, Dan giveaway website list, this very top one right here, which we'll take you to this part here. There's a great video. And this gentleman here is a, he's a fitness coach. And he just talks about how he gets shredded just by walking. And this is where I got the idea to do this. Here's the deep dive to the sweat, sweat coin app or sweat coins and why I believe in it. And then here's some frequent last question. Is it free to enter? Yes, download it right here. What are the dates? January 1st, 31st. But Rob, this is a big question I'm going to keep getting. So I'm just going to answer it here. But Rob, nothing's free. If the app is free, then I'm the product, right? Yeah, that's how it works. So I'm just going to just say it like this. Are you here on YouTube? Did you see an ad? Do you think they're not tracking you? Oh, but Rob, Rob, no, no, I have a VPN and I have the ad blockers off. Trust me, they're still tracking you in some way, shape, or form. So like when people say, well, why is it free? It's because when you download it, you're going to see advertisements and things like that. Yes, it's how it works. So in these types of things, you don't have to do this. You don't have to get on top of it. But this is just what it is. And then lastly, it says right here, well, what about my privacy, Rob? Aren't they going to sell my data? I'm still waiting for my check from Facebook. And I said, again, first of all, using a social media platform, you're probably getting tracked in some way, shape, or form. But Oleg, the CEO, or CEO, talked to, did we did a deep dive video, which you can watch right here. And he answers that specific question. He says they don't, terms of conditions say they don't. So again, you don't want to do it, don't download it, but here's what we got up for grabs. So first things first, Sweatcoin app, if you haven't noticed, it's one of the most downloaded apps in 2020. It's got over, it hit 100 million lifetime users in early June after tripling its monthly downloads. That's not why you're here though, right? While you're here is there's a link in the description. And it looks going to scroll down a little bit. Right here, Sweatcoin app, click on this link, Sweatcoin, you're going to go there, you're going to step the invite, you're going to click on the app store, I mean, for, for Android or for Apple. And then from there, just, you know, 5,000 different, actually almost, yeah, over 5,000 Sweatcoins are up for grab, which isn't much, because right now it's only a penny, but who knows what it could be in the bull run, just saying. Also ledgers up for, for grabs, those are 165 bucks a piece. And also token metrics, everybody's talking about AI, artificial intelligence, but this one, token metrics uses AI type of information to calculate where the market's going. Now, for a premium membership, it's 300 bucks a month. And we're giving away a lifetime membership if you win first place. But you know, hey, you might not do that. Also, I trust capital, they're giving away the tumblers. Again, if you're looking for a Roth IRA coin ledger, they are, they're giving away 10 free premiums. So if you do this, first of all, you can sign up for coin ledger right now for free and do a tracking of your portfolios. You can see gains and loss and all those things. But if you want to do taxes, which I've been using two years straight, if you go over to pricing, just to generate the report, which is what I've done, it's 300 bucks for unlimited transactions. So this might be for you because you're going to get a free, a total one. Also, 10 cent gave us two of their subscription base. Now 10 cent, if you don't know, they are a launch pad. And they have launched some small little projects, which I've talked about on the show. Satoshi Island, I never got a chance to have, I always talked about that was cool. But if you can see right here, it says all time high sense launch 2000% since it launched fame. We were a part of that one. And the all time high sense launch was 30,000%. Everdome, I kind of got into it, but we talked a little bit about it, 94% since launch and then met a hero, Kanga 16,000%. The whole thing about this is it doesn't matter if you like these products or not, I'm just telling you this is how much is done. And to get into these products to be able to be whitelisted to actually invest into them, you have to subscribe. So that seems pretty simple, right? You just subscribe and that's it? Well, not so, because when you click on subscribe, it's going to say here, here's your subscription and it's open. All you got to do is lock 5,010 cent tokens and again, a year subscription. So you can be a part of investing in other projects, which did pretty well. And just so you know, right now, 10 set is roughly about 50 cents. So that's like 2,500 bucks. If you wanted to get into that program in the bear market, and they're giving away two of those for the giveaway. Also shield folio, I love this thing, get to put in all your mnemonic phrases and everything else and keep it safe. I've got three now, two or three. And I keep everything in there. It's water, water resistant, tear resistant, it's not fire resistant. So be careful with that. But this is where I keep all my mnemonic phrases all in one place because I lost my mnemonic phrase from my Cardano deadless wallet in the test phase. And now I kissed 20,000 Cardano goodbye down the tube. And at the all time high, you know, I wish that was worth 60,000 bucks. Epic Arts, you're gonna get an art on your wall, three of those Arculus, which they were nice enough to send me, send me a demo. So we're gonna give away two of those. This one's pretty cool because you can actually do all the things with like, it's a cold storage device, and you just need the card to send, to send your crypto and back it up, not back it up, but crypto wallet. I'll do a big deep dive. You know, the Cryptoverse, they've got their charts, and this is where I steal all my data from. Look, I got to tell you, there's very few places that are better than Ben's website. It's got everything you want to need. And this is the big one, this one called risk. I'm not going to show it. So nobody, everybody calm down. Everybody got up in arms when I showed it last time. They're like, well, Rob, you know, we paid for that. Well, all right, I get it. But anyhow, risk, log in regression, ROI, moving averages, and even like, this is what I really like, the macro charts, prices and inflation. I mean, everything you want to do, and then this is the social media charts. Anyhow, that is the one about the risk.  And that risk value, that's what I'm using as I guess, as I would say, a linchpin for all the different data points that I'm looking at, which includes MVRBZ, well, multiple reserve risk, PyCycleTop and UPL time and risk, this one right here. This is the one I'll be looking at. And it's only on Ben's site that I can find it. So we're giving away three premium memberships for six months. Also, ladies NFTs. This is a pretty cool project.  