And I think we can all agree how valuable it is to hear from practitioners. And I want to thank the panel for sharing their knowledge with the community. And one common challenge that I heard you all talk about was bringing your leadership and your teams along on the journey with you. We talk about this all the time. I mean, it's critical to have support from the top. Why? Because it directs the middle and then it enables bottoms up innovation effects from the cultural transformation that you guys all talked about. It seems like another common theme we heard is that you all prioritize database decision making in your organizations. And you combine two of your most valuable assets to do that and create leverage, employees on the front lines and of course, the data. As rightly pointed out, Tom, the pandemic has accelerated the need for really leaning into this. You know the old saying, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Well, COVID has broken everything. And it's great to hear from our experts, how to move forward. So let's get right into it. So, Gustavo, let's start with you. If I'm an aspiring change agent, and let's say I'm a budding data leader, what do I need to start doing? What habits do I need to create for long lasting success? I think curiosity is very important. You need to be like I said in tune to what is happening not only in your specific field, like I have a passion for analytics. I've been doing it for 15 years plus, but I think you need to understand well-being, other areas across not only a specific business. As you know, I come from, you know, Sam's Club, Walmart, retail. I've been in energy management, technology. So you have to try to push yourself and basically go out of your comfort zone. I mean, if you are staying in your comfort zone and you wanna just learn continuous improvement, that's just gonna take you so far. What you have to do is, and that's what I try to do is I try to go into areas, businesses and transformations that make me, you know, stretch and develop as a leader. That's what I'm looking to do so I can help transform the functions organizations and do the change management initiatives of mindset that is required for this kind of effort. Thank you for that. That was inspiring. And Cindy, you love data and the data is pretty clear that diversity is good business, but I wonder if you can add your perspectives to this conversation. Yeah, so Michelle has a new fan here because she has found her voice. I'm still working on finding mine. And it's interesting because I was raised by my dad, a single dad. So he did teach me how to work in a predominantly male environment. But why I think diversity matters more now than ever before. And this is by gender, by race, by age, by just different ways of working and thinking is because as we automate things with AI, if we do not have diverse teams looking at the data and the models and how they're applied, we risk having bias at scale. So this is why I think I don't care what type of minority you are, finding your voice, having a seat at the table and just believing in the impact of your work has never been more important. And as Michelle said, more possible. Great perspectives. Thank you. Tom, I want to go to you. I mean, I feel like everybody in our businesses in some way, shape, or form become a COVID expert. But what's been the impact of the pandemic on your organization's digital transformation plans? We've seen a massive growth, actually in our digital business over the last 12 months really, even in celebration once COVID hit. We really saw that in the 200 countries and territories that we operate in today and service our customers in today, that there's been a huge need to send money, to support family, to support friends, and to support loved ones across the world. And as part of that, we are very honored to be able to support those customers that we across all of today. But as part of that acceleration, we need to make sure that we had the right architecture and the right platforms to basically scale, to basically support and provide that kind of security for our customers going forward. So as part of that, we did do some pivots and we did accelerate some of our plans on digital to help support that overall growth coming in and to support our customers going forward because during these times, during this pandemic, this is the most important time when we need to support those that we love and those that we care about. And in doing that, it's one of those ways is actually by sending money to them, support them financially. And that's where really our product and our services come into play, that you know, and really support those families. So it was really a great opportunity for us to really support and really bring some of our products to the next level and supporting our business going forward. Awesome, thank you. Now, I want to come back to Gustavo. Tom, I'd love for you to chime in too. Did you guys ever think like you were, you were pushing the envelope too much and doing things with data or the technology that was just maybe too bold? Maybe you felt like at some point, it was failing or you're pushing your people too hard. Can you share that experience and how you got through it? Yeah, the way I look at it is, again, whenever I go to an organization, I ask the question, hey, how fast you would like to transform? And based on the agreements on the leadership and the vision that we want to take place, I take decisions and I collaborate in a specific way. Now, in the case of COVID, for example, it forces us to remove side-laws and collaborate in a faster way. So to me, it was an opportunity to actually integrate with other areas and drive decisions faster. But make no mistake about it, when you are doing a transformation, you are obviously trying to do things faster than sometimes people are comfortable doing and you need to be okay with that. Sometimes you need to be okay with tension or you need to be okay debating points or making repetitive business cases until people connect with the decision because you understand and you are seeing that, hey, the CEO is making a one to year efficiency goal. The only way for us to really do more with less is for us to continue this path. We cannot just stay with the status quo. We need to find a way to accelerate the transformation. That's the way I see it. How about you, Tom, we were talking earlier with Siddish and Cindy about that bungee jumping moment. Do you, what can you share? Yeah, I think you hit upon it. Right now, the pace of change will be the slowest pace that you see for the rest of your career. So as part of that, that's what I tell my team, is that you need to feel comfortable being uncomfortable. Meaning that we get to be able to basically scale, expand and support the every change you need in the marketplace and industry and our customers today. And that pace of change that's happening and what customers are asking for and the competition in the marketplace, it's only going to a slow rate. So as part of that, as you look at how you're operating today in your current business model, things are only going to get faster. So you have to plan into a line and to drive the actual transformation so that you can scale even faster in the future. So as part of that, that's what we're putting in place here. It's how do we create that underlying framework and foundation that allows the organization to basically continue to scale and evolve into the future? Yeah, we're definitely out of our comfort zones, but we're getting comfortable with it. Cindy, last question. You've worked with hundreds of organizations and I got to believe that some of the advice I gave when you were at Gartner, which was pre-COVID. Maybe sometimes clients didn't always act on it. Yeah, not on my watch for whatever variety of reasons, but it's being forced on them now. But knowing what you know now that we're all in this isolation economy, how would you say that advice has changed? Has it changed? What's your number one action and recommendation today? Yeah, well, first off, Tom just freaked me out. What do you mean this is the slowest ever? Even six months ago, I was saying the pace of change in data and analytics is frenetic. So, but I think you're right, Tom. The business and the technology together is forcing this change. Now, Dave, to answer your question, I would say the one bit of advice, maybe I was a little more very aware of the power in politics and how to bring people along in a way that they are comfortable. And now I think it's, you know what, you can't get comfortable. In fact, we know that the organizations that were already in the cloud have been able to respond and pivot faster. So, if you really want to survive, as Tom and Gustavo said, get used to being uncomfortable. The power in politics are going to happen, break the rules, get used to that and be bold. Do not be afraid to tell somebody they're wrong and they're not moving fast enough. I do think you have to do that with empathy, as Michelle said and Gustavo. I think that's one of the key words today besides the bungee jumping. So, I want to know where's the dish going to go bungee jumping? Guys, fantastic discussion really. Thanks again to all the panelists and the guests. It was really a pleasure speaking with you today. Really, virtually all of the leaders that I've spoken to in the CUBE program recently, they tell me that the pandemic is accelerating so many things, whether it's new ways to work, we're hearing about new security models and obviously the need for cloud. I mean, all of these things are driving true enterprise-wide digital transformation, not just, as I said before, lip service. And sometimes we minimize the importance and the challenge of building culture in making this transformation possible. But when it's done right, the right culture is going to deliver tremendous results. What does that mean, getting it right? Everybody's trying to get it right. My biggest takeaway today is it means making data part of the DNA of your organization. And that means making it accessible to the people in your organization that are empowered to make decisions, decisions that can drive new revenue, cut costs, speed access to critical care, whatever the mission is of your organization, data can create insights and informed decisions that drive value. Okay, let's bring back Siddish and wrap things up. Siddish, please bring us home. Thank you, thank you, Dave. Thank you, the CUBE team. And thanks goes to all of our customers and partners who joined us. And thanks to all of you for spending the time with us. I want to do three quick things and then close it off. The first thing is I want to summarize the key takeaways that I had from all four of our distinguished speakers. First, Michelle. I will simply put it, she said it really well. That is be brave and drive. Don't go for a drive alone. That is such an important point. Oftentimes, you know the right thing that you have to do to make the positive change that you want to see happen, but you wait for someone else to do it. Not just, why not you? Why don't you be the one making that change happen? That's the thing that I picked up from Michelle's talk. Cindy talked about finding the importance of finding your voice. Taking that chair, whether it's available or not and making sure that your ideas, your voices are heard. And if it requires some force, then apply that force. Make sure your ideas are heard. Gustavo talked about the importance of building consensus. Not going at things all alone sometimes, building the importance of building the quorum. And that is critical because if you want the changes to last, you want to make sure that the organization is fully behind it. Tom, instead of a single take away, what I was inspired by is the fact that a company that is 170 years old, 170 years old, 200 companies and 200 countries they're operating in and they were able to make the change that is necessary through these difficult times in a matter of months. If they could do it, anyone could. The second thing I want to do is to leave you with a take away. That is, I would like you to go to thoughtspot.com slash NFL because our team has made an app for NFL on Snowflake. I think you will find it's interesting now that you're inspired and excited because of Michelle's talk. And the last thing is, please go to thoughtspot.com slash beyond. Our global user conference is happening in this December. We would love to have you join us. It's again virtual. You can join from anywhere. We are expecting anywhere from 5,000 to 10,000 people. I would love to have you join and see what we've been up to since last year. We have a lot of amazing things in store for you. Our customers, our partners, our collaborators, they will be coming and sharing. You'll be sharing things that you have been working to release something that will come out next year and also some of the crazy ideas of engineers have been hooking up. All of those things will be available for you at ThoughtSport beyond. Thank you. Thank you so much.


