In this episode, you're going to learn how, and most of all, why you need to be designing for seven generations to come. This is going to be a great one. Let the show begin. Hi, I'm BC Williams. Welcome to the Service Design Show. Hi, my name is Mark Fontijn, and welcome back to the Service Design Show. On this show, we explore what's beneath the surface of service design, what are those hidden and invisible things that make a difference between success and failure, all to help you design great services that have a positive impact on people, business, and planet. Our guest in this episode is their brilliant, BC Williams. Amongst many things, she's the co-founder of the Massive Change Network and co-host of the Health 2049 podcast. The reason I'm excited to have BC on the show today is that we're going to talk about why we as a design community have a responsibility to think and act bigger. Often, it's hard to get our clients, and yes, even ourselves, to look beyond the scope of a single project. But as you'll hear in the colorful stories BC shares, their work is really in their name, Massive Change. It doesn't spend the lifetime of a project, it spends the lifetime of generations. We discuss what it takes to get your clients to embark on this journey with you. We talk about two key concepts of heritage and legacy and how you can use these to design a better world and how designing for generations to come differs from our current approach. If you stick around till the end, you'll also learn how to make these bold ambitions actionable today because there's no denying that there are urgent challenges that quickly need to be addressed in our society. If you enjoy conversations like this and would like to see more, make sure you subscribe to the channel and click that bell icon because we bring a new video every week or so here on this channel. So now it's time to sit back, relax, and enjoy the conversation with Bissie Williams. Welcome to the show, Bissie. Thanks, Mark, for having me. I'm delighted to be here. I'm excited to have you on. It was a long time going to get you on the show, but I'm happy that you're here. It's super important and interesting stuff that we'll be talking about. That's the thing I always say with every guest so I can imagine people listening to this. I like Mark, you always said it, but it's true. I'm really excited for the episode today. But before we dive in, Bissie, for the people who haven't looked you up on LinkedIn or Google yet, could you give a brief introduction what you do these days? Absolutely. So thank you so much for this opportunity, Mark. Well, I am Bissie Williams and I'm the co-founder of MasterChange Network and I am also the chief insights and analytics officer for our company. So I'm the data wonk, but I also love, love, love design, but information, stories, et cetera. And what I do is I really bridge kind of the two worlds, the design world and the humanities world and really focused on the social-emotional effects of change and that's in our name. It's in our strategy, Massive Change and Network. And so that's what I do, really interested in how people can absorb change, embrace change and also just giving them those tools to be able to get control of their business, their life, their work or what have you. So that's what I do and that's what I love. And that's one of those questions like, what do you do when you ask that to somebody who's remotely in a design space? Like it's hard to summarize that in one sentence, which I'm happy about. If I'm not mistaken, you also run a podcast, is that correct? I do and that's another research project. Thanks, thank you for that, Marc. Yeah, it's called Health 2049 and it's really about the future of health and wellness and that show came about when we were actually asked if design could play a role in healthcare transformation. And I thought, hmm, let me see. So in typical fashion, we started a research project and recognized that actually while there's a tremendous amount of design in the hospital and wellness phase, it's kind of like a design free zone. And what I started to look at was that, well, there are four areas where design could really play a role in terms of space, right? People, process and technology. And if you marry that with data, right? Population health, et cetera, which is my co-host, Jason Helgerson's remit that we actually thought we could do that and sort of change perception. And then second was we realized that the problems of healthcare transformation, medicine, medical redesign, it's very, very complicated. And so how some people go, I don't know how much is a billion dollars I can't see it. You think about a trillion dollar enterprise. People really bury their heads in the sand because it's so huge. So we decided to do an exercise in world building. And when you future cast and future forecast, you have the ability to dream and therefore you don't get stuck in the day to day and that it allows you to actually open up your heart, your mind to think about how you could deliver medical and related services differently. So it's been really a lot of fun and really inspiring and surprising on many fronts in terms of how people look at health and wellness. And I love that you mentioned and frame it as a research project. I think that's a great way to think about these conversations. Like you learn every day, like every conversation brings a new perspective, brings something to light, creates, like my goal with these conversations is to find better questions. I'm not looking for better answers. Like if they come up, that's great. But if we find better questions, that's really where the value is. I'm 100% with you. I mean, in fact, I'm always like, design is always like a quest for a better question, right? And it's about curiosity. So, you know, for us, for our practice, like that's how we learn. We learn by listening. We learn by asking questions. We learn by asking even more questions. And also, it's like, that's how the world works, right? And we're not an, I'm not an expert in anything. But I am a great student of everything. And if I have the opportunity to learn, then I can actually be a better service. Cool. So we're already, I don't know how many minutes in, but I still have a few questions for you in our rapid fire question round. So I have five questions for you to get to know you, even a little bit more better. Your task is to answer them as briefly and as quickly as possible. So are you ready? I didn't study for this, Mark. Well, that's the whole point. Are you ready? Ready. All right. So my first question is, what's always in your fridge? Yogurt. If you had to recommend one book, which one would it be? The Sun Also Rises. What was your first job? My first, so the first job that I volunteered are the first job where I actually got paid money. Let's go for paid money. Okay. So my first job where I was paid money, real money was a publishing house, scholarly book services. All right. Here's an interesting- I'm babysitting. Okay, babysitting. Babysitting. Yeah. Well, we'll count that. We'll add that one to the list as well. Here's an interesting one. If you could be an animal, which animal would you like to be? A horse. A horse. Yeah. Okay. 100%. That was a confident answer. And the final question is, do you recall when you first got in touch with service design? Gosh, about three years ago. And three years ago, and it kind of blew my mind because I was making things up about, you know, what we could do in the realm of healthcare and so on. And then a very good friend said, Beast, that's called service design. And I was like, oh, hey, very cool. You know, and thinking, huh, when I was growing up, I wondered if I'd known about that. I might have been a service designer, but I hadn't heard of it before. And so I'm obsessed now. Welcome to the community, I would say, although it's three years ago, but I think this resembles the journey of many people in this space who stumble upon it somewhere somehow and then they enter the rabbit hole and they never make it out. Thank you for these answers and giving us a little bit better insight into who you are and knowing that you would like to be a horse. That's awesome. Well, tell me, what's your spirit animal? My spirit animal, that's a great question. And when I was writing this question down, I was thinking like, what would I want to be? And I don't know, probably a cat or something like that. Like if I look at the two cats we have over here, then they seem to have a pretty decent life. I'll go for a cat in this episode. Maybe I'll come up with a different one in the next one. Sounds fair. Let's transition into the topic of today. I read your notes and I had to summarize it down for myself. Like what is the topic of today? What I have here in my notes is Designing for Seven Generations. That's what I took out of your notes. Could you say something about that? Like, that sounds pretty huge. Well, you know what? As you're amazing, Mark, I'm so excited that you got that distillation for Design for Seven Generations because that's exactly it. When I decided to partner with my husband in life and partner in business, Bruce Mao, about 12 years ago, we really looked at Massive Change Network as a new way of design, of a new way about thinking about our world. And with the idea that everything is designed, we need to design everything. We also needed to be mindful, but also recognizing that, you know, the world's a very complex place, that environmental concerns, racial concerns, you know, you think about all of these things and I also have three children. So that makes me a bit of, it makes us a bit of an overbreeder. And so I also wanted to make sure that the impact that I have on the planet, that I pay it forward. And so when I think about Massive Change Network and the work that we do and the tools that we build, you really see it as a platform, not the solution, but a platform, a number of one of a number of many, let's just say, to sort of pave the way for people to think about how they can design their better future and how we can actually think about those seven generations because I look at my children and children's children. And I'd love for them to have the bounty and beauty and the experiences that I've had. And I'd love for them too, to be able to drink from the lake, swim in the water, you know, do those kinds of things which are really important and, you know, bring a lot of joy. So that's why. So I'm happy that you sort of acknowledge that this was the gist of the story. And basically the first question that came to my mind here was like, you probably don't wake up one day and then suddenly you realize that this is your mission and purpose and life. Like, I'm curious, how did you get here? Like, what's the story? You know, that's a very good question, Mark. And I love that question. It started, I've always been interested in how the world worked. I've always been interested in justice and fairness. I've always been interested in beauty and I've always been interested in doing things that have a positive impact. And I just sort of did these things. And then when I met my husband, he was a designer and I was interested in design, but like big D design. So at that, you know, fashion, cars, houses, architecture. But he started to explain to me that like everything was designed. So if I looked at a form, if I looked at, you know, building, if I looked at, you name it, like, you know, a bottle, he would explain that, you know, that was made by designer. And so it started to turn in my mind and I realized, well, like if everybody else could understand, like it's not like people in the humanities are not right. They're super smart, but there's a methodology and there's a way of thinking and design and for people who build and make things very, very different from the Cartesian model of the humanities. So I became obsessed.   