Hi, and welcome back here. So today's video is all about literature review writing. Now I understand this is a very specific area of academic writing, and it's only relevant really to people who are at the stage or are required to do it. But it's still very useful. There is a reason to specific reasons why I picked up this specific area to talk about today. The first one is just generally it's something that I have been working on for months now. I also have a supervisor meeting tomorrow so videos like this helped me to organize and collect my thoughts gather my thoughts you know kind of present them ready for our discussion so it's kind of a warmer for me and my supervisor tomorrow. And the second thing is I actually am having a desk day here today so I'm literally like desk bound, I am creating a lot of content, and that in particular is for my academic community on Patreon so the focus this month was for the task one writing of preparation for IELTS examinations. And you know we've got into the swing of things over there. So I just have some content to create some videos and some material because obviously if you do know anything about my Patreon. We go into full video tutorials full video tutorials where you know I have material to accompany what I'm saying, and I often prepare the tutorial. sessions beforehand, so I give my students in the community, a chance to actually download the material have a look through it, and have it ready to when we have the video tutorial. So it does take time. It's something that is, you know, I put a lot of work and dedication into and I enjoy it this is absolutely you know privileged for me to be able to do that. And that is one of the reasons why I love social media because it allows me to share that expertise and the passion I have for the expertise so basically I'm having a desk bound day. Yeah, it's me and this space here on this wonderful Thursday and other thing I'm fasting. So I won't actually be able to have any tea coffee or any kind of snack or anything which is a good thing because it just refocuses my mind and definitely not having the excuse to kind of wander off and find something to eat is definitely helpful. So I figured this specific area of literature review writing, which I have touched upon I've gone in and out of. And you know, this is more of a again a chatty style video. I will definitely be doing a tutorial on literature review writing very shortly. And then I will share here. It's obviously there are exclusive things that I put in my community on Patreon, but there are also things that I like to share here and I'm happy to share with the people who don't have access to my private academic community on Patreon so these are just you know the thoughts and the things I want to share in terms of my experience and in terms of what I have learned from everything and from everyone so far. So I hope that's a comprehensive introduction as to you know what this video chat is about. And I think the first thing I'd like to start off with is just the idea of a literature review the idea. If you are someone who is just kind of stumbling into that area of academic writing and research a literature review sounds just, I guess, in its basic form. A review of the literature in the sense that what you do is you read and you write a review on what the literature is. I don't want to completely negate that and say that that is not what it is because that does form some element of what is required in a literature review but definitely in terms of actually, you know, a PhD worthy literature review. There are skills beyond reviewing and summarizing that you do need to develop and master and showcase. So that is kind of, you know, that that's the essence I would say that's the starting point. Yes, you do need to read and yes you do need to summarize in great detail basically what you have read, but I would say the summary part of the literature review is more for you, not for the actual literature review if that makes sense. So, of course, summary summarizing is a useful academic skill and I will never ever downplace usefulness and effectiveness. If you know anything about what I have spoken about the blooms hierarchy of critical thinking skills and I do have some material on that so just have a look at my channel and you'll see anything to do with critical thinking skills, there is a pyramid, and you'll see summarizing is usually at the lower end what is considered to be the lower level critical thinking skills, but it's still useful because it's a foundation you need to be able to summarize information before you can actually come to analyze or critique or evaluate it. So it is definitely useful, and I don't want to like I said I don't want to negate or downplay the fact that summarizing is needed. But when I say the summarizing is required for you, it's because it's for your understanding, and it's for you to obviously remember the key points of what you've read because if you think about the amount of literature that you have to engage with it's a huge amount, especially at PhD level it's huge you know you are reading, you know masses, and it's ongoing. So being able to summarize you know 30 page article is an absolutely useful skill now you could say, you know just having a look at this abstract is enough. I wouldn't disagree with that, but the abstract only gives you an insight that's basically what it does the abstract is kind of you know an outline of what is going to be covered in the article. So it's a good filter point where you think okay this is necessary or this is useful or it's not and then you decide you make your mind up whether you want to read it or you don't. That's from my experience and I know like I am somebody who does kind of like to take a lazy route. The abstract isn't enough into getting into more of what the article discusses really so be prepared you do need to read like there's no way around it. So that's why I always say you know if reading isn't your thing. Don't do a PhD and don't do any kind of research because you have to read you have to read and you have to understand. And that is where you're summarizing comes in so the summarizing aspect of the literature review is for you is for your understanding it's for you to getting to grasp with the key concepts key definitions key ideas key arguments, all of that. That doesn't mean that you're just going to regurgitate that in a narrative in a you know pros and present that as your literature chapter that is not what you need to do and that is something that is all you know will give you. It will be a week literature review, however, bear in mind that the literature review is an entire process. It's one where you will refine and you will remaster and there is a starting point so if your starting point is just literally. You've written you know 2000 3000 words which is just essentially kind of summary and a review of the literature that you've engaged with, I wouldn't beat myself up about it. I'm not saying this because I've been there because what it will do is, and of course it does depend on your supervisor and how good of a supervisor they are, they will pinpoint things that you need to develop in terms of critique, and in terms of, you know, deeper discussion and this that's also another important thing. Another thing that you'll find is that you will be able to develop threads, and that will take you off into directions of where you will actually refine your focus and essentially establish the gap which is all about what the the entire PhD is is really finding a gap. And making the original contribution to the field which you can't really make that original contribution until you kind of you know, establish the gap and really, you know, know what it what is missing and how you your research is going to add value to that. So essentially what you're saying is you know, you know, here's the gap. And here is why this research matters, and this is what I'm going to do about it. So keep that in mind. Okay, keep that in mind. The literature review will help you establish what the gap is, and why it matters for research to be undertaken in that field and then what exactly you are going to do. And from there then obviously you get your research questions now, you might be thinking, Okay, well, aren't my research questions done in my proposal or isn't it done at the stage where I get my upgrade yes that's true. So when you do write your proposal, you will have your research questions, but your research questions will either change or evolve. If something will happen it's highly unlikely it will stay the same from the point of where you've written your proposal, all the way until you actually, you know, write up your thesis it's highly unlikely. You might add some questions you may remove some questions. My research questions have gone through a refining process for sure. And that is all part of the process. But the point of the research question is to gravity to keep you, it's, it's your main research question, and then obviously the some questions that you have.   And one of my, she's not my supervisor anymore she was my, she's a one of the academics in the Department of Department of Educational Research at Lancaster University. She actually, she says it's an anchor think of your research question as an anchor that's pulling you back, you know, to focus. And I think that's a really nice analogy of that. So the literature review plays a big part in being able to obviously, you know, let you find the gap and say why it's important to have research in that gap and then what you are going to do. And then from then on, you're you refine or you produce essentially you produce the research questions. And like I said it doesn't matter if you have your research questions from your proposal for any part of the process up until that point. It's okay because it's either going to just cement it. I definitely think there will be some kind of a refinement to it that definitely will be but it's basically the light shining on you know what the questions are so you know because your questions are your research you know that's what your research is going to answer so it is essentially what you are going to do it's your mandate.   So, I hope that has made sense and I think three further points from that that I would that I've discovered that I'm working on still is the first one like I said you know when you think of literary viewing you know if you just write it you know it's a review you do about the literature and it's kind of done it is it is never done until you finish your thesis right up. Okay, it is an ongoing process. And when you do your timetable or if you have a look at some example timetables of the thesis structure and how long it will take, you will see the literature review doesn't have a finish date it usually is an ongoing and there are reasons for that because what you will find. And I am at the fourth stage of redraft in my literary review is you'll find that what actually can work really well is if you let the literature review speaks speak for itself, rather than arguing for what you're looking for. And there's a reason for that if you think about if you're arguing for what you're looking for from the onset. Then it takes a different light in what the literature saying because then you're going to kind of mold the literature to say what it is that you're looking for. But if you actually let the literature speak for itself and you know. That is where you're going to establish the gap because you see, you know, what's the literature saying what our bodies saying what are certain bodies and for me and actually navigating through like bodies of literature because it's not. You can't just list what all scholars say all individual scholars or researchers or, you know, experts you can't do that sometimes you have to have a body of literature. And if you see what this body says what that body says and then you'll find you know the disparities amongst that and the gap that you know that it's all about the gap and highlighting the gap and I think if you let the literature speak for itself, rather than from the onset stamping and saying you know this is what I believe the literature says, because if you do that you're kind of going to want the literature to say what you want to say. And if you let the literature speak for itself, you will see the gap, the issues, the challenges, problems, and from there, you'll be able to refine what not just obviously from the gap, what your contribution is going to be and why you know your research is important. And you know, like I said, you know, the second point is that it is an ongoing process so don't think of it as done. Because from the very first literature view you do to the little paragraph part of your proposal. And then to the point where I wouldn't even say you finished because obviously I am not done with my thesis but even I can say, if I was to take the, the part that I wrote within my proposal and look at how far I've come now. But it's incomparable, it really is like there is a huge difference. And just let yourself also know that the literature review will only be as good as it as good as it gets at certain points, and you just have to park it and leave it that's why I said it's ongoing because for my fourth review right now. It's going to be the point where I'm like okay I'm done with this for now, and I need to move on to this part. And, and then from things I find in my data, I'm going to be able to come back, and then actually you know, sculpt the literature review in that way. So, you know, understand that it is as good as it gets at a certain point. And then you need to leave it and come back to leave it.  