So how many films have you watched now? five five So lunchbox Hindi medium Namesake, but that's not necessarily it's not really it's half half Hindi. Okay. Yeah Hater Hader and what's that twice?  What's that called?  It's called the zachronim Gotcha, so people call it acronym, but it's a zachronim really cool. It's the only cool thing about me Hold on. I'm talking. So the Zach is Z for Zach a for Andrew C for Charles K for Kieslitz Okay, Zach So Zach is back already Because he couldn't stop himself Apparently from watching a film I told him to wait and watch because I was planning on having him review it Later, but we'll just I couldn't now because it's fresh in his mind. He has your fond fever. I guess we can call it No, you're fond fever So yes, he reviewed Hader along with all those other films that he has Now seen They've all have been with Irfan.  It's so good like right from the bit like from like just the start of that The the doctor guy just him walking in the alley is just like just a it's beautiful. It's so beautiful shot So good So good and you you were actually in Hamlet, correct? You did a you did a yeah I did I did it was like a black box like a short little thing for theater and then read it all through High school and college and because I was also in theater so and in English classes So I doubled the Hamlet and it's my favorite play. Yeah, so you you're Shakespeare fans. So Tell us about the film. What did what did what did you like about it? What do you want to start? Did it wasn't a good adaptation of? It's the best it literally it was the best adaptation of a Shakespeare Besides Leonardo DiCaprio's Enjoy it Yeah, for sure and definitely and and the lanking because the lanking is a adaptation of Hamlet. Yeah, it is No, it's it's by far like one of the best I've seen and Because it's it's and I watched shells review So I'm not trying not to say exactly what she'll say because I agree with a lot But because it's like sticks to the text like really well But also made it its own spot like very very well and the main guy who played Shade or poor Shade Kapoor say it one more time. She hid Kapoor. Oh, it's so sex. So He I'll tell you the truth. I was not impressed with him for the first half of the movie Got I did not think he was I was I could do this Gotcha the actor and me was like they just seem like he was just very just kind of like stiff and Just kind of stoic and I was just it wasn't It was nothing impressive. Like there's other actors. I was more impressed But then when he found out a little when or or fun shows up it just like totally like This guy he went from like this guy's an okay actor too. He is a Super-great actor and I think now what I saw it was like intentional Like he was playing this kid who was just you know found out his father's gone everything in his world's kind of Falling apart like Hamlet and so he is gonna be kind of stoic and rigid and The whole mission is him looking for his father, but then when he gets that closure, it's just It's just he's well done When he flips the switch he becomes crazy.  I mean they they he appears like he's lost his mind and he kind of did that but he Most seem like he's I just don't care anymore. Yeah. No, I'm just Just life's life's a joke life, you know is is just one big You know far, so I'm just gonna not take it seriously until he starts, you know It goes to the rock the writing and directing of the film, right? Which is Vishal bard washers was one of my favorite directors so good. He's brilliant He actually started as a as a composer of film And so he did compose this obviously film he does his own, but I think he actually sang a song in this actually as well Yeah, he did but yeah, he you know me I researched after He's a big Shakespeare fan, obviously So yeah, what had to talk about did what do you think of the directing and the the writing and all that? Oh, and I think so I was reading I liked when I watch a movie and then especially a movie that I like I'm I'm I indeed be and I'm Wikipedia. I'm researching it. It's it's what I love to do And so I was looking at the director and I think what Mason's such a good director is that? He's a composer first So he's seen a movie in a different lens and like what's made like a lot of my favorite movies like Like the Star Wars or Indiana Jones. What's made those movies and researching those? You know interviews or not was the composing was that was the music those movies want to be as great if it wasn't for the music So this guy is both he sees that in a directing Sense and I also read that he didn't even want to be a director He just wanted to compose but the reason he chose to be a director so he came So we can compose and then a lot of movies and like his main movie He liked was like Pulp Fiction and you can see that especially with McBool. There's a very kind of What we're talking about has an amicable but you can you can you can compare the two because we probably won't do that review with you What do you do between the two? Which one do you like better McBool or this one? I like this one better. Yeah, and I think what messed me up though and watching else review I should have watched and if I didn't jump the gun this probably would have happened I should have watched my bull first because it was the first one He did did it back in 2003 went the exact same way you just went So Yeah You should absolutely go the oldest ones first So you sure because obviously you see his growth as a director and his budget and the technology grows with him So obviously the whole cinema gets better as a whole like like mobile was great and it was it was a good film It was great acting and it's staying same with that the music was really good and the story how he made a lot I feel like you made a lot more changes with McBeth than he did with hater Yeah But he But the movie was kind of Dragging a little bit I felt like my bull did and I think part of it was Jumping right from hater to McBull. I'm was even even when it was Dragging it wasn't but even when I was dragging hater and they're still beautiful I mean because of the cinematography and the music and I feel like It was a little slower with McBull. Yeah, now also the bull is a crime Drama like the godfather or good fellas and so those stories are a little Slower and so that's kind of this kind of and like bull is basically Not only is it a McBeth adaptation. It's a godfather adaptation. Yeah, remind me so much Even the guy who played, you know, the the main mobster. So now you've actually seen taboo in three roles What taboo was his mother and header and I've seen I know I Remember if she was in she was the mother and header She was the mother in the namesake and she was yes, so Yeah, that's lover and I yes, I fell in love with her in The namesake. Yeah, which was okay movie. Yeah, I told you that yeah, but I realized what I love is watching her and Irfan falling love. I love that yeah Because they play it's so like just so natural and of course, I mean he's a good actor and just having her support him Or he support her it's just They're both really good and she's one of those really good actresses that she can play crazy. She can play That's the sweet why for the kind of you know, new to America like in the namesake and I just thought She's a great actress, but I love her and Irfan together Yeah, and so I have a separate where she falls in love with The the spirit she falls in love with Forget his name Who in and hate her? Oh? The uncle No Irfan's character. Oh the ghost. Yeah. Gotcha. Yeah, the ghost. I don't know what I don't know his name in in in this But I think it's Rudolph or something. Yeah, I think it's Rudolph is spirited. Yeah, but I think they fall in love They have to they're together. They were together in the car. I think they fell in love first Yeah, is there any part of this film that you didn't like? the only thing it was beautiful, but the driving Scenes I can tell was green screen Okay, gotcha Yeah, when they're when they're driving specifically when it's the big when they're taking him to when the The Solomon Solomon guys are taking Hey there to be killed. It just it was very you can kind of tell that it wasn't it wasn't but that's like That's very nippy wasn't a big deal at all didn't ruin it. Did you like when I first watch it? I didn't like it Guildenstein and Rosencrantz yeah, yeah that those characters would do what do you what do you think about them Rick didn't have a problem with so I I They were little much But I like I like you did you understand what they were doing at all Because it was a little what they're like because they kept referencing an actor named Salman Khan Yeah, I just assumed that they're big fans of this actor and so they were trying to beat him Yeah, he's a he's in so he's a massive massive star who's Known for you know being a big guy and having good looks, but he's not there He's but he's got the guy to big Bollywood numbers, but he's not much of an actor But he's like the rock essentially but almost Okay, yeah, but that's a picture but like if the rock was adored like Massively adored by oh, so like By guys who like driving and stuff. So that's small people Make it bigger. That's essentially what they were doing. But yeah Though that was probably the only issue I had with it It's just I would have chosen something different for the film But the only one you would have done is probably just done real driving as opposed to some green screen. Yeah, that's that's that's my only thing is like I Because it looked like the ouch like they would If they just figured out how to like shoot with inside the car Which people have done before and that would have been my only thing but I did like them I thought they were much needed because you especially Stuff like this and that's why William Shakespeare so great is you need some humor. Yeah and These dark movies and so I think that's what they were trying to be and so they did it They were a little over the top especially the short one Like it's just a little too much. Yeah, but Like even like when when hammer, I'm just gonna call him because I might be butchering than it When he kills them like that whole scene was hilarious. Yeah Like it was like I was like this is funny and then I was oh, he's he's brutally murdering these people with rocks Okay, that's where we are It was hilarious up to that point. It was incredible The but did what do you think about the end? It was great. I it wasn't what I expected So when I played a hammer and when I played in handler I played lairatees, which was the brother of affiliate and so I had to learn how to fence for a scene because they had that big duel So I was expecting Something like that to happen and then he just like heads his head on the rock. I was like, okay Something difference is gonna happen and it was already different with the mom and the uncle and Just the way that they gave her more of a arc than in Hamlet and Ophelia It's kind of playing like her ratio his friend and Hamlet Cuz he had a friend named Horatio and and Hamlet and she's kind of Ophelia's character the girl's playing kind of both like the friend and the girlfriend And so I like that they gave him more substantial roles. Um, so those were different So I assumed the ending would have been different just didn't know how different I was hoping for his head to be Cut off. No, that's an I'm now I knew this was gonna happen I knew I was gonna get like that. I should have done that Yeah, that was gonna happen Yeah, so now that you've seen five Indian films What is your favorite of the five Indian films? I want to say hey there that this is a movie that I was ready to jump in and watch it again Hindi meet Hindi medium was another one that I was I could watch again. Yeah Absolutely. I'm lunch Lunchbox what you haven't seen yet. I haven't seen I didn't see any medium yet. No, okay That was it was really really good really good.  