How's everyone doing? Good stuff, good stuff. I can keep talking? Yeah. Oh. I see. I see. I see. I see. I see. I see. I see. I see. I see. When is my vote are coming? To me. To me. To me. To me. To me. To me. To me. To me. To me. To me. Oh. Of this, of this fire in the Bronx impacted us all. I recall the day of and the days after and seeing the overwhelming response from not only the FDNY with the acting commissioner was there really manning and whimming the troops of the first responders EMS watching those officers and firefighters come out with soot covering them traumatized by watching the bodies leave the building in general, but specifically the children and the number of lives lost. But I also saw the heroic energy and spirit of the council persons, the borough president, the state and federal law makers, and you were all, you ladies and gentlemen, you all knew, you know, you were new to your jobs, you know, we were all rookies and but we all responded. We all came together. And so although we took immediate actions with our executive order, these, the councilmatic team went and decided with the speaker that we need to do some real work. If not to eradicate incidents like that to alleviate them, we cannot drop the ball and I want each council person to specifically talk about their piece of legislation. I don't want to do that. They did the work. They made it happen.  And we're holding these hearings and bill signing for five bills to strengthen safety in New York City. The tragedy impacted us and out of tragedy should come change. It should not bring about stagnation. And that's what we did. 17 New Yorkers. We lost, children were included in that at the Twin Park's apartments. We mourned their passing, but mourning the passing is just not enough. Government must do more and must respond better. And so the office of the mayor, the FDNY, the city council, housing, preservation and development, department of buildings, landlords and residents must all work together to prevent a tragedy like this from reoccurring. So we did our executive order. The city council immediately kicked into gear and started putting in place what they saw as some of the legislative changes that we need to do. And Councilman Feliz, thank you for chairing the task force up there and just being thoughtful of how do we make government work. And so I'm proud to have partnered with the city council and I'm proud to sign these bills today. The fire at Twin Park, it was caused by a defective heater and it was caused because of the self-closing doors. When you look at the combination, those are clear things that we can do if we just had the energy. And if the heater would have shut off, if the doors would have closed, we probably would be having a different conversation right now. So today, these five bills, we're going to take action. Intro 104, 105, intro 131, 106, intro 155. All of them are crucial and we're going to call up each council person and allow them to talk about their bills. But at this time, I'm going to call up the partner and this New York City law firms, Adams and Adams, Speaker Adams. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you so much, Mayor Adams. Thank you for hosting us for today's bill signing. As the mayor said, this package of bills has deep meaning to this council and to our entire city, following one of the worst tragedies in New York City history. The fire at Twin Parks Northwest Department Complex on January 9th was the deadliest fire in New York City since the Happy Land Nightclub fire in 1990. It was also one of the worst residential fires in the United States in decades. It claimed the lives of 17 of our fellow New Yorkers, including eight children. Investigators found several violations and flaws that led to this becoming such a tragedy. And as a result, the city council established the Twin Parks Citywide Task Force for Fire Safety, led by chair, council member Oswald Felice, to address the underlying issues that caused this fire and others. Through the leadership of Chair Felice, as well as the chair of our Committee on Fire and Emergency Management, council member and chair, Joanne Ariola, and Housing and Buildings Chair, Pierina Sanchez, we passed several bills to enact solutions. By signing this package of bills into law, we are putting those measures into place and making New York City safer. As we do our part to decrease future fire tragedies, let's honor those whom we've lost and let's continue to do all we can to protect all New Yorkers from deadly fires. These bills are a huge step forward and we also know there still remains work to do ahead. Thank you again to my colleagues in the council who sponsored these bills, council members Oswald Felice, Pierina Sanchez, David Carr, and Shahana Hanif. And thank you again, Mayor Eric Adams, for signing these bills into law. Thank you very much. Thank you. So why don't we turn it over to our councilmen and women so they can talk about the particular bills that they sign as Julie Menon flows in. First, we're going to bring councilman Felice. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you so much for being here. I am council member Oswald Felice. I want to start by thanking everyone that was there of helping affected families during these times of tragedy. I want to thank our New York City mayor who was working on the ground 24 hours a day, making sure that these affected families received all the resources that they needed. I also want to thank our speaker, Adrian Adams, and all my colleagues in the city council for being great partners in this journey to build a safer New York City. I also want to thank members of our fire department. That Sunday morning, we saw them running towards danger and risking their own lives to save the lives of families that they had never ever met. We're very thankful and we're very grateful for every single firefighter that played a role in helping those families that Sunday morning. Today, we're taking action, action to help resolve the fire safety challenges that continue to plague our city and especially the burl of the Bronx. We have to tackle all the causes of fires as we're doing today by banning the sale of specific space heaters that do not have protections such as automatic shutoffs. We have to tackle all the causes of fires, but at the same time, we have to make sure that families have the tools so that if there is a fire, they can safely escape. The tools so that if there is a fire, they can safely escape. There was one tool that could have prevented that horror that we saw that Sunday morning. One tool that could have prevented that horror that we saw, properly functioning self-closing doors. Had those self-closing doors actually functioned, smoke would not have filled the entire 19 story high rise and those families would have been able to safely escape. The self-closing doors were not properly functioning, allowing this fire to turn into the tragedy that we saw that Sunday morning where we lost 17 innocent lives. These fire safety bills will help ensure that another similar tragedy never happens again anywhere in our city by helping ensure that self-closing door laws are being taken seriously by all. By helping ensure that self-closing door laws are being strictly followed and also strictly enforced. By giving landlords no more than 14 days to fix self-closing door laws, but also requiring a mandatory reinspection to confirm that those self-closing door violations have been fixed and also increasing fines and civil penalties for bad actors, including property owners that falsely state they made self-closing door repairs. Self-closing doors can save lives. Self-closing doors or properly working self-closing doors could have prevented that tragedy that we saw in the Bronx in Twin Parks. Self-closing doors prevent fires and smoke from spreading and from harming families. So I wanna thank all my colleagues that took action to help ensure that the self-closing doors are working and closing and protecting our families. I also wanna thank everyone who joined us in this quest to improve fire safety in the city of New York. Thank you Mayor Adams for signing these very important bills and making them law in the city of New York. I also wanna thank Speaker Adams for making fire safety a top priority for this city council. We were able to move very quickly on these fire safety bills because of the work of all of our colleagues and a city council led by Speaker Adams. And I also wanna thank all of my colleagues who also played a big role in making sure that these bills move as fast as possible. So thank you. I wanna thank everyone for joining us. We're improving fire safety in the city of New York and today we're taking action to making sure that the self-closing doors are actually closing and preventing tragedies. Thank you so much. And for bill 106-8, Councillor Person Hanif. Thank you. Good afternoon everybody. I'm council member Shahana Hanif from Brooklyn and I just wanna give a big shout out to my Bronx colleagues for being so welcoming immediately after the fire and allowing us to support in every way and having a united front on addressing fire and other emergency issues following the tragedy in the Bronx. I wanna first start off by just naming the 17 individuals who were killed and maybe always remember their spirit and their legacy. Sarah Janney, Seidu Turei, Hawa Mahmadoo, Hadi Dukurei, Hada Dukurei, Mustafa Dukurei, Mariam Dukurei, Fatumata Dukurei, Fatumata Dramei, Fatumala Dramei, Nyumaysha Dramei, Muhammad Dramei, Fatumata Tunkara, Omar Jambang, Aisatu Jabi, Haji Jawara, Usmani Kontei. These are the names of the 17 Black Muslim immigrants who were killed in the tragic Twin Parks or Turei Towers fire as my colleagues and I started our term and now six months in today marks a very important day for our city. Big thank you to Speaker Adams for taking this issue urgently and moving quickly and for of course Mayor Adams and his team for moving as quickly too on signing Intra 106A into law. Congratulations to my colleagues who also have bills being signed into law today. I'm so proud to work with colleagues who are proactively invested in keeping New Yorkers alive and safe. I'm gonna give a shout out to public advocate Williams and council member Sanchez, Powers and Feliz for introducing this legislation with me and for council member Feliz, especially for its continued leadership on this issue leading the Twin Park Citywide Task Force on fire prevention in the face of continued immeasurable pain. And of course, thank you to council member and chair Areola for passing it through committee and her leadership in the fire and emergency management committee. The devastating and avoidable Twin Parks fire in the Bronx was caused by a space heater that was on for a prolonged period of time and then overheated. This may seem like a rare thing, but incidents like this are a leading cause of fires across this country. We know we cannot eliminate space heater usage in New York City while landlords have an obligation to their tenants to provide adequate heating. This obligation is often not met and residents are forced to resort to using electric heaters to stay warm. However, we cannot simply accept people will be put in harm's way because of neglect. I'm so proud that we are taking action to end this neglect. Intro 106A ensures that heaters are as safe as possible to prevent future tragedies by requiring all space heaters sold in New York City to be equipped with one, a thermostat, two, an automatic function that disables the heater upon overheating or tipping over, and three, a safety certification from a nationally recognized testing laboratory. These essential pieces of safety technology will significantly reduce the risk of a space heater causing a fire. Finally, I wanna thank the advocacy and work of the grassroots community groups like the Gambian Youth