If that's the case you will find when you you know come to a further stage that it's all now pretty that it's either all irrelevant or there are huge parts of it that are no longer relevant to what it is you're saying, especially if you do refine or change or add any research questions. So, move on, and you can come back just bear that in mind you can move on you can come back that is why on my system here I have a system which is specifically for my thesis writing, I have folders. I have two chapters one chapter two chapters three chapter four chapter five and in each of those. I just you know, work simultaneously through them. I'll have the introduction going on I'll have the bits of the things that I feel shouldn't be in my literature review, and need to go back into my introduction, and maybe things need to be put into methods and you know it's a it's a work in progress that's going to treat it as a process process over the over product, you know. And so, if you think of that obviously the ongoing process you have your initial review. So that's like the you know the first kind of bit that you do that you're proud of. But then, bear in mind, not just about the redrafts and the refinements there is a point where you will come. And you will do another review like a major let's think about it these are the major reviews don't think about the redrafting. And so your initial review that's the first major piece that you produce. And then you come to the point where you will have another review in light of the data that you've collected. Okay, because that is absolutely essential because you need to see like you know the connection there and that's why I talk about sculpting.  You've got the data to support to support you essentially, and it to support your claims, and that's where you're going to really pull it in and stamp it in so you have a refined sculpted literature review. So that is why you know the third point of sculpting it rather than framing if you think about, if you sculpt something, you shape it to kind of like fit a form. But if you frame something so if you think of a frame is quite rigid. And I think that is why I said, if you lead with what you want the literature to say, then you're going to force.  I'm not there, but just bear in mind that this is essentially what's going to happen. The sculpting just makes more sense because you're sculpting as you go along as you're refining as you get more data as you know refine your research questions and you're, you know, molding it but if you just frame it you're forcing it. And if you haven't let the literature speak for itself. And you know, you probably might make a lot of sweeping assertions which I have been guilty of. And that's what I'm actually working on now supporting claims I've made certain ups and substantiated claims. And by letting the literature speak for itself. I'm these things. So, you know, why certain, think of why certain elements are leading you to to a certain argument. And then again that's you know kind of you establish in your gap because if you've found and you know found this element that's pushing you towards this area. And then you can form an argument why that is what is going to be your in your valuable contribution, and why is it that that is important to have the research why is that. Why are those elements why are they worthy of your research what are you going to add to it. Based on basically you know what you've found from the literature speaking for itself rather than you speaking for it. And this comes back down to a voice because voice can be hard to get. I have spoken about voice I've spoken about you know, the writer voice where, and there is a fine line.  So it might sound tricky but letting the literature speak for a cell isn't just summaries because the summaries is essentially you saying this is what's being said. But what it is, is you know, when, when you engage with all these bodies and like I said, get used to the actual bodies of literature which I myself that's what I'm doing. There you will see where the debates are, where the arguments are, where there's a lot of focus where there's not too much focus, where there needs to be more research where there needs to be more information, where there's too little information. That is what the literature speaking for itself is.  And then from there, then, when you've established you know, you know with the gap. And the reason is that you want to do, and why it's important for you to do it, then that's when you can really like stomp down your voice. And you know when refining it then you know you're going to get a strong voice through. Because you've actually let the literature speak for itself so your voice is actually now a substantiated voice. I would say that I don't know I don't think of the literature review as a linear process. But I think it actually could be a, you know a circular process you could be a starting point, and you have to go through all of this to get not to the, not to the back to the starting point but essentially, to the aim of what you wanted.  So it is, you could look at it both sides really the argument is open there. It's definitely you know debatable whether it's a circular process or a linear process, but whichever one it is. I think the key point that I think that is worthy of taking away from this is that it is a process. It's a process. It needs to be refined it needs to be sculpted, and it takes time, and it's something that you at some point need to understand that this is as good as it gets. And put it aside, move on with the intention to come back to it and resculpt it when you are in a better position of knowing things for example your data. So I'm going to stop right there, because I don't want to turn this into an entire lecture. But like I said these are thoughts based on my experiences what I am obviously navigating and where I have learned through this. And just kind of like you know my dumping ground of thoughts, but I definitely will be doing a tutorial ask how to how to write your literature review. Just so that you know for people who kind of need to see the stages and how and what to do that is coming here on this channel so stay tuned if you are not subscribed do subscribe. And of course, give the video a thumbs up, and you'll see me soon, or you'll see me over if you are one of my patrons in my private academic community and you'll see me very soon because I have a lot of new content today tomorrow and over the weekend. And if not, you will still see me I will be back here inshallah so thank you very much for watching and you'll see you soon bye bye.


Rokeby is a National Historic Landmark. It is one of the best documented underground railroad sites in the country. It is on 90 acres. It has a number of historic outbuildings, a historic house. It can really help to tell the agricultural history of Vermont. And we have an incredible modern education center that has an exhibit that talks about the freedom seekers that came here to Rokeby on the Underground Railroad and the work of the abolitionists here in Vermont. We're on a fall foliage tour learning about four different states and this really I think solidifies a lot of what Vermont was about. You have the Robinson family here at Rokeby that was four generations. How often do you find one institution that has that? But also they were part of the Underground Railroad. So we like coming here because it's a condensed piece of history, but that's broad of course, very important to our nation. But you get a nice chunk of it right here between the Underground Railroad history and also the legacy of this family, which spans all the way from the 1800s into 1960. Where do you find that under one roof and one family in the U.S.? So one reason is that they were able to preserve it here. So I love this museum for that reason. What we have in these four generations is you can look at agriculture, you can look at art, you can look at abolition. I think people are really taken by the range of how much is in this, I know we have 90 acres, but in this relatively small space, how much is held? We also have seasonal exhibit space, which allows us to tell multiple stories of the family that lived here from 1793 until 1961. There was a Robinson who lived and worked on this site and we have a lot of their possessions still in our collection. So we can use this space to tell their story. So let your eyes get used to the light. So as you can see, this is the original main room of the house. It was two rooms up, two rooms down. The walk in fireplace was what they used originally, of course. And in the winter, this was, you know, the favorite room. So they made everything here and originally they made candles. You can see the molds over there. They certainly cooked here. They made bread. They dried apples for eating later and pumpkins and such. So everything in the house, all of the artifacts are things that were either owned by the Robinsons or used by the Robinsons. Nobody had to bring in anything to make it, you know, a period correct kind of situation because they never threw anything away. I think one of the important things with the Robinsons is that family members did recognize the importance of the family to history. And they recognized the Underground Railroad was an important part of the family's history. They recognized that Ronald Evans Robinson, who was third generation, was an important literary figure and an artist. And his daughter was an important artist. And they saved all of their items. And they even labeled some of the items. So we know where they came from and who purchased them or who gave them to the family. And I think there was a hope that one day visitors would be able to come to the sites and learn about the family and learn about their history and really take away something special from the history of the Robinson family. That's what's really unique about about Rokeby's story is that we can tell all these different aspects of black history in Vermont and the aspects of freedom and folks finding freedom for the first time and also the aspect of folks that are black Vermonters living in Vermont through the 19th century and the challenges and successes that they were finding. Coming from the south, we have history. Y'all have history too. The histories are connected with the abolitionist movement, the slavery movement. It's interesting to hear this part of it from another perspective. Your dozens are wonderful. They're very knowledgeable. They certainly know their stories and the background is so interesting, especially the Quaker background and how they were so influenced by their religion that they were very fierce abolitionists. So yes, it's wonderful. The buildings, being able to see it, I feel like I've walked back in time. People should come because we have a real varied experience for them. We have got a wonderful historical exhibit in the museum where you see actual documentation that people had and tell stories about actual freedom seekers who came here, about work that was done. We have the farm. And that is so important. We have the history of agriculture in this state right here. And it's beautiful. We have 90 acres that you can walk around. We have trails. You have for children, we have a storybook walk that Tucker does. We change those three times a year. And then, of course, we have the historic house, which is not a mansion. It's a house that people actually lived in. And you can come and see that and see the way people really did live, see the way a house, the way a family changed their environment and changed their home over the years. We all do it. We all make changes in our houses. And this is a living structure from 1790s to the 1960s, really. So there's history. There's agriculture. There's exercise. And it's beautiful. And you can picnic.