Yeah, I think so in Hindi medium It's a different Irfan and I like him because he's showing more of his comedic like more over-the-top comedic because he was comedic in the lunchbox but Hindi medium he was more and so I like that kind of see him but my bull It was just that like he's one of those you say Effortless he's effortless, but he's also one of those. He's a little bit of a chameleon where I mean It looks like Irfan but different personalities. What he goes from playing like an old man type Grouchy guy in the lunchbox And then he's playing this mob boss and a guy in McBull and he's so good. Yeah, one of the best actors I've ever seen Um, so what kind of film do you want to watch next? What do I want to watch next? Um, probably something a little more happy Okay, I kind of down in a dark dark spell. Um, he does like a lot of dark stuff Yeah, even with the namesake was it was just kind of depressing.  Yeah Um She literally just texted me So let Zach down below know what film he should watch next Yes, let me know We'll get him to Other actors to love because there's a lot. I feel like you there you would love Many would you like to explore more Shahid Kapoor? Uh, because he's yeah, actually there's so there's movies that I looked up that I I saw like he was in a world war two movie that um Don't just hop into anything Just hop into anything because one that could be very bad It could be a terrible experience for you Uh, because he was actually at the beginning of his career known as the pretty boy and he was uh, he was like, you know Heath Ledger was coming up. He was known as yeah, just that pretty boy That was my complaint with the beginning of hey, there was like, oh, he's just he's like super handsome great hair um, and you know his His stubble was like just like perfect. I might I might send you into a ram lila Which is Romeo and Juliet not by this director a different director But it's it's a fun. It's a fun. Okay It's it's not depressing. Romeo and Juliet. It's Okay, it's fun. Uh, it's big bolly. It's big bollywood numbers Uh, and you get to you get to experience renvier sing and de pica Uh, okay. They who are two massive stars who are married in real life Um But well, let him know down below which uh film he we should have him review Next and we also need to get you to other languages like malayalam That'd be good. Yeah


The truth about Bitcoin and alternative currencies. The U.S. dollar has been the world's most popular currency for over half a century. But that's starting to change. Our central bank's been meddling with the value of the dollar and people are looking to replace it with something better. One currency has been making news lately. Bitcoin, a new digital currency. Lots of things have been used as currency throughout history. Gold and silver. Wheat. Seashells. Tobacco. Salt. Paper. And numerous other things. Some currencies have stuck around.  But why? What makes some currencies better than others? It's not any government to create. It's their properties. Certain properties are essential to a healthy currency. And if we keep score, the U.S. dollar doesn't look so great. Especially in comparison to historical favorites like gold and silver or to Bitcoin. A sound currency stays valuable over time, has a limited supply, and is easily divisible and portable. If we want to compare currencies head to head, we need to understand the importance of these qualities. Imagine that a currency doesn't stay valuable over time. For example, let's say we use bananas as a currency. Well, bananas have a lifespan. They eventually rot. A large store of savings in bananas would eventually turn to mush, and nobody wants to trade rotten fruit with each other. The U.S. dollar doesn't rot. But thanks to the central bank, it's lost about 95% of its purchasing power in the last 100 years. Gold and silver don't rot either. They're durable and have a long history of being valuable. Bitcoin also doesn't degrade over time. The ones and zeros will be the exact same 50 years from now. It's a decentralized currency, not issued by any one institution, which means its value is independent of a government or central bank. As long as people find it valuable, it will stick around. Next, imagine a currency without a limited supply. Let's say we use wooden nickels as a currency. What happens when people start carving their own? If people can easily create more currency for themselves, economic prices become meaningless. Since the 1970s, the U.S. dollar has had anything but a limited supply. The central bank has created trillions of dollars out of thin air, devaluing everybody else's dollars in the process. In contrast, the supply of gold and silver has been relatively constant for the last few millennia. Bitcoin also has a stable supply. In fact, at any given time, we know almost exactly how many exist and at what rate they will be produced in the future. No more than 21 million Bitcoins will ever be created. It's written straight into the code. Counterfeiting might also increase the supply of currency by defrauding people. The only difference between money printing and counterfeiting is who's behind it. The result is the same. Fortunately, it's difficult for citizens to counterfeit U.S. dollars, gold or silver. But what about something digital, like Bitcoin? It uses mathematical cryptography and a public ledger called the blockchain to make it impossible to counterfeit. Picture a currency which does not divide easily. What if cows were used as a currency? How would you pay for something like a loaf of bread? A cow is worth much more than one loaf of bread and it would be very difficult to divide a cow into small enough units to make a fair trade. The dollar divides very easily down to the penny. Gold and silver are a little bit more difficult to divide into small quantities. Bitcoins easily divide down to 100 millionth of a Bitcoin. The sound currency must also be portable. Imagine the difficulty of using cinder blocks as currency. The dollar is easily portable. Gold and silver are less portable. Though on a gold standard, people usually carry around paper which is redeemable in the metals. Bitcoins can be sent anywhere in the world with internet access instantly regardless of the size of the transaction and at almost no cost. So how do these currencies match up against each other? You decide for yourself. We can't know what the best currency is. We discover it over time. But if central banks keep inflating the money supply and people are free to choose, the U.S. dollar likely can't stand toe to toe with its competition. To learn more about sound economics, visit fee.org. And to donate Bitcoin, scan this QR code.


I feel like I should have stood at the back of the room and then like walked down the middle, like I was dying a ross. Like, thank you for having me here. So I just want to introduce myself again. I am Femi Wright. I am a content strategist and creator. I believe that dope content empowers entrepreneurs. And so everything that I do when I work with service-based entrepreneurs is to help them understand who they are as a business and how they can best share their messages with others. So before we get started, I want to give a special thank you to Wynstina Hughes and Samantha Serra of Uof's Diversity Fund for supporting me in coming to our camp US. And here's the free resource for today from Pillars to Prompts. It is going to be the tool that I use throughout. So I'm going to just click real quick. You can do the QR code and that for people who, like, I don't want to do that. I'm going to show you what I gave you so then you will click on the QR and you will download it. So I'll just show you really quickly what's inside. OK, so I am going to be discussing something called content pillars today. So that's the first sheet that you'll be using or if you decide to use this later when you go home. The second is a quarter for Content Planner. And then the last thing is I came up with 70 AI prompts that people can use in their businesses. OK, so let me get back to my screen. No problem. The connection got lost, so I'm reconnecting. Oh, yeah, I put it back. And I'll put it back on at the end. So what you're going to need today, I'm so happy that so many people have their laptops or their electronic devices open. We're also going to be using Chat GPT, the tried and true. I also found a really cool tool called Content Cucumber. They have a AI software called Juno that we can look at. And then the Content Ideas and Planners spreadsheet that you just got. And make sure that when you sign up for it, you make sure you hit Confirm so that it comes directly to you. So I am a big lover of golden era hip hop. And it is the 50th anniversary of hip hop, the birth. And as somebody that was made in the Bronx and raised in the Bronx, I feel it is my duty to have this icebreaker start with one of my favorite songs. So there's true or false. I have believe the hype or don't believe the hype. OK? So we're going to go through a couple of things. And if you believe the hype associated with AI, you say believe the hype. You don't believe the hype, say don't believe the hype. OK? AI is a passing trend, but we need to get on board. Believe the hype or don't believe the hype? OK. I think you were right about that. It's a powerful tool. It's changing the way we do business. Only big businesses can use AI effectively. It will replace the need for a content strategy. Good. You guys are on it. Writing tools will make the content creation process obsolete. All right. It's not plagiarism. It's murky water. It's murky water, which is one of the things that I'm going to discuss, that we have to be discerning in the way that we use it. OK, so that's it.  For a long time with AI, I kind of didn't believe the hype. Right? I was like, oh, what is that? I know how to create content. I don't really need this. And then I started looking around and seeing the things that were created with AI. And I still felt like, so you're telling me I could give 50 motivational quotes. They really don't get that much engagement on Instagram. You're not, you need more people, right? So then I went to WordCamp Phoenix, and someone did a presentation on different AI tools. And I was sitting amongst a couple of the content creators, and they were all like, we're doomed. We're not going to have a business anymore. Everybody's going to use AI. They can do everything. And I was sitting there, and I was like, no. That's not the case, right? So I said to myself, how can I start learning about these tools and thinking about how I can support small businesses who might want to use it, right? So I said, let me just do a deep dive. Think about it. And think about some ways that I could use it already in my business and how I can support others. So if you like some of the things I'm saying today, you know the hashtags, well, WCUS, and then my personal favorite, hashtag believethehype, OK? So how do you currently feel about using AI in your business content creation process? We can do an active poll, and you can scan and just let me know. And I'll be using this throughout, so we can see each other's responses. I hope it works, because I keep saying that my connection is reconnecting. So I'll see what you have to say in a few seconds. Yeah, just put whatever you want. Just write whatever you want. How do you feel about using AI in your business's content creation process? It's just you should be able to just respond to the question, no? Hmm, that's weird. OK, well, let's move on. If anybody wants to respond, we can just do this verbally. So how do you feel about using AI in the content creation process? Does anybody want to share? So it is coming up. OK. Yeah, good to have. OK. OK, thanks. So we're seeing it as a personal assistant. So one of the things that I always tell other people is that it is a tool, it is an assistant, and it's an opportunity for us to save time and produce our productivity. It's also an opportunity to work smart and not necessarily hard, especially if you're a micro-entrepreneur and you find yourself with many different hats on. So I always talk about that there needs to be a synergy online with your presence. So you have your website, your social media, and your email list. And at the heart of it needs to be a strategy for all of those things to be operating in unison. Because this is where you're able to build your business credibility, generate your leads, establish relationships, and then make that money that you really want to make. And so this is the way that I help small businesses come up with content creation. It's not just here's an Instagram post. Here's 10 blog posts. It's an actual unpacking experience. So the first thing we do is we develop a strategy, then we develop a plan, we produce the content, we look at ways of promoting that content, and then we analyze the insights. And I work in this way because I feel like this is the right way to begin reaching your audience, building your awareness and your interests, and then again, right, because we're all in business, we need to do what? Make money. So I always want to clarify the difference between a strategy and a plan because very often we are using those words interchangeably, but they mean very different things, right? So your strategy is about clarity. It's about looking inward at who you are as a business, and then outward at everybody else, and seeing how you can make that need. And when you do that, then you're able to carry through with content creation and promoting an analytics. But I consider the strategy like the heart of it all. Or if you're cooking, you have to have the right ingredients or nothing goes right. So if you have the right seasonings and you lay the foundation right, then you can get the rest going. So developing a content strategy, like I said, you've got to look inward first. That makes you ask the question, who are you, your business mission, your vision, specific goals and objectives, and your business story, right? And those are things that AI cannot do for you. Those are only things that you can do for yourself. Now, of course, you could give AI a prompt and say, write me a business vision statement based on whatever your business is and serves this target audience. But really, this is what I say is hard work. And then you have to look outward.  