Any volunteer organization I was working with at the time, even if you should get a designer, even though I was working in the book industry, you know, I didn't realize how much design was in that space. And then I thought, oh, wow, wow, this is really fascinating. And I can see that this could be a tool to really help people make their lives better, make their work work better, make the world better. And then I saw people using design in a less formal sense. So I would say that I was always design adjacent but didn't understand the disciplines. And then that's what sort of made me on this crusade thinking, okay, like I know there are tons of disciplines if we could bridge the divide so that people could understand that, you know, yes, you're designing and doing things, you're thinking about things, but there are people in the world who have expertise who can make it better, more beautiful, you know, more abundant, probably smarter than the layperson. So with that, it got me thinking, well, design, if I wanna make this organization better, if I wanna make my life better, if I wanna make anything better, I started thinking design is the way to go and then how I could do it with my set of skills, you know, so with journalism and research and information and data that I realized that I can use those things to tell stories and that's part of the design process. And so here we are, we kind of married that together. Yeah, sharing stories, beautiful. Thanks, really good to know and sort of grounds the conversation that's going to follow. Now, again, I was thinking, okay, designing for seven generations, that's big and we'll dive into some practical examples because you have some interesting stories and examples, how and what it actually means to do that. But before we do that, I'm curious, like how would you describe the current state of the design community? And I'm obviously asking for your perspective, like this is your take on it. And the reason I'm asking this is we're having this conversation about designing for seven generations, apparently we're not doing that yet or not yet enough. So how would you describe the current state of the design community, the design practice?  You know, when I see like bad design or I'm like, why would you do that? Why are they doing that? So the question I always ask is why? Why, why, why is it like this? And the more that I learned, I think that designers are the key to helping solving the greatest challenges on the planet right now and why is that? I feel that designers don't use their full set of skills, you know? And I'm on a really on a mission to change that. I feel like the current state of design, from my perspective, yes, it's great to be professional, but I feel that, you know, you need permission to color outside the lines a little bit. And so I find that very rigid. And so when you stay within your lane specifically, I feel that it constricts you a little bit in terms of the problems that you need to solve. And then I think it makes designers think about a single solitary beautiful object. And when you think about a single solitary beautiful object or program or thing, that's great, but it also has unintended consequences and the knock on effects. And so when you think, this is my opportunity to make this one beautiful thing and you hope that it lasts forever and it doesn't, it's relegated to the trash heap. Or if it's broken, you know, it doesn't biodegrade or it has some toxic materials in it. And so when I think about that, I know that designers know where the raw material comes from, how long it'll last, if it will or will not biodegrade, you know, they'll understand the full life cycle of that material and that object. And it's not like I don't want beautiful things. I love beautiful things, but I also would like it to last. So my problem right now is that we make this thing and it has this beauty, utility and delight, but we don't think about what we're pulling out of the earth and our environment to make it. And then it goes into the rubbish and it doesn't biodegrade. And it kind of breaks my heart a lot actually when I have to pitch out a stove, a fridge, a microwave, like think about it. So that's my problem. And the same goes for our built environment, you know? So we know better, it goes right back to Vitruvius and I know we can do better. And so I'm thinking maybe we need to be a little more holistic, think a little broader about, instead of the discrete object, which are lovely, but what can we do for scale? I mean, we're eight billion people, right? You're mentioning objects and sort of the sustainability and making sure that we still have natural resources in a few decades, but I'm confident you also mean like, it's not just a physical object, it's also the relationships we build. I'm thinking about the influence designers had on the social networks, the online social networks and like what the consequences are of those today, how they have eroded neighborhoods, how they have eroded friendships. And I guess that's also part of your mission. Is it? Question mark? Well, I think when we, as a designer, right, we need to think about more than just the thing, right? So those, these tools like our phones, you know, social media, Zoom, these are amazing, amazing, amazing, amazing tools and things of human ingenuity, right? I know I love that. But one of the things we need to think about is, well, what does that mean for your behavioral health? What does that mean for your physical health? What does that mean, you know, for our social networks? And you're right, I think designers could play a role in that too. I think, you know, when we go to autonomous vehicles, like that in itself is a great thing, but what does it mean for young people? Like how are you gonna get that meat cute? How are you gonna like bump into that, you know, cute boy or girl or whatever and start up a relationship? How do you actually act somebody out? How do you have reciprocity with not only humans, but you know, the plants and animals? And so I think when you think about that, I do think about that. And not that I'm like going back to the caveman days, like I love all these beautiful things, but it's more like, you know, can we keep the humanity? Can we design for relationships? Can we design and think about, we don't have to get everything, but this is where multiple intelligences come in, Mark. So like bring in not only just the designer, but the sociologist, the psychologist, the behaviorist, right, the, et cetera, et cetera, to look at what we're creating and does it have the desired effects? And what are the potential effects, short-term and long-term? And yeah, that's something that is challenging. I would love to dive into some examples because again, I'm going back to that phrase, designing for seven generations that seems so intangible, so huge. Like I know you have a story from a project you did in Saudi Arabia. Could you sort of take us through that and visualize, illustrate what that looks like? Right, so, you know, and thanks for asking about that project. So it was, it's Mecca, the Holy city of Mecca. And it is the holy site for Muslims where they could go to be safe and where they go to pray. And if you're a Muslim, you're not allowed there. And it was built, you know, thousands of years ago. And recently they called and they were having deaths and accidents from the ritual of moving around the space. And it had to do with, you know, over modern times you have huge buses and now we have huge populations. And so we have millions of people who are going through a space that was really designed for a few thousand. Even though they had a master plan, but you know, you can imagine a very ancient city that now has cars and buses and humans trying to make this round. And so people were getting killed. Well, it turns out that a holy site is actually also a design site. It's an urban design that you need to solve. And so when the governing bodies came and said, we need to do a master plan, they initially thought it should be for 20 years.  But as we were delving into our research and being curious, we're like, well, Mecca's been around for thousands of years. It's gonna be around for thousands more.  And they're like, well, what's the matter with the brief? And we said, well, the brief is fine. However, you know, if you design for the next 20 years we're gonna design solutions for how the world is today. And if we do that, we're gonna design it around the car. And, you know, we think the car is maybe 10 or 15 years out, Max, there's going to be something else. So could we imagine designing a platform? Could we imagine opening up the space and creating a zone of respect that would allow for any new invention and any new flourishing to happen down the road? And they agreed. So as a design, we sort of opened up the space and created the seven zones of respect. Made it a win-win for people to develop new buildings and hotels. And so that people could actually approach the city with the awe and wonder of the first time when you come to the Holy City, it becomes visible again. So that you remember your first time. So that's an example of designing for seven generations of leaving space for possibility and surprise and delight. Now, I have so many questions about this, but maybe one of the first would be if you're familiar with the quote-unquote existing design process, how would you, like, what's the biggest difference how you approach these types of briefs compared to maybe how they are approached in a quote-unquote traditional way? You know, I think that authenticity, culture and place are really important. I think when we look at it, we really try and understand like, what is it that you want? And what are you trying to do? And like, what do you really want? Like your hearts, your deep hearts desire, the things that you wouldn't say out loud necessarily, but we need to actually hold that and protect that and, you know, really put a guardrail around it, but then start to imagine if you want to get to the majesty and the beauty of the idea, then let's just take a step and let's just look at it historically. Let's see where you are, where you were, where you are today. And the practice that we have is there's no shame in blame. Like most of the problems we have, I want to say, Mark, those are success problems. We figure things out. That's what we do. It's human ingenuity. You know, you build with this, et cetera, ta-ta-ta-ta-ta. But for now, we can start to see for the first time, right? There's the fourth industrial revolution.  And so if you start looking at it comprehensively, we start to think, okay, well, we understand the challenges of materials. We understand the challenges of time, but how do we get beauty and delight for longevity by designing it smart and beautifully and sexy? So we have to make different choices, longer-term choices, right? We don't necessarily, I mean, as much as you'd like to build it off or make things, we would sort of say, actually, you know what? The best design decision right now? Don't touch it. Don't do anything. Leave room. Give it time. And it's hard. And imagine the story that you want to tell. So in this instance, it's like, it was a tragedy that people were getting harmed but we redesigned it for safety and then we redesigned it so that another generation can imagine how they're gonna use that space. So we share the dream with our clients. And like, what do you really wanna do?  