I love these guys. I love these guys. They're part of the DsNuts crew. I just love them. So ladies, the team behind the projects is fully doxxed.  We got seven plus years of experience in art design and game development over 300 million game downloads.  I'm old. And what the NFT is going to do is a play-to-earn game and they're going to give away $500 per day. We'll be given out for that type of thing. So check that out. And then lastly, and this is a big one, I didn't realize how big these guys had gotten, Melt. So Melt, we did a deep dive. And I linked the deep dive video in the description. And it was me and Ken just talking and somebody had connected us. And I was like, Oh, it's a good project. You know, it looks like this is over a year ago and nothing really happened with them. You know, they just never, nothing did. I reached out to Ken Oleg, the CEO. And I said, Hey, man, you want to part of this giveaway?  And I said, Yeah, I've got the emails. It's great. It looks like you guys are building. He's like, Yeah, let's talk. We're supposed to have a 15 minute meeting with what we talked for over two hours. And I finagled him to give away 20,000 Meld tokens and also the NFT banker and NFT. But that's not the big story. The big story is this. First of all, what's melt. It's very simple. It's a DeFi project. It's not a CeFi. Who screwed us in 2022? CeFi screwed us. DeFi did just fine. So it's a DeFi protocol for loans, get your cash, earn yields on your crypto while it's in there to pay off the loan. Like I called it, it's a DeFi protocol or loan protocol that pays itself off. You pay back the loan, things that are left over, and you earn all the time.  Again, who screwed us in 2022? CeFi, not DeFi. And that's what they're that's what they're moving forward to. And then so they give away 20,000 of those Meld tokens, which aren't worth much now, but they're going to be, I think. And then you're going to get a bank manager NFT. We're going to give away three of those. What did that was that do? You get to boost your APY, lower interest, early access, because what's the early access to? A bank. They're going to become a Neobank. Actually, let me just show you that first. That's the most appealing thing. Ah, where'd it go? So Meld is, becomes an EMI to bring fiat encrypted to the masses by becoming essentially a Neobank. What is that? I'll give you that a second. Let me just tell you this. This is what's been happening the last 30 days with them. They got a partnership with Avalanche. They got a partnership with MultiChain so you can roll across from different bridges. That's the only one they're going to need as far as EVM, the Ethereum virtual machine. They've got a partnership with Arculus, which is they're going to be able to give you your Meld debit card because they're going to become one of these Neobanks. There's a partnership with Cornucopius. I like these guys too. Now, these two gentlemen here, it's a good game. It's actually got a working project on Cardano. And then this is what I'm trying to do. They're going to be a Neobank. What the heck is that? First of all, what's an EMI? What's Meld? Why are they attaining this? An EMI is an Electronic Money Institute or Neobank. It's usually a FinTech startup that operates on a more limited license than a traditional bank. So it's not really a bank bank, traditionally wise, but how is it different? It's a great question. Here's how it's different. Have you ever heard of fractional reserve banking? I bet you have, especially if you're in crypto. So traditional banks offer fractional reserve banking. They take your money, keep your fraction, try their job. Will they invest? Well, 2008, they didn't do so hot. So how does an EMI use your deposits?  The key is that depositors are often backed by a full reserve. The key is that deposits are yours. Often backed by a full reserve and depending on the jurisdiction, they are insured as well. And what Meld just did is they got an EMI, or as a Neobank, in 146 countries. Because Neobanks don't offer the same debt tools as traditional banks, they typically focus on moving money for customers. That's all I really wanted my banks anyhow. One of the primary value propositions of a Neobank is convenience. That's what they want. That's what I want. A number of Neobanks is exploded. And here's just a few, like Chime. And Chime, you can see is this. This is a Neobank, essentially. It's not a physical location. Those are dying anyhow. All they do is they store your money and they move it around. Now, depending on the jurisdiction, depending on what's on the EU in the United States, it's FDIC insured or whatever it is in the EU. I don't know. I'm going to get Ken on and we're going to talk about that because that's a big thing moving forward. So yes, these guys are doing pretty big things. And here's just a more in-depth detail of what's happening. So that's that. So that is the giveaway. And I know some people are going to love this stuff and some people are not. I understand because some people don't. They're like, you know, it's walking or whatever else. But I just want to start off with Wright on 2023 and just get everybody's just stepping the right foot. Look, it's good to be in shape. It's good to do these things. It's good for your mental health. And also what's really good is you get free stuff. So who likes that? And yeah, that's it for today. So look, if you like today's video, give it a thumbs up, consider subscribing. All things to talk about time sensitive. Mostly what we do is news, but it's a little bit different today. And that's it. So thanks so much. Now let's get into your questions. So if you have questions, start writing them down or typing them in the chat and I'll answer those the best of my abilities. And that's it for today.  Thank you so much. See you guys in the next one. Let's go into the questions.


Hello, and welcome to this presentation of the STM32MP1 Arm MPU Core. The STM32MP1 series integrates a Cortex-A7 Core from ARM in order to support a range of full operating systems including Linux and Android with a high level of performance and a low power consumption. The Cortex-A7 Core includes 1 or 2 32-bit cores with complete SMP support with full HW coherence. The Cortex-A7 Core also supports trust zone security with separated secure and non-secure execution modes. Each core includes a 32 kilobyte data and 32 kilobyte instruction cache and a common unified level 2 cache of 256 kilobytes, all having 0 weight states and running at processor speed. NEON is an advanced simple instruction multiple data or SIMD instruction set for further acceleration of media and signal processing functions. A single and double precision FPU is also present. A generic interrupt controller supports up to 224 interrupt lines with security and multi-core routing. For more details please refer to the ARM website on which you will find all information about the Cortex-A7 Core.