What makes your business unique? So now a content plan and production, that is where AI comes in because it is a tool. So it's about creating a calendar, posting on social media, sending out your email newsletter, publishing a blog or YouTube or a podcast. It's actionable and it's tactical, OK? So like I said, heart is important. Excuse me, we have to unpack who we are as entrepreneurs first. So I want you to, and this was from another presentation I had done, but it belongs here. You have to define who you are. Explain the uniqueness of your business, have an understanding of your target audience, know your direct and indirect competition, and then curate stories about your business. Those stories are important because without them, you don't know how you're going to make whatever AI prompt you put in and whatever shoots out at you. You don't know how you're going to make it authentic without your stories. So this is what I want you to remember about AI more than anything. It is a tool, not a strategy. We'll never replace that.  So if you haven't already, if you can pull up chat GPT, you don't have to pull up the content cucumber one. We'll hold off on that. And then if you have the spreadsheet and then the spreadsheet that I gave you earlier, we ready? Got some things in here. And I want you to understand, we're not just going to be going through and coming up with a bunch of Instagram posts or blog posts. I want us to focus on the next thing above the heart, which is working on your actual content creation process. And that belongs, that's planning. So I'm using this small business owner, Channabel Ariyaga. She's the owner of Inserinity. She's a decluttering, organizing, and cleaning business. And I felt like she was the right person to use because she knows her business, but she really doesn't understand content and how to use the content to really market herself and build awareness. So like I always say, so work. Be aware of your business and aware of yourself. These are the questions, the answers that we came up with about Channabel. She's the mother of two, a grandmother, married to a Marine vet, faith-based, affirmation loving, worked in administrative support. Why she established the business? She loves feeling organized and she loves a clean space. She says often, I don't see a mess, I see a puzzle, right? Her target audience is discretionary income, urban and suburban dwellers, because if you know New York, like right above New York is Westchester County, right below is Long Island. So there's plenty of space if you have a car to get to those places quickly. She wants to talk to people who want to know how to keep their spaces organized because life is hard and life be life, right? And so you constantly have to be thinking about how you can create peace in your home. Her direct competition is other solopreneurs and her indirect competition would be service-based platforms like Handy or TaskRabbit or even corporate cleaning services. And what's her story? She realized after she was laid off we couldn't find another job that she could use this tool that she had from childhood, understanding how to clean and how to organize to support other people. And she realized that she could do it with affirmations and love. So here are her goals and objectives. She wants to increase her monthly revenue by 25%, increase social media following, grow her email list and drive traffic to her site. So how are we gonna do it? We said we would create two lead magnets. Weekly email, she didn't wanna take on doing a blog or YouTube right now, but she said, you know, maybe later, I talked her into doing LinkedIn, so I'm really excited about that. And she's also gonna stay on Instagram. And that's the goals and those are her objectives. So now we're gonna start planning. And we started from the ground up. So the approach with planning is, I say you have your soul work, you have your human touch, and then you have AI and that should give you some pretty dope results, okay? So these are the things that we did together. We created some content pillars, we identify evergreen and timely content ideas, and then we plan 12 weeks of content for Q4. So I don't know if you, how familiar you are with content pillars, but I believe that content pillars are one of those things that you really need to use to focus your expertise and really allow your audience to be set on a journey, right? I know I can expect to hear from Chanabelle on Tuesdays about the cluttering and organizing. I know I can get a cleaning tip on Wednesday. I know Monday is motivation, okay? So that helps you build that no light and trust factor. And you can use those content pillars on anywhere on your social media, your blog posts, videos, even a podcast. And so it just had great combination, that great space in between what you care about as your brand and what is important to your audience. So these are the content pillars that we came up with for Chanabelle. She only wanted three, she didn't want four. I said, okay, that's fine. So she wanted mindset to cluttering and organizing and cleaning. And then if you notice under, I put a number of questions for each. And the reason I did that is because I wanted her to understand exactly what she needed to be looking at when she looked for mindset content on AI or when she was thinking about it for herself. And if you have any questions or anything, it's cool to ask a question. Sure. You said the other one is great. They say that three is good, four is great. That's the general consensus around content creators. But I felt, once she explained to me, I don't want to get overwhelmed. I feel like three is a good place for me. I said, then let's run with your three. And then for any questions, so that everybody can hear the question up there, Mike here and I'll run to you if I see your hand. Yeah. I'll take one or two more questions. Before we move on. Okay. So I'm going to show you our actual process that we use when we use chat GPT because we did it twice because I wanted her to see something specific. We know that the more specific you are with your prompts, the better outcome that you will get. We also understand that you have to be discerning. And when you're looking at whatever shoots out on chat GPT, you have to think about if that's really a topic or if that's a subtopic, right? So I'll show you what we did the first time. Okay, here it is. We can't hear it for whatever reason we can't hear it. But all right, I'll just share what we did. So what I did with this is I put in three content pillars for a decluttering and cleaning service, helping people in urban and suburban environments. And a lot of different things came up. Some of those things were sub pillars of mindset or they were like, oh, use these cleaning tools versus cleaning. So cleaning is the topic. A cleaning tool or a cleaning solution is a subtopic. We tried it again the second time and we were even more finite because I wanted her to see the difference because I said, you might wanna start looking at just marketing your business to suburban clients in Westchester County or you might wanna just look at urban environments but go to specific areas in New York City. So she was like, no, no, no, no, I wanna do both. I said, okay, but let me just show you something. So when the second time I put in to cluttering and organizing in an urban environment and very specific things came up like how to keep a small space clean and organized, how to use specific products in a green space, things like that that didn't come up in the first try. So here's your time. So you're gonna use chat GPT and I'm giving you a suggested prompt in pink. Create three to four content pillars for insert your business type. Servicing your target audience and the challenge need desire. So I'll give you that example is under it. Create three to four content pillars for a digital marketing agency, servicing tech startups needing to understand the importance of content marketing. So I give you five minutes. Can you tell me when the five minute mark is up? And I would have had you share on the slide but since it's not, it's not working effectively. We can just, if somebody wants to share out, I would appreciate it. I've been pretty skeptical. So this was cool. I did it for a client instead of for my agency. So it was create three to four content pillars for an educational nonprofit, servicing teachers who work with disabled students. And I got inclusive teaching strategies, professional development, personal stories and case studies and resource hub. And with like extensive descriptions of what those four could contain. So I always say look at the descriptions too because sometimes when you look in the descriptions you will see things that you can pull out and use. So the inclusive teaching strategies is definitely one. I wouldn't make professional development a pillar. I would make that a subtopic within whatever the more specific top, yeah. And then. Personal stories and case studies. I always just put that as a subtopic but if you feel like it is something that will have to stand on its own then I say in this case, if you feel strongly that we're gonna develop a number of stories around XYZ that make it its own pillar, right? What else came up? And then resource hub which is actually what the whole website is going to ultimately be but it's a brand new organization so no one knows about it to come there for resources. So we're gonna have to market it as a resource hub. So I would take resource hub again and go back into chat GPT and put specific resources for and then if you have specific disabilities or specific things that you need to look at, I would put that in. Yeah, cool. Yeah. Anybody else wanna give it a shot or no? We good? All right. So let's move. Oh, these are something. Oh, that was from before. Look at that. All right, so now we're gonna move on. We've got our content pillars three to four and now we're gonna create what's called evergreen content. So that's content that you can be using anytime, anywhere, right? It's sharing your expertise, again, building that awareness and interest. You'll be driving traffic to your site or in your sales funnel or making people consistently come back to your posts on LinkedIn or Instagram or Facebook or X, wherever you are and improve your search engine rankings. So in Serenity, we looked at two different tools. The first one was evergreen topics for in Serenity or chat GPT and the other one was contentcucumber.com. So that site is a site, these guys set up pretty much an agency, excuse me, where they are using AI to develop content for small businesses, but then they have a team of writers and editors who make it real to the writers. But they also have this tool on their site called Juno, which allows them you to put in your website and then they will send you a list of blog post ideas with an outline, a blog post and social media blurbs. So I looked at both, I hope it works this time, we'll see if it doesn't, we'll just move on. Nope, not gonna work. Okay, so what I found in the evergreen content was that you have to put in something very specific. So evergreen topic ideas about decluttering for and then you put your target audience and it will spit out the answers. If you just say evergreen topics for a cleaning service, you're gonna get a ton of things and then you still have to sift through.  