Are you aware that if you use these materials that, you know, it's not that we preach? We're saying, so here's, let's look at a cooler, more beautiful, a more sustaining way of doing it. And generally, they come along and we have our design principles that we use too. So you have to think about demographics. You have to think about time material. You have to think that you're not separate from nature. You have to design the economy. So when you start looking at it holistically, you then can see where you make the best bets to have the best impact, to make the best product or system or what have you. So we are product agnostic. Very good. Solution agnostic. Yes. Can I answer your question, Mark? Sure, sort of, I guess, I'm not sure. This is a conversation. So there are only better questions. And I definitely paint a picture in my head. But the thing that's sort of left open is, okay, so if you don't design solutions or if your, maybe that's not what you said, but if your solution agnostic and you're designing for a platform, how do you, or do you make it actionable today? Because like you said, people are dying today. So there is a challenge that needs to be addressed and designing for the generations to come isn't going to help prevent these accidents. So how do you translate your ideas and solutions into tomorrow? Actually, and in today. So that's a great question. So one of the things that, you know, this is what's lovely is that we have all these tools available to us. And so one of the things that we did, we worked with Hanema Masani, who's like one of the world's greatest transportation design experts here at Northwestern University. And he has imaging software. So you can actually look at the city and you can see where the pain points are. And that today we could actually design solutions, right? To fix that as we start to redesign and remodel. So we actually always have an action in the solution for today. And when we research, we actually look for collaborators and folks who what's being done today that could actually help alleviate these problems. And what can we do for the future? In this case, if you start to imagine like a further couple of hundred other million people going through the site, we can start to model, you know, what that would look like in the fifth generation, right? Given the population growth, how we would need to design so that folks could move through that city safely, comfortably and respectfully, right? So we do do look for solutions today. We do listen because it's like, there's a tension between what our client thinks they want sometimes. And when we start to ask questions and listen, and maybe what they really want, and that's also the mystery of design language, right? Because it's like, if you're not a trained designer and architect, you sort of use this common language. So I need a building. I need a sign, you know, I need a logo. I need a whatever when they identify a problem, right? And so the job of the designer is to listen. So you know what? Maybe you don't need a building. Maybe you need a movement. Maybe you don't need a movement. Maybe you just need a film, you know?  And that's what I mean by agnostic because we, if you leave the process open enough at the beginning and you kind of learn like what they do and how they do it and why they do it and when they do it, you start to imagine that, oh, we could translate that. And the key is that almost every problem that any client faces, it's a communication problem. And so what we realize is like, well, tell us what you're doing and then let's figure that out. And then from there, we can design the communication. We can help you articulate what it is that you'd like to do, how you want to do it and why. Does that make sense? Yes, yes, it does. And what I'm getting sort of distilling from the story is of course you need to have solutions for today. But what I'm hearing you say is what you're adding to it is you're enriching it with a sort of heritage and also like a perspective on the future. So you're infusing the solutions of today and like the heritage can be a day, can be a week, can be a month. It can also be a thousand years. You know what, Mark? I think you need to come on our team, but exactly that's it because there's a story. What's the story that you want to tell? What's the legacy that you want to leave behind? How do you want to be remembered in the world for the things that you do? These are the questions that we ask and most people don't say, oh, you know what? Yeah, sign me up for trash in the environment and then add a soup song of, you know, like all the other bad things. They actually don't want that. People are generally very good. They may not understand the unintended consequences. And that's what I'm saying is as designers, we can actually help look at that, you know? So if somebody says, oh, I really want to be carbon neutral, we're like, okay, so let's talk about that. What does that mean for you? Can you do that? Like, don't make bets that you can't pay. So let's talk about it honestly. Like, what do you really want to do and how much of it do you want to do? And that's great. Like, let's get to there.  If you don't want it, please don't ask us to make it. We won't. You won't be happy and we won't be happy. So do what you love and the way that you love. But if you want to do something that's like a little bit like cowboy-ish, then it's like we're not the people for you. There will be others, but we would highly recommend that you might want to look at it a little differently. That's our job. Yeah, yeah. It's great how you, again, how you phrase it, the legacy part. Like for me, it's being between your heritage and your legacy. And then those are super, and then where today. And as a designer, it's a great place to be at, like understanding the heritage and designing your legacy, something like that. I know you have a second story, which I would love to dive in, because that's probably also super inspiring. You did a project with the government of Guatemala. Is that correct? Well, not the government. The citizens of Guatemala. Well, even better. Can you tell us a bit more about that? Absolutely. And this is still one of my favorite projects and my favorite people. I mean, we're still, it's almost, I would say, almost 20 years since we started this project. And we've made amazing friends. And so the story is the minister of education wrote a letter asking if we'd be willing to take on a design project to help the people of Guatemala learn to dream again. And she explained that they had 36 years of civil war and that while they have a democracy that each term, whatever government was in place, would leave. And so she knew that if this was a government initiative that it would be tossed out with the next regime. So she had citizens come together, but it was her role as the minister of education looking at the future of Guatemala and the children that they needed to have their eyes and their hearts open. And she said in her letter, they only know one thing, which is violence, war and conflict. And when we asked them about their future, they just couldn't imagine a future of beauty.  Like we take dreaming for granted. We take possibility for granted. We take our futures for granted. Let's go and see what we can do. But with the caveat, it's like, this has to be the people of Guatemala's project. We can't come in, like we have all the answers because we don't. But we do have tools. So when we arrived, I mean, they called us, we made a call on a Monday. We were there on a Friday and we didn't know anybody. We jumped on the plane with our kids and then we thought, wow, what if they're, but they're amazing people, but we just landed in the country four days and we started to look around and ask questions. And they were like, we want you to change the name of the country. We're like, no, we want you then to redesign. And we're like, no, no, no, why do you want to change the name of the country we started with? It's like, well, when the Spaniards, the place is called Guatemala and Mala means place and Guatemala means place and Mala means bad. So the Spaniards called it bad place. And he said, so how would you like to wake up the United States of bad place? And we thought, well, okay, you got a point. But when we thought, okay, let's think about it. It's the most beautiful country on the planet. It's evergreen, gorgeous. It's called the land of eternal spring. And yeah, the food's amazing. The colors are amazing. And we thought a member of our team who speaks Spanish just added an A and then it became Guate Amala, the love of Guate and they love that. So then we started to convene. And what we found was that, and this project was profound for our way of thinking was that, yes, there was 36 years of civil war. Yes, the records were difficult to find. You couldn't find who owned what, et cetera. But it turned out that there were hundreds of people who were also working on the piece. Thousands of people who were in their individual lives doing whatever they could. And so, and people who hadn't spoken to each other for decades because of whatever side they were on the war. So naive Canadians that we are, we thought, let's bring everybody together. And they came together, bless them. And so we started to ask questions and we made a safe space. And then they realized that we're working on the same thing. And then we identified 200 organizations within this country that we're working on reconstruction and designing the piece. So we created a movement. We said, let's get together, the Guate Amala movement. We have tools, we've got designers. We will give you everything, ask us everything. We will show you our full arsenal of skills to bring people together to design events, et cetera, which they already had. And that's when we realized the power of optimism, the power of a group of folks, tools, not us doing it, to help them reimagine their future. And the great part of that, sorry, Mark, was that after we'd done that design work with them, the Art Institute of Chicago really loved the work. And so their work for their movement around the love of Guatemala is now part of the permanent collection of the Art Gallery of Chicago, the Art Institute of Chicago.  And that just really changed how we designed everything. How would you describe that change? What was the change and how you design? Well, the change is that you really have to be humble. You really have to listen. You realize that people's lives are at stake if you make the wrong design decisions, if you're really arrogant, if you're not careful. So that notion of unintended consequences, you know, it's not that you're withholding, but you have to be deeply respectful of the process, deeply respectful of the people that are there, really understand culturally what is okay and what's not okay and not to make any assumptions about anything and actually a tremendous amount of community consultation, like more than you need, like every voice needs to be heard. So what I find super inspiring in this example and it shows, it speaks to what you mentioned earlier is that the movement is the quote unquote solution and whatever tangible artifact comes out of the movement will be different today, will be different in five years and 10 years, but as long as these relationships are there, these networks are there, as this is facilitated and nurtured as a community, like it will adapt and find solutions to the actual day-to-day challenges. And I hope people realize that something like that, something like a movement is also what these are. Is something you can design and facilitate and quote unquote create as a designer? 