Hello Columbia and welcome to This Week in the City. Highlights brought to you by the Public Relations, Media and Marketing Department with the City of Columbia. I'm your host, Lisha Younzi. This week in the City, are you ready for the famously hot New Year celebration? Well, it's almost upon us. It will be held on December 31st in downtown Columbia, a free event that's open to the public. All activities will begin at 6 p.m. and they will end at 12 30 a.m. So come out and ring in the New Year at famously hot New Year. Ring in 2020 in downtown Columbia. The lead act for headliners will be salt and pepper and also there are local acts from Columbia and Charleston, South Carolina that will actually kick off the fun. Again starting at 6 p.m. ending at 12 30 a.m. on New Year's Day of course. Please visit our website at ColumbiaST.gov for more details about parking, entertainment and other activities related to this event. Also this week please be advised that on New Year's Day January 1st city offices will be closed. However, emergency personnel will be on duty and can be reached by calling 9-1-1. Again, all city offices will be closed on January 1st. However, they will reopen on January 2nd. Also planning ahead for January, there will be four public meetings held in the month of January for Columbia Compass, the 10-year comprehensive plan. The plan has been updated and planning and development staff want your input on the updates and the current status of the draft for Columbia Compass. These public meetings are open to the public, they are free and we seek your input. Please attend one of the following meetings during the month of January and for more details visit our website at ColumbiaST.gov. And on behalf of the City of Columbia and Public Relations Media and Marketing, happy New Year and we hope you have a safe and enjoyable year in 2020.


Item Number – SCP-343 Object Class – Safe Special Containment Procedures – SCP-343 resides in a 6.1m x 6.1m or 20 feet by 20 feet room at Minimal Security Site 17. It should be brought any items it requests and visited by at least one staff member each day. Just to add further safety precautions or required clearances are unnecessary or impossible due to the nature of SCP-343. Description – SCP-343 is a male, seemingly raceless, humanoid in appearance with apparent omnipotence. SCP-343 was discovered walking the streets of Prague and detained after a staff member witnessed him disappear from the streets and reappear on a rooftop. SCP-343 is detained willingly in his chamber as containment has proved impossible. Addendum Number – 3431 – SCP-343 colloquially nicknamed God by the staff here looks like an older man although his features are different to each observer. In my first talk with him he claimed outright to be the creator of the universe. When I asked him to prove this, he laughed, walked through the wall of the chamber and returned seconds later with a hamburger in his hand. When I returned for a second visit, the previously bare cell had been furnished in upscale old English style, complete with a roaring fireplace and seemed many times larger than it did from the exterior. SCP-343 greatly enjoys speaking with people and seems to have a knowledge of all topics. Visiting with SCP-343 has become a daily event for many of the staff here and all employees report feeling generally happier after each visit, but attempts to bar staff below level 3 clearance have proven unsuccessful as guards assigned to watch the room quit their posts saying, you know he likes company or shrugging when questioned. Since SCP-343 has thus far been harmless, all staff have been allowed access and somehow they all have time to meet with him for as long as they need. For now, I leave this report open as further questioning of SCP-343 is ongoing. Dr. Beck Warning, security level 4 or higher needed for further access. Addendum number 3432 In regards to Document 3431A, there are no relevant records available or seemingly in existence and similarly all records of Dr. Beck ever working with SCP-343 or Dr. Beck are missing and presumed non-existent. All staff questioned about the document convey ignorance of document number 3431A and claim not to have met Dr. Beck. In a related matter, Senior Officer Dr. Beck has requested a higher staff rotation to increase morale in worse off sections. This is a very odd request and was the subject of further investigation. Other localized anomalies such as better health, greater job satisfaction, and lower fatalities in this section have led to the request being granted. This subject is now closed on orders of 05- Addendum number 3433 Data recovered from routine check of Dr. Beck's network drive. Addendum number 3431A Data lost As of data expunged, visitors of SCP-343 are to be questioned as to their intent in conversed data lost. Questions pertaining to other SCP are to be put forth data lost. Orders of Dr. Beck Document number 3431B Data lost. Apparently my orders have gone missing. This is the last straw, Dr. B. Data lost. All my reports and requests to higher ups have gone unnoticed. I will confront SCP-343 tomorrow. Signed. Dr. Beck Lesson complete. If you missed the previous orientation, go watch SCP-342. A ticket to ride. Right now. Or for the complete course, watch this playlist.


And what I'm going to present for you is sort of how I've presented IT for IT to executives over my last three years of working with the standard and since it was even before a standard. And some of the tricks and things that seem to work and some of the scars that I've earned where it doesn't work so well, things that I've learned. And the way I've got this structured is I want to give you a little bit of a background. So I've actually presented IT for IT. I look back at my three years and over 80 times I've presented to executives or teams of folks and tried to convey the value and convey what IT for IT was and get them to sort of subscribe to, this is a great idea. I've had the privilege of actually getting more involved in the open group. I'm certified now as one of the few folks out there is only 160 or 70 of us now. I keep track of it. And I am the adoption work group chair. So I'm highly invested in your ability to convey IT for IT to the folks that you work with or your customer base or what have you. I measure adoption and people taking a hold of this and owning it and moving forward in their own initiatives and everybody here is doing a different job, different companies, different outcomes that you're looking for. But IT for IT is really a common thread and I think that's why you're here in this room. So that's my current experience on IT for IT and really my agenda, the best way I think to kind of show you at least what works and what doesn't work is to kind of go through a scenario. And I'm gonna take about five minutes and do what I would consider my elevator pitch to explaining IT for IT in five minutes. And if you're in the elevator with an executive, here's your five minute chance to get them interested enough to have the next meeting. And what is that successful outcome? We're gonna decompose that a little bit. And then I'll have six tips for successfully presenting IT for IT based on some of the themes and the things that I've learned over the years. And of course Q&A. So with that, I am going to use the Open Group Standard Templates. They have provided some executive communication material and you can download this material and use it on your own. So this is sort of the scenario I'm gonna take you through. The company I work for, of course, being a good adopter use case, I'm gonna show you a little bit about how we have adopted and sort of take you through that scenario. So here we go, five minutes folks. Somebody keep me honest. Okay, so how can CIOs better improve what you're doing today? And you're faced with a lot of challenges. And I've noticed Mr. CIO that you've got a couple of key challenges in your environment. One is linking costs directly to the revenue, understanding the value of IT's contributions in your environment. And also is having a better financial transparency of where your investments are going. So your business basically trusts and continues to invest in your IT organization. So I met with their account team and I understood that these are some key issues that you're having within the organization. Would you agree with that Mr. CIO? Thank you, thank you. I thought so. We have a number of organizations that have actually already adopted the IT for IT framework and have started to realize the benefits from actually using this framework to change the way they manage their IT organizations and also integrate and use the tools that automate what many of these IT functions. And out of those organizations, I mean you would agree that these are the fairly large and fairly complicated organizations. And if they're able to do it, would you agree that this is something that you as a smaller organization could actually tackle? Yes, I thought so. What IT for IT really is, is a language for digital business and being able to have a true service portfolio, a management function in your organization. What we see is a lot of organizations struggling to transform themselves into a service delivery organization and still thinking about everything they do as bespoke projects. Well part of that is being able to have a standards based operating model. How can you interoperate with vendors or have your tool vendors provide different capabilities that cannot interoperate? Standardization allows you to walk around with your cell phone and use it anywhere in the world or any hotel in the wifi networks. Standardization is what fix that problem so we don't have to worry about connecting each other to the broader network. We have to, IT for IT also helps improve the financial controls and provides the end of business IT structure so that you can realize the business outcomes that your business is asking for. So these are the key elements that IT for IT provides and I think that this would be something that you would value. We understand that you have kind of four key areas of the organization, probably three right now but I would consider debt liver as the disruptive area of the value stream. And what each of these values, these areas of your IT organization has evolved to be is to be more of a value stream. You've heard of product idea to product, quote to order, order to cash. These are elements that your business is currently using to identify bottlenecks and to automate and mainstream the current business that you're in. So with strategy to portfolio, we are able to better understand what the strategy of your organization and where you should be investing to maximize the outcome for your business. With build we look at that in more of a requirements to deploy perspective. Once you understand the requirements of what your business is trying to deliver to be able to automate the steps in the processes to be able to deploy and realize those requirements in an environment. Detective