They will give you an outline. The outline is really extensive because they want you to write like a thousand word blog post, which I feel like is way too much. But you can take each bullet and that's actually an Instagram or LinkedIn post. And so that's what we did. I said, look at these, see which ones you could be using in your business. And we took those and we put them on her content slide. So we're going to create some evergreen content together. Now that you have your content pillars, I want you to put in this prompt. Share evergreen content ideas for in search of business type and the content pillar servicing your target audience and their challenge. And then I'll give you five minutes to see what comes up. While you're looking at these topics, I want you to really think about which ones are the best ones for your target audience and your brand. All right, does anyone wanna share since my Slido doesn't work when it's a room with no connection to the internet? Sure, thank you. I can hear you. I don't know if it's on. Oh, there we go. I was just not holding it right. So basically I'm a little bit of a unique case because I'm a government employee. Okay. But I did, I worked for NASA. I did a very vague, I didn't wanna use NASA specifically. So I said my prompt was share evergreen content ideas for a government organization emphasizing exploration and discovery servicing US taxpayers who are interested in research and innovation involving space. Okay. And something interesting I found was a lot of these are already exactly what is on our website. And so that makes me a little concerned that what if your business is similar to another person's business, wouldn't the AI just pull exactly from them? So that's the thing about AI it generates information from the internet. And so you remember when I asked the question in the beginning of is plagiarism or not? And we were like, this is murky water. Well, this is one of those moments when you realize, yeah, I could be pulling much pulling up information that already exists on someone's site. So as an entrepreneur, that's why you can't just pull that content and use it because if someone comes to sue you, you can't say, oh, well, I didn't know it was chat GPT, right? That's not gonna fly. So yeah, yes. You mean in terms of SEO or in terms of, I'm not really, honestly, I'm not certain. I would think that the more authentic your content is, or the more different it is, the more it will stand out in a search ranking because it's not the same as what everybody else is generating or using rather. Anybody else wanna go or can we move on? Or you have any questions about evergreen content? All right, so now we're gonna move into timely content. I also call it seasonal. So it is current events, holidays, and it allows you to use it to connect to your knowledge on the subject. So today is Women's Equality Day. I did a LinkedIn post on Women's Equality because I am a small business owner and clearly a woman. And so I felt like it was something really important to talk about. Current trends in your industry or specific holiday. So when we did seasonal cleaning tips for in Serenity, it was very hard. And the reason why was because all of the cleaning tips were about cleaning outdoors, moving from the, when you put in moves from summer to fall, it's about transitioning your home from the summer to the winter. So outdoor activities to indoor activities, cleaning an HVAC, things like that. Most people that live in New York don't have HVACs. And yeah, no. So it really wasn't anything that really resonated with her target audience. So then we had to be even more specific. We had to put Thanksgiving cleaning tips and then things came up. We had to put in holiday cleaning, like Christmas cleaning tips or Christmas organizing tips. And even then when we were looking at the list, we had to sift through it. And we had to be looking at putting the prompts on different parts of her spreadsheet because it all didn't just fit under cleaning. So here we are, we're gonna do a timely content. Same thing. You choose whatever event you want. You can insert your business type, which are service, your target audience and their challenge. So I put Chiquanz and Quanzer content ideas for a business consultant supporting black entrepreneurs find focus at the end of the year. That is very specific. Does anybody wanna share what they found with timely content? Go ahead. Okay, absolutely not. No freebies. So maybe, yeah, that's what I was gonna say. Maybe a lead magnet. So maybe put a Labor Day focus lead magnet sharing five tips for who's your target audience. Okay. So there. So that's it. Okay, go ahead. I feel like I ignored this side of the room, so sorry. Say what I did. I did share ideas for an association that represents 911 Dispatchers, which is what we are in honor of Veterans Day. Because a lot of Veterans are actually 911 Dispatchers and back and forth. And it gave some really nice ideas about combining the two. We do recognize the Veterans Day on our site, but about reaching out to Veterans, about talking about the same PTSD issue. So there were a number of things when I went, ah, yeah, that's kind of cool. Okay, so it gave you stories, right? Which are very important. And it also gave you an idea to talk about an issue, PTSD. Great. Anybody else or any questions about timely or evergreen content? Go ahead. Let me see if I can word this. So along the same lines of what NASA was talking about, let's say you're working with a brand or a client who already has a website. And because ChatGPT is pulling from the internet and they're pulling from websites, similarly, I'm getting a lot of content from their website and I don't like what's on their website. They're in the middle of redoing all their content. That's why they're kind of working with various teams. Is there a workaround to get it to not just pull from the existing content that's living out on the internet about that brand? That's not great. Oh, okay. So I have the last thing I did and I actually added in last night. So it will answer that question, I think. But I think in the case of what you're saying, you remember in the very beginning of this presentation I talked about the sole work and I'm packing who a business is and all of those things. In the case of your business, the business that you're helping, that you're like, all of this is not good. This is an opportunity to go to them and say, we need to have an hour's worth of a talk about who you are and why you are in business and what is your story. And once you do that, then everything else will really start to take shape.  What I'm saying is, what I'm saying is, you know, they just think about the fact that they provide a specific service but they don't think about necessarily the story behind how they got to this place and how they got to being online or how they got to actually doing something. And that's really important to developing your content, whether it's website, social media, email, blog posts, YouTube, whatever it is that you do to market your business. Not put in the brand name when you're searching chat GBT, like would you just maybe not put in the exact brand name instead describe it so it doesn't just keep going to their website and pulling that because they wanna replace it all. I just keep getting the lousy content from chat GBT. Or you know what, this is also an opportunity to look at direct and indirect competitors and what it is that they do in their businesses. What is their content look like? What is their voice? Not to say I want you to swag a jack, right? What I want you to do is I want you to look at it and I want you to say to them, look at what your competitors is doing and how they're speaking to their audience and think about how you need to do that. What do you want to sound like? What do you want to share? Hmm, I'm not certain. To be honest, I'm a... Right, that's a techie. That's a techie question. I'm a content creator. I don't think that's anything. Yeah, yeah. Something I've found helpful and I've been using it a little bit with what we've been doing here is if I front load chat GPT with, say, I'll take the buyer persona that I have and I'll front load it and I'll say, this is my buyer, use this as a reference, say done when you understand and I'll take a brand script, whatever my new direction, if I have a brand script written, so I'm writing to that buyer, then I'll load that in and I'll say tell me done if you understand that I can write to that persona in my voice a little bit better before putting these prompts in and then what I've been doing with what we're doing is using all the above information, share these content ideas, servicing that target business and I can get more specific and it keeps, because it's a learning model, it keeps everything above in mind when it's generating ideas and the more you produce, the better content you start getting back out of chat GPT. So that touches on my last activity. But thank you. Sorry. But it's okay. But totally right that the more that you front loaded with, the more information that you give it about your business, the better it will be able to shoot out information. Okay. So take a pause. You have to start thinking about how you want to plot out all of this great information that you have now generated with chat GPT, right? So for a channel about we came up with a weekly theme and I do this for all of my clients, there's a weekly theme and the reason why is because I feel like that kind of sets stage and sets some awareness and interest for whoever is looking at your content. And then you have specific days that you publish. So she does her mindset on Monday, Tuesday is the cluttering, Wednesday is cleaning, Thursday is testimonials, and Saturday is some sort of like service sale. She always wants to offer some sort of sale on Saturday. She runs it through Monday and that's how she sometimes picks up clients. So this is what we came up with. I just pulled specific weeks that we're going to work on. So some of these weeks, if you look, they are very evergreen and then other weeks are very seasonal. So like the second week transition from fall to winter, the Monday mindset is why is it so important to stay organized and have a clean space as the seasons change for five things to put in storage been right now. Best tools to keep your entry clean as the seasons change. And so you can just see the different weekly themes, what's going on in your home, transition to fall to winter, small spaces and holiday jingles, not holiday triggers. So that is how we planned out most of this content. I don't know if you guys want to do a whole Q4 content plan today. So, and yeah. So I would much rather give you guys time to digest what we talk about. But you have the content spreadsheet and you can do that on your own, okay? Does anybody have any questions about like putting together your content on a planning sheet or anything? Nope. So now it's time. We've done all of that soul work. We've put down good soil and now we're gonna watch it happen, right? We're gonna actually create the content. So this is the prompt that I put in to chat GPT, create an Instagram caption for busy moms who need motivation to keep their homes clean. This is what chat GPT gave me. Embracing the chaos, conquering the clean. To all the