100% Mark. And so that's why we look at like, you leave the platform open, like what is the solution? And in this case, what was really amazing, 10 years in, when we were looking at rebuilding civil society and institutions and reinvesting in Guatemala and the young families that had to flee now want to be there and have their children grow up there, there was a very tricky situation where one of the ministers of the country was shot and it was murdered and it was all over the news. And my thought was, oh, you know, this is tricky. The group, they then flew to Chicago and we were just talking about, well, what to do? So normally under those circumstances, there'd be regime change, right? Because it's one side hurt the other. And in this case, the group came up with that note, we're gonna use the Guate, the love of Guate movement. We're gonna have due process of the law.  And so basically these leaders, community leaders said, you know what, we're not going to allow this to happen. That's the old days. We're gonna use civil process. And so we worked with them to just design the videos and so on. Again, it's organic, it's what's natural to them. And they went back and they did have an investigation and it turned out that what they thought were the facts weren't. And so due process of the law did work and that there were other forces at play. And that was really gratifying that you can actually really use design when people want it to facilitate the behaviors that you'd like in the society that you're rebuilding. A few things that sort of, I wanna highlight, you mentioned 10 years into the project, like that's a scale that most people don't think about or don't get the opportunity to work on, unfortunately. And the other thing you mentioned is like people wanting design, like they have to invite it in, they have to be open to it. Now, the two projects and the two stories we just talked about, I noticed that they are both sort of in the public domain. Do you see examples of commercial organizations also embracing this? Because I feel that it's less common to think in terms of legacy and generations in that space. I, you know, Mark, that's a good question, but you'd be surprised. I think that, I get an example, I can use this Coca-Cola. You know, and again, that's like a 10 years, 15 years. We have long relationships with our clients. So our work is really quite relational rather than transactional. I don't know if that's good for business, but it seems to be good for friendships for us. But it's like, you know, we really, and maybe that's not professional, but we actually need to feel like, you know, we could hang out together if you will. So it's really relational and they go a long time and you have to have a belief in what they're doing. And so the case with Coca-Cola and their sustainability platform, you know, early days, this was a while ago, you know, one of the best advice, the best advice that Bruce had given is like, I know you're interested in sustainability, but don't say anything. Don't announce, don't make it a program. Don't make it a PSA. Just let's quietly figure out the work. And that's, the big learning from that project was the role that design can play in operations. So, and this was very instructional because at the beginning, you know, the Frigerators from Coca-Cola, you know, they have a facing on them and then every seven years they redesign them. And then after 14 years, they need to be recycled and, you know, they've lost their value and their ability to function as a cooler, et cetera.  And so when we were doing our research, it came to the point where it was like, well, why don't you have your designers involved in this? And they said, well, our designers, they're out of left field, I don't know.  And we thought, that's strange because like designers are really good at, you know, working within a budget and they understand like the utility and the life of the thing. So why is that such a problem?  So if you brought your designers in at the beginning, at the strategy to say, these have a five-year, these have a seven-year, these have a 15-year lifespan, they would design differently, they would design for the time and material of that object. And we realized Coca-Cola is the smartest, biggest, like the 140-year-old brand if they weren't doing that, everyone else was. So that made us go on a mission to say like, when we work on a project, we really look at either operations or we look at growth or we look at inspiration from the CEO's office. And then from there, we can determine what's our design process. So in that case, Coca-Cola working on recycling, we did a brand new brand for live positively to have the positive aspect of the full cycle of a material. So one thing we recommended is make products at the end, which they did. So you've got like beautiful things from Emaco and headphones. The second is very quiet. I was in a movie theater and the curtains go up, the ad goes up, there's popcorn and there's Coca-Cola and they announced the restoration of all the watersheds. Now, everyone was in the popcorn, I burst into tears because I realized that they're restoring the environment for the water. Another recommendation that we had was like, well, how do we actually empower people in there? Well, they have like $20 million, 20 million women who, five million women who started businesses, right? Who can feed their family, educate their villages, et cetera, build hospitals. So if you start looking at it, there's so much public good when you think about it and you build these relationships around being sustainable. Wow, again, there's so much to unpack there, but so it's encouraging that also commercial businesses are looking into this and thinking beyond the quarterly cycles, although not everybody. And I think you have to get the opportunity and the trust and like you said, relationships are definitely key there to, yeah, to let businesses be informed by designers who think beyond the thing that's right in front of them. Sort of steering towards the end of our conversation, there are still a few questions left, which I'm really curious about. One of them is if you take this into account and that it is possible and you're demonstrating that it's possible, what would you say? What does this require from the existing design community to be able to accelerate this and adopt this quicker, faster? You know, it's a two-way street and I feel that there's a translation that needs to happen and I think that's, and I think more and more firms are starting to realize that. So there are things, and my husband's like a great designer, there are things that designers do and know and understand that are just a given as part of your toolkit.  And so by taking a step back and it is weird but you need to actually unpack everything that you've learned and start with Design 101 when you're meeting a new client or corporation and so on and explain like how, one, how you can be of service and two, what I've learned is not to point out how bad everything is. So you just sort of like go, okay, so no judgment. So you have to learn to like not judge and there's no shame and blame. So it's like, okay, well, here's the situation and here's where we are right now. So gently through research, through talking, have a conversation about what you can do and the beautiful thing that designers have is you have the ability to show the future. And that's really what your clients want. They actually wanna understand where they are today and how they can get clarity and where they can be in the future so that they can be secure, whether it's a mom and pop shop or a corporation. And the skill that I would offer that is magic for whatever your projects you're working on as designers is if you can show the presence and systematically get there, even if you don't know the answer but you have some of those steps, it's enormously helpful to the rest of the world. You'd have the most genius person on the planet but designers work at the intersection of art, science and technology. And when you put the three of those together, right? That's, you know, our friend Julio, Tina calls it nexus and that's where design works, it's synthesis. So if you don't have something that scientifically sounds, it's not gonna work. If it's beautiful, if it's not beautiful, you can't persuade anyone to do it. And if you're not using the best tools to actually deliver, it's going to fail. So with that, that knowledge that you have, you have the ability to unpack what the client needs and wants and the ability to repack what it is that they would like and what they'd like to use for their future. So I would offer just take a step back and you don't have to overstep or prove anything but it's just like, there's so many solutions to what they need and you just may gently offer and then you can show them, you can give it to them and 2D, 3D, digital, whatever, they'll go, oh, aha. And that's how you build trust so that they can see, you make the invisible visible. Again, there are so many things I'm taking and learning from this conversation and the sense-making part is definitely part of the design as we know it and using our tools and methods to uncover that, show it, like make it really tangible and then also repackaging it or reforming it or reframing it into a better future. Yeah, that's awesome. I'm curious like you're on a journey, this is going to continue for a lot more years hopefully but if you look back to your last five years, what's the thing you wish you would have known five years ago? That everything strangely, this is gonna sounds very weird but even the worst situation is gonna be okay. Like it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter. Like if it's just mistakes, they happen and guess what, they can be remedied. And even if you think something is catastrophic, even if you can see something catastrophic happening, it's right before your very eyes and it happens, it happens. But there's a solution for that. And so I would say everyone, yes, we should be diligent and concerned but don't be scared and don't panic. There is a way out and generally it involves design and you have the full skills and faculty to just take a step back. I would offer widen the brief, really look at it holistically but there are solutions right there at hand and you have them within you and I think just being compassionate and kind for the situation and for the people and realize that for the most part it doesn't come from a place of malfeasance and that, you know what, like there are solutions and you can be part of that. So that's, I think the big learning from five years ago. And something related to this and that sort of reflects on this episode is if somebody has made it all the way to this part of the episode, what is the one thing you hope they at least take away from it?  It's all within you. You have the tools and the skill set and the mindset. So I say be brave and be kind. Go for it. Be brave, be kind and go for it. Basically awesome. For if people are interested in following your work, what's the best way to do that? Yeah, massivechangenetwork.com. We're here and everywhere. We're here and everywhere. I'll make sure to add all the relevant links in the show notes, also to your podcast, also to all the other relevant social media profiles. Bisi, thanks so much for coming on, sharing a few of your stories. We could have talked about them for many hours to come. Super inspiring work, what you're doing. Thank you and keep on doing it. Mark, thank you so much. It's just been my greatest pleasure to speak with you and your audience, designers of the world. Let's have a party and let's do it. Thank you. Thank you. Awesome that you made it all the way till the end of this conversation. I really hope that you enjoyed it and found it inspiring. If you did, make sure to leave a short comment down below and if you'd like to see more, make sure to click that subscribe button so you'll be notified when new conversations come out. Thanks so much for watching and I'll catch you very soon in the next video.