correct is really the ability to understand and operate your IT organization and maintain SLAs and make sure that nobody's calling you two in the morning because something failed. And getting in front of that, being able to improve the service availability, service ability and SLAs. Last but not least is delivering standard services. What we've noticed is that there's a lot of organizations that treat every deliverable like a unique project but we know many of those services are repeatable and you should be able to standardize those and be able to automate the fulfillment for those services that are being delivered. This is IT for IT and a nutshell. And here at service now, we understand IT for IT is important. And what we've done is we've been able to map the IT for IT framework to the platform that we sell and the solutions that we provide to our customer base. So Mr. CIO, would you like to come and see my team and find out a little bit more about IT for IT and also the capabilities that we provide to deliver on the end-to-end value streams? Thank you. That's about it. Now that was a little bit of a nervous version of a five minute, but this is kind of how I would use this material if I had a few minutes with the CIO discussing really what IT for IT was, this idea of value stream concepts, right? Identifying what problems they already have and kind of correlating that back to what the value streams in IT for IT standard really represents. And I think that's where you guys all can do a pretty good job and leverage the material that's available. Everybody here has available to you the same basic material, right? These books are out on the shelves. Everybody can read this. What I found is that everybody, not everybody could present this information and contextualize it for each of those customer engagements. And that's the trick. What I've learned is that contextualization is key. Not everybody listens to the same message in the same way. Not everybody interprets it in the same way. So you've got to study, you've got to do some homework. So just a quick question. How did I do? Besides being a little nervous on my feet because I'm like sweating up here, right? Whew. Hopefully your CIO conversations aren't so under heated pressure. And what's a successful outcome? I think there's a couple of key successful outcomes of a presentation, whether you have five minutes or an hour or two hours, right? Make that connection. And part of that is being able to have them understand that you understand their problem. And there's a bit of an emotional drowning here where they have to realize that they're not with the other forks that are actually solving these problems. They're not, the problems aren't unique and that you understand what those problems are and there is a way out of it. There's a sales technique in emotional drowning. Anybody out here in sales? Ah-ha, a few of you. Anybody out here sales people? I mean, salesmen. Everybody here is a sales person and here's why. Even an enterprise architect, you got to sell your ideas, right? They don't just sell themselves. You have to be up there in front and be emotionally invested and convince folks that this is something that's valuable and worth pursuing and are investigating. You need to establish empathy with that individual and there might be a room full of different individuals and there's different objectives and different personalities and different drivers. So on a one-on-one, it's easy. You know, there's nobody, there's no third, fourth party in there to kind of convince that might argue or not really understand what you're saying. You just have to worry about one, but in a room full of people, it's a lot harder. And you have to really peak the interest of that individual based on contextualizing the story to their particular problems. And that is really the key for, I think, an executive presentation. If you don't peak their interest, they don't want to meet with you again. There's no reason to. Interesting, but I don't really need this. You know, everybody sort of experiences that, right? A guy comes to the door and tries to sell you a vacuum cleaner. I really don't need a vacuum cleaner right now. Goodbye. So you're not selling vacuum cleaners. You're solving an industry level problem that a lot of organizations are all invested in, including you being there, presenting IT for IT. And really the key objective is, or in the next meeting, the executives aren't there to make all the decisions. They're there to approve what their folks are saying and believing in and asking them for usually funding. And permission to move forward. They're not gonna do the work. So a lot of times the executive meeting is really the step to the next meeting. And you gotta look at it that way. When you get the opportunity to get up in front of the executives, you just have to get the next meeting. And if you've done that, you've done your job, you've been effective, and you can bring in more detailed information in that presentation, or smarter people than myself to present the details, based on the different interest areas. So the tip one is really preparing your IT for IT presentations to that individual presentation. It's understanding the customer really well, understand the material.  You have to assimilate that information in a way that makes sense for why you're there. I could be out there and just talking about the open group. And I think there's a lot of open group folks in here that's what you do. You're selling the open group and the standard. But you, working for a consultant, or a software vendor, a hardware vendor, doesn't matter. There's another angle. There's another reason that you're there for. And you'd still have to assimilate in your context and adapt it to that audience. And that's the last thing, is really contextualize the story so that the audience understands and it resonates. Some of the examples that I've had in the past, actually, this is a slide that came out of FedEx about a year ago. And what FedEx did was they took the material, right, over the course of a year, digested it, used it, and then tweaked and tailored it to their organization. This looks like a conveyor belt for everybody, right? I mean, would you agree? It's kinda like, you know, this is a FedEx. And you don't see the conveyor belt in FedEx, but that's what's running all of those routing systems in the middle of the night when all the planes go to their distribution hubs, right? And they're trying to reroute packages to the right destinations. And so they've tailored the colors, they've digested this, and they've detailed this in their own way so that it resonates with their own executives. So Jody Jenkins, who I actually presented this with, really surprised me, and it was sort of humbling to see people that you don't even hear about. They just took the information verbatim at conference number one, and one year later came back with a great story. So contextualize and make it your own and make sure that the folks in your organization understand the paradigm in their way. Why IT for IT? Anybody know Simon Sinek by any chance? Yeah, so this changed my life in a little bit. I would recommend you going out there and there's only a few things that Simon Sinek has done, but this is one very profound thing, right? It's you start with why, then you show what, and then you, or how, then you show what. And really, and anybody can say why this is, why this is so profound? What's the meaning of this? And why is this sort of a different way of thinking? Nobody? Any Simon Sinek fans out there? That's right. The people that, and I like his analogy, too, because the people that use Apple products are the ones that get up the night before, standing in line all night long just to get that next version of the freaking iPhone. I'm not that invested or emotionally invested, but that's why people do that. They are emphatic, not only about the products, but why the company exists and what they stand for. And so part of what you gotta get across is why IT for IT is important. It's really why is the standard relevant to me, and this is a bigger problem than you and me in a room. It's an industry problem. We're fixing things that are much bigger and broader than just the things that we're dealing with in this room. And then I like to show how it can help, which is why I contextualize the problem to their problems, and I also show how other folks have solved similar problems using the same standard. So how can it help? And then last but not least, but what is the IT for IT standard? Should you try to teach the IT for IT standard in an executive meeting? Anybody guess? Anybody try it? Yeah, you could try it. And depending on the executive, it's a hit or miss, but 90% of the time it's gonna be a miss. And the reason is, A, they don't have the time to sit in there and listen. There's a lot of material here. It's a 180-page document and there's a lot of detail there. You're not gonna learn it, okay? But your objective is to get the next meeting and to meet with the folks that will read the material, take it away and do something with it. This is one of the things that I've done as well. I've taken this material and I've contextualized it for, in this case, an executive, CIO. And shown we're at a high level, right? They can digest the details, but also executives love these, I call them viscidine charts, get the red out, right? It's really finding out where to improve and what to do about it. And in this case, it's a little understanding the corporate priorities related to the value streams and the value streams you need to break it down and saying, listen, Mr. CIO, or executive team, diagnosis of a problem and detective correct is your biggest problem based on your corporate priorities. And so now you've got some level of detail and the CIO, and when I've done this in the past, we'll put names, budgets, timelines underneath this and use this as a planning template. Now, this isn't too complicated, right? I mean, any CIO would get this in about 10 minutes, right? Or less. And if they're not, you should just go away and start somewhere else. But this is a very high level understanding of an IT shop, right? And if you go through it at a high level and get to this point, now, who do you follow up with? You follow up with John over here that owns this particular step in the value stream and you work from this point of view and work out. And he's gonna get the budget because he's the one where we've identified the corporate priority lies. Props. Have everybody get one of these? Probably have a library of them by now for some of the folks that have been coming for a while. I use props wherever possible because this is kind of nice because you can like hand it out. And what I usually do when I do a presentation to a room full of execs or whatever, I'll hand this around the room and I'll pass it around. And the trick is figuring out who wants it bad enough. Who's gonna open it up, crack it open, thumb through it and find something while they're listening to you, right? This is sort of the background. You're not doing it as a full distraction, but they're able to kind of see that this is real. This isn't some crazy idea that you thought up, right? It's on planet Pluto. This is actually a real standard that has material behind it. And most of the time when I use this technique, the customers ask for the book. And it's usually one of the persons in that room that asked, you know, and one of the last examples that I have of that was the CIO for an insurance company. When I passed it around the room, it came back. It landed on my desk again and I think, okay, apparently it wasn't, you know, nobody found anything of interest. But as I was shutting down the presentation, the CIO asked for the books. And that told me, you know, I've got her attention and this is actually something that I can follow up on. But that identifies the champion. It also gets the information into their hands. And if it's not gonna be for her, she's gonna give it to one of her key folks, right? And then I'll have something to follow up on.  