superhero moms out there juggling life's demands, remember, a clean home is a happy home. Let's tackle the mess together and create spaces where memories flourish and smiles thrive. Okay, that's nice. So we took that and she was like, oh my goodness, this is so wonderful. And I was like, no, that's not good. I'm sorry. I said, you have to now use the stories that we discussed and put it in there. So we talked about how to do this and this is what we came with. Okay, so do you see the difference between the two? We talked about like who she was, how she once saw having a clean space, right? She's connecting with the audience with the idea of being a mother, right? And the idea of being overwhelmed and all of the things you have to do as a working mother, but that she had this home and it was the one place in her life that was peaceful. And that's because she spent the time to clean her home, right? And then ending it with make a goal to clean one space a day. This is a mindset pose. So the next day, it might be that tip about that one space, choosing that one space in your home to keep clean. And she said, your mind will thank you even if those kids don't because we know that they don't think us for anything, right? So here's activity five. I want you to use one of those content ideas that you had, one of the evergreen topics or the timely topics. Choose it, pick out what comes out on chat GPT and then I want you to make it your own. So can we get 10 minutes for that? And I really love if like two people would share. I purposely didn't put a prompt because I want you to think about what the prompt should be. And you can look at the prompts that I gave you as well. Would anybody be willing to share what they came up with? I'll have a hard time personalizing this one since I did it for a client, but the client I'm working with is a divorce attorney. And so I was working with it and they target LGBTQ clients. So it had earlier recommended, I actually thought that the recommendations for ideas were pretty solid. And so it had suggested building strong parent. Oh, and it was the prompt I'd given it was for the timely was back to school. So divorce attorney content suggestions for back to school time. And it was building strong parent-teacher relationships after divorce. So it came up with a pretty good, why it matters and very specific, how you create unified front, et cetera, et cetera. So I thought it did a pretty decent job. I didn't personalize it because it's for the client, but it did a nice job. Awesome, awesome. Anyone else? Okay, thank you. All right. Oh, there was someone else? All right. So I was thinking last night and was like, okay, it can't just be these very short prompts. I know about the buyer personas, but I didn't talk about buyer personas specifically. So I said, what else could you do? So what you can do is take a piece of your writing, or if you're working with a client, take a sample of their writing, unless of course you don't like their writing and they don't like their writing, then you could probably look at your director indirect competition and take a piece of their writing. And you're gonna write this prompt. Analyze the style, tone, and common phrases in this text. Summarize the style, provide suggestions on how I can keep this tone in future prompts, and here's the text. And then you give them a snippet of that text, and then it will shoot out an analysis. So I did it with something that I wrote. I just chose a paragraph and it came up with all of these things like, oh, you're motivating, you're using these type of rhetorical devices when you write, your tone is engaging, it's informative, and I was like, so then I wrote in, what is an engaging or informative tone? And so then it gave me a little bit more insight. And then I said, right, and I put in engaging, informative, motivating, for LinkedIn, service-based entrepreneurs when celebrating women's equality. And it shot out a bunch of information on different tips that we can use to move forward with women's equality, like remaining resilient, being good to others, diversity, inclusion, remembering the past, right? So I chose a couple of those and I decided I was going to actually write about my grandmother and my great-grandmother on LinkedIn, but it was good, because I talked about them professionally and I related it to those three ideas and we're done, right? So that is how you can expand it and make it a little bit more personable just than the shorter prompts, okay? So this is what you have to remember about AI. We know that it is a tool, we know that it is an assistant for us and assistants have to be taught how to work for you, the boss. So be patient, always be discerning, and most important, I want you to remember your purpose for why you're creating your content and why you're running your business. So if you need it again, here is the free resource and there's time for it to talk. Go ahead, which one? I can just ask chat GPT, how does this sound? Instead of asking all of that detail and it would spit out the analysis of it and give me perhaps suggestions or tell me it's well structured or et cetera, et cetera, because I look at it like a tool to just continue to either brainstorm ideas, fine-tune ideas, sharpen it or something like that. Right, that's how I believe that AI should really be used for brainstorming. It's gonna pull out a lot of information but the sentences will be choppy and it doesn't really have any kind of uniqueness, right? That's up to you as the writer or whoever that you have working for you to do. Hi, my name is Glen and I am an SEO strategist and copywriter in Delaware. Do you mind if I just kind of like share some things that I noticed and like maybe a few tips that could help people? Sure, go ahead. So I'm gonna say like I like the presentation and I'm glad you got around to the training part. I think that would have been helpful to know like at the beginning. But definitely when it comes to the training part, some useful things that people can do that maybe not a lot of people do is understand that you can prompt chat GPT to ask you questions. So for example, you say like, what information do you need to know from me to understand the business and then chat GPT could prompt out a list of 10 questions and says, answer these questions for me, please. And then you answer those questions so it can get a better understanding. Another thing you can do is you can be assertive in chat GPT's roles. Like for example, be affirmative, say you are this. For example, you are a copywriter. You write in an informative voice or you write in a creative tone. Say I need an article written between 500 to 1000 words. And so I would encourage people to try to spend as much time as you can. Like with that final point you were mentioned in the training session because that will save you a lot of headache later. Because the more that you train chat GPT you remember each chat, it saves all the data from each one. So if you need to like train it to do different roles. So for example, I have one set up as like data analytics where it can like scrape data. I have another one for prompting out writing things. Save each channel because it remembers everything in the chat. So spend as much time as you can writing. And I think like from the questions from the representative from NASA, like you were asking like, hey, why is it pulling content from the website? Try spending a little more time like training it to kind of pull the data that you want it to. And then you're gonna start finding how it's gonna give you the results that you want to see. And if you wanted to talk about anything, I'll be happy to like meet with you after anything. But thank you. Good presentation. Well, thank you. Anyone else? So I really like your approach to how you presented and like walking us through all of this. I think a lot of it has to do with just your particular communication style, which is really stellar. So you yourself, I think, are what make the presentation really great. So thank you for that. Second, with all that in mind, the client who says, I only want three brand pillars. I don't want four. Or I don't think content pillars are important. How do you work with your clients? How do you talk to them and convince them the importance of some of these things in that really fun-loving, generous, gracious way that you're doing with us today? Right. Okay. So someone that says they want three instead of four. Okay, so then we can discuss why, right? So in the case of my client, Channabelle, she said, you know, I'm a squirrel and I'll just go deep dive into everything and get up, make myself a mess. So I said, yeah, you're right. So I know how enough to know that. And so I said, we can settle on three and that's it. Somebody that says to me, I don't need content pillars. It's probably somebody that would also say something like, they don't need a target audience or everyone is their target audience, right? And if that's the case, then you don't need me, right? You, there's no reason to need me. You can go on another site, like a platform that somebody will just write blog posts for you or write emails, but I'm looking to create an experience for you, right? So I'm looking to create a space where you will learn so much about your business and about your target audience so that whether you use AI or you sit down at a table with your team or with me or whoever, you will come up with the best content and the best messages for your business. Sure. Hey, great presentation. I just have one question. What are some copywriting tools that you use in conjunction with doing the prompts? I remember you mentioning that sometimes you get choppy results. So what are some things that you use to validate that copy? So I don't use copywriting tools. I'm a writer. So I use, I really believe that chat GPT should be used as a brainstorming tools, right? I believe it's a foundation tool, but it's not what we should be using to write content. Now there are AI tools like co-schedule has the headline analyzer that you can put things in it'll kind of, you know, rate it and tell you if you're on the right track. If you want to use something like that to kind of support you in knowing if you're on the right track, that's an option. Chat GPT can look at headlines as well, but I firmly believe that most of the writing process should come from you. There's somebody else to name you. So I've been trying to come up with article titles for the last three months using chat GPT. Looking at my competitor sites and all this kind of stuff and I've come up with about 50 of them and I'm like, great. That sounds like something I could do for a whole year. But you just showed something you were writing five a week and I'm like, wait, that's only 10 weeks. Oh no. So a couple of questions is what is a good posting timeline for things? Does it, you know, is it five times a week, a good one once a week? And then there's all these topics that I've come up with and I spent three months. What am I gonna do next year? So like long-term strategies as well as far as timing as well, how you handle that. Okay, so let me just unpack what you said. So one thing you said was, how often should you be posting? And you also asked like long-term planning, correct? All right, so how often should you post? So one part of me says three to five times a week to build awareness and interest, right? And to know that you're present. The other part of me says know your bandwidth as an entrepreneur, right? If you don't have time and you, if you don't have the time to develop a lot of content, find the platform that works for you and develop a series of posts for that platform, right? And let it go and develop your relationships, right? I just think that you really have to think about your bandwidth and what you can keep up with. Or if you have the budget to hire somebody, what does that budget look like and how can you service? Now in terms of how long and how far out you should plan, I like to work in 12 weeks because I feel like you can start to see a change or you can analyze enough insight based on 12 weeks. So by the 10th week, you can go into your LinkedIn or your Instagram analytics and look at those insights