Organization, which sprang into action after the fire and are continuing to support families. Of the 17 victims, all of them were working class West African Muslim immigrants. The work of mutual aid groups and connected networks of Muslim New Yorkers and communities in and outside of the Bronx delivered the care, materials and comfort to dozens of families in the immediate aftermath. They've been tireless advocates for meeting the needs of those affected and addressing the root causes of this avoidable tragedy. So today I'm so proud to stand with our communities to ensure dignified housing and no more deaths in the face of fire. Thank you. And Council person Sanchez. Thank you so much. Thank you so much to Speaker Adams for your leadership and stewarding these pieces of legislation through the council. And of course, to Mayor Adams, you don't have to sign every piece of legislation. You don't have to be there at every tragedy, but on day one, you were and our speaker was. And I think that starting off the year in such a tragic way, at least there was a silver lining that we could all be there together with Council Member Felice. So today, I'm so proud to be having 131A pass, which will expand educational outreach regarding space heaters. It's a sort of companion bill to Council Member Hanif's bill. And it adds increased language access for immigrant communities. Educational outreach by the FDNY reaches thousands of New Yorkers each year, but we know that there are barriers to reaching our immigrant communities, which of course were so impacted on January 9th. So expanding this to include the top 10 languages will ensure that they have access to the information other New Yorkers are receiving. And now this is the first package of legislation that the council is passing in honor and in respect and in response to the Twin Parks fire, but it is just the beginning to be clear. We do not now rest. We continue to improve building and fire safety, holding landlords accountable, modernizing our fire and building codes and ensuring adequate code enforcement is working for all New Yorkers. In fact, there have been so many bills introduced following these bills that were first introduced by the council. And I look forward to working with council members, council members Felice and Ariola to steward these forward. So thank you so much Mayor Adams for signing these into law. And let's get it done. Thank you. And council person car 155-A. Thank you so much, Mr. Mayor. Council member David Carr from what the mayor always and quite properly refers to as the never forgotten borough of Staten Island. So proud to be here among my colleagues seeing this great package of legislation signed into law. You know, we keep hearing that these fires are referred to as tragedies and they absolutely are. They take lives, they take people's homes and they take people's memories with them. And the only thing that we can do to compound the tragedy is to fail to learn and then fail to act. And I'm so proud to be part of this group of lawmakers led by our speaker and our three great committee chairs, Chair Ariola, Chair Sanchez and Chair Felice, along with my colleagues who have bills passed being signed into law today to make sure that we show that we've learned and that we're acting in the wake of the tragic fires, fire in the Bronx.  So I think the best thing that we can do is to try to help people build back, try to help people correct those defects so that their homes are safe from the kind of fires that ravaged their neighbor and do what we can to make sure that government helps them achieve those goals. And that's what my bill does by trying to wave a fee. I'm particularly confident knowing that the mayor has appointed a great commissioner of buildings to administer that agency and commissioner Ulrich and will faithfully execute this law. And so grateful again for him and his team for making this bill into law today as well again to our speaker and our great committee chairs and congratulations to all my colleagues. Thank you. And we don't get any of these items done without a team. So I just really want to let them have a few words. Some of our councillor persons who are here various on your first and we'll move on from there. Hi everyone. I will actually be super brief. I'm really proud to be here today supporting my colleagues work. My district saw what happened in council member Felicia's community and sprung right into action within the first two or three days. I had thousands of products, hygiene, baby items, clothing, food, non-perishables in my office ready to move into that district. And that's really because the Bronx looks out for their own and we know what it means to have community and it takes a village to really protect one another. And so I'm just here happy to be sponsoring on these bills, happy to be supporting the efforts that were made. And to my colleague, council member Sanchez's note, I also have put in some bills after this realizing the many or the few flaws that we might have in our system because we're so used to being in high density areas and in our city. And so really our responsiveness, Speaker Adrian Adams expedited response and the mayor really taking the culmination of all of that work by signing it in today is a beautiful moment for us. And it leaves us here showing that it's great to act and to act fast, but also how do we look at emergency preparedness in a new way and a new light with all of these bills. So thank you all for joining and thank you for the moment to speak, Mr. Mayor. Appreciate it. And the chair of fire safety, councilwoman Ariola. Thank you, sir. Thank you everyone. I think on the night of the Twin Parks fire wheel stood there in shock and disbelief, but we're New Yorkers, so we took action. Mr. Mayor, thank you for how quickly you signed that executive order. Speaker Adams, thank you for how quickly you move those bills to the city council for introduction to