The next thing is don't panic. Anybody been in a meeting and it went sideways?  You never know what's gonna happen. But don't panic, sometimes it's the wrong audience. I took a trip one time, I lived in, I live in Austin. I took a trip all the way to Houston, two and a half hour drive. Get in there and I'm gonna do my typical IT for IT spiel, right, hour long. I get in there, it's the wrong audience. It took me about two seconds to realize this is not gonna be of any value for them, any value for me. I didn't panic, I just sort of shut down fast. They didn't care and I just moved on. Backup slides, sometimes there are needs to kind of branch into other topics. So have some backup slides. I like to have those interactions, especially with a smaller team of executives, very informal, very interactive. If you don't get any interaction, there's something wrong, right? You should beat their interest or get them to interact and if they don't, you've got a problem. But you need to go to those backup slides because you're gonna have your consolidated deck and everything else that you could talk about that usually comes up, because if you've done it long enough, you'll sort of know, oh, they're gonna have a problem with bimodal, we'll have a bimodal contextual slide ready to go that you can bring forward. Hostiloid and so I've had that before. Believe it or not, I was called into, it was a company that's in Ohio. I was called out to be the bad cop. And really what there was is there was two managers in this organization that couldn't agree on a framework. It goes back to one of the examples, I think that you used during the lunch. Couldn't agree on the framework and I was there as sort of the industry spokesman and it started out hostile, right? This guy did not want to hear from me. He was already invested in something else, but I had to kind of rise above that saying, listen, this is a great thing you're doing, but I'll tell you, don't even deal with my business. Don't deal with my company if you're not gonna subscribe to this because our company's behind it. And so you have to take the high road, which is a big part of going in there and being able to deal with a situation is if you're always take the high road and do things for the right reason, nobody can fault you for it. And I like that. I think nobody, Gandhi, right? Who could ever fault Gandhi for doing what he did, right? And there's a lot of great examples in our lives. Don't give in is what that should be. I don't know what happened to in. It often takes two to three meetings to get through to an audience. There's another energy company in Houston that I dealt with. I met with them three times and no, it's no company that's in this room. Three times before we really started to see some momentum with this company. And it was really as subtle as this, they didn't quite understand what services were. And the fact that this wasn't delivering servers, this was delivering services and there's a different paradigm afoot, right? So sometimes it takes a few times to sink in. You're dealing with older people that have done things the same way for most of their lives. They got there using a paradigm that we've created in the industrial age and it takes a while to change. So two or three meetings don't get frustrated. And again, it goes back to take a different approach because I don't know, I can't remember who to quote here, but doing the same thing and getting the same result, right? That's insanity. You gotta change the approach, right? So take a different approach if saying the same thing over going the same way, it doesn't work. And find a different audience. So if you're really kind of in an organization and you're finding a ceiling, right? You can't go up, go around. Find somebody else in the organization that actually will listen. I was at Dell. This wasn't for this particular environment, but when I was at Dell, I was trying to do something that was organizational wide and I had one individual in the executive staff that wouldn't listen. I just went around him and eventually when all his peers had adopted and moved forward with this initiative, he was sort of the last man, single man standing. Find a different audience and then check back later because even at this conference, there are people here that I've met with and never heard back from, but the people that are actually here is an indicator that we're still moving forward. And so check back later, it could take a year, it could take less. Leverage key opportunities. This is kind of interesting and I'm all about maximizing opportunities. Don't exploit, but at least don't waste your time. Find the soft spot and go there. One of the ones that really works well is when a new executive comes in to play.  This could be part of it. That's if you get in early enough and you can get in front of them and educate them on, hey, there's this bigger thing than just us, called IT for IT. We should rule zero, so you look at this as part of your transformation plan going forward. An event. An event could be an M&A, a divestiture. It could be a big project. The Phoenix project is a good example. It's either save the company or die. But the point is you gotta have these events. I met with a company last week and I was there in my day job providing ServiceNow stuff. I was meeting with the enterprise architect and they were saying, you know what? We're going through this IT transformation at the executive level, the CIO and they're gonna be presenting to the board in March what we're doing. It's not going so well. Do you have anything that can help? Well, out came IT for IT presentation and now we've got a very different conversation and engagement with that customer. So a big event was happening. I found out about it and I moved in to provide a solution. And that's really the transformation story in this case. They were going through a transformation. This particular company had hired a small consulting firm and apparently there wasn't very trustworthy the material that's come out, the framework that was being provided and everybody saw it and it was gonna go down in flames. So we stepped in, brought IT for IT forward and we have some momentum. One of the things that I wanted to also show is that you have to contextualize to whatever's going on. So one of the transformations might be bimodal. Anybody dealing with a company that's doing, trying to take all Gartner's sort of material and saying let's do bimodal, trying to implement this? No, yes, yeah. Well, you gotta break this down because the way Gartner presents it, it's not very easy to really implement. There's a lot of things on the table and what I've been able to do is map the bimodal story to IT for IT in a way that's easier to implement and get behind. And if you're not familiar with bimodal, the idea is there's a core IT organization that delivers standardized services, focuses on delivery, sounds like a repeatable factory or a request to a fill, doesn't it? Then there's a mode two fluid IT which needs to be able to deal with ad hoc demands. The way I map that to IT for IT is okay, well core IT, you're talking about repeatable, focused on efficiencies and costs. That's kind of what this request of a fill is. You can standardize the service delivery and once it's in the catalog, automate the fulfillment. Whether it's infrastructure or storage or some other business service, right, that's necessary. And then requirements deploy is really that fluid organization that develops based on ad hoc demand. Now this could be waterfall, it could be DevOps, it could be agile, it doesn't really matter. But the point is once somebody defines those requirements, you need to get them out there and that's fluidity. So bimodal differently interpreted, but I find organizations loving this interpretation because they can implement it. This is something I can get my head around and it makes perfect sense. And it also, bimodal is kind of turned into multi-mode, right? You can get into some of these arguments, right? It's not just two, there's many ways that we operate. It accommodates that. And I would argue that the standardized services are leverageable here. There's a big automotive manufacturer that I was dealing with that was automating the entire deployment process. So IT didn't have to get involved all the way even through deployment. So they've automated every step here and it allows all of their development organizations to just go crazy and deliver new services. And that new service goes back in the catalog for others to consume. Another good example, Jody Jenkins from FedEx. They did this. They basically were able to take the tools in their standard service catalog, build a new service over here, put it in the catalog for consumption and then get rid of it. They did this in two weeks. They built the service, used it for a week and that was done. So that's fluidity, right? If you can react to a business demand that fast, that's amazing. Anybody's organization could do that other than a single person organization? No, it's amazing. And then when you're funding, of course you have to fund both of these value streams. There's standardization of those services and the delivery options. And then of course these teams need to be able to use those standard services to unblock and facilitate the factory of getting an idea out into market. So that's my bimodal contextual slide just to give you an example. And over the last couple of years, I've developed a lot of these kinds of contextual slides because the executives that I meet with, this could be their thing. And I wanna detour into this because I find out this is their hot topic. If I speak their hot topic, I now have an IT for IT context. I have a path forward to present and get them on board with IT for IT. All right, tactics for overcoming some of the challenges. One of them I call it top up, bottom up, bottom up, bottom up, bottom up, bottom down by lot. What did I get wrong there? Yeah. Yeah, I'm