Welcome to another EDUCAUSE community conversation. Today we're talking about analytics and data, and I'm joined by two leaders of the Foothill Danza Community College District, Chancellor Judy Minor and CIO Joe Murrow, who's also a former EDUCAUSE board member. Welcome, Judy. Welcome, Joe. I wanted to start with a goofy recollection. So I remember back in 2012, there was an interview in EDUCAUSE Review, and it was about analytics. And the title was No More Excuses. And it makes me think every institution has to reach a point where they decide that the imperative to do analytics becomes bigger than the hesitations and the doubts and the questions. When did you reach that point at Foothill Danza? I would say that we really began a deep dive into analytics, probably after the Great Recession in 2009. It forced us because of the drops in enrollments and just a number of other demographic changes in Silicon Valley for us to begin thinking about our place in the larger social context. Nationally, community colleges are under a certain amount of stress these days. Financially, everyone is. In terms of enrollments, community colleges are feeling that strain more than ever. How do you make the case for investing in analytics and data at a time when resources are at a low? When I think about making a case for data analytics and the costs that's there, I'd like to start by saying, if we agree as a community on our institutional values and goals, then data and participatory governance are essential elements in achieving those goals. So evidence-based strategies will certainly be compelling, but highly inclusive dialogue and even debate will create more commitment to an ownership of the work to be done at the operational level. The biggest investment that we need to be prepared to make is time. I think that for most institutions, we have gobs of data. We have the tools to visualize that data, to report on that data, but developing a culture of data ingestion, if you will, by all of those governance groups and planning groups and management groups and really making the time to understand what the data says, to challenge it if we don't agree. But to be prepared to be surprised. We published a statement along with Nukubo and the Association for Institutional Research, and it's changewithanalytics.com. And in it, we said that if you're going to do analytics, those initiatives should be driven by specific outcomes, the specific results you want. I'm curious, what were your top three or top two or top outcomes that you were hoping to change with analytics? The goals that we have at Foothill-Dianza are really about student access and success. So I would put maybe at the top of the list our dual mission of transfer and employability as a function of our transfer preparation and our career technical education programs. Those are equally important to us. And they're not necessarily mutually exclusive, even though some people might view it that way. Certainly, having an increase in the diversity of the students who go into various areas where we have had an underrepresentation, whether it's around ethnicity or gender or ability or gender identity, that's really important to us that we prepare the most diverse population of students for the world that they are entering as workers. And I would say in the third area that I would want to look at, is that cultural shift for the institution? I think it's really important, having picked up on something that Joe has said about being surprised by data. I really like that approach that we may discover things that we didn't know about the way we're operating. And so to be very open to say the data need to inform ways that we would change and not just looking for the support for opinions that we've held or practices that we've had in the institution in a very traditional way.


Ahead on early birds, the Falcons are trying to start the New Year off right with a win over the Cardinals. How it can happen, plus go one-on-one with Desmond Ritter. Don't want to miss the quarterback, and before we get to New Year's Day, it's a showdown on New Year's Eve. We're talking all things Peach Bowl. Georgia, Ohio State tonight on Early Birds. Happy your favorite, Joe, and let's talk Falcons football on Early Birds, presented by Mercedes-Benz. Good morning and welcome into Early Birds. He's DJ. I'm Justin. Happy New Year's Eve. Shock your Aida countdown. You got any plans tonight? Happy new year. Maybe a little bit of playing, something going on a little bit later, but I'll go with that soon. Watch a little football if you can. There's a good game, I think, and there's a good one tomorrow. Let's start 2023 with a win. Let's get things started here with the opening drive. Falcons and Cardinals tomorrow on Fox 5. It'll be start number three shock for Desmond Ritter at quarterback. The rookie seemed like he took some strides last weekend in Baltimore. What do you see from him? Yeah, more poise this week. I thought the pass game was a little bit more efficient in this game. It's a good job of getting out and making plays down the field. Obviously more efficient 22 or 33, over 200 yards, and guys made plays. I thought he had complete control of the line of scrimmage. I thought he did a lot of things at the line of scrimmage. That was really good. Changing plays. So you saw him grow, not only at the line of scrimmage, but also down the field.  Two games. I am pressed with the rookie, offensive coordinator Dave Ragone. There's things to grow from. There's things to learn from, but there's things in which he handled for his first start. I've been around Ricky quarterbacks, including myself. And I thought he did a really, really good job of the parts that aren't seen in terms of Des is up for another challenge. And we have to prepare him that way. And it'll be great for not just him, but the other ten guys in the huddle with him. Tomorrow, and as we continue on the opening drive, something we're not watching for, a return to the playoffs. Yeah, it's off the table now. Everybody else in the NFC South won last week, so the foul officially eliminated. So DJ, two games to play. Of course they want to win. They're not tanking for draft picks. But do you worry that motivation might slip a little? No, not at all, because you've got a lot of guys who are one year deal. A lot of guys who are trying to make other teams or trying to make this organization and play on the team next year. So you want to put good things on tape.  You probably won't be on a team next year. So you're playing for your NFL life and NFL career going forward. And Arthur Smith knows there's still a ton to play for in the next two games. It's important to win, regardless of building short term. Obviously we came up short of our goal, you know. But we need to finish this outright. We need to win. And then we need to go into the off season. We'll have areas to address there. But this week is the most important thing for us professionally and every guy in that locker room. That's the culture you're trying to, you know, the competition you have. And can you go back and look at these games and get close? But obviously we came up short. But we're here to win. And win this week and we'll get the best guys out there. And as we wrap up the opening drive, let's talk a little cardinal, shall we? One of their best players is about to retire. J.J. Watt just announced this is going to be his last season. It's not like the big guy slowed down at all. Nine and a half sacks this year. And he's not somebody that Desmond Ritter wants to spend a whole lot of face time with tomorrow. No, you're talking about a guy who's a three time defensive player to your five time I'll pro. He understands what it takes to get to the quarterback.  So you got to make sure you know where he's at at all times and don't do things like this, like not blocking. He is one of those type of guys that can absolutely still change the game. Even though he's about to retire, he is absolutely one of the best and will be in Canton pretty soon. Block him. Easier said than done for J.J. Watt. Well, welcome into Early Birds alongside DJ Shockley. I'm Justin Felder. We've got the New Year's decorations. And let me ask you for any Falcons fans who are resolving to see their team lose these last couple in order to get a better draft pick. What would your message be to those fans? I say I understand, but it's not going to happen.  So there's no way these guys go out and say, let's lose for a guy that we don't even know. That's going to be on our team next year. They're going to play hard. They're going to play just as hard as they played all year. So don't expect them to give up any. That's certainly the attitude of the team. Well, DJ from Phoenix, Arizona, all the way to Tacoma. Keep on rocking over to the film room. That was from our producer, Miles Garrett. I thought it was pretty good. Okay, Miles, you're coming through with it. Miles, I'm going to tip my hat to you. In the film room in just a few. But first, we haven't had the chance to sit down too often with the Falcons. Rookie quarterback Desmond Ritter. Now that he's the starter though, we're getting to learn a little bit more about the Falcons third round draft pick out of Cincinnati, including how he feels getting the chance to play in front of his home fans at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, a place that before this season, he was met with more booze than cheers. Our Kelly Price went one-on-one with Ritter this week. Is it crazy to think about your first start at Mercedes-Benz Stadium and then one of the last times kind of that you played there was when you were at Cincinnati in a bowl game?  