my colleagues. Thank you for putting those bills together. I am co-prime sponsor on two and I'm proud to be a sponsor on the rest. But what you're seeing before you is what can happen when you work in a bipartisan fashion. That's how quickly things can get done. This is a comprehensive package of bills that will save lives. I'm proud to be the chair of fire and emergency management and proud to have shepherded this through our committee. I'm so proud of our committee members who voted unanimously for each and every one of your bills. I look forward to future bills to come before our committee, cosponsoring with you, sponsoring with you and making sure that our city remains safe. Thank you. And finally, the chair of small business services, Julie Menon, councilwoman. Thank you so much, Mr. Mayor. And I really want to thank the mayor and their speaker for their incredible leadership in bringing this package of bills together. I want to thank and congratulate my colleagues, chair Felice, chair Sanchez, chair Areola, chair Hanif, councilmember David Carr. I'm a co-prime sponsor on this. And when I was coming over here, I was thinking about it. I'm a mom of four. And to think about on January 9th, those families, there are eight children that were killed to have that call that you have lost a child. There is no greater pain that you can go through. And so when I think about the work that we do as elected officials, there's frankly no higher calling than protecting lives and particularly protecting vulnerable families and children. So I'm delighted to be here and want to congratulate my colleagues on their leadership. Thank you. Thank you. I want to thank my team, the chief housing office, Jessica Katz, she'll just really get this stuff done. And it's an important HPD commissioner carry on. Thank you. Phil Banks, deputy mayor of Public Safety and acting commissioner of fire department, commissioner Kavanaugh. So let's sign this, you know. I'm sorry I don't want to sign it wrong, but I'm signing here. I hope you have a good year. I'm going to make that go on. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.


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should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for? Robert Browning said it. He wasn't thinking of Booker T. Washington, but there's no better line ever said or spoken to sum up the character, the iron strength, the awesome drive and determination and ambition, the place in American history, and the meaning today of Booker T. Washington in our lives. A man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for? I cannot remember having slept in a bed until after our family was declared free by the Emancipation Proclamation. We had a pallet on the dirt floor, or to be more correct, we slept in and on a bundle of filthy rags laid upon the dirt floor. During the period that I spent in slavery, I was not large enough to be of much service. Still, I was occupied most of the time in cleaning the yards, carrying water to the men in the fields, or going to the mills to which I used to take the corn once a week to be ground. Textures, cloth, wood, grain, dirt, the first things a child's hands know. These things can set up a reaction within the child, implant a longing for something better, always better. So they are the shaping elements going deep into the child's mind and spirit. If you sleep on rags and handle wood, grain, and dirt, this can make the finer textures of the world, the textures of civilization, large and aching needs to your brain and heart. Knowing you are a slave can fill you with thirst for the materials of freedom. First pair of shoes that I recall wearing were wooden ones. They had rough leather on the top, but the bottoms, which were about an inch thick, were made of wood. That part of the flax from which our clothing was made was largely the refuse, which, of course, was the cheapest and roughest part. It is almost equal to the feeling that one would experience if he had a dozen or more chestnut burrs or 100 small pin points in contact with his flesh. Yes, being a slave can fill you with thirst for the materials of freedom. From the time that I can remember having any thoughts about anything, I recall that I had an intense longing to learn to read. I determined when I was quite a small child that if I accomplished nothing else in life, I would in some way get enough education to enable me to read common books and newspapers. But the materials of freedom don't always come with freedom. Education was no gift for Booker T. Washington. It was a victory. Some man who seemed to be a stranger made a little speech and then read a rather long paper, the Emancipation Proclamation, I think. After the reading, we were told that we were all free and could go when and where we pleased. My mother, who was standing by my side, leaned over and kissed her children while tears of joy ran down her cheeks. The hands reached, and the brain reached with them for an answer. But he got no answers, only more questions. In a few hours, the great questions with which the Anglo-Saxon race had been grappling for centuries had been thrown upon these people to be solved. The question of a home, a living, the rearing of children, education. Where, when, how? While his hands worked with salt and a salt furnace in Maldon, West Virginia, his brain reached along with his hands. The boss of the Packers would come around and put the number 18 on each of our barrels. And I soon learned to recognize that figure wherever I saw it. And after a while, I got to the point where I could make that figure. Education, when, how? In an old Webster's blueback spelling book, his mother got it for him, somehow, somewhere. He tried all the ways he could think of to learn the alphabet without a teacher. He could find no one to teach him. He was deeply impressed by a man who could read a newspaper. The mind reached, the hands reached. And he found someone to