getting hot. I'm not thinking straight. No, so the idea here is that depending on who you're dealing with in an organization, you might be dealing with one individual that has testing functionality ownership. And that's, yeah, they don't care about anything else. So you can't talk about strategy portfolio. You can't talk about debt or requirements to deploy. You have to just deal with testing. That's bottoms up. You're dealing with sort of that lowest level denominator in the framework, and you're showing them now where they fit in the world. When you're looking at Google Earth and you zoom out, you're looking at where you're somewhere is, you zoom out and say, hey, this is an island. You don't even know until you zoom out. So IT for IT is a nice tool to show that bottoms up guy where they fit in the ecosystem, or any one of those functional owners, right? Top down, again, if it's the CIO, excellent. You've got a great opportunity to express the whole value chain and then down. And the middle out is somewhere in between. And that's where I see people that own all of the operations team, they might wanna really understand what Detective Correct is, for example. And that's where you start. Explain the value stream. Use different starting points in each of these points of view. Again, being nimble on your feet, recognizing who you're talking to, you've gotta change your priority. And you may have a CIO and then, you know, their third or fourth level direct report in the same room. But when you're answering questions, use that point of view and they'll understand how they fit and how they work together better. So a lot of times I work with these large organizations that they don't even know what they're doing across the organization. So you're sort of providing roadmaps in some ways on how they interact with each other. And that's really powerful. You gave them a roadmap for their own company and they don't even know it. And then focus on one value stream. A lot of times when people look at this, they get really enamored and they get really excited. And they say, we wanna do this. Well, you got it, let's start small and incrementally get to all the other areas that you really wanna get to. But let's prioritize, right? You can't eat an elephant in one bite. Let's figure this out in one area at a time. So most of the time we tee up a value stream level analysis and we look at one value stream and say, okay, given your situation and priority on this value stream, let's decompose this and then we'll start from there. But in that executive conversation, you can tee that up ahead of time so that that next step is with the right individuals for that value stream. You don't waste your time in another area. Another thing is really stand your ground. And when you're challenged because, so they'll always ask, so what? That's not a priority for me. Stand your ground that this is an industry level standard that's gonna change how we all work. We all work together, right? It's how tool of vendors can be compatible with one another. All these stories are gonna come out and when people start objecting to what you're presenting, right? This is gonna be no value. Wait a minute, it is. It's gonna decrease the cost of ownership. It's gonna decrease the cost of integration, et cetera, right? There's plenty of opportunities to actually rebut the argument. But stand your ground and if you're not comfortable, bring some people that are. I certainly wasn't an expert the first time I went out there to talk about it. I brought some of the folks that worked on the standard into those environments and I was sort of a fly on the wall and learning and then they were there to back me up when I was actually presenting the first time. So get somebody else to back you up and stand your ground. Don't be afraid. People don't like change inherently and you're kind of talking about a pretty big way, a change in the way of thinking in many cases. It's not radically different. It's just organizing a little bit better. So those are the six tips, tips that I've got. There's some tactics for overcoming changes of course. Using those props, these props have always worked and I always tend to take a couple of books when I go and do a briefing and veritably I leave them behind. I've asked Open Group to supply me a small chain of these so usually I stock up a little bit when I'm out here and so I have enough for the couple of next executive meetings, thank you. But it works and that's it. That's pretty much what I have. That's what I've learned. I've got a lot more material that I've developed over the years and you've got a room full of people in the forum that you can just reach out to. As a chair of the adoption work group it's my interest to get you an answer. If you have a question, get you a coach, get you somebody to hold your hand, go into a meeting if you need it, whatever you need. So that's it, yes. Thank you, Mark. You have a question, Gin. Yeah. Yeah. Well you have a question. I'd be interested in hearing what your top objections are, valid or invalid? Top objections, well it's an architecture first of all. So when you say architecture you immediately turn off the attention of executives, right? So I often don't even say architecture, I say operating model or you know what I mean? That gets them over that initial shock, right? If you say reference architecture it's even worse, okay? Because executives don't understand that at all. It's a special kind of architecture. So that would be the top objection that I see. The second thing is usually that they're, one company, I'll just say they're in the airplane manufacturing business. When I presented this they were like, wait a minute, we just got to plan, build, run. You're telling me there's a deliver too? Yeah, well okay, well that means you're gonna go on another journey to figure out deliver. So those are the kind of objectives. If they've already got something in flight, if they've already kind of have a framework that they're using that is similar but not the same, those are the kind of objectives I've seen. Or like the individuals, right? The hostile individuals, they already have a religion and you're not gonna convince a religious person. I've actually had some battles, I'll just say with an analyst firm, people at analyst firms, nobody that's in this room, and it was clearly religious. I till was the religion there and you weren't gonna convince them any other way. So those are the other things. It becomes a religious discussion. Yes. One of your tactics is to focus on one value stream. Yes. Do you find that you've gotta try and keep the bigger game in mind as well? Always. I mean, that's one of the, I think that's one of the traits of enterprise architecture anyway. I found myself in my career, always needing to understand the big picture before I was able to concentrate on the little picture. Yeah, you always keep it in mind, but you don't beat the dead horse to death. Once you understand there's a big picture and all they care about is that, just throw everything else away for a while, right? But it is a challenge, the bigger picture, like typically in a larger IT organization, there's not one person owning the end-to-end process or the end-to-end way of working. So we have people responsible for enterprise architecture, portfolio management, security, risk. There seem to be monitoring operations and that can continue. So what is your idea of how do we then come to the right person and say, you have to think about end-to-end and CIO typically doesn't really directly see that because he has people already covering it. So how would you go into that discussion? Find somebody that feels ownership of the end-to-end way of working within an IT function? Well, one is going up until you find that individual where things come together, right? We're monitoring meets event management, right? For example, that's an easier one. You might find an individual. The caveat to that is they don't care. They're not invested, they don't want to learn. They've got a couple of teams, they seem to be working good. You're not giving me any sort of answer. So you might not be able to get there. You might just have to work with those individual teams and you are their architect. You're the one designing and I guess instilling the need to change and how to interoperate in them, right? Yeah, but still, if the organization is still fragmented, so you can go up to the CIO level and talk about IT-5T and they say, well, still coming back to the question is, how do you then explain to that CIO, say, wait, you have organized around silos, but now we need to think about end-to-end value streams. Think about IT-5T as a model, but still you need to explain how that brings values because he said, well, I already covered that. Well, part of it, this is really interesting because a consultant, anybody in here a consultant, you'll know that a lot of times you're hired to tell them something they don't know already, right? But it's like they have egg on their face, they just don't know yet. Somebody's gonna come in, provide pictures and documentation, talk to enough people to establish the fact that there's egg on your face. Part of that is being a consultant and being able to kind of show the evidence in their own organization, where there's disconnects. I've did this many companies and it works, right? Sometimes, again, you might present this and they don't wanna hear it. I've had that happen before. You present a bad story and then you're never gonna be invited back again, but you did the right thing. And surprisingly, if enough people know that around there, that individual may not be there long enough. What's the 10-year of a CIO? But it's a key challenge we face with IT-5-T reference architecture. You can talk with executives and they know they need to change their operating model, right? They know they need DevOps, agile development, but they don't directly see how then IT-5-T would be that specific solution for them. So we still in that... Part of that's education and marketing. I mean, this is something that we don't do great here. I mean, architects, how many of you guys know how to do marketing? Anybody have a marketing background? Okay, you're the exceptions, okay? But most architects don't know how to market. And why? Because we don't know the mechanisms of doing marketing, right? Or architects, we know design, we know constraints, we know patterns. When I was at Dell, I hired a marketing person that used to sell phones, market cell phones. It's back when Motorola was falling apart and there was people and I needed a marketing person to market what we were doing as an enterprise architecture team. But I think that's an area where even within a company that's adopting, I usually recommend they get some marketing help to market internally what's going on. Being that evangelist and having a marketing flair, but attaching to something that's already happening, an existing transformation, existing event, all the stuff, all those little tips, right?