So I get told about it a lot. So now it'll be exciting to go into Mercedes-Benz and get a win and finally wipe that slate of the loss out of here. And to not have, you know, opposing fans and to not have the weather situation, are you excited to have kind of a little bit more of a normal situation to walk into for start three? Of course, a quarterback, you know, will be happy with perfect conditions and I know Koo will be happy too with, you know, the roof closed and everything. So, you know, there's a certain few positions on the field that like when it's perfect weather and then others like it a little dirty. So, you know, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter, but obviously it helps out. I think the most interesting thing to me that you said last week was about how the pocket was cleaner than you're maybe used to at Cincinnati or in your previous years. And you wanted to let the picture kind of develop more in this last start. How do you feel like you did with that? I feel like I did pretty well, you know, going back and watching the film. And it wasn't, you know, necessarily rushing out of the pocket like up and through the pocket more so just pushing up in the pocket. Whereas if you went back and watched the film this past week, I felt like I did a good job of just staying subtle within the pocket, just slowly climbing instead of, you know, urgently pushing up forward. And I thought I did a good job of letting everything develop kind of behind you and just see it. What's kind of your goal in these last two games this season? To finish. You know, I think that's my goal. I think that's our team's goal. This is just finish these last throughout strong. Obviously, we want to get a win. You know, we've been on a little losing streak, but we want to finish this season, you know, on top and on a high. We've had an up and down roller coaster type of year and everyone just kind of wants to finish, you know, on the good note. And so that's, you know, with these two wins and, you know, we're taking it day by day. And like I said out there, just kind of, you know, being where our feet are daily. It's time to get some game intel from shock. You're invited into the film room. So cut the lights and let's get started. All right, we've talked about the offense a lot and how they have kind of progressed and things have gone well with Desmond Ritter now and the fold. But let's talk about this defense. This defense has played really well throughout these last couple of ballgames and really inside the red zone is where they really have done a good job. Now, this is a second play down the red zone where you're going to get him across the backside and it's just a play-acting. You're trying to funnel this guy out here to get him here. But the defense has such a good job of keeping eyes on the quarterback and watching the play get started. There's going to be nowhere for him to go at the football. Look, he has clamped up. Nowhere for him to go. Nowhere for him to go. And he has a good job of now sticking to him. And now, look at the defensive players' eyes here. Look at everybody's eyes. They're looking in the backfield, looking at the quarterback. Even Troy Anderson, the young rookie, has come back off the play-action and now as the play continues, you're going to see there's really nowhere for him to go. Now, the quarterback wants to scramble and look at these guys still plastering to their guys. Still plastering to their guys on the backside. But best thing is, look at these eyes of the guys on the backside. This is what you like down here. This is what I'm talking about. It's so stingy in the red zone. They're not allowing their defenders to get open. They're offering to get open. And now, even when he scrambles, nowhere for him to go to football. Nowhere for him to go to football. This is just a nice job of rallying into the football. I'm doing a good job of not allowing him to get it. So this Falcons defense has been really good in the red zone. We need to keep it up for the next two games, Justin. Yeah, Shucks. Defensive are going to take another step forward tomorrow against Arizona. Well, what or what will we discuss in the college football segment this week? I think we'll find something, maybe a deep dive on the Peach Bowl, Stetson Bennett and Company, Georgia and Ohio State tonight, plus. I think a huge part of it is pre-snap. And so understanding the play and then the track of the back. It's not about the destination. It's how you get there. That's Chris Lindstrom's mentality in run blocking. He shows you next and going deep. Hey Falcons fans, score a touchdown with low tire prices at Mavis Tires and Bricks. The official tire retailer of the Atlanta Falcons. Visit MavisTire.com to find a store near you. This is presented by Mercedes Benz, the best or none. And brought to you by Georgia Latter. Today could be the day. By Truist, committed to a better future. And by Home Depot, how doers get more done? Which gears and talk a little college ball brought to you by Truist? BB&T and Suntrust are now Truist. Here again is Fox 5's Justin Felder. Welcome back into Early Birds here with former Ohio State legend Michael Jenkins. We got a little college football game tonight. How are you feeling? A little something. I feel great. It's going to be a good one. Your buck guys, DJ's, dogs. Hopefully you guys can keep it civil, at least for the length of this show. Let's talk about the Peach Bowl semifinals tonight. Might just end this game when the ball drops. It's starting late. Let's go deep on this game. We'll start things off when Georgia has the ball.  So what's going to be the buck guys' game plan against Georgia? We have to limit the big plays. These guys with the running game, Akintosh, those guys back there, they obviously Brock Bowers. McConkie has always hit big plays. Seems to always get a big play. So just limiting the big plays and getting off the field on third down for Ohio State defense. Stetson Bennett, lots of good things to say about this buck guy defense. Here's a listen. First of all, they have really good players and they execute their system. You know, they try to cause havoc. They can come from a lot of different places. You know, they do their assignment and in order for us to be successful, we have to do ours. Let me go back to a point you made a moment ago. Those Georgia tight ends, Brock Bowers, Darnell Washington particularly, how might your buck guys try to slow them down? It's a tough task.  I don't know. Bowers is probably one of the fastest tight ends I've ever seen. So it's going to be a tough challenge for those guys, but they face some good tight ends. You know, a tight end up in Notre Dame, a great tight end, but they're going to have to be on their A game at all times because Georgia does a great job of getting those guys the ball. Let's flip things over to when your buck guys have the ball and this is really going to be two great units, right? Ohio State, the number two scoring offense in the FBS. Georgia, the number two scoring defense. So who's got the edge because it seems like a strength against strength. It really is strength against strength. And we're going to have to try to match the physicality of that Jalen Carter and that front seven that they have. Obviously some great plays on the back end with Ringo and Smith and all Americans. So it's going to be a tough task on offense to move the ball consistently and stay on schedule. Here's what the dogs have been telling us this week. He's an elite passer, very poised with his game. And you could tell they run everything through him. So like I say, like you say, coach say he got legs. He could pretty much do it all. You know, he was a hard man following this. And that just says enough for the kind of player he is. We do what we do. But Ohio State's up and down the field in the first half. Michigan got off the field on third down and they had a couple of turnovers. Let's talk a little bit more about your Buckeyes. One thing hearing from them talking all week long here in Atlanta is they're really embracing this whole underdog thing. I see that smile right there. Because it's Ohio State, man. They're never underdogs. It's been years since Vegas has thought they were underdogs. So can that little bit of motivation help them? I think so. You go back to the Clemson College Football Playoff where they were underdogs in that game. End up winning 49-28. So they're embracing this underdog role. They know it's more of a home game for Georgia. But they're ready. They're going to be prepared to kind of show and show out from the last game they had that second half against Michigan. Boy, are they tired of talking about that. Michigan game here's to Ohio State's players talking about facing the number one team in the land. Me personally. I'm glad we could play them in Atlanta in their kind of home arena. Kind of always like being an underdog in the game. So I'm just excited. I do feel like people are counting us out with that. That's fine. I mean we've been counting out plenty of times. This is how you want to play Georgia here. Their house pretty much. And yeah, since I've been here it's pretty much been Ohio against the world. So I think this game even exemplifies that as well. Ohio against the world. Our Zaxby's indescribably good game of the week. We'll take a guess. Come on, there's another playoff game, but whatever. Ohio State and Georgia APM tonight at the Ben's pretty good way to ring in the new year. So we know how DJ feels about this one. Before we send it over to him, you got a message for your buddy, the former Georgia player. Yeah, I mean, he said 45-28 was going to be the score in Georgia. I don't think that's going to happen. That's what he's saying. DJ, any response? Well, I didn't say that they were going to win either. So, all good, baby. So, Jake, looking forward to it tonight, baby. All right, nonetheless, the Season Falcons offensive line of Chris Lichom has been one of the best at his position all season. Part of the reason for that has been his ability to navigate himself and to block his assignments that fit where the play is going. He explains in this week's Going Deep. I think a huge part of it is pre-snap. And so understanding the play and then the track of the back. Where the back's going to go and how that's going to affect the defense. So if I'm the, we call it covered or like uncovered guy, so if I'm the guy who I know I'm going to, or pre-snap, I'm thinking I'm the one coming off the combination. I like to paint an X in my mind of where the linebacker is going to be. So like, you can never go where the guy is. And so, say it's like wide zone outside or something like that. I'll usually try and go one guy past so I'll look one guy past.  