teach him. He found someone because he had to. He found a teacher who taught him by night. And then he found a school and went to it by day. With the understanding that I was to rise early in the morning and work in the furnace till nine o'clock and return immediately after school closed in the afternoon for at least two more hours of work. He had to work till nine. And the school opened at night. So Booker T. Washington moved the hands of the salt furnace clock forward. Since it is a fact I might as well stated, I have great faith in the power and influence of facts. I did not mean to inconvenience anybody. I simply meant to reach that schoolhouse in time. He worked against time. He worked in the earth with the earth's stubborn textures. He worked, too, against his times and their own slow yielding reluctance. He worked in the coal mines, in the dark and the damp. The mind always blazing, both mind and muscle fighting toward the liberation of the spirit, toward real freedom of spirit and body. And from Mrs. Ruffner, wife of the salt furnace and coal mine owner, he learned as he worked for her the satisfaction of craftsmanship that can come from doing a job well. She helped him get books for the tiny library he now kept in a wood shed. She let him go to school in the afternoon. From her, he learned a great new lesson. Even to this day I never see a filthy yard that I do not want to clean it or a pailing off a fence that I do not want to put it on an unpainted or unwhitewashed house that I do not want to paint it or whitewash it or a button off one's clothes or a grease spot on them or on a floor that I do not want to call attention to it. From the town of Malden to the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute in Virginia was about 500 miles. Part of the way through the coal mountains was by stagecoach. Part of the way through the bitter coal lesson of discrimination lay in being turned down flat as a guest by the desk clerk in a shoddy white hotel. Part of the way through the chilly lonesomeness of not enough money, no friends lay in spending the night under a bored sidewalk enrichment back again to the naked ground. And part of the way to Hampton lay in helping unload a cargo of pig iron. And then at the school in Hampton came the entrance examination. It consisted of sweeping a recitation room. I swept the recitation room three times. Then I got a dusting cloth and I dusted it four times. Besides, every piece of furniture had been moved and every closet and corner in the room had been thoroughly cleaned. South Reliance. The dignity of work. The liberation of the inner self which is education. These Booker T. Washington believed in. And these he practiced laying the start of a giant American flame even while he worked his way through Hampton as a janitor laying the base for a flame of the intellect which would begin to burn away prejudice from the mind of America. I had to rise by four o'clock in the morning in order to build the fires and have a little time in which to prepare my lessons. And somehow his fires are still burning. He remembered in these words the time when he worked alongside Miss Mackie the head teacher of Hampton. She worked by my side cleaning windows, dusting rooms. It was hard for me to understand how a woman of her education and social standing could take such a delight in performing such service. But he did understand. He understood fully and took delight himself in service to his fellow man relating ideas to facts of nature. I also learned a valuable lesson at Hampton by coming into contact with the best breeds of livestock and fowls. His philosophy grew at Hampton. Grew like grain stored to bursting in a grain den. Part of it was firmed by another white friend General Samuel Armstrong of whom Booker T. Washington said one might have removed from Hampton all the buildings, classrooms, teachers and industries and given the men and women there the opportunity of coming into daily contact with General Armstrong and that alone would have been a liberal education. These things he took with him from Hampton ideas both abstract and as solid as a piece of chalk in the fingers. Ideas he put into action when he went back to Maldon as a teacher. He taught his pupils at Maldon to keep their bodies clean from their minds like doors so that the students who went from his classes at Maldon to Hampton were automatically advanced two classes. During this time too he joined a political group and traveled through West Virginia making speeches. He began to be known as a dynamic eloquent speaker. During the same time he thought seriously about becoming a lawyer and he studied for the law but he decided the best use he could make of his life was to dedicate it to education. Now he had the materials of freedom. Now the child's vision had come alive. Now he could begin to share what he had with his people. He went to study in Washington at Washington Seminary. Of the time he studied there he said, I derived a great deal of benefit from the studies which I pursued and I came into contact with some strong men and women. Yes he was a man who responded to strength who brought it out in others. Of the jobless Negroes the Negro dandies he saw in the city of Washington he said, I wish that by some power of magic I might remove the great bulk of these people into the country districts and plant them upon the soil upon the solid and never deceptive foundation of mother nature. The solid and never deceptive foundation of nature. Truly he believed in nature but not nature alone. Nature controlled by man dominated by the mind harvested by the mind and the will in harmony. He was a giant. Yes. He was an optimist. Yes. Without these qualities he could not have reached his vision. Without them he could not have achieved his enormous value to his country and to his people and now like leaves ripening like grass bursting with purpose in a fresh field like all the materials he had known