Thanks, Brad, for the lovely introduction. As Brad mentioned, I'm at the Research School of Earth Sciences. So that's down near the centre of Canberra. But what I like to do is get away when it's not in shutdown and look at rocks. And I look at volcanic rocks from eruptions. I go to Salt Lakes and look at the rocks there. And then I have spent some time being part of the team that's looking at rocks on Mars. So this is part of the Curiosity Rover. Here's the instrument that I helped calibrate and sent to Mars. And we also go up into Arnhem Land and work with the traditional owners on rock art. So I do a range of different things. Today I'm going to talk to you, though, about Mars and exciting things that we have been learning about the red planet, our neighbour. So here's the Curiosity Rover in the Namid sand dune. And you can see that it hasn't got stuck. In fact, this rover's been going for eight years, a few weeks ago. And so it's amazing. It's a very resilient little rover. On its trips, it's collected a whole lot of views of Mars. And so I'm going to just show you some of them. Now, as I mentioned, I'm a geologist. I like rocks. I like sand dunes, too. More sand and rocks. There's a lot of sand and rocks on Mars. Great for a geologist. Very thin atmosphere on Mars. And this is an impact crater. So there's different processes that occur on Mars more frequently than they occur on Earth. It's also very cold. About minus 60 degrees centigrade average. The radiation is strong. Not a good place to hang out, really. It's actually quite inhospitable. But I just showed you that we had spent a fair amount of times with rovers on the surface of Mars. And here are the tracks of the Curiosity rover coming off that sand dune. And it seems you might wonder, why do we go to Mars when it looks so inhospitable and rocky and cold and has very little atmosphere? So why do we do that? Well, the first reason is that humans just love to explore. We've been doing it for thousands of years. And as Brad mentioned, the Australian... Are we to use a transcript? Islanders have been some of the first explorers. Here I'm showing some of the song lines or path trade routes that they used as documented in the 1930s. But they have been using those trade routes for tens of thousands of years. So exploring on Earth and in the oceans is something that we as humans have been drawn to do. But as most of you love astronomy, the sky has also held our fascination. And here are some examples from other parts of the world. Star charts from Egypt and also from China. And we continue to explore. And as you know, one of the places that we explore the planets nearby. This is the launch of the Curiosity rover in 2011. And here I am with my family watching for the countdown. That rocket went really fast. It was there one minute, seemed to hover in the sky. And then 20 minutes later, it was over Australia. So if you want fast transport, take a rocket. Could be confused for some of the places that we have on Earth. So here's some photos of places I've been. And you can see that they have a sort of Mars-like quality. Rocks, dry, red. Not very hospitable looking. But Mars is more like home than any of the other destinations nearby in our solar system. So here's a list of targets that NASA has been considering to visit, to look for, how the solar system has evolved and changed over time. And so you can see Mercury and Venus, Earth and Mars. Mars is the most similar to Earth. Here are some moons. They're very icy, not quite as similar to Earth. So because Mars is so similar to Earth, people have wondered, does it hold the answer to this question that we've thought about for millennia? Are we alone? This has been a topic of many books, movies. You've probably seen some of them. Here I am with ET in Hollywood. It's the real ET. One of the first famous extraterrestrials is ET what we're looking for. What kind of life should we be looking for? Well, there's one option, which is a live life. And then the other option you can guess, dead life or extinct life. So which kind do you think we should be looking for? It's actually both. So that is, we kind of doubt that we'll find a live life, but we'd be happy if we did. We're thinking that it's more likely that we'll find extinct life. So the kind of life that most scientists are looking for is very small. We're not talking about dinosaurs or ET. We're talking about microbes. And microbes are 100s the size of a normal piece of hair. So if you feel your hair and think about how small 100s that would be, that's the size of a microbe. Microbes are important because they represent were the first kinds of life on Earth and the simplest. And they're now really abundant. And so they're a good target for looking for life elsewhere. The first microbes on Earth were found in really old rocks. So rocks that are older than 2.5 billion years old. And you can see Australia has quite a few of those kinds of rocks, particularly in Western Australia. Now, Earth doesn't have as many of those really old rocks as Mars does. On Mars, here, these orange rocks are shown. And those are more than 3.7 billion years old. So scientists think that Mars would be a really good place to go and explore for early life because it has a lot of rocks that formed at the time that life was forming on Earth. So it's a bit hard to search for microbes, as you might imagine, because they're so small. And so scientists have decided that the easiest way to look for microbes is actually to look for the kinds of environments that microbes might like to live in. And so NASA has had a strategy for many decades now of following the water. And the Mars exploration program has relied on looking for water on Mars. Interestingly, indigenous people in Australia have known for years that water is essential for life. Here's some Wajna rock art from the Barnett River in Western Australia. And the Wajna spirits shown beautifully here in this rock art were cloud and rain spirits. And they created the landscapes and continue to have influence over the landscape and the inhabitants. So we're looking for water. But I showed you a whole lot of pictures. And those pictures didn't really have any water in them. And so why are we going from Earth with lots of water to this dry planet that, as I explained before, is not very hospitable for life. It's dry, thin atmosphere, very, very cold. The sun's radiation and cosmic rays hit the surface of the planet. And there's lots of dust and rocks and probably limited life, if any. Well, the reason that scientists go there is we believe that there used to be water on the surface of Mars in the past. And so if we look at the oldest areas of Mars, and so those are the heavily created areas in orange that I showed you before. So yes, Mars is older than Earth in terms of it has more rocks that are old. It's not actually older than Earth. They both formed at the same time. But there's more old rocks. I'm just answering a question I see online. So if we look at those old, old rocks, we see things that look like streams. So on Earth, we have streams will connect up. Little streams will all lead into bigger rivers like this. And we see things that look like legs with streams coming out of them into big depressions that I thought to also have been legs. So Mars does have a little water today. It has it in ice at the poles. So there's dark blue, it's ice. And then it has water bound up in the rocks in the light blue here. So that's in types of minerals called clays and sulfate minerals. So you have those in your garden. There are gullies on Mars and some of the craters. And this is Newton crater. And that's been monitored over the years. And hopefully you can see that going downhill, the surface is changing over time. There's been a lot of argument about these observations. Some people think it's water. Other people think it's just dust going downhill. Anyway, there's multiple lines of evidence suggesting that there may have been water on Mars in the past.  And so this one's been eight years on the surface security rover. And what it's been doing is trying to look for a place on the Mars mountain surface that would be a potential place for life in the past or present. And as soon as we got there pretty much, within the first few weeks, a stream was confirmed on the surface. This is confirmed by looking at rocks and seeing these little round pebbles. Can you see them up here in this top right corner? And you can only make little round pebbles like that by moving them in a fast-moving fluid like water. So this be water like the water in a river on Earth. We then travelled around within the first few months and found rocks that had funny little spots in them that geologists think form through the process of water, trickling through the rock. And so these rocks made the scientists on the team very excited because this was a place that we wanted to go and look at carefully with all the tools on the rover to see if these rocks could have hosted life or even have traces of life in them. So that is in fact what we did. We went and drilled these rocks with the rover. So here's an example of a drill hole on Mars. This is the first drilling site. So we did a little test drill hole, not very deep, because this was the first time the drill had been used on Mars and then did a deeper drill hole here. Can you notice something strange? The rock's red over here, but what's being drilled is grey. I'm just going to leave that with you for a while to think about. Okay, so when the geologists went here, we were looking for a few things. Was it a good environment? And the answer was yes, because we found clays, like you have in your clay garden if you live in Canberra or clay you might have used for modelling in class, not very much salt, which is good for microbes and not very acidic, which is also good for microbes. A chemical energy gradient. Well, remember I mentioned this grey versus orange? That's actually a chemical weathering gradient. The grey rock has been oxidised or rusted to make it orange. And so there's a chemical energy gradient. Sometimes it's called a redox or oxidation gradient between the grey and the red. And microbes use that chemical energy to survive. Is there protection from radiation? Remember I said it's pretty horrible radiation. Well, not really, but it's probably the best we've ever seen on Mars, we had seen on Mars at that point because it was a drilled rock. And so we were burrowing down inside the rocks. Was there organic material? So microbes are made of organic material. So if we found organic material we might be able to say something about whether there were microbes there. So even though these rocks were drilled in 2012 this work wasn't done for six years because it had to be done so incredibly carefully. So molecules on earth are in microbes and include a whole range of different potential molecules. Now on Mars there's radiation and the oxidation, the rusting. So we probably wouldn't expect these molecules. There's some traces showing molecules here that were found. And these are very simple molecules, not complicated like these ones and suggest that they probably aren't microbes on Mars. And if they were, they've been extremely degraded. So our best guess at the moment is that we haven't actually found and measured life in these organic molecules. So we're going to go ahead and do a little bit and measured life in these organic molecules. It's probably from meteorites. The exciting thing is we found an environment that could sustain life and where microbes could live. So what's next? Well, on the 30th of July, so a few weeks ago the Perseverance rover shown here on the right which is kind of a twin of the Curiosity rover took off on a six-month trip to Mars. So we're in a good time right now and we're quite close to the orbit of Mars. So that's why this mission went now. Perseverance is going to another crater. It's called Jezero Crater. This is topography map. And it's going to investigate this area here shown in these very strange colors. That are thought to represent what's called a delta. So a delta is where a river comes out into a lake and fills the lake. And as it does that, material is deposited on the floor of the lake building up sticky clay. And that sticky clay ends up having microbes stick to it and as you go into the lake, you get more and more microbes. So here in this picture, we see that this shape is like this. So we'd expect the river is coming down here and we have... Oh, can you see my... I hope you can see my mouse. Anyway, the river is coming down here and we can see these rocks out here and we'd expect them to be... Have more microbes in them if there are microbes there out on these edges. So that's what the exploration plan is.  