While two local sisters are hoping to bring awareness to human trafficking through their skating abilities, Sarah Winkleman takes us to the ice rink to hear about their efforts. Sisters Korra and Jamie are passionate about helping others. I think it's fantastic that the girls are wanting to teach other girls. This weekend the girls hosted a figure skating show to raise money for the Rising Hope Foundation. We can help people and help girls and it's just really fun to help other people. With a goal to bring awareness to human trafficking that is happening right here in central Minnesota. There are so many girls that are forced into this against their will and we're not aware of the large number of girls that have to do this and that we are here we can help them and that there is hope for them. With January being national skate month and national human trafficking month it was perfect timing to lace up the skates to bring awareness. It's really fun to see things happen. Performers from the Breezy Point Figure Skating Club, White Bear Lake Sports Center and other soloists from around the state all took to the ice with a message of hope. It's just been an incredible experience watching everybody rally for this for the show and this cause. All of the money raised will help with the construction of the Freedom Ranch in Brainerd that will be a group home for girls ages 12 through 17 that are freed from the abuses of human trafficking. Girls coming out of this they they have nowhere to go because they just they can't go back into normal society right away so to have a place that is safe for them and allows them to heal in their time frame is just amazing. The Rising Holt Foundation says they are still in need of 225 thousand dollars to get the Freedom Ranch up and running but with the Skating for Hope show put on by the Tabby sisters they just got a lot closer to their goal. I'm very proud of them. The Freedom Ranch could open as early as this spring reporting in Breezy Point Sarah Winkleman, Lakeland News. If you'd like to make a donation the link can be found on our website at lptv.org.


On occasion, I like to just let loose and talk a little bit about some of the comments I get on the channel.  I'm not gonna do any special shoutouts here. No, instead, I'm just gonna kind of go over something that I've heard time and time again over the many years that I've been reviewing films on YouTube. I've gone over some of the classics in the past, but one that's recently cropped back up more and more lately, I suppose since I've been seeing more films I've hated that people will disagree with me on is, Hey, Adam, why don't you try directing a movie, you freaking expert? If you think you're so great, why don't you make the film?  What kind of a response is that in a comment? If you like a movie, I don't. That's great. You know what? That deserves a round of applause. Good job liking a movie, prick! Listen, I get it. I touched a nerve. You didn't like my review of something.  I'm giving you my opinion. If you don't want to hear it, great. Don't watch. Hit the dislike button for all I care. Or here's a crazy idea, make a rebuttal in the comments. Give me some tangible evidence or reason as to why I'm wrong. Say for instance, I point out that the movie's too long, and that the story goes all over the place. The person might come back and say, Well, you know what, Adam? I actually beg to differ. I think the movie was the perfect length. It really gave us time with the individual characters. It really fleshed out this story and this story. It gave us all these different dynamics to work with. Okay, that's great.  In fact, I've liked several comments in the past where people politely disagreed with me. It's crazy, I know. You can have civil discussion, and I have to say this. Please don't take me ranting right now. It's something that bothers me to the point of depression, or like I'm gonna stop making videos.  Again, I've been doing this a long time. Negative comments, that happens constantly, especially if it's like a polarizing review or something. And that's cool. That's cool if you want to disagree. I think it's so comical when your go-to argument is, you make a movie if you don't like it. If you're so good at the movie, you do better. That is so dumb. Okay, are you gonna fund the movie? Like, I don't even know who I talked to about this. Like, I just call up Warner Brothers. Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. Yeah, hi, WB, it's Adam. Olinger, yes, of course, from Adam Does Movies. Yeah, less than 60,000 subscribers or something. Of course you know who I am. Listen, T-Balls69 says that, I assume T is for tiny balls, but he says I should direct a movie. And I'm just wondering if that's something that I would call you about, and maybe get like a $200 million budget to make the film I'm disagreeing with better.  Okay, thanks. Don't call again. Cool. What do you want me to do? Do I have to go work for Hollywood for like six years and climb my way up the corporate ladder? Like, I'll start out as a coffee boy and then work my way to the boom operator, maybe get behind the lens of a camera, then head on over to like color production, or maybe, you know, like, what do you want me to do? What do you want me to do? Have you ever disliked a meal before and said, oh, this meal's not very good? Did the person across from you go, oh, if you don't like it, then why don't you go make it?   And the person next to you is like, you paint it. This is subjective entertainment. Sure, there's objective things that you can argue about, but for the most part, people have opinions. You're either going to agree or disagree, but to tell the person to do it better is so amazingly dumb. It's so tone deaf. I don't even know where to begin with it. A couple of comments took it even further recently and started pointing out how not only did the directors and writers put time into it, but it had a huge budget. It had a massive crew of thousands of people behind it working on this thing. And here I am.  They got paid for a job. The job didn't work out for me. Guess what? They still made a successful film. Like, who gives a crap? Is that the litmus test now? However much a movie costs and however many people are employed on it, that means we have to like it more. In that case, Transformers 5 is a 10 out of 10. Give it every award in the book. Give it everything. Fast and the Furious 9 is a cinematic darling. Vin Diesel, best actor.  I truly don't understand why some people watch movie reviews or read them unless they are really just looking to find a review that agrees 100% in line with their thoughts, which is just stupid. I mean, talk to your friends. I really don't even know why people like that are watching movie reviews. Like, you clearly are just looking to have someone agree with you? I mean, so I guess fine.  But I guess the advice for me would be find the popular ones that really don't have anything too bad to say about a film unless it's like wildly hated to begin with and just follow them and no one else and just kind of take comfort and solace in the fact that you're getting a very boring review most of the time that's just gonna cover the same basic garbage over and over again. If you want something with a little bit more flavor, a little bit more spice behind it and someone that's not afraid or being paid or worried about losing some presser to the next movie release, who's gonna give you honest, hopefully a little bit funny reactions to films, then maybe you stick around a channel like this.  Instead, you engage with me in the comments with some decent feedback and we can go from there because I'm never gonna kick you away from the channel for hating me for not liking something. I will, however, shake my head very aggressively, roll my eyes 100% and say, you think I should direct the movie?  Hope you like the rant. I do a lot of them here, so feel free to subscribe. I put out new content every week between my Adam Rantz movie series and movie feuds. You should have plenty of content at your fingertips. You don't even need to watch them. That's the best part. You can pick and choose. I have a second channel, Adam Olinger, that's non-movie-related stuff. I'm on TikTok at Adam Does Movies. I also have a second channel, Adam Olinger, where I cover non-movie-related stuff. I'm on Twitch at Adam Olinger. I'm also a Patreon at Adam Does Movies. So we have this kind of back and forth between my real name and the Adam Does Movies moniker. It's kind of crazy, really. It's wild stuff.


The key is that we act now and not wait until the next outbreak. You don't have a fire brigade that's only operational when there is a fire. You need people on standby all the time. In 1976, when I was part of the team that discovered the Bolavirus, the world was a very different place. So the threat for this kind of outbreaks and that they become a threat for the rest of the world, and that they no longer remain local, is becoming much bigger. Because the world is far more connected than before, there's far more mobility. A silver lining of the Ebola crisis was that for the first time research was done during an outbreak. You know, we needed to develop, build all the infrastructure that was not there. We did not deliver fully, I must say. So we need a better global architecture to respond to this epidemic. Our research and development system to develop vaccines is not fit for purpose anymore, because there is no market incentive. Nobody is going to make money out of a vaccine against Ebola, and yet we need one. We need to support countries that are vulnerable to this kind of epidemics with building the capacity. Because in the case of Ebola, one, it took more than three months before it was established, and then it took another five months before the world really woke up. So we need a local capacity. That's really the front line and that's important. And we need to invest in that. We need this public-private partnership to create an environment that will produce these vaccines, will make sure that they go through the very complex regulatory systems and also that they'll be made available in the countries that need them most. In between epidemics, we need to set the rules, how to conduct trials, how to make vaccines available, and also that there is a stockpile of vaccines that can be deployed immediately. So we need to create incentives so that industry will produce them together with academia, but that there is also public funding, either directly to develop the vaccine through the existence of some special fund or through pull mechanisms. A big lesson is that epidemics will always occur.