and worked with salt, coal, corn, wood, the earth itself he had reached the time of his great use to the world the time of planting for harvest the time of founding and originating Tuskegee Institute we wanted to give our students such a practical knowledge of some one industry together with the spirit of industry, thrift and economy that they would be sure of knowing how to make a living after they had left us. For Booker T. Washington knew what the needs of his people were he wanted to give them real training in scientific agriculture and in modern craftsmanship he wanted to free them in earnest as he had been free a cabin, an old kitchen, a stable and a henhouse these were all he had to work with at the start at the time slavery had been abolished for just 16 years but from the start he offered more than manual work again he opened up minds like doors again he let in the fresh winds of new thought again he turned students eyes toward bright horizons he taught brick making and wagon repairing and well cleaning but he also taught the mind working with the hand electricians, surveyors, steam engineers, contractors school teachers, home economists and Tuskegee grew grew through gifts through the eloquence and fame of its founder grew as his influence spread throughout America the influence, the strengths of such a man are hard to assess they need a special hourglass to mark their greatness they are still alive in our time very much alive very deeply alive in our world from the child open to the bitter winds of slavery asleep under rags on the cabin floor of dirt to the man sitting with Theodore Roosevelt at dinner chatting with Queen Victoria the international man all this seems an immense step and it is yet it was inherent in him in his vision and the vision was universal for every man, woman and child at his race listen to the voice again I would not confine the race to industrial life not even to agriculture for example but I would teach the race that in industry the foundation must be laid at the very best service which anyone can render to what is called a higher education is to teach the present generation to provide a material or industrial foundation on such a foundation as this will grow habits of thrift the love of work economy ownership of property bank accounts practical education professional education moral and religious strength the hand and the brain must work together to make the vision true this is what this powerful orator this towering educator told us to remember and in his Atlanta speech he told us something else told it to every American every lover of humanity should count it a privilege to help in the solution of a great problem for which our whole country is responsible Booker T. Washington told us that with his life and he is telling it to us now in this living moment his reach did indeed exceed his grasp but that, as Robert Browning has said is what a heaven is for


Social distancing policies aiming to reduce Covid-19 transmission have been reflected in reductions in human mobility. Here, the authors show that reduced mobility is correlated with decreased transmission, but that this relationship weakened over time as social distancing measures were relaxed. This article was authored by Pierre Nouvellet, Sondé de Bottier and Corey and others.


Do you know what a noodle board is I didn't but I got a lot of requests to make a noodle board It's just a stove cover and we made this one in minutes, and we'll show you how we did it right now What is up a welcome back do you like to do it build it or make it so do we and we have a new video each week This week we're making noodle boards step one that we're gonna gather all of our supplies We just needed some noodles and some glue He's been ready for that joke Thanks for playing along Kim I had to tell Garrett what a noodle board actually was it is a requested project It's been requested for a while now, and it's been on a back burner of projects to do pun intended. Oh Pun intended Finally he says because it was brought up again this week and then so and Garrett said what is a noodle board anyway? I had no idea what a noodle board was so I did not want to make a noodle Yeah, I had no interest in making whatever a noodle. That's why I kept rolling to the back of the project list It's cuz he didn't she was like I don't know noodle board. No moving on. What else do we want to make stove cover though? Totally in I'm totally in on a stove cover. So that's what a noodle board is It's also known as a stove cover and we're making this right now and during this Christmas season for a couple of reasons One I think it would make a really great personalized gift. You'll see how quick and easy this project is so it's a great gift idea It's also a great idea to bring to a craft show and sell as a gift So you can personalize these you can take orders You can just put monograms on them or you know you can put pretty much anything on them There's lots of funny sayings for them So you can just bring a bunch of pre-made ones and sell them right at your craft shows or farmers markets So that's why we're making it now. Yes, it's a hot item for the top of your stove No, I see what you did there Well, the other great thing is the use of a noodle board it can be used as a serving tray It could be used as a charcuterie board and we all know the charcuterie boards are so hot right now So it is again it goes along with a great gift because it's a serving tray For lots of different things. Yeah, I really got to show you. Yeah, I envisioning what the serving tray looks like I was in I saw it Can you see me holding it? All the meats and cheeses. I saw the spread Now I'm hungry Step one For real we're gonna gather all of our supplies. We needed a one by six by ten It was a long one then we needed to find a good one by four by eight Kim was very particular Particularly these things had chunks taken out about Then we also needed some glue some brad