So the perseverance rover is going to go to this area and it's going to investigate these areas that are rich in smectite or clay. And it's going to do that with a whole lot of instruments, radars and lasers and weather stations, cameras, a spectrometer that measures UV light, another one that measures x-rays.  Now, my favourite part of the rover is this cool little aircraft that's going to launch from the rover's body. It's called ingenuity and it has a little rotor here so it's kind of like a helicopter because it's flying in the sky and then here it has two camera eyes and it's going to be looking down and trying to help the perseverance rover figure out where it should go. The other part that I really, really like on this rover is that it's going to collect samples. So it has a really big head here. This is bigger than a lawn mower on the end of an arm that's about the length of a lawn mower. And it has drills on the ends of that arm that are going to drill into the rock. And the cool thing about those drills is that they're able to actually create cores of rock so they're like cylinders of rock. So here on the left is an example. The bottom left of a core of rock and then it's going to put it in this sleeve and store that rock inside the sleeve in this container. And this container is called a cache. And then eventually in a few years time the aim is to go collect that cache and bring those samples back to Earth so we can look at them. Now the idea of looking at the rock cores is that the rock cores might have materials in them that have been protected from radiation. And radiation as I mentioned isn't very good for preserving molecules and it destroys them. And so we're hoping that by looking at cores we have a better chance of finding microbes in those clay or smectite-rich rocks. So there's two Australians on this mission. Abby Orwood is from Brisbane. She works at JPL and she's in charge of the X-ray spectrometer. And then on the right David Flannery works in Brisbane Queensland University of Technology and here he is last year measuring rocks out in the Western Australia. Some of those really old rocks and using the drill that they were using on the rover. So there's some Australians involved in this mission which is really exciting. So if you'd like to learn more you can go to mars.nasa.gov and find out more about these exciting missions and upcoming results. So thank you. There are lots of questions here and I think I'll just have to scroll back. So someone says, I understand exploring and curiosity. Why would we want to imagine life on the moon or Mars or another planet when we can't take care of this planet? I actually wonder that myself sometimes. I think that they're different goals. So caring for our planet is something that everybody should be doing. But that doesn't mean that we can't listen to music, that we can't do art, that we can't explore. It just means that it's one of the things that we do. And it turns out that exploring on other planets gives us some options of things to learn about and that may end up helping us take care of our planet. And also turns out a lot of the money that we spend on going to other planets is spent on people's salaries and people developing new things. And so sometimes those new things are helpful for us in our day-to-day lives as well. So I think we should be doing both. I don't think it's and or. I don't think that we have to have a choice between exploring planets and taking care of our Earth. I think we should always be taking care of our Earth and that we can choose to look at planets too. Venus is very hot for this kind of exploration. And so Venus, unlike Mars, is over 350 degrees on the surface and it's got very, very thick atmosphere in clouds. And so we think that it would be quite hard for life to survive on Venus and that it's more likely to be found on Mars. Mars might have underground volcanoes. That's true. Mars might have underground volcanoes. In fact, it might have something called lava tubes. So this is when lava comes out of a volcano and a crust forms on the surface of the lava as it's flowing along. And that crust then insulates the hot lava inside that can still keep flowing through that tube or that crust. And so then the volcano ends up being underground. People think that that might be a reasonable place to go looking for life because the crust of the volcanic rock would have shielded any life from the radiation. Okay, those sand dunes really look like small vows on Earth. Are they similar to what we have on Earth? And yes and no. The gravity is different on Mars and the atmosphere is thinner. And so the wind doesn't move material as much as it does on Earth because the atmosphere is thinner. So they, yes, they're similar but we do have to make corrections for the different properties of the surface and atmosphere of Mars. Can we live on Mars? Not right now. And the reason we can't live on Mars is because we don't have enough resources on the planet to live there. And so we would have to figure out some way to make water for a start and protect ourselves from the radiation as well and keep warm. All of those things are really quite hard to do without fuel. But fuel is really heavy and so it's actually quite hard to take fuel to Mars that's enough to do those kinds of things. So when can I visit Mars? Well, I think we have to solve some of those things first. And I think that bringing back samples from Mars will help us because it will tell us what's there and then what resources are there in a real way. So we've set these rovers and that's great but it's all remote. So can you imagine sending a camera to the bottom of the ocean? You could take photos, look around but it's just not as good as you going yourself, right? Well, it's the same with these rocks. You really want your rocks to come back to you so that you can look at them and multiple people can look at them, check them out and then everyone can decide what's there. When you send the remote camera or the rover to Mars you can't really have that fact-checking and multiple people looking at things because you only have one way of getting the information. It's like sending the camera. It's just one way of getting the information. But if you bring back what you see on the ocean floor then everyone can look at it on the ship. Same with Mars. If we bring back the samples everyone can look at them and then we can come up with better ideas as to what's there. So we can come up with better ideas about what kind of radiation protection might we need. Are those rocks and minerals toxic? All of those kinds of questions we can answer with samples that have been returned from Mars. Wow, there's so many questions here. What got me into looking at rocks? That's interesting. So I just waked being outside and I've never heard about looking at rocks actually. I didn't know that people did that. And a family friend said to me when they heard what I was going to study at university, Penny why are you doing that? I was going to do arts. And they said you'll end up just filing papers in an office somewhere. And I thought oh no, that's the last thing I want to do. I want to be outside.  And so I decided to do geology. And I decided that rocks were actually pretty cool. Are there any other sites like the one that Perseverance is going to explore? Yes there is. There are actually quite a few sites like that because there are a lot of craters on Mars and lots of evidence for that old water. So yes there are other sites like that. What will happen if extinct life is found on another planet? Hmm. So if extinct life is found on another planet there'll be people that say yes I believe that and there'll be people that say no I don't and there'll be people that the scientists saying we need to test that. And so I think it's going to be ambiguous if we find evidence for extinct life on another planet. I think that the scientists will say we need to test that again and that we need to then check out what's going on with multiple techniques. So I think that's the first thing that's going to happen but I think it'd be very, very interesting. Why is there no water on Mars? You know I'm actually working on that right now and we don't have a very good idea. The main ideas are that it had an atmosphere early in its life that had water in it and it was that the planet couldn't hold on to that atmosphere very well because it's not very big and so gravity didn't hold that atmosphere to the planet and the hydrogen escaped. Now that said there is water in the ice at the poles. So there's not no water because there's water in ice but there's no liquid water. So I might have said that wrong by accident earlier but yeah there's no liquid water and it's liquid water that you need for life. Can we make a rover from an RC car and a GoPro? What is an RC car? I wish that someone could answer me because I don't know what an RC car is. Sorry, remote control car. Ah, okay. Probably could, yep. Now the problem with your rover is it would work on Earth but it wouldn't work on Mars. Now the reason it wouldn't work on Mars is that Mars is so cold that our normal electronics that we're used to don't work very well on Mars. So you have to use special electronics that can survive temperatures that go from minus 120 at night up to 25 or 30 degrees during the day and so if you had a remote control car and a GoPro that had parts in them that could stand up to the temperature cycling yeah, you could. Am I interested in your rover at all? Is it being explored too? Yeah, I love your rover. Your rover is a moon of Jupiter and it's got an icy crust and then it has an ocean that isn't like our ocean with normal salt in it it's an ocean with epsom salts in it so you might have seen epsom salts for the bath so there's epsom salts in the ocean of your rover and then there's bicarbonate soda so that's what you use in the kitchen when you're cooking so your rover is super cool we're not quite sure why it's like how it's become the way it is but there are some plans for exploring your rover in a lot more detail so you can go to the NASA website and learn about that OK, so how do these machines and you need to pick up rock cores get tested on Earth before they start their journey to Mars so what they do is like this picture here this is David Flannery and he has actually got the drill bits this here under his piece of whatever that is, piece of paper is one of the drill bits like the drill bit that they're going to use on the rover and so he's drilling into some rocks that are kind of like the hardness of the rocks on Mars to check it out and test then what they do is they put those onto the rover and they test it on the rover itself sometimes they have a twin rover that they do testing on too but they have to do, I mentioned earlier they have this horrible temperature fluctuation and then they have lots of radiation too so they usually do some testing in a cold chamber they do a testing in a shaking chamber a vibration chamber and they make sure that the parts work before and afterwards and it takes more than 10 years for most of these missions to get ready and so they spend a long time testing I hope you enjoyed that and looking forward to seeing this stargazing even though it's virtual stargazing thank you