And that's kind of how I think about it as a guy coming up to linebackers. Interesting stuff there from Chris Lindstrom. All right, coming up, we dive a little further into the process of Desmond Ritter. DJ will help break it down later in the show. Well, last week we showed you the inside of the Falcons Spark Laboratory over in Flowery Branch, but that was just a little sneak peek. There's an entire room inside the lab dedicated to enhancing athlete performance in addition to helping those same athletes recover later. And that's the focus of this week's Emery Road to Recovery. This is a motion analysis lab that's embedded with cameras throughout. So we have this large volume that allows us to measure athlete performance as they're doing a variety of athlete tasks. As you see, our athlete here is performing a quarterback task in virtual reality where they're competing against avatars to measure their performance, but also we can measure their biome and can'ts with high fidelity. So what the biggest problem in the NFL today is soft tissue injuries, and particularly hamstring injuries. Those are causing the most time loss in sport. So what we're doing here at the Falcons is we're trying to find ways that we can better predict who's going to have an injury and better guide them on when they should return to sport. So what we see here is a multi-level assessment of an athlete's muscular function and structural integrity. By doing that, we can come over here and we can combine it with their running mechanics. So we had the athletes running at maximum max speed and we can quantify how they're moving with how their muscle structure and function and we can bring that together and we think that we can better predict who's going to have a hamstring injury and better guide them return to sport once they have had that. Alright, as a forward QB I know a thing or two about pre-snap reads but what goes on through the mind of Desmond Ritter doing that process? I'll break it down next. This has been presented to you by Mercedes-Benz, the best or nothing. Hey Falcons fans score a touchdown with low tire prices at Mavis tires and brakes the official tire retailer of the Atlanta Falcons. Visit MavisTire.com to find a store near you. Alright, time for our play of the day presented by Lucra, the new friendly competition app. The question this week Shock, will Tyler Algier rush for over 100 yards against the Cardinals? Yes, the Cardinals are not good and we're ready for it so we will absolutely give up over 100 yards. The rookie's got a chance at a thousand yards. If you want to compete head to head with your friends just scan the QR code on your screen and Shock, there's one thing that you asked our Kelly Price to ask Desmond Ritter about when they sat down this week for the first time in his process before a snap. Take a listen, we'll get your reaction. Here's what Ritter said. For me it's coming out ID in the front checking whether it's four down, five down and then checking the safeties whether it's one high, two high looking out to the corners seeing if they're in the man's zone teller or not whether they're eyes on them impressed the man or kind of eyes inside whether it's corner and then you know you got a lot of teams especially in the NFL who do a lot of you know false rotation sometimes those backers tell you a lot too. That's pretty interesting. Number one, DJ, your reaction and number two maybe translated into English for the rest of us. I love it. In translation, he has to see the entire field and see everything happening for one particular play to another so I love the process he's going through before the ball is even snapping. It gives a phase, a little snapshot into all the things that goes in for a quarterback before the ball even snaps. We hear about so often as a mature beyond his years maybe that's just a little bit of a taste of being at their facility all year long. Well, that's it for us here on Early Birds. Happy New Year to everybody. Enjoy the peaceful those of you watching. Thanks for joining us. Have a good morning and a great 2023.


Just look how crazy that is. I'm in a dark room now. That's just the pigment. Hi, everybody And welcome back to the average today I've got something really exciting because I have bought this Lits glow-in-the-dark paint and I've been waiting to try this for a while and share it with you guys because I thought it'd be Something really cool. I've done a few preliminary sketches. So I'm ready to go I've got my idea and we're gonna try this out basically what you have to do with this lit paint is this is the pigment So you mix it with this super base and this is not sponsored by the way. I bought this for myself I've never mixed my own pigments before so we're gonna see how that works out. So let's just Go with it. Shall we? Okay, I'm gonna leave that for now to sit and let's get on with the drawing Okay, guys, let me tell you something I was a little bit intimidated by this pigment and mixing it myself because I've never mixed Pigments before and I thought this was gonna be difficult But actually it was not it was super easy and it worked out really nicely I did a few preliminary sketches for this illustration today and What I found on Instagram and Pinterest for me was this kind of explorer type woman and I drew like a realistic portrait in my sketchbook of her and then I Stylized it a bit to look a bit more like this and posed her and I thought when I wanted to do was have this Explorer lady just searching this jungle type Land and maybe some ghosts in the background chasing her and she's just not aware of it and not really seeing it just enjoying herself and then I could play with using lots of jungle type themes and Different painting techniques that I wanted to try in within an illustration So I'm doing this paint layering technique that I've talked about a couple of times and it's where you just with watercolors You work light to dark as always, but then you kind of cut out shapes with your Washes and then it gets steadily darker and darker and darker, which you will see happening here. I Really like this technique and I've always wanted to try and use it in combination with this sort of cartoony style that I have And I think it works really well, especially in the context of this piece Of course, I wanted to add a little cat there to the Explorer story too So she's not alone. She's with her little buddy And I think what I wanted to do was just have the cat looking back at the ghost like hey Wait a second. We're in danger. I sort of Wallace and Gromit type of Story where Gromit the dog is noticing all these things going down and Wallace is just like in his own head So I like that kind of Storyline so I wanted to emulate that within justice illustration And I think this is a really fun piece because I think I can really see a story behind this one And I think what helped me is that I did a lot of preliminary work last night to kind of get the final illustration down So let's talk about color. I've been using a lot of blues and purples and pinks recently I say recently. I think my whole life I've been using those combinations of colors and I'm trying to really stem away from using them But in the end this kind of came out that sort of color scheme as well Even though I made it a point in my sort of preliminary work to do color tests and stuff And I wanted to try out doing just a lot of different greens and maybe some oranges But as I went it just didn't turn out that way so I really have to try harder to try to try and branch out and mix up the color style because I Can't really have all my pieces of work always having the same color scheme. It just it doesn't really work So I need to push a little bit more maybe ban myself in the next piece from using blues and purples and pinks and Just using all the other colors that are available to me that I seem to dislike so much I used a lot of the Molotow Paint pens in this piece and I think they worked really nicely They made things just pop a little bit more and yeah, I just I really enjoyed doing this piece I used the gouache but I use them a bit like watercolors So they're less opaque than normal. They just I used a lot of water within them and I think they work They've worked quite nicely. I will say that the paper I used is this one that I've had for a while and It's not as nice as just a really good watercolor paper So I wish I had had better paper, but it does the job. I think it's okay for what it is Touching on the color scheme again I'm really glad that I made the center piece of this illustration really green and I stuck to my guns on that one I just think it works quite well because it's different to the outside It's a bit of a strange composition because I wanted to have a line Lined border where I can paint the glow in the dark paint around her and make her the center point of this illustration and then have different leaves around the outside and maybe different color scheme because I think it emulates that feeling of her being in This jungle and traveling quite quickly and seeing all this array of different scenery Before I did this I did a few sketches in my sketchbook where she was traveling and the landscape was quite normal And it wasn't really this abstract I guess you could say and it didn't it just didn't seem as