and see what posts are making the most sense and which ones aren't. But you still have that whole catalog of evergreen and timely content ideas that you could be using to your benefit, right? And so then you can start filleting the next quarter with those evergreen content ideas and those timely content ideas as well. But base it on the analytics and I do it in 12 weeks. As evidenced by the attendance here and the questions, this is all emerging and we are all learning and getting better at using it. My question is that when you approach clients and talk to them about your capabilities, obviously clients have access to chat GPT and many of these free tools as much as we do. So just curious for yourself or anyone else is that what is the response where you're like, why can't I just do this myself? So in terms of the ability to create content, create those prompts and brainstorming and continuing to keep agencies, designers and developers relevant. Just wanted to hear your thoughts on that. So I think it's like anything, any other kind of service, right? I could definitely sit down and create a WordPress website, but I'd rather hide under the table, right? Right? I can hire somebody to do that for me or I could work with somebody to get that done. And so this is the same thing. I think a lot of times you only see the main thing that happens, right? You see the Instagram posts, you see the blog posts, you see the YouTube video, but you don't see all the work behind it, right? So if somebody is just an entrepreneur says, oh, I don't need to hire a strategist for any of this. I could do this myself with chat GBT. Well, yeah, you're gonna get a long stream of ideas and you're gonna be throwing spaghetti on the wall to see which one sticks. And maybe some do stick, some might not stick, right? And then you're gonna be placed in a situation. Do you know how to look at your insights and create ideas based on that insight? Do you know how to go back and say, these are hubs of content that I've created that will set my audience on a journey? So those are all skills that me or anybody else here that's a writer or a strategist has. So yeah, there was somebody else over here first. Oh, okay, she'll come back one. Thank you for doing this. I just discovered something that is really gonna help me and not with social media or communicating really with the customers, but I just was able to use the chat GBT to write descriptions for a product line that I have that has 150 different items, very similar. And so I was able to come up with very quickly some fodder for me to write logical descriptions of each of these, which it's just an enormous time saver. And there, it doesn't have to be as personal because I'm just describing objects. So thank you. But let me ask you this, who's looking at those objects? People, hopefully people with money, with credit cards. That's the point. I'm asking like, who is the target audience? It's like car magnets with goofy sayings on them. Okay, so are you gonna sell them on Amazon or on your website? Well, it'll be on a website, on a Shopify site. Okay, well, think about it like this. Just consider this. My nine-year-old daughter is all of these twins, right? They're now into skincare and being preppy, preppy. So if you have that description written in a certain way, it could make her interested in your car magnets. To make her come to me or my husband to say, I need this. Can you give me your car to buy this? Right? So all I'm saying to you is, yeah, it is a description, but it's not just a description. I think just think about your target audience and your process. That's all I'm saying. I agree. Yeah, thanks. This lady over here. The long list of all that we've created, all the ideas, all the brainstorming. How do you, what do you save? What do you delete? How do you archive? How do you find it later when you need it? Right. So I wish I had been able to share the looms that I created when I did the searches, but, you know, technology, right? So the thing about chat GPT is all of those searches will still be there unless you delete them. But when I look at the list, I start sifting through what makes sense and what doesn't right now or where something should go. And I might put it in a bin, like a note on the spreadsheet. This could be for later. And just put all of that information right there. So yeah, right here. I just have a quick question about it. Could you share your slides with us? Would that be possible? Sure, absolutely. I think we do share the slides after and it doesn't it go out? Yeah, it will. So we'll get it. And it'll be on the live stream. Yes. Yeah, it will. I'm really sorry that the looms didn't work. This has been saying connection loss reconnecting the whole time. So the looms will show you how we actually look through whatever the chat GPT generated and how we went through it and pulled certain things out and left certain things there. So that says, thank you. All right. So I think that was it. I appreciate everyone. If you want to reach out to me, this is how you can find me. I'm mostly on LinkedIn these days. That's my new favorite place. Second to that is for me writes on Instagram.


All right. Peter Deagle, Dean of the Library, some of you know, asked me to get this started because he's in a meeting right now and is working his way over and rather than make you wait for him to leave a meeting, we'll get started. So, and as we all know, he would welcome all of you and faculty, staff, members of the overall community, alumni as well to our first Talking the Library program for this spring. And this one is presented in collaboration with the Creative Writing Program as well. Before I introduce Maria, I will also take the time to advertise the next two events. The next one is Monday, actually the next two are on Mondays, which is un-customary because typically we do them on Tuesdays. March 23rd will be Johar Ilham, who some of you students have heard the story of the daughter of Ilham Todi, a Chinese scholar who is in prison in China and his daughter, college-aged daughter, your age, has been here in the United States for two years, very accidentally here and has become really someone who's had to make a life for herself and advocate for her father at the same time. A very interesting story and a very interesting person, a very lovely person too, so she'll be here to, she told me she's not going to stand and talk to a bunch of people, but she'll be here to, you know, converse as it were. And then the last Talking Library this season will be on April 13th, which will be a Pulitzer Prize Award winner, Paul Harding, who will be here as part of the Burma Fellowship, and that'll be on April 13th. There's also tomorrow, as long as we're just rattling this stuff off, a panel discussion on Native Sun with Keith Stokes will be here, Dean Isinger, and somebody else from the law school. And there's an exhibition anyway. And then there will be, you'll get information from Professor Soto about the various National Voluntary Month events that'll be happening in April. Okay, and otherwise the general turn off the cell phones kind of stuff and we'll get going, okay. Now, now I need the glasses. There are many possible reasons why you may be here this afternoon to listen to Maria Fluke. Maybe you're here because of Maria's poetry, the art form she started in and brought her earliest accolades, notably the Halton Mifflin New Poetry series. Or perhaps you are here because Maria's nonfiction, remembering, among other works, her fascinating exploration of a murder, a life, and a culture in invisible Eden, love and murder of Cape Cod. Or maybe you have come to Maria through her fiction novels and short stories, such as her recently released novel, Mothers and Lovers, a narrative about an academic named April, so it just sat here in Rhode Island, who in an effort to uncomplicate her life, is pulled by threads of temptation that may become too seductive to resist, of which she risks being undone by. Readers of Mothers and Lovers will recognize Maria's writing the careful choices of a skilled craft's woman in the art of fiction. They will recognize the deep study of the complex push-pull of human instinct versus human consciousness versus human nature. They will recognize humor. They will recognize a level of suspense and tension, and they will recognize a sexiness, both in the writing and in the storyline itself. But, of course, there is another reason why you might be here today to see Maria, and that is that she is an alumna of Roger Williams College. As she told Abby DeVerve in an interview on our library's connection site, quote, I was 18, I never graduated high school, and I didn't have a high school diploma. I was admitted into the creative writing program at RWC as quote a special student. The letter S appeared after every grade I received on my first report cards until I'd earned enough straight A's to be taken off the special student list. I'd been admitted to the course after showing a manuscript to the creative writing instructor Robert McRoberts. He saw that I was doing something interesting with my poetry and he endorsed my application. Throughout that interview, Maria shares many fascinating experiences of her days at Roger Williams, giving a glimpse into what life as a student in the creative arts meant here at the time, something that in a world that forever dismantles tradition in favor of the illusion of innovation we might learn from. I'd encourage you to read the interview when you get the chance. It can be accessed through the library's homepage again to the connections. In the meanwhile, for whatever reason you are here, please join me in welcoming Maria Fluke back to Roger Williams. Thank you, Adam. That was a lovely introduction. I met with some of you earlier for an hour and I really enjoyed meeting you. You seem like really serious, great students and I think Adam is lucky to be working with you. I am very happy to be back here. I've been back here a couple times since I was a student here but this place has really changed and I was even telling Adam I was so surprised to see that there's no toll at the bridge and then he told me it must have been 12 years ago they took the toll away but you still always have to come down and pay a little toll. So a lot of things have changed. Tonight I am going to read some pages from the first chapter of so of this book, Mothers and Lovers, which takes place in Rhode Island. One thing Adam didn't say is that many of my novels take place in Rhode Island. I have a brand new novel which hasn't been published yet which takes place in Middletown and that one is called Divorce Dog Style. So hopefully that will get published and I'll be able to share that with you. So I'm going to read maybe about 20 minutes or so from this new novel and then afterwards are we going to have a little discussion and so if any of you have any questions about my experience here, I keep still calling it RWC. I can't get used to RWU but I'm going to try to read this without this being in my way. Okay it's right in my way. Anyway let me introduce this novel that I'm going to read to you. I'm going to introduce in the first couple pages the point of view of one of my characters who is a teenage boy. Okay then I'm going to introduce my other main character who is a young 30-something-year-old college professor and these two characters meet one another because the college professor has just moved in next door to the teenage boy so I'll start. He stands beside the highway in a windy bib of waist-high daisies where a sign says, wildflowers do not mow. Last chance bumblebees skim the tossing mop heads and he swats them one by one. A cruiser lounges past him. He dodges the trooper sinking chin deep in the weeds until its wig-wag lights disappear in the distance. Then he's on his feet and pumps his thumb. Cars rip past. Drivers keep moving when they see betwixt in between written all over him. He has the penetrating look of a young man who unfairly suffers the aftermath of something. Pounded by the right lane airway he's thinking of her the way she curled her pinky finger when she wanted him to climb into bed beside her. Another driver peels by checking his rear view without pity. Blaze twirls around, tilts his arms and plays airplane to mock him. In the growing dark they can hardly see him let alone stop in time. Dressed in black jeans and a dark hooded sweatshirt he's almost invisible. His colorless silhouette absorbed by the macadam. Truckers might pull over to save a baby stray breaking when they think it's a teen who took off in a huff. But when he climbs into the cab and extends his long legs he's six feet plus. He wears a halo of blue meanies so they start telling him their own stories to knock him off his high horse. He's heard it all a hundred times. When his last ride dropped him the driver punched his shoulder as he climbed down saying kid go home it's crazy to thumb and funeral clothes that's just asking pancake. The rig had said York Pennsylvania the barbell capital of the world. The driver had explained that his trailer carried lat bars curl bars power lifter bars and crates of dumbbells. Blaze said what's the difference between a dumbbell and a barbell? I guess a dumbbell doesn't know the difference. Blaze looked at the windshield to see a vanity plate preaching T H N K G O D. Think God yeah right. Son that's that tag says thank God where do you come from? After the hearing that afternoon he had left the courthouse in the county van. Heading back to the mini max in Cranston he saw his chance stopped at a no right on red. He crashed through the window of the bubbler GMC after peeling back the rubber gasket.  