I'm really excited to present here at WordCamp. It's my first WordCamp, so I really appreciated Carrie's presentation about being the new kid on the block. So stick with me, and I'm going to do my best to share with you some essential SEO for bloggers and content producers. So my name's Leah King-Tall. I live here in Asheville, and I work for an Asheville-based online marketing company. I'm the director of SEO. I've worked with SEO for four years, and I've been teaching SEO for two years, and that's my favorite part of what I do right now, because it's really something that everyone can learn. So how many of you produce content or are writers in your current jobs? Okay, that is fantastic, because writing is actually the hardest part of the job, and what I want to share with you today is how you can do some simple things to make sure that your content is optimized for search engines. So today we're gonna cover what is SEO, just a bit of a review, how blogging or producing content impacts SEO, and three stages for approaching your content to ensure that it's properly optimized, and some extras. So what I want you to take away, again, the writing is the hardest part, so once you have that covered, what else can you do so that you feel confident in understanding how content impacts search engine optimization, and then with that, how have these Google updates impacted your writing, and between the two of those, I hope you'll feel more confident and therefore more efficient with your own writing and content development, and ultimately, as is always the goal with search engine optimization, you'll build more site traffic. So to review, search engine optimization is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a webpage in search engines unpaid results. So what that means is we're talking about in the search engine results page when you Google something, search engine optimization is the posts that first appear that aren't those paid ads. So ultimately, search engine optimization is all about getting what you create in the Google search results, and drive traffic to your site as a result, so that's what it all comes down to. So how does blogging or content impact search engine optimization? So first, blogging builds authority and when you build authority on a topic, you build search engine traffic to your website for keyword phrases. It also builds authority in search traffic for niche keyword phrases, so if you're talking about a specific element of your service or your business or what you offer, you can have people arrive to your website through that post. And lastly, if you create great content and great blog posts, people will link to you and building this link helps you show up better in search engines. Let's just put it into context. So let's say you have a website about cats, as one should. If you want to show up in search results for people searching about cats, then you have to be an authority on cats and you become an authority on cats by talking about cats like a lot, like a lot a lot. So you definitely have to want it. So with cats, you gotta talk about all the different things that people are interested in in relation to cats, like all the different cat breeds, like you might want to write a blog post about Scottish fold, you might want to talk about, the cat on the right is Cozy, a Maine Coon cat that won the first cat competition in 1895, in case you were wondering. So you want to talk about the history of cats, you want to research what are people interested in when it comes to cats. So you can kind of just a quick Google auto fill search brings up this list of things that people commonly are wondering online about cats. Like why do cats like boxes? That might be a great blog post topic that you can use to help build your authority on cats. I actually had to look up why do cats like boxes and at the end of the presentation, I have some resources and I've included a link to why cats like boxes if you are interested. So as you talk about all these topics, you're growing your authority and when you grow your authority, that is what leads to search traffic. So what I want to offer today is since you are writers, how it seems, a lot of times when you're writing something, it seems like you're pulled in so many different directions, especially when it comes to SEO.  So how can you go about doing all the things you need to for a blog post or a content piece without being kind of overwhelmed by the details? So what I advocate for is that every single piece of content you produce that you take three approaches to it.  And that's a lot of attention to one blog post but essentially that's how you can shape and frame how you're looking at the value of that piece of content for all the different areas that it needs to be optimized for and to really function. It's like crossing the T's and doubting the I's. So the first stage is simply writing for your audience. So at this point, like I give you absolute permission to not think about SEO at all. Like just put it out of your mind. So when you first sit down to write, you definitely want to just think about your audience. Like who is it for? Why are they interested? Why is this important? And don't think a thing about keywords or optimization or anything people have been telling you to do probably for a long time. And part of the reason why you want to do that is Google has advanced significantly in the last few years. It's pretty scary. And so I want to talk a little bit about Google updates. So Google updates their algorithm regularly and there are two big updates. One is called the Google Panda update. And this changes what the search results look like. And if we think about what is Google's mission and their objective? So Google wants what shows up in the search engine results page to be the best match for their user base. So the audience of Google. You know when you search for something and what appears, if it's not what you were looking for then that's a bad job that Google did. So they're constantly refining their algorithm to make sure that what shows up in the top of search results is the most qualified content. So that is part of why your first stage needs to, the first stage of writing needs to approach just your audience in the point of the piece. So the Panda update essentially targeted thin content, duplicate content and overall poor quality site. I mean you know how aggravating it is when you click on like the first result in search engines and look at the site and say is this from 1995 or something? Like how did they get here? So when Google's doing these updates they're trying to refine how things show up in search results so that they are the best quality. And they do answer your questions and your queries. There's actually a Panda update rolling out last weekend and this weekend. So it does happen regularly but if you stick to this first approach of addressing your audience and being authentic and actually trying to be the best at what you do then you can really don't have to worry too much about these Google Panda updates. So I just wanna put that out there because I think there's a lot of fear mongering online around what especially bloggers and content producers have to do when these updates happen. So I just wanna allay those fears a little bit. If you're focused on developing good content you will be okay. So what does good content look like? So from this first approach, looking at your audience what is the point of your content piece, your call to action. I just have a couple examples here of good looking blogs. So this is Mod Cloth. Does anyone familiar with Mod Cloth? They're a great online store that sells sort of hipstery clothing for young women and professionals but they have a really great blog and when you look at what they have, it's well designed. You can easily share it. They have great images. So I mean, I am not a designer but I certainly look at this. I'm a person. I'm a person who uses the internet. So I think using that text on yourself when you look at the piece of content you produce doesn't look good. And it's as simple as that. So here's another example of a well designed page. This is for a company that I'll use as an example throughout. They're called Part Select and they create super exciting. They create parts for home appliances. Like any home appliance part that you need, you can get on this site. But what they have going for them and what makes it really interesting is the way that they've designed their posts. It's super engaging. They have a video in there that's well laid out. It's targeting their audience like how to fix a dryer that's not producing heat. And then it shares information with people about how to troubleshoot that problem. So that's just a quick design. Look, asking like your niece or nephew or somebody is always a great way of addressing if it's well designed, let someone click on this and care to read it. And then Coca-Cola actually released what their quality checklist is for any of the content that they develop, which I think is great for doing this first job of your content, which is should someone care? Does the piece of content or the blog list does it surprise you? Does it have universal appeal? Does it generate interest? Is it new or something you haven't seen before? And is it different from what your competition is offering? I think that one's key because a lot of times when you're creating content, there's so much out there and it's a total flood of information. So figuring out how you can stand out or answer questions or maybe have a new angle on a conversation that hasn't been written before, researching your competition will help you sort that out. So now you've written this amazing piece of content, which is like I said, that's the hard part in your writers. So you have that down. Step away from the computer and like do something else for a day. So then when you come back to the post, this is when you wanna think about SEO, not before. So now you have a great piece of content like let's say it's 600 words. You know who you're talking about. Maybe it's a blog post that's highlighting a certain service that you offer or maybe it's a blog post answering some common questions for your company or business. Now let's think about search engine optimization. So this is the review and editing of the piece of content you've already created. We're gonna talk about some essential SEO elements, keywords and some WordPress plugins that make it really easy. So the areas of your post or your page that you need to be intentional about like craft these areas is the URL itself for your blog post or your page. The metadata, which is your meta title and meta description which I'll go into further. The content, the headers on your content and images. So images, I'm not actually gonna talk about that much because I think later today someone's talking all about image optimization which is great and important. So see him for that. So when we talk about, we can't talk about search engine optimization without talking about keywords. So keywords provide the framework for understanding what a page is about. And I think there's always in the realm of SEO there's a lot of conversation. Like people write their own blog posts about do keywords still matter because of how sophisticated Google is becoming. And the answer is yes. Keywords still absolutely matter. Google is getting great at reading between the lines but we're not quite there yet. So when we talk about keywords, you know essentially optimization is math with words. So Google is a program that reads the words on your post or page and that's when they're indexing your page, how they can understand when it should show up in search results. So keywords are important because if you don't have certain words on the page then Google can't associate your post or your page with those words. So sometimes I do a test with people I work with where I take them to a blog post or a page on your site and ask what is this page about? And then we just read through and see if any of the words that they just mentioned are on that page. And I think this is a great thing you can do for yourself especially on existing, like if you have service pages in particular or product pages, just do that quick test, like step outside of yourself and the content and make sure that those words are on the page. So keywords also, the reason people talk about our keywords dead is because again the Panda update, the Panda Google update that is about quality and what has happened is that it used to be, if any of you have been in the SEO realm for a while, people used to game the system which is what Google is trying to prevent you from doing because it's not in the best interest of the end user. So people would game the system by creating blog posts or pages that were not for a particular audience. They were for a particular keyword phrase. So like laptop computers. So someone might, actually when you search for things now there are still some people who do this, like if you're like watch this game for free online which I don't recommend but you know I've done it before for soccer games. And you see these, what shows up is like a page that just takes the keyword phrase and pastes it all over. It's terrible content, terrible quality. It's just a keyword phrase pasted all over the place. So that's the history of SEO. Like these techniques that people employed to tell Google that they were all about a topic by instead of actually being about that topic and being authoritative on that topic they just paste to the keyword over and over again. So the Google Panda update is meant to curb that. Google now recognizes synonyms which is crazy but it's happening. So that's why keywords are still important but we have to talk about keywords in the context of a topic for an audience. Which I think for content producers this is like no big news. If you've been blogging and writing for a long time it's almost like SEO finally caught up with what's actually legitimately right which I'm really excited about because the games that SEO people used to play don't work anymore. And like this is now the time