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Seven signs you have defeated the narcissist the narcissist abandoned who they really are a long time ago They believed that who they were wasn't good enough So they created a false self they created this ideal image, which is meant to be perfect It's meant to be better than everyone It's always self-absorbed Because the false self isn't real It is dependent on other people's validation They don't have the capacity to care about anyone else They have nothing to give They're just trying to get as much as they can for themselves You have to treat them a certain way For their false self to continue its existence You have to keep propping it up Which is why it will seem like they are so dependent on you They always need your attention and admiration They always need your validation They always need your emotional support Because that keeps the false character alive If they can get you to believe that it's real It makes it more believable for them, but of course it isn't real It is a false character When you refuse to prop up this false character It will fall apart It has no foundation or structure It's built on lies It was built on the intention of manipulating people So that they could get what they want Which is why when they don't get what they want When you don't attend to them or admire them it destroys the illusion It defeats the false character and when that happens You will see another side of them A side of them that is very dangerous and likely to cause problems for you And when you see this You will know that you have defeated them One They can't get their way You have defeated the narcissist When they can't get their way When they can't do what they want They will try to deceive you by concealing or misrepresenting the truth They will do anything to manipulate and control you To get you to do what they want But if you say no If you refuse to do it It destroys their false self Because the false self is dependent on people doing whatever they need them to do In their minds when you say no It means they're not deserving or they're not good enough So it destroys their false self and makes them very angry They were acting in an offensive and bad mannered way Two When they're not the center of attention The narcissist always has to be the center of attention They expect the world to revolve around them They expect everything to be about them And they believe that no one else should be admired or praised except them But if you refuse to treat them as the center of attention If you refuse to cater to their every demand It will destroy their false self Free Criticism The narcissist cannot deal with criticism They expect everyone to see them as being perfect As being the ideal standard for what everyone else should be trying to attain When you express this approval of their false mistakes It defeats the false self They cannot deal with criticism Because they have an inflated ego They have an unrealistic standard and expectation of themselves And they would rather live in this fantasy Than to accept reality Whatever allows them to feel better about themselves And to get them the things they need But when you criticize them It will cause a narcissistic injury Which will be followed by narcissistic rage When they're caught doing something wrong When they're caught going against social norms When they're caught breaking the rules of disregarding someone's boundaries Narcissists are pathological liars They will do whatever it takes to avoid taking responsibility for their actions But when they're caught in the act They will behave in an offensive and a decent way They may become extremely annoying and insulting They may become violent and unrestrained At that point they will have no regard for morality 5. When you try to hold them accountable for their actions An easy way to defeat the narcissist Is to try to make them take responsibility for their actions They don't believe that they're ever wrong They think that everything they do is right Everything they do is justified They think there's a reasonable excuse for why they're doing it So you have no right to question or confront them But if you force them to take responsibility for their actions You have defeated the narcissist 6. When they're not granted privileges or special treatment The narcissist has a strong sense of entitlement They believe they are inherently deserving of privileges and special treatment They believe they should have whatever they want Whenever they want it And no one has the right to deny them But if you do say no to the narcissist They will become very angry They will behave in an unacceptable way They will insult you and put you down They will say you never do anything for them They will say that you're selfish Because the survival of their false self Is dependent on you doing whatever they want You have to let them get their way For them to feel like they're something significant or important 7. If you don't agree with their opinions or ideas The narcissist's false self depends on validation It depends on people agreeing with them If you don't agree with their opinions or ideas They will feel like their reality is under attack They will become anxious to prove their point to you They will try to get you to see things their way But if you continue to disagree with them They will feel invalidated and the illusion will fall apart They may become angry or they may give you the silent treatment When the narcissist begins to act in a manner that deviates from what is normal or usual It's because they've suffered a blow to their inflated egos And that is when you know you have defeated them Thank you for watching I hope this video wears out with you Please like, comment, share and subscribe If you would like to donate My PayPal link is in the video description Coaching queries You can email me at coach.narksurvivor.uk Thank you for watching and I'll talk to you soon


That's drunk. While back I took a look at a Nintendo 64 game called Forsaken 64. Now just from the name, maybe only a few of you remember that game, but this cover? I got tons of comments saying that, yep, I remember that, I always wondered what that game actually was. There's lots of other similar examples out there. One in particular, is for the game Brutal Pause of Fury. This game was released for Sega CD, Amiga, Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo. Looking at the game footage here, you may be thinking, huh, this doesn't look very familiar. Well, does this magazine ad look familiar? I'm willing to bet it does, because publisher Game Tech absolutely blitzed gaming magazines and comic books with this ad for months and months. And hey, to the ad's credit, it makes the game look like it'd be pretty cool. But as you can see going back to the footage here, there is a slight disconnect between the artwork on the ad and the box art, and the game itself. It kinda reminds me of when Atari 2600 game cartridges needed all this lush artwork to help fill in the blanks of your imagination, because when you played the game itself, eh, it usually didn't match up to say the least. Alright, so it's clear that the graphics and art style of the game itself don't quite match up to how cool the ad looked, so how does it play? Eh, not well.  We'll start with the characters and the art style, and yeah, I know I'm harping on this a little too much, but I mean, come on, who is this? Chester Cheetah? Okay, well, his name is Tai Cheetah, so you gotta give points for the terrible dad pun there. We also have a Tai boxing rat, a coyote that knows Taekwondo, a buffed-out bear, a clearance bin version of Bugs Bunny, and of course, the token female character, and of course, it's a fox. Maybe it's just me, but something about these characters and just the overall look of the game really just seems off. Now, this game was developed by Eurocom, a British developer, so the usual Japanese art style isn't here, but I mean, Eurocom had a hand in developing some great-looking games on Super Nintendo, like Maui Mallard and Cold Shadow, but the colors here just seem so basic, like it's a Westwood console game, like Young Merlin or something. I mean, compared to other fighting games at the time, you had such interesting character artwork with great settings and backgrounds, everything from the usual stuff like Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat, but also games like Primal Rage, Power Rangers Fighting Edition, and Ninja Turtles Tournament Fighters. The characters and settings in Brutal Pause of Fury by comparison are just plain and kinda generic. There really isn't anything here visually that draws me in. Then you get to the fighting, and this is where the game is completely backwards. Whoever you pick, your character does not start with any special moves. You have to earn them by beating opponents. Okay, that's kinda neat, but the problem with this is that every opponent you face has all of their special moves. I mean, think of playing Street Fighter II with just punches and kicks, trying to beat M. Bison. That's how hard the first fight is in Brutal Pause of Fury.  Sometimes I'll somehow hit my opponent from half the screen away, then I'll somehow miss, even when I'm standing right next to him or her. There are many, many moments during fights that just do not make sense, and it's ridiculously frustrating. Even worse is that once you do learn a special move, it is not easy to pull off.  Granted, some of the special moves are awesome once you see them, like the lion's guitar attack, but I sure as heck can't pull it off myself, at least not consistently. I should mention that this game does have a password system that allows you to play this game with the character's special moves already unlocked, but unfortunately, the passwords look like this. I wish I had better things to say about this game. It seems like a good idea on paper, and hey, there's some good stuff here and there, like being able to watch a replay after each fight, and I love the detailed stats after each fight. That's always a nice touch, but unfortunately, brutal pause of fury is just boring, no matter how you slice it. If you go it alone against the computer in story mode, the difficulty is just so absurd that you're likely to just say screw this and play a better fighting game. If you play against a second player, you'll likely find the special moves so absurdly convoluted and difficult to pull off that you're left with just punches and kicks, which gets boring real quick. So again, it's like, screw that, let's play Killer Instinct, or Turtles Tournament Fighters, or hell, even clay fighter games are more fun than this. Brutal pause of fury is brutal, alright, brutally boring and brutally difficult. Avoid this game. Alright, I want to thank you for watching, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.