He was a tall drink of neon in his juvie hall jumpsuit with two officers in pursuit. He lost them behind a strip mall and when he climbed into a stout salvation army bin on chalk blocks he wormed under the heap of tangled clothes waiting for them waiting for them to crawl in after him. They didn't go in. He buried his hot pink pajamas in the giveaway vault and walked away in his second hand jeans. Standing on the rumble strip he pictures her again. Ruby bubbles of foam sputtered on her lips. Wet red paisleys had bloomed on the top sheet. Her body still warm when he left her. Just then a big Kenworth car hauler down shifts and veers into the breakdown lane. The semi doesn't stop. It plows straight into the wildflower patch beheading a section of daisies like a monster weed wacker aiming for the tallest bloom. That would be him. The trucker blasts his direct compressor air horn two shorts and then the long and blurs into the straight away again. Never slowing down. Blaze rolls clear just in time pinging his collar bone. Brushing thistles off his jeans he sees more trouble coming. From out of the twilight about 50 yards away on the apron of the highway it's already gaining on him. A freak creature lobes in wild pounces heading right for him. A big silver dragon. Half animal, half alloy, like an Xbox serpent or something from a Terminator movie. He doesn't wait to see. He sprints down the breakdown lane but the dragon gallops the rest of him hissing and rattling its scales. It's just a loop of flameproof dryer hose. A squirming squirming tube of shiny accordion foil that tumbles with the wind. A cast off just like him. An escapee unattached to any legitimate dwelling or proper situation. In the morning the mountain was higher. New deliveries of sludge arrived after dark. She heard the diesel as it downshifted and turned into her neighbor's lot. When she pulled her curtain to look outside the driver cut his beans. He wasn't fooling anyone. The stuff was supposed to be rich fertilizer for weekend gardeners and gentlemen farmers who puttered in their backyards on Sundays. Hasmat authorities monitored the transfer of cured waste coming from sewage treatment plants in Boston and Providence. But there was something sinister about the substance. It sifted, steamed and bubbled as if it were alive. April had already called Town Hall to complain. She was new in town and she was shuffled from one phone number to the next. She had recently moved from Providence to East Westerly, a little backwoods hamlet once known for its productive granite quarries. Its comic oppositional name East Westerly was its most famous distinction and a statewide joke. If someone went off his rocker or had lost his marbles, Rhode Islanders would often say he s gone East Westerly. She wore a raincoat over her clingy nightgown and stepped into her furry boots. She walked outside into the cold pewter half light near dawn but the dump truck was gone. Watching where she placed each step, she circled the apron of the newly replenished heap. It was starting to drift and topple into her drive. She was surprised to see she wasn t alone. A figure stood in the doorway of the place next door. Her neighbor s teenage son had been sent home from reform school and was living with his father under house arrest to await his next scheduled family court date later that spring. Weekdays, the local school bus rolled past at 6.30 but didn t stop for him. He was tall and slender, only a shadow in the poor light. She couldn t see his face behind a long curtain of dark hair. Even in his hiding spot, the kid oozed a lot of attitude.  He was nearly snuffing a cigarette. He smoked menthols. She had noticed some of these white white cool butts sprinkled along the worn path that made a desire line between their properties. The kid prowled the path and flicked his burning stubs willy nilly. Mentholated brands were popular in prison. The minty rush of flavoring adds an extra jolt. She imagined that in the monotony of the day by day lock up inmates seek every extra jolt they can get. The boy turned to look in her direction. He was giving her the up and down. He didn t have a greeting. This is what she had to deal with. Not so much as a hello how are you. She looked at the hill of bio fertilizer, tiny funnels of mist erupted over its bulk like wriggling ghost worms. Back in her kitchen, she started her coffee machine and washed last night s dinner plate at her double sink. She dried her silverware and put it away. She was finicky and kept her teaspoons and tablespoons separated in parallel bins with the teaspoons facing the opposite way of the tablespoons bowl to stem. When she opened the silverware drawer, she d never reach for the wrong one. If only she could use the same precaution as she sorted her personal affairs and her contracts with people could be managed and monitored, held at bay, bowl to stem. She had moved to the country trying to extract herself from an affair with a married man. He was the provost at Sinclair College where she was a faculty member. But it disturbed her that they had shared the same embarrassing email address because she and her lover both worked at Sinclair College. Their emailed love notes, notes, works, changed to and from sin.edu. The email address sin.edu seemed to mock their illicit relationship. She decided to leave town in order to distance herself from him. She couldn't stay in the city and be single again.  Not yet 40. April was a long way off from that. But she was alarmed to come across the C word in the dictionary and to find out that the derivation for the word crumb was carrion. April opened her freezer door and took out two previously steep tea bags from the ice cube bin, little pillows of green slush. She walked into the parlor and collapsed on her sofa. She was hatching a headache.  She was certain that the increase in her morning headaches must be caused by this toxic sludge pot. The tea bag trick sometimes worked wonders. She tried to rest but someone was tapping the brass door knocker in flurries of clinks and clanks. She put the soggy tea bags in a saucer and went to see who it was. The unexpected visitor kept banging on the door. She had thought it might be the provost arriving for one of his rare small and early surprise visits. But it was a newcomer. He had one foot already wedged on the threshold as she pulled the front door open. Halfway inside already he stood there uninvited. Shoulder length hair framed a very pretty yet solidly square jawed face. His skin so white he looked pale as a geisha. It was the boy from next door. Oh it's you she said in her neutral and tolerant school teachers voice. She didn't invite him to come in. I'm testing my cuff he said as he brushed past her and walked into the foyer. You're doing what? Testing the hardware. Your cuff. My virtual arrest solution. You know it's got a stamp of approval from the American Civil Liberties Union. You have to wear that electronic device she said. He showed her a rubberized cinch snapped onto his ankle. It's a wireless tramp tamper proof transmitter he said. It shoots to the outer space satellite back to the cell tower and then to the monitoring center. Shoots what? Every move you make. He said I can't leave the property without sending an alarm to big brother.  She wondered what drug he was taking. Maybe Ritalin that made him such a motormouth. She had learned that students who spent a lot of energy explaining themselves are not to be trusted. He said if I'm not where I'm supposed to be it pops onto a screen and those Betsy's alert my P.L. Then he calls my dad or he calls the state police. Those fucks. How long do you have to wear it? She said. I'm short time now. If I get any add-on time at the training school these dog pen months count against my sentence. Well you're not very locked up now she said. That's the beauty part. You're inside the radius. It's good here he said. And here he inched into her parlor. He walked in tiny bride steps until he was all the way into the room. April followed on his heels. Then he turned around. He grinned. Oh he said I should introduce myself. I'm Blaze. He extended his hand. When she reached out to shake hands with him he licked his palm grabbed her hand and pumped it up and now. She was surprised by the flash of his pink tongue followed by his cool wet tongue. He had tricked her. He was making a crude joke at her expense. But her wave of repulsion felt more like a thrill. He plopped down on her sofa brushing her saucer of wet teabags onto the floor. What's with the teabags? He said. I thought I smelled coffee. She didn't offer him a cup of coffee. He put his arms behind his head. We're golden he said. Golden. You mean that sofa is within the confinement map? It's safe. You tell me. Is it safe? She looked at him in awe. He was acting like a precocious Casanova and he seemed as confident as his elder the sludge tycoon next door. She wondered if the kid had learned it from his father. Other men might talk to her like this but they were usually had acts all talk and no real threat. He leaned back on the sofa resting his long arms against its sulking back. Is this a fainting couch? He said. It's so antiques roadshow. Not a fainting couch. No. It's French empire. She said. She understood his confusion because the antique French sati had a sculpted back that was higher on one side before it dipped gracefully to the lower end like the matronly curve of a hip. The sati was very feminine. Teen boys and grown men looked almost silly sinking into the cushions. She could have told them that real fainting couches were popular when ladies were tight corsets and they often collapsed from poor circulation. She said antiques roadshow you say? Did you really watch PBS in jail? No. We liked the map channel he said. Oh you mean National Geographic. I like that too. No. M-A-P. Mature amateur porn. My favorite. I guess that's why you look familiar. He said. She felt a queasy pleasure tug in her stomach. It was a silly insult or perhaps it was a backhanded compliment. She tried to ignore it. This is nice. I like it. He said. Patting the sofa cushion. It's comfy. So in the olden days why did women faint so much? Like I said it's not a fainting couch. But go ahead. Be my guest. Feel free if you want to faint. He reached out and grabbed her wrist. No. You will. You're going to faint all you want. He smiled staring into her face. She tugged her hand away watching him more closely.  