of the writers. It's like the time of the actual content developers because being authoritative makes sense from the way that you construct a story and construct whatever information you have to share. Like it's becoming not only was it always natural to talk that way now you're encouraged to talk naturally instead of just kind of copying and pasting a keyword phrase all over your post. Back to the list of what, so all that being said keywords are still important because when Google reads a site there are certain areas that they look at first when the bots scan your page. It's sort of like the outline of your site or of your post. So let's talk about metadata. So this is the search results page for a sample query. Dryer not producing heat. So the metadata what we have is of course the URL that shows up in the search results page and what's underlined in blue here these are the meta titles of your page. So when you're in the back end of WordPress you can customize these things but when you write your post it's not obvious like what is the meta title and what are the meta descriptions because where they appear on the actual search engine results page and the meta descriptions are the couple sentences that fall below your meta title. Customizing these areas is critical for optimizing your post or your page. Because I mean there's a couple reasons first you can include calls to action within these couple of sentences. Like you can still speak to your audience you can still reflect your brand. You just want to do so by throwing in doing all of that and then inserting some really important phrases that you want that topic, that page, that post to show up for. Like what is it about? Don't just tell your audience, tell Google. And this is where you can do that. So we have the first one is how to fix dryer with no heat. That's great because I'm curious about my dryers not producing heat. Like this example actually came from a colleague of mine who had this exact problem and was incredibly helped out by what returned in search results which is this first post. So what I want to point out here to go back to the keyword conversation. In the past the first result would not say how to fix dryer with no heat. It would be the exact match of what I typed into Google. And you may recall seeing this in the past. So the first thing would say, dryer not producing heat, like exactly. And that's the history of SEO again. And I just kind of want to clear this up because not everybody, the industry changes very quickly. So I know that if you produce content you probably hear conflicting messaging based on who you're talking to and how caught up they are. So now with Google's updates, Google's recognizing topics, incentives. So the first result does not say dryer not producing heat, but it's matched to the intention of my search. Like Google understands that my dryer is not producing heat. They don't have to find a page that says that exact phrase. They're finding what is a really great result. So how to fix the dryer with no heat. The second meta title here is diagnosing the no heat dryer. Whirlpool dryer not heating. So these again are the meta titles. And critical for you to well define that including keywords for your posts and your pages. And then again in the meta description. So you want to have, again, we're going to talk a lot about synonyms. So, sorry. So the difference between the meta titles and the meta descriptions is that it's a variation of the same concept but written a little differently. So that's important. Don't use the same words all the time. So we have how to fix the dryer with no heat. And then the first sentence, I know you can't all see this, but the first sentence under that is when your gas or electric dryer is not producing any heat or not enough heat. So that's a variation of what the title is. It's another way of describing it which helps Google understand right away that you're covering the topic itself. So let's go to the back end of WordPress where you are working when you're creating posts and blogs. So the first area, what we have at the top here, this is a post I wrote, new Google update targets mobile friendliness. Are you ready? So this was a couple of months ago. So that first area, when you're writing your blog post where you put the title of your post, that's gonna be your header one tag, your H1. And that's really important. So we're talking about the URL, the metadata, and your header one, your first header, which is the title of your post in WordPress. These are where you wanna think about the topic and insert keywords and keywords synonyms into this area that define what your post is about. And so in WordPress, WordPress is so great for making blogging easy and making it super easy to optimize because you can just, as you add your content, go in and adjust your URL. So the URL is one of these key places as well where you can diversify the keywords that apply to the topic that you're talking about. So the last, what you don't wanna do is exactly match everything. That's old strategy SEO and it's no longer a best practice. It's not really gonna hurt you, but if you do it all the time, it can be come, basically wanna make sure you don't look fishy. So if you're exactly matching things all over, I wanna say that, taking the same keyword phrase and putting it in your meta title, putting it in your URL, putting it in your meta description, repeated, that raises like alarm bells. So just diversify it. So the easiest thing you can do is just take out, if you do nothing else, when you're customizing your blog URL, just take out like the articles, like the or of, you know, just to condense it a little bit. But, I mean, I recommend including a bit of a variation, like a synonym of one of your main phrases, if you can. I did not do that in this one because I couldn't think of one at the time. But anyway, so you wanna look at this in the backend of WordPress when you're creating your posts. And then, to adjust all the really critical metadata for optimizing your posts for SEO, WordPress has awesome plugins. And the all-in-one SEO pack is a fantastic one. Yoast is a fantastic one. To make it super easy to cross the T's and dot the I's for optimizing the content you've created. So I'm gonna show you, this is the backend of WordPress after you've installed Yoast. So what's great about it is it shows you, there's a snippet preview at the top, that shows you what your post is gonna look like in Google search results, which is super helpful to kinda connect all the dots. So then what they have, they have an option for adding a focus keyword, which kinda helps you make sure you're organizing things around your topic. And then we have the SEO title, which is your meta title. So this post is Kickstarter campaign marketing tips. The focus keyword Kickstarter. And then the meta description. Here's where again you have the opportunity to highlight what is another way of talking about Kickstarter. That would be important to help improve your authority if you wanna be an authority on Kickstarter marketing. Well Kickstarter is a method of crowdfunding. Crowdfunding is another way that people search for Kickstarter related projects. So in the meta description, it says marketing your Kickstarter campaign is key to meeting your funding goal. Here we offer a few tips for successful crowdfunding marketing. So we have crowdfunding marketing and Kickstarter marketing all in the meta description, which helps diversify and improve your authority around the topic of Kickstarter marketing. So that's what you wanna look at doing when you're optimizing your meta description and your SEO title. This is the Yoast backend. In WordPress, once you install Yoast plugin, the all in one SEO pack is really similar. They all create these areas for optimizing these critical places.  And on the right side, it shows you what you customized on the post. So you've got your SEO title and your meta description and your focus keyword. The reason I am including this is because those green circles. So there's like this big green circle that's like, hey, you optimized this post, good job. And I just wanna say, especially for like the overachievers out there in the content writing, if it's not a green circle, it's totally okay. Like I'm the kind of person that wants to see everything is a green circle because green means good. But because of the advancements Google's made, you're optimizing for a topic, not a keyword phrase. So you use this as a guide, not as like the definitive be all end all, this was a good, well optimized post. Because as I was mentioning, like that post, the Kickstarter marketing tips, it's about more than Kickstarter, it's also about crowdfunding. So I might, when optimizing the SEO title or the meta description, because I'm looking for synonyms, they might not off say Kickstarter in them. They might have some variations. And if that's the case, then it might not be a green circle. So it's okay. And don't let that like limit how you're thinking about what it means to be optimized. Red circles, orange circles. We're all good. Okay, so now we wanna talk about the content itself and keywords. So keywords, again, you wanna look at synonyms. What's also important are your adjectives and qualifiers. And I'm gonna give an example of that in a minute.  But let's think about content itself. So the difference between the fox jumps over the dog and the quick round fox jumps over the lazy dog is that you get descriptors in there. You get adjectives and qualifiers. So I really recommend for your company or your brand, whatever your site is overall about to list for yourself, all of the adjectives and qualifiers that are important to defining who you are beyond just a keyword phrase. A quick round fox, you could have a site that's just about a fox, but it's gonna be easier to acquire search traffic if you're actually not just about foxes, but you're also about quick brown things with your businesses.  And for products, I do this as well, I list all of the sizes, all of the colors, all of the materials. So that way, when you're looking back over your posts for SEO opportunities, for optimization opportunities, you can tack on some of those qualifiers to help broaden the topic that you're covering. So this is the content that was for how to fix a dryer that's not producing heat, which was the first search results. And so also, like I learned all the time from what is the first search result for a query. So if you're competing with someone, or you know that you want to show up and search results for a certain query, just search it and like study whoever showed up first, because, and this is where you can learn a lot from large companies because they have a whole lot of money to spend on this stuff. And so this should, I hope, really help you assess why the people who are showing up first are. Like here are some of the reasons that they're there. So how to fix a dryer that's not producing heat. So what we have are two header tags. There's the H1 at the top and then H2, there's a heating element. The full article has like about six headers that are all about basically structuring, outlining the post itself to tell you, here are the different elements of addressing your dryer not having enough heat. And what that does is help you frame the posts to cover a topic and Google reads those headers more thoroughly than the content on the page as part of that outline that they read first. So it's important to include header tags but only have one H1. And then you can have as many of the other ones as you want. So the thing I want to point out about synonyms. So I've highlighted all of the keyword phrases in this post. But let's talk about if I am interested in how why my dryer is not producing heat, I'm also interested in fixing my dryer, repairing my dryer and troubleshooting the problem with my dryer. So these are all different ways of talking about the problem that I'm having and how to address the solution, which is the intent of my search. So this post is a fantastic job by using all of the phrases that are associated with someone like me who's looking to figure out what's wrong with my dryer. So this is where having those synonym lists will really help you make sure that you include these variations of how to talk about whatever problem you're addressing in your blog post or whatever query you wanna solve for your readers. So now you're gonna walk away from your post again and like take another day, like leave it alone.  