Visually interesting so I wanted to do something a bit different And I think this works nicely and it helps as well to take the eye away from the background a little bit because I think if I had an Over-detailed background it would have brought the eye to that instead of the main character and then the ghosts So I think it works. Let me know what you think I also wanted to add some little faces to these rocks that she was stepping on I had the idea that maybe these are the graves of the ghosts and they sort of have their own Personality and the ghosts come up out of these things and she's just nonchalantly stepping on them And I don't know I think that was kind of my idea with this and I think it's kind of cute and not that spooky So it it works. I think it's a cute little illustration I had to go over the line work for her obviously because I had painted with watercolors So it dulled the line of the ink quite a lot and I think once I went over that it really helped her pop off the page again And I'm glad I did that I just think it looks quite nice and I'm really proud of this piece And I'm glad that I did all that preliminary work because I think this is something that I've been the most proud of For a while now so it shows that I keep learning this lesson if you've been watching me for a while I keep learning this lesson of do the preliminary work and then the final piece will be much better But no I always forget So to talk a little bit about the lip paint, it's made by this man called Stuart Semple. You might have heard of him He's the guy who took on Anish Kapoor. Anish Kapoor being quite a famous artist I don't really want to speak about him So if you're interested in him, you can look him up But he claimed this black pigment color that was all devoid of light So it looks really really dark black and then he claimed the rights to it So nobody else on the planet except for Anish Kapoor could use this black So Stuart Semple, I think I've been saying his name right Invented a black 2.0 and it's basically a very very close formula to that pigment That anyone can use and if you want to use it and buy it You have to click on a waiver that says you're not giving it to Anish Kapoor Which is quite funny. So this is another product from their company I've bought a few things from them that I'm going to be testing as the weeks go by Because I really like the product center when I try and use them individually And give them a fair amount of time to be used on each piece And yeah, I just think this is really fun And you will see now how good the actual glow in the dark paint is I was actually really pleasantly surprised because I thought yeah, it will be alright I'm sure it'll be like a glow in the dark paint, it'll be okay But you're going to see how good it is right now Okay, so that's the final piece and it looks kind of cool But I think it will look even cooler when we look at it under the um Under the darkness that doesn't make sense when we look at it in darkness Let's have a look and also nobody blamed me for this I know that annoys you because it annoys me but overall I really like this piece I think it works really well and I really like the fact that I did this kind of technique Because I wanted to kind of create that kind of jungle feel And I really like it Okay guys, we are in the darkest room of my house It's a small bathroom where there are no windows And I just have to show you how insane does this look That's so crazy and awesome Obviously I need to get a little bit used to painting with the glow in the dark solution Because it does look a little bit splotchy But I think that's kind of on me I think that's awesome Lights on Lights off That's it for me guys Thanks for watching Please come back And I will see you next time Bye


For more videos on people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Sao Paulo State in Brazil has announced code-read COVID-19 restrictions as the country witnessed a record number of deaths in the last two days. In just more than a year since the first registered case, more than 10.7 million people have been infected and more than 259,000 people have lost their lives to the virus. The pandemic's trajectory in the nation has been characterized by political controversies, the absence of a national plan to combat the illness and the dismissal of preventive measures. Brazil is currently ranked 117th globally in the number of tests it carries out. The country never implemented any effective contact tracing and fewer and fewer people are practicing physical distancing. This scenario was created by the narratives pouted by President Bolsonaro himself. In March, the first time the president went on TV to criticize the quarantine, Brazil had more than 60% of the population staying at home. After that, the index has dropped. Since then, even as the death toll rapidly increased, the president continued to minimize the effects of the pandemic. He encouraged the normal movement of people on the streets and cast doubt on pandemic figures. To make matters worse, he also insisted on defending the use of drugs which had not been scientifically verified as a form of treatment against COVID-19. Meanwhile, research by the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, Fio Cruz in Amazonia points out that the viral load of the P1 strain of the novel coronavirus, which is the variant recognized in Amazonas, can be up to 10 times greater when compared to other strains of the disease. The variant is also said to be twice as transmissible than the earlier variant and the chance of reinfection is anywhere between 25% and 60%. A survey by the Center for Research and Studies on Health Law of the University of Sao Paulo in partnership with the Connectors Human Rights in NGO concluded that the government knowingly acted to undermine the fight against coronavirus. The periodic newsletter writes in the pandemic bulletin analyzed more than 3,000 decisions made by the hair Bolsonaro administration regarding the pandemic. This includes laws, provisional measures, decrees and other mechanisms that despite their quantity did not meet the needs brought on by the crisis. In addition to this, Brazilian jurists filed a criminal representation with the attorney general's office against President Herr Bolsonaro for crimes against public health, infringement of preventive health measures, irregular use of public funds or resources, malfeasance and endangering people's lives or health. Meanwhile, social movements have been mobilizing on the ground against the mismanagement of the pandemic by Bolsonaro for months now. On February 19th and 21st, protesters rallied in multiple cities to demand the resignation of President Herr Bolsonaro. Cows paraded in major cities blaring horns with their windows painted with slogans such as Bolsonaro out, impeachment now and vaccination for all. The protest action was called by the popular Brazil front and the people without fear front. Some 9.8 million Brazilians, that is only 4.4% of the population, have received at least one dose of the vaccine so far. Brazil could vaccinate up to 60 million people a month, but the movements consider that there is no political will on the part of the government to buy immunizers. They also objected to the termination of the emergency assistance in December, which helped one-third of the population to survive the pandemic. More protests are expected demanding the ousting of Bolsonaro.


The legacy state government has reassured residents of its commitment towards eradication of all forms of domestic and sexual violence DSVA. The executive secretary DSVA Titlola Vivo Adeni stated this during a sensitization event held in partnership with the legacy's bus service limited aimed at heightening awareness on issues in the state. The DSVA boards encouraged negotiations to break the culture of silence and speak up and speak out against such occurrences. We are all mandated reporters. If you see something, you have a duty to say something and do something.  It thrives in the culture of silence. And so when we say if you see something, talk and encourage people to break the culture of silence, break the culture of silence, speak up, speak out. So it doesn't necessarily have to be you. It may be you as a neighbor, it may be you as a teacher, it may be you as an aunt. You see something, talk and encourage people to break the culture of silence. So because truly, if it be you. Titlola Vivo Adeni said the awareness program was key in driving the message home to the populace that sexual and gender-based violence as GBV crimes are against the state. Managing director of the legacy's bus service limited Ido'u Oguntono whose doorsteps the program was held urged participants to take the message of zero tolerance of all forms of abuse to their community and create a culture of respect and equality. We have a statutory mandate to ensure that we create awareness about issues of sexual and gender-based violence because we believe that awareness is closely related to prevention.  You let people know that these are crimes and crimes are committed against the state. You let people know that they are telephone lines they can call to reach out and report cases. We believe that this will go a long way in preventing the occurrence of sexual and gender based violence in the first instance. You know, societies where there is equality between men and women have been found to be safer and healthier societies and so we are also lending our voice to say that there needs to be equality. As men, we need to see women as equals and not see them as people that are beneath us. And so we are hoping that we will get to a situation where within our society there will be that sense of equality between the men and the women and thereby we will ultimately be able to have a safer and healthier society. Hello. Hope you enjoyed the news. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.