She sensed a raw fear under his silence. His chiseled expression looked older than 15 or 16. He was a hardened animal right out of a jungle of small cons and headaches that she didn't want to imagine. But he jabbered like a sugar jazz kindergartner. He had plopped down on her couch like a kid ready to watch Saturday cartoons. Men are happy to kick off their shoes, wingtips or nikes. Once shoeless when they are in their rumpled socks. They are like innocence. Men often sleep where they finish in bed on the settee. Her fantasies were fiction but felt good swarming through her mind. She'd savor them later when writing in her bedside journal with its velvet board covers. She had learned that velvet covers kept her journal from sliding off the bed. These unwholesome thoughts were in direct response to her current dead end affair with the provost. But she didn't know what to do with the teenager. If he was really under house arrest she wasn't supposed to babysit him. She said, so what's the story with the bracelet? He locked eyes with her. You really want to know? Okay, I'll tell you. It's called aggravated assault. She didn't exactly know what characterized an aggravated attack. Boys always fought about girls. She didn't want to imagine drugs, armed robbery or something worse. He said, I see that Camry has a moonroof. That's a nice feature. She realized that his unauthorized plot down might be because he wanted her wheels. She warned him, that car is a lemon. Every time I park the thing its tail lights won't turn off.  The mechanic had told her it would be $1,500 to replace a circuit panel. So for the time being she would have to drive the beater. She said, sometimes I drop the fuse behind the dash and I can't find it. They're tiny. I could find your fuse, he said.  It was a turn off or a turn on. She didn't want to decide. She said, do you know when your dad is planning to move that sludge pile? It's like that B movie, the blob. He told her, you're right. That mound is like an X file. It's like Stephen King compost. He was mocking her. Sweared, he said, smearing the words. Yeah, I keep an eye out. Things can happen like house drops on a witch, he said. The boy had stretched out on her sofa. He was reclaiming his space. He said, my mom ditched me to run off with a contractor who builds strip malls, whore, he said, imitating the cold jargon he must have heard on TV shows or maybe at the kitty prison. You don't get along with your mom, she said. Bitch doesn't pass the food bowl test. April had met his mother a few times, but she didn't recognize the reference he was making. He said, you know how the ASPCA evaluates shelter dogs? The trainer reaches for the food bowl with a plastic arm. If the dog bites the arm, end of story. His icy summary of his mother's vicious streak was disturbing, but his absurd invention of the food bowl metaphor seemed shockingly authentic. He shifted on the sofa stretching his legs out. She rescued a hand embroidered pillow from under his dirty shoes. Hey, are you going to be sociable? He patted the velvet sea cushion. As a college professor, her male students sometimes tried to find a chink in her armor. They watched her closely as she walked between the tight tables in the classroom, trying not to bump her hips against the crowded chairs. She just looked too curvy. On the website, ratemyprofessors.com, where students critique teachers, she'd often been awarded a little red icon beside her name, a hot pepper. But Blaze was way ahead of her. His silly insults have confused her, first with his wet handshake, and next with comments she might have heard before, but always from a seasoned player, not from a kid. He didn't want to seem to leave. April finally told him, you have to go. I've got to meet my class. You work at Sin, he asked. Yeah, I heard. She hated it when people lopped off the second syllable of Sinclair College. The slang nickname had special meaning to her because of her illicit connection to the provost. Okay, I'm going, Blaze said. He rolled slowly off the sofa in one languorous collapse to her carpet. Seduced by his dreaminess, artificial or not, she walked into the kitchen door with added formality. She tried to regain control by relying on her ladylike decorum. It was very nice to meet you, Blaze, she said. Thanks for stopping by. She watched him walk down the path to the driveway where her car was parked. He stopped to peer into his driver's side window, steepling his hands as he pressed his nose to the glass. Her camry looked a little shabby. It had doilies of rust on its front fender, and of course, she had to remove the fuse each time she parked it. Blaze turned and smiled at her. He was twirling something on his pointer finger. She recognized the little flat, black plastic cue of her lock beeper. He had pocketed her car keys. She always left her car keys on the kitchen counter. Despite her description of its electrical problems, she had left her oh, what a feeling, Toyota right there on a silver platter. Blaze had already climbed into the camry. He had found the needle nose pliers in the cup holder and replaced the fuse. Sinking into the driver's seat with a comfortable grin, he cranked the ignition. It purred. He towed the gas and rolled the car in a half circle around April, avoiding the empty flower beds, steering clear of their borders. The camry peeled down the country lane, its gears shifting smoothly, responding to its young driver like an all too willing cohort. The car smelled of honey or vanilla. April had dropped her grocery bag and her herbal shampoo had spilled on the car floor, soaking the rug. The sugary pastel was intoxicating, and he imagined his new neighbor. He saw her body. She's wearing nothing but a crimson thong. He saw her face. He followed it onto the highway. Thanks. Do you want to run this discussion? Okay. Anybody have anything to talk about or any questions? Yeah. Well, I'm a Rhode Island native as well from Providence, and I noticed in your reading that you kind of went around Rhode Island. During your writing process, do you feel like you have to go back and kind of back travel to just kind of remember where the journey that you're writing about? Oh, you mean to actually go we visit places? Yeah. Austin's is where we visit places. And I wrote my novel Open Water, which takes place in Newport, where I lived for many years. I did have to go back and check a couple things. I had to go back to a cemetery in Middletown that had this strangest little area of places where they buried babies. And they had this wonderful plaque with like the title of the baby cemetery. And I can't remember exactly the wording, but I needed to go back to that cemetery to actually find the right wording. And I went back to the baby cemetery and it was sort of changed. And there was somebody working there and I said, where's the baby cemetery? And they said, well, we're not advertising it anymore. They're still on the ground, but we don't want to advertise it's full of babies. And then he showed me the plaque that used to be there because they had it in the back. They had taken it off and moved it around. And so that's an instance where I did go back to make sure I knew what I was talking about. But this new novel that I just wrote about, that takes place in Middletown, I didn't really need to go back because I wrote it and it takes place in sort of one house on the Sakanet River. And I knew it so well, I really didn't feel I needed to go back. But I know things are always changing. And for writers, you should always return if you have questions or if you want to be re-inspired, you know, it's good to turn back. Anybody else have a question? I noticed when you were writing you talked a lot about very specific things about Rhode Island, like specific things to like people who are from here. So I was wondering if you write about another place, how do you research that and try to find things that make it as real as you can make Rhode Island? Well, I mean, it's the same thing. I mean, I've written about other places as well by a novel. Lux is a Cape Cod novel, is the first Cape Cod novel I ever wrote. And what was interesting about that was I had written the novel Lux. I had completed it right before I was assigned my non-fiction book about a murder in Turo. And in that book, I had to describe the Cape Cod landscape because, you know, out where that is, everything is controlled by the sea. The sea is basically the whole setting. And I was sort of upset because I had written this whole novel Lux that took place on Cape Cod and I really described Cape Cod. Then I had to write another book about Cape Cod and I had to describe Cape Cod again, but I couldn't describe it with the same descriptions I had described the first time. So I had to, I mean, if you put the two books together, I never repeated myself. I described Cape Cod afresh the second time around.  You have to see what a setting presents to you and it doesn't just present what it appears to present. It doesn't just present its physical wonder, but it goes inside you and it becomes an interior kind of presence, you know, a setting, right? And that's why when I come back to Rhode Island, it's very interior to me to be back in these places that I know so well and that have sort of a psychic or emotional component to me. Yes? How does that come about? Well, there were editors at Random House who thought I would be somebody who would be able to tackle that project. So they called me up and asked me if I wanted to write a book about the murder and I said, let me think about it. But it was a story that was fascinating to me and I knew several of the people involved personally and it sort of was like a story with my name on it. So I took the project on. Right? Yeah.  Well, actually, when I was writing the book, I was a little part of the story, but I didn't speak to the press. I had a wonderful, my editors and the press people at Random House said, don't talk to the press before the publication of the book. So anytime anybody tried to talk to me about it, I just wasn't talking. But amongst the community, I was known for somebody who had the gall to write a book about the tragic murder. So I did get a lot of flak from it. Yeah. I actually was writing for a new edition of that book all about Christopher Cowan and Random House decided not to do it because of legal issues. Because of legal issues, yeah. But I had actually done a lot of research with Chris and I knew Chris pretty well. He called me from the prison all the time. He told me his story and everything. So I was writing about it. I was going to write about him. But Random House got wind of some legal problems so they didn't want to do it. Yes, I know he did it. I have no question. And I'll tell you why because this is a lot of facts a lot of you people don't know. This man prior to the murder had five separate restraining orders from women who he had previously beaten. He was a violent man. He beat all of his girlfriends to a pulp, though he didn't kill them. And then he killed Christa. This was a violent man who was out of control. And I don't believe that the decision to convict him was incorrect because those things are actually sealed and they were not even able to use them in the court case. Believe me. Isn't that crazy? Nobody, I mean they couldn't even use his restraining orders in the court case even though they were on the books of the courts because this murder, you cannot accuse somebody of murder because of his past restraining orders. It's nutty. And again, I'm no expert in criminal law but I did learn a lot about it going over this. I went to the trial. I went to every day of the trial. And I did come to my, and I had my curiosity about who had killed Christa Worthing and who could it have been. There were so many different suspects. But the more I learned and the more I found out about it, I believe it was pretty clear that Christopher McCowen probably killed her. And the reason he probably killed her was he knocked her out in a fight. And because he was on parole, if she woke up and called the cops and reported him, he'd be back in jail. So he murdered her so she couldn't really tell on him. What a downer. Well, it's wonderful to see you all here and to meet you all. I wish you great, great success with all your writing and I wish that you would figure out a way to bring spring. Somebody told me that the daylight savings is in just two weeks. Is that right? Well, that's helpful anyway. Is that it? Is everybody okay? Anybody have anything else to say? Okay. Thank you, everybody.