And the third time we're gonna look at it for linking opportunities. So how does this post exist in the internet as a whole but specifically on your own website? What is the context for this digital piece of content in space? So we're gonna talk about why it's important, actual interlinking, and another Google update that I just wanna share some information on. So interlinking is good for SEO because it helps Google determine which pages are most important on your site. So this is really helpful if you have a particular, say you have a service and you have four services but one service is the one you make the most money off of or something like that. You want most people to find you for that services so you can use interlinking to help highlight that service page that's most important to you. Internal links also help build and pass, it helps build and pass authority around your site. So when we're talking about interlinking, we're talking about within your own website just links to different pages on your site. And lastly, like I said, as you can learn, you can always learn from the big guys in town. Wikipedia does it and they're the best. So we look at a Wikipedia article. So Wikipedia shows up first in search results all the time for many reasons. Part of the reason is because they're absolutely massive but the other thing that they totally have down is interlinking on their own site.  So this is a Wikipedia article on fainting couches just because. And if you're interested in learning more, this interlinks to articles on just couches, on fainting rooms, female hysteria, which is pretty fascinating. So essentially you wanna do this to your own website through your blog, it's really exciting. This is like what brings it all together as the final piece of actually optimizing your post in the context of your site. So you'll notice that these are keyword links, right? Let's talk about keywords a little more. So another update that Google rolls out fairly regularly is called the Google Penguin update. And again, Google updates are meant to stop people from trying to gain the system and end up in search results when they're not actually the authority on a topic. People used to do this by paying for keyword links to their websites. They would pay other people to do this. If you've been blogging for a long time, you may have been asked in the past to insert a keyword link like laptop computers within a content piece you wrote and that link takes you to some site that sells laptop computers. This used to be totally standard SEO practices. It's no longer okay and that's what the Google Penguin update was about. It's targeting manipulative link building practices, link schemes, link farms, on the, it's essentially unnatural links. So if you've never engaged in this in the past, you really don't have to worry about it. But for people who've been in SEO for a while, it was kind of like a behavior that became natural because it was really helpful to pass authority on a topic through these links from these other sites. So now you cannot get keyword links to your site from other sites that are not, like, that are not your own site. Or if you are blogging for other people and you get asked to insert a keyword link to another company or another site, like, don't do that. That is what this Penguin update is all about. But you can still do it on your own website. My rule of thumb is like, if people are on your site, they should expect to stay on your site unless you tell them otherwise.  You're not gonna be sent somewhere else. So my personal rule of thumb is if you're sending someone somewhere else with a link off your website, just make sure that it's clear in the link. So I, you can't do this, sorry. This is just an example of a company that was majorly penalized by the Penguin update, which is always fascinating to read about. So it's overstock.com. Overstock basically paid all of these universities to write somewhere on their site a post that linked to overstock.com on keywords like laptop computers and different products that overstock.com always sells. Like this one is diamond rings. This is an example from a real university website. So like, let's think about it. That actually makes no sense that someone on a university website would ever be writing about products that overstock has for sale. So like if it feels weird, if what you're asked to do feels weird, then it is weird. And Google is catching up to all of these things that people used to do to game the system. So overstock was totally penalized and lost all this traffic because you just can't do this. You know, like let's just be reasonable. So when you're doing your own blog post, this is a little map of a, a sample map of a site. So you've got your homepage, you've got your blog, let's see, you have three services. What you can do is take your blogs, blog about service one, blog on unique audience for service one and link over to that service one page on a keyword phrase. So I kind of, when I'm developing a strategy for blogging, I like map, I literally map out a site and like draw these connections for myself. So here is a service area. We're gonna talk about it in five different ways in these five different blog posts and I wanna make sure I link on a keyword phrase over to that service page which will help build authority for that service and for your site. Now I'm gonna take you really quickly through an example of a site that does this really well, the three approaches to developing your content. So this is just add ice orchids. I haven't worked with them, they're just doing a great job. So they sell orchids online that you put ice cubes I guess in them and then they work. So if you search online for buy orchids online, this is highly competitive. We can tell this because lots of people are buying ads so you already know it's gonna take a long time. How do we become an authority on buying orchids online when it's super competitive and part of how you do that is by becoming an authority on orchids. Like just grow what you're talking about. Be the expert that you say you are. So they have a really fantastic blog where they talk about all elements of orchids and this is an example of the first test, test line, first look, quality in audience. Looks good, it's got some calls to action. That's fantastic, you know it's well designed. There are pictures, there are social cues, answers important questions. This is how, four tips to spike your orchids growth. Stage two, SEO editing. So if I type in how to make orchids re-bloom because who hasn't done that if you have an orchid? They are so hard to deal with. So I've definitely searched this before. This search itself has 1,680 searches a year. Just that phrase. And what's coming up first is just ad ice orchids. How to trigger re-blooming of your Latin name orchid. So that's the meta title. How to re-trigger the blooming. The meta description is what follows. And what I've highlighted here is like, let's look at how they diversify their keywords. So there's trigger re-blooming. How to, how to, an important way that people search. Blooming in there again, orchid may re-bloom. Like re-blooming is way different than blooming. Good to have them both. Getting orchids to bloom again, what's under there. Different ways of, how do we talk about it? I said make them re-bloom. And some people talk about getting them to re-bloom. Some people talk about orchid flower, why not? I mean, not that you wanna put that in there, but it would return searchable like that. So now let's look at the content itself. And I've highlighted it again. This is for the page, the first page that shows up. What have they done to cover their topic? Orchid re-blooming, finished blooming. Create large, beautiful flowers. Blooms and flowers are different. I mean, if the same topic would cover it all. Trigger the regrowth. The Latin name, I love that they include that. People search for that, you know, maybe not as much. But if you don't include the Latin name, you're not gonna show up. And then linking. What they do, and this is another great thing you can do with blogging, is link to, oh, I do wanna mention one thing. What they don't have are great headers. So if I was gonna like recommend something to them and say, hey, put some headers in there and throw in some keywords. So linking, this links to other blog posts on keyword phrases. You can do that within your own blog. Did you talk about this topic in a different way somewhere else? Like they have, this doesn't mean your orchid is dead, you know, a lot of people search for, is my orchid dead? So they have other posts on that topic. They're thoroughly investigating all elements of orchid care, and they link to each other. And they also have when appropriate, links to their product page on keywords. Not all the time, but enough to help grow their authority and compete ultimately for searches like buy orchids online, which is gonna be tough. But you can definitely, it certainly acquire a lot of traffic and brand impressions by being an authority on topic. Select review. How does blogging impact FDO? Which is the whole angle for this. If you write a blog post, people come to your website in two different ways. They either search for a niche topic you cover on your blog, and they arrive on your blog. Like I work for a SEO company. I write posts on different elements of SEO. If people are searching for that specific informational topic, they might arrive on my blog post. What also happens is because I'm covering SEO in my blog post, people who are searching for that might arrive on the homepage of the company or on the service page. So your blogging is not just a doorway into your site because you've covered that niche. It's supporting your site as a whole. And I think that's really, really important because it can feel defeating sometimes, especially when you're starting out and you're writing these blog posts. It seems like nobody's arriving on my blog, why not? But no, the more that you do that, it's not just about the posts that you're creating, it's about building your authority across your entire site. And you are doing that when you regularly write on a topic, even if people are not arriving on the post itself, especially if you interlink it and check all the boxes. So ultimately, authority, when you build it, once you have the whole site about cats and you answer all the questions about cats and you have all this going on, you've improved your authority and you will get some search traffic, which is what we want. Content stages, stage one, write for your audience, stage two, edit for keyword placement and synonyms in your URL, metadata, content, headers, and your images. Three, review for the linking opportunities and where does your blog exist in the context of your site as a whole? Where can you direct your users for more information on any of the pieces of the topic that you're covering? And my final thoughts are a quote from my dad. I think this is what optimization is all about. So the difference between doing a good job and a great job is really just a little bit because you already have the hard part down and that's developing and creating the content. So that extra little bit are just these optimization steps that make a good host a great host. So here's some resources. Why cats love boxes in there, if you wanna follow it later and learn more about that. And some mob beginner guides, algorithm cheat sheets, some other things I thought would be helpful for you all to look at later. So that's my talk. What's that one keyword phrase per blog? No, so that used to be what SEO was like. Now, you can, in the plugins, they have a spot to put a keyword focus in there but you wanna optimize around an entire topic, not just one keyword. Anybody else? I mean, is that something that Google looks at? Yes, and let me back up real quick. In the backend of WordPress, you can highlight and set, oh geez, sorry, this is way back. So you can highlight and set in this area, usually there's a dropdown that says header two, header three, if there's not, because it really depends on who created the site or what it's like, if there's not, you have to actually go to the source code and type it in there. Which is actually really, what? It's not the little tags inside. Yeah, it's basically the outline of your site or the outline of your post and applying the HTML H1, H2, H3 tag. And a lot of times there's like a little dropdown where you can just set it and be like, all right, this is my header two. If there's not, it's like really easy coding. It's just like. If you click on that, click on all the way to the right, it'll drop down the second level, the second layer of the tools, and that's where you'll see heading one and a two paragraph. Awesome. It is there, it's just not showing, but if you were to click on that, it would drop down a second set of tools on the toolbar and that's where you could then drop that. Okay, got it.