nails and two handles now You can get some cabinet pulls But you'll have to be careful because you want to make it a long enough screw to screw in from the bottom Cabinet pulls require that screw from the bottom, but we got these handles over in the fence section So we'll just be able to screw it in right from the top. They looked okay They look pretty pretty beefy. They look rustic. Yeah, I like them No actual pasta included No actual pasta needed and your noodle board step two. We're gonna make all of our cuts We're gonna take the ten foot one by six and we're gonna cut that into four equal sections That's about 30 inches 30 inches times four is 120, but you have to account for that one eighth inch blade So all of our boards are gonna be about 29 and seven eighths. It's very precise Then we're gonna cut the one by four down into two 22 inch sections and we're gonna make all of these cuts with my pocket saw Three now, we're gonna assemble it We're gonna bring it all together with some glue and some one and a quarter inch finishing nails first We're gonna line everything up Line the boards up Now we're gonna clamp them together. We're not gonna glue them together. We're just gonna clamp them together Hold them in place Until we're ready to glue and and nail them. I don't want them to go this way because you're gonna put that Yeah, and board Gonna use a hammer just to tap everything in the place Make sure everything's lined up. That's pretty good Put a little glue you want to add the glue Yes, I have a correction. Hopefully he's already corrected this in the Display at the beginning of the video. This is a one by three not a one by four. I told him it was a one by four But I was wrong Faulty information. Yes All right a little bit of glue not gonna get crazy because we're gonna stain it next and If the glue gets on the wood it won't it won't hold the stain. It won't take the stain or the look odd and these are some Premium boards that we have for these edges here This one by three because as you saw on the previous Section I couldn't find One by three common board that wasn't beat all the way up So this doesn't even matter if you put it up or down because it's beautiful on either side There we go All right, should I clamp it and then flip it or Just try to hit it from underneath Clamp it with it. Yeah Here's your clamp.  I got the clamps All right, we'll clamp it in a similar area. I clamped it and then slit it All right clamp them. Oh man did too. Oh My gosh, I really slid it that time I draw I hit it. Oh My goodness. I'm making a mess. Oh Gosh Kimberley, what's happening? Every time I clamped it slides. This is the worst clamp. Let me do it. Yeah. Yeah, it's usually because it's just keeps sliding See that's all right, that's okay. There you go Let's get back in place Let's flip it. Let's just flip it Gentle gentle Mine's pretty lined up There's a pretty good Don't have to be perfect. We're gonna sand it here in a minute Yes Now we're just gonna hit it with a one and a quarter inch brad the nail not the guy I'm gonna put like two or three in each board all the way down. I think we can remove the clamps now I don't see any glue squeeze. That's good. No, it's good For and now we're gonna give it a little sand little sanding. Was it sand on sand off? It was wax on the floor. Was it sand the floor? That's what we're doing We're sanding the Noodle board same thing a sand on the floor these boards are really nice quality. So they don't need much sanding I think I'm gonna just use some 120 on here And I'm just going to smooth out some of these knots a little bit and then maybe hit these corners a little I'm not you could put 80 grit on here and round these corners a little But I don't think it needs it.  Yes, wherever those little burrs and stuff are not Yes, just that sharp edges. Yeah, I think it's gonna hit them a little bit. It's all we're looking at. Oh Where's our masks? Now we're gonna give it some color. We have this ebony stain It's dark and we're gonna use these rags and we're gonna stain it. It's gonna look dark. Yeah, it's very dark It's like black. It is it's black. It's a black stain. I've not used a black stain before here. It's very hesitant I am but I think it's gonna look cool in our kitchen because our kitchen counter is black and white granite and Gray and white and so I think this is kind of gonna go with it Yeah, I think it'll go with it. I'm just that's dark All right, we're going in. Oh, man, how to get through my glove Soak through my glove Yeah, you're laughing you haven't taken your gloves off yet Step six clear coat nice We're gonna put some of this polyacrylic down to protect it And so that it's a lot easier to add the vinyl at the end. Yes the vinyl for stencil or paint Yes, either way, it won't stick as well to the stain as it will a little bit of this clear coat So might as well take five minutes Throw some clear coat on it You know, that's my motto Five minutes to clear coat five minutes to clear coat. That's here. You say that one all the time all the time. It's like It's like a daily thing Seven now we're gonna add the handles. We're gonna make it so you could pick it up and carry it around town Well, it's a serving tray.  