Yeah, man, it really got us off it for us. I mean, to be able to start the game off like that is awesome. Why did you think of what the crowd brought this evening? Well, man, the crowd was awesome. They were up on their feet from pitch one to last pitch, man. And that's what we needed to really get going. Dominant self today. I mean, he was attacking his own and he was getting quick outs. And he was striking guys out. And that's what we need him to do. What's the biggest key for you guys against Boston? To continue to stay strong. I mean, believing in ourselves and being able to push our limits. You also got in on the offensive action to contribute in a game like that. Is that meaningful for you? Of course. I mean, this is awesome. I mean, to be able to play a meaningful game like this and contribute for your team is everything. Aaron, thanks for the time. Thank you.


Good afternoon and welcome to the Private Property Show House edition. If you're looking for that perfect home, if you're looking to start your family in a new home, this indeed is the show for you where we travel around South Africa and you see more amazing homes, which are for sale. Of course, we have other shows coming to you every day this week. We have Zaman Tungua Kumalo with the Private Property Podcast. That's every weeknight at 7pm. And of course, if you're interested in farming and agriculture, well, we've got Mbali on the ones and twos every Tuesday and Thursday night at 8pm. If you're still looking for that perfect home, join Chad Vaviros as he tours mansions, loft departments, townhouses, gorgeous, gorgeous homes around South Africa. And last but not least, we do have the first time home buyer show. Are you looking to build your property portfolio? Are you looking to make that first investment and purchase that first home? Well, this is the show for you. That's every Wednesday night at 8pm. The first time home buyer show. Good afternoon. Welcome to the Saturday Show House Edition. We're in the beautiful Cape Town. Table view, this gorgeous home. Four bedrooms, three bathrooms and two garages. Of course, just the stone throw away from the beach. And as you enter this home, you are welcomed by an open-plan kitchen that effortlessly flows through all the bedrooms. That's table view in Cape Town. And still in Cape Town, we're in Durbanville. This is a 13-bedroom house. Yes, you heard correctly, 13 bedrooms. Most of them have aunt's suites. And of course, the bedrooms are off the living areas, sliding French doors to close them off. Of course, the large bathrooms, reception area. Absolutely gorgeous. This home is 13 bedrooms and 11 bathrooms in Durbanville. And back to the beach. Still in Cape Town, a five-bedroom house in Big Bay. Four bathrooms and three garages. Of course, this is the latest luxury auction offering over here. A beautiful four-bedroom home with a stunning separate granny flat as well. And of course, three garages just to end off this gorgeous property in Big Bay. Absolutely gorgeous, compact garden, artificial grass, sliding doors, lots of big windows to allow that beautiful light to enter this home. And here we are in a four-bedroom house in Kleinbronn Estate. Four bathrooms and two garages. Of course, as you saw, a beautiful study downstairs. Of course, there are cabinets throughout this home. Gorgeous open-plan kitchen, lounge area or TV room area and that patio with that bright area right over there. Perfect for entertaining. This home is absolutely gorgeous. And still in the Cape Town area, we move on over towards Kales River. This gorgeous two-bedroom apartment in St. Jumas over here. One bathroom as well. Of course, this is perfect if you're starting off with your investment plan today. Perfect for first-time home buyers as well.  That's Kales River, the Oaks. And another apartment, another great investment opportunity. Two bedrooms, two bathrooms over here. A perfect, perfect apartment for you. And of course, it is still in great condition. It is move-in, ready, pack your bags and enjoy this lifestyle in Sandown, two bedrooms, two bathrooms. And a popular summer in Cape Town is Ijmid, a lovely three-bedroom house over here. Two bathrooms and two garages. Of course, this home offers three bedrooms with ensuites and a lovely living area, kitchen and dining area. Of course, when we go outside, you'll see that there is enough yard space for the kids to have fun and splash around in the pool. That's Ijmid, three-bedroom house, two bathrooms and two garages. And we move on over to Parklands, a three-bedroom house, two bathrooms and three garages. Of course, as you enter this home, you are welcomed by a large open-plan kitchen, dining area and lounge. And a special feature about this home is that it does have an undercover swimming pool. Who says you can't swim in winter? And back to Big Bay, a three-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment over here. Again, absolutely stunning investment opportunity for those first-time home buyers, stunning penthouse apartment, overlooking Big Bay, of course, scenic views. When you wake up, when you go to bed, absolutely gorgeous top-floor apartment, spacious inside and out.  As you can see, this is a beautiful Dutch mansion over here. It is white, light and bright. And we invite you to take a tour in this gorgeous home in Plattercloof. Of course, it does have four open living-plan areas, with entertainers' kitchen leading to the pool, three garages and of course, ample off-street parking for your visitors when you are entertaining them. Throughout this gorgeous home in Plattercloof, if this is the one for you, make those moves. That's all we have for you this beautiful Saturday. We'll see you guys again tomorrow. Same time, same place and take care.


So, just a quick recap of the topics we looked at the last time. The last time we looked at the definition of the determinant and we looked at several properties and today we will continue this discussion on the properties of the determinant and then we'll move on to discussing about norms. So, just to recall, if you take a matrix of size m cross m, the square matrix, then we define the determinant through this cofactor expansion. So, we consider the matrix Aij, which is the matrix obtained by deleting the i-th row and the j-th column of A. This would be an m minus 1 cross m minus 1 square matrix and we call the determinant of this smaller matrix as the minor associated with the element Aij and we define Cij to be minus 1 to the i plus j times the determinant of Aij. This is called the cofactor associated with the element Aij. Then the determinant is defined as the summation j going from 1 to m of Aij times Cij and this can be computed for any i, i equal to 1, 2 or all the way up to m and similarly it can also be computed as the summation i equal to 1 to m of Aij times Cij and this can be computed for any j, 1, 2 or all the way up to m. This is a recursive definition because the determinant of an m by m matrix is defined in terms of Cij, which is a determinant of an m minus 1 by m minus 1 matrix, which will in turn be defined in terms of the determinant of an m minus 2 cross m minus 2 matrix and so on and so we need to know what the determinant of a 1 cross 1 matrix is and that is equal to the element itself. So with this we know how to calculate the determinant and the last time we saw several properties of the determinant. So for example, if two rows of the matrix are equal, then its determinant equals 0. If you subtract a multiple of one row from another row, then that leaves the determinant unchanged. So what this means is that if you do these row reduction operations, that does not change the determinant of a matrix. Also, if a has a row of 0s, then determinant of a equals 0. If a is triangular, then the determinant of a is the product of its diagonal entries, which means that the matrix is equal to the product of the pivot elements that appear when you can compute the row reduced echelon form of the matrix with an extra plus or minus 1 depending on how many row exchanges you did in order to compute this row reduced echelon form. If you didn't do any row exchanges or if you did an even number of row exchanges, then it is plus 1, otherwise it's minus 1. If a is a singular matrix, then determinant of a is 0 and if a is non-singular or invertible, then determinant of a is not equal to 0. And the last property where we stopped is that the determinant of the product of two matrices, AB, is the product of the two determinants. Determinant of a times the determinant of b. A consequence of this is that if a is invertible, then the determinant of a inverse is 1 over the determinant of a. The next property is that the determinant of the matrix a transpose is equal to the determinant of a. So taking the transpose of a matrix does not change the determinant. So a related interesting question is what are properties of a matrix that remain unchanged when you take the transpose? So you can see that from this, you can see that the determinant of a matrix is one property of a matrix which remains unchanged by the transposition operation. Similarly, the trace of a matrix is another property that remains unchanged by taking the transpose because the trace of a transpose is the sum of the diagonal entries and the transpose operation doesn't change the diagonal entries. It only exchanges the off diagonal entries. And so the trace of a transpose is equal to the trace of a. There are many other properties that remain unchanged by taking the transpose operation and we'll discuss those more later in the course. Now, how do you show this? So the rank is also a property that remains unchanged by the transpose operation. Okay, we'll later see that the rank is the number of non-zero eigenvalues of a matrix and so the a and a transpose have the same number of non-zero eigenvalues and consequently, they also have the same number of zero eigenvalues counting multiplicities. Another question is whether a and a transpose will have the same eigenvalues. Okay, so that is something we'll see later in the course and it will turn out that a and a transpose actually have the same eigenvalues. Now, obviously, if a were a singular matrix, then it means that the rows of a are linearly dependent, so determinant of a is zero and if the rows of a are linearly dependent, it's a square matrix. So the columns of a will also be linearly dependent or in other words, the rows of a transpose would also be linearly dependent. So determinant of a transpose would also be zero. So it is clearly true for the case of singular matrices. Okay, a is singular if and only if a transpose is singular or ranked efficient. So we'll consider the non-singular case. So we've seen in the last class that a matrix, any square matrix A admits a decomposition of the form PA equals LDU where P is a permutation matrix, L and U are lower and upper triangular matrices with ones on the diagonal and D is a diagonal matrix. Such a decomposition can be computed for any matrix and we later explicitly study matrix decompositions where we'll also outline how to compute such decompositions. So this is true, okay? You can do this decomposition, you have to take this on faith if you haven't seen decompositions like this, you may have seen decompositions of the form A equal to LU, which is a slightly different decomposition and this P just accounts for the fact that you may need to do some row exchanges in order to find that decomposition. Okay, so if I take the determinant on both sides of this equation, what I get is determinant of P because determinant of a product of two matrices is the product of the determinants, the determinant of the left hand side is determinant of P times the determinant of A is equal to the determinant of L times the determinant of D times the determinant of U. Now if I take the transpose of this equation, then that will read as A transpose P transpose is equal to U transpose D transpose L transpose and so if I take the transpose and then take the determinant, you get determinant of A transpose determinant of P transpose is equal to determinant of U transpose determinant of D transpose determinant of L transpose and now because L and U are triangular matrices with ones on the diagonal determinant of L and determinant of U, determinant of U transpose and determinant of L transpose, they are all equal to, so also D is diagonal implies that D is equal to D transpose, so that determinant of D equals the determinant of D transpose. So what we then have is that the right hand sides of the two are actually equal, this is equal to this and so we have determinant of A transpose, determinant of P transpose is equal to determinant of P times the determinant of A, so but then P is a permutation matrix and so P is permutation matrix which implies that this is true for all permutation matrices, P P transpose is equal to the identity matrix. So if you want to see this, I mean if you think of permutation matrix as performing a row exchange then P transpose undoes these row exchanges, you can also look up properties of permutation matrices, that's a good exercise to do on its own, but P P transpose is equal to the identity matrix, so I have that determinant of P, determinant of P transpose is equal to the determinant of the identity matrix which is equal to 1, which means that the determinant of P is plus or minus 1, but also in fact, no this is in fact a separate point that for a permutation matrix, the determinant of a permutation matrix is always plus or minus 1, so that means that if the product is 1 and this is plus 1 then this should also be plus 1 and if this is minus 1 then this is also minus 1, so this implies that determinant of P and determinant of P transpose plus 1 or minus 1. Let me write it a little more clearly, okay so because of that this, if this is plus 1 this is also plus 1, if this is minus 1 then this is also minus 1 which implies that determinant of A equals the determinant of A transpose, okay the next property is what happens to the determinant when you scale a matrix, C times A equals what? Because every row is getting scaled by C and it is linear in any one of the rows, so you can pull out a C from each row and it becomes C power m times determinant of A. Another property that you are probably aware of is that the determinant is the product of the diagonal of the eigenvalues of the matrix, so we haven't formally defined eigenvalues yet, but this is a connection that I want to make right now which we will revisit later where lambda i is the eigenvalue, this also means that you've seen that the determinant of a matrix, the magnitude of the determinant of a matrix is the volume of the parallel pipe it formed by the columns of A and what this means is that the parallel pipe it defined by the columns of A can be transformed into a rectangular solid or a cuboid with edges given by of length equal to the eigenvalues of this matrix A. The next property is that if you take any orthonormal matrix, so for any orthonormal matrix the determinant is plus or minus 1 and in particular a permutation matrix is an orthonormal matrix and therefore its determinant is also equal to 1 or minus 1. Okay, yeah, welcome. The next property is that if B is non-singular determinant of B inverse AB equals determinant of A. So we've already seen this because determinant of B inverse AB is the determinant of B inverse times determinant of A times determinant of B but determinant of B inverse is the same as 1 over the determinant of B so those two cancel and you're left with determinant of A. This transforms, so you take a matrix A and you find a matrix C which is equal to B inverse AB. This is called a similarity transform and it has lots of very nice properties which we will see later but one thing you can note right away is that the determinant is a property of a matrix which does not change when you apply a similarity transform on the matrix. Of course another crucial property of the determinant is that it allows you to compute A inverse. So suppose A is a non-singular matrix and suppose we compute this matrix A tilde which is equal to the adjoint of A and defined to be this matrix containing those cofactors C11, C12 up to C1m, Cm1 up to Cmm with a transpose. So this is called the adjoint of a matrix A then we have that if I compute if I take this matrix A tilde and suppose I take its i-throw A i tilde transpose this is the i-throw and I multiply it by A i you can go back to the definition of the determinant and verify that this is exactly what the determinants definition is doing. So I'll just scroll up for one second to just show you that. You can see that the determinant as defined here is the inner product between two vectors one vector being the i-th column of A and the other vector having these factors Cij, j going from 1 to m. Okay so if I take the transpose then that corresponds to picking the i-throw of A tilde. So if I do A i so this is the i-th column of A then this will be equal to the determinant of A and it's true for i equal to 1, 2 up to m and similarly if I take A i tilde transpose times Aj what will this be equal to any idea?  Yeah so if you if you think about it this A i tilde transpose Aj is actually the determinant of a matrix where you have replaced the i-throw of A with Aj transpose. So this is a determinant of a matrix whose two rows are actually identical. So this determinant has to be zero. So we see that if I take this matrix A tilde times A then this is equal to the diagonal entries of this product are all equal to the determinant of A all the off diagonal entries of this product are equal to zero. So this is equal to determinant of A times the identity matrix which means that A inverse is equal to 1 over the determinant of A times A tilde. So the determinant allows you to find the inverse of a matrix although this is not this is typically not the way you want to compute the inverse of a matrix. So for instance if you're using MATLAB this is not how MATLAB would compute the inverse of a matrix but it gives us a formula or at least one way to try to find the inverse of a matrix. So those are some of the properties of the determinant that I wanted to discuss. Before I move on to norms maybe very briefly I'll talk about a few uses of the determinant. The first is that it can be used to test invertibility. If determinant of A is zero then the matrix is not invertible if it's non-zero then it is invertible. The second is that if you consider the family of matrices A minus lambda I now this is a family of matrices because lambda can be anything. So let me just say it's a any complex number for now. So as I vary lambda over the complex plane I'll get different different matrices and I look for what values of lambda will make this A minus lambda I a singular matrix. So I look for solutions to determinant of A minus lambda I equal to zero. Now if I expand this out this this will turn out to be a polynomial of degree n which means that it has exactly n roots counting repetitions and therefore there are exactly n values of lambda which will make this determinant equal to zero. For any other value of lambda in the entire complex plane this determinant will be non-zero or A minus lambda I will be a non-singular matrix and these n roots give us the n eigenvalues. So determinant is also something that helps us in computing the eigenvalues of a matrix. The other uses are that I already mentioned that determinant gives us the volume of the magnitude of the determinant is the volume of the parallel pipet formed by the columns of A. The next one is that the determinant can actually be used to obtain a formula for each pivot element in the row reduced echelon form. I'll discuss this more later when we talk about matrix factorization but for now for the sake of completeness I'll put down this thing. It gives a formula for each pivot element in the row reduced echelon form and finally but not the least for sure is that the determinant gives us a measure for the sensitivity of a solution to y equal to Ax to changes in y bar. So specifically if you are given a set of linear equations y equal to Ax and you're asked to find x and suppose tomorrow somebody came back to you and said that y was measured incorrectly and so there is a small perturbation and the actual y is some y prime then you've already given them your solution then you can compute how sensitive your solution is to this error in y. Similarly if they said that the a that was used to obtain y was not a but instead it was a prime then you can actually compute how sensitive the solution is to this perturbation in the matrix A. So this is a this is another sort of chapter by itself and again we will study this later in the course.