I don't need scissors I'm just gonna line it up with that center board where the boards meet, right? So there's a center seam here. So it should be really easy to just Eyeball the middle of the handle doesn't have to be exactly perfect All right Now we can carry it around Step eight and now we add the accents. We're just adding some vinyl to the to the top of it This is where you can really add that personalization So you can add a monogram you can add last names But for hours, we're using a generic design that my daughter picked out It has the cow pig chicken on it with a little farmhouse design So we're gonna add that to our noodle board You can really add the accents or designs anyway You can add permanent vinyl like we're doing today. You can paint it on using a stencil You can even engrave it you can even use the engraving using that ammonium chloride Okay, we're gonna use a Cricut Maker 3 to cut our design using permanent vinyl Once it cuts, we'll weed our image. We'll add our transfer tape Our decals cut we have our transfer tape on I'm gonna find the center of our decal just by folding this Transfer this well our smart vinyl or our backing if you just had transfer tape You can do this too and just fold it right in half just to find the center Give it a little pinch. Yeah, little creases that kind of show me where the center of our Image is and now we need to find the center of our board What do we get 25 and 25 so 12 and a half This top board is raised just slightly and the decal goes over that and leaves kind of a Raised spot. We're gonna cut the decal and make sure that both pieces adhere 100% hey, it looks good Show what you're working with Pretty easy, huh? That was it. That was all that was to it. I mean like made in minutes I think letting the stain dry was the longest part that and the polycrylic. Yes, that was literally the longest part Otherwise, you can't tell those middle boards aren't glued together. I Don't think you need it. I think the sides being glued and tacked together with the finishing nails Was fine and you know, we'll just be getting faster the more we make right if you were to make a bunch of these at one time The efficiencies you would gain from doing multiples. I wonder if we can bring the Cricut maker To the craft fair and personalize on spot Is that too much? Yeah I think you can try it. I've seen people do it. So they bring it to the spot and do it on the spot What do you guys think you think people would enjoy? Customization on the spot.  Yeah, they don't work What do you guys think will it work? Will you guys make your own? We've had a lot of comments asking to make these So are you gonna make one now? Let me know in the comments down below Otherwise We're about out of time So if you're not gonna join us for the patron after show, we will see you next week where we'll do it build it and make it again Now I'm gonna balance it for real I was waiting. I just phoned in the last part to get to the balance Ooh It's very substantial. It's a lot heavier than it looks I could definitely see making noodles on this But it's I mean, it's not that heavy. I think you can carry it around No, I was just saying Substantial like I would feel comfortable carrying heavy stuff on that. I think you could serve Your little popcorn and all its fixings on it take it over to the sofa. It's not fun. Yeah, it's so fun


So I'm Meredith. Hello, I am a product manager. For those of you guys who haven't met me, I've been doing this for a while. Interestingly, someone else just asked me that question and it took me a while to try to recall how many years a product manager. Maybe on off, I would say 15 years. I guess that kind of gives away my age as well, but who cares. Okay, so what I'm going to do today is just to give you guys a bit more information of what we do as product managers. I'm sure a lot of you guys work with them if you're an engineer and you'll probably think that this thing about a product manager like, wow, very busy. This person running up and down, giving me orders. I don't know what this person is doing. So I'm here to clarify a little bit of that and for those people who are thinking about going to a product manager, I hope you consider. It is a, well, as you can tell, I've been doing this for a while. So it must be quite satisfactory, I guess. Although Michael was kind of giving me some insights of what to cover. He said that some people here might be considering a switch to product management and all I could think of was you need to have a high threshold of pain, I think, to some extent. But anyways. Okay, so in theory, product management is pretty much these few activities. Although we do a lot more outside the circle and the job doesn't just stop at the very end. So of course, we start at the very beginning. We do a lot of user research. We are very active in the field talking to customers or doing customer research and then understanding what is it that the customer wants and what is it that we're trying to solve and bring the solution to the customer. In this sense, I'm talking about digital product management. I don't really have any experience in hardware. So I'm just going to cover. And then a big part of my every day, which I'll talk about later, I do product backlog grooming.  At least so I find a lot of satisfaction writing all your user scenarios for my engineers. And then of course, putting into sprint, running the sprint and agile ceremonies on a daily basis. And then a big part of it is going to market. So going to market is not just launching code, but it's also coordinating with a whole bunch of other people like marketing, legal, tax, finance, compliance, PR and getting the product out to the hands of the customer. But obviously, there are a few ways of doing that and we'll talk about that as well. Lastly, part one of many, which is the data analysis. So after you've launched something, you look at the data, you figure out why is it not working? Why is it working so well?  So as a product manager, we don't just stop here and it's a continuous process.  So that's one thing to think about as well. So my daily duties, some of this, so stand up, sprint planning. I think most of the time I spend stakeholder management, which is depending on your organization, big or small, you always have stakeholders. And whether it's senior or junior, even engineering is also stakeholder, right? So I spend a lot of time talking to my stakeholders, making sure we over communicate and making sure my team understands what they're doing, repeating the objectives. I think like shy, shy lash. Maybe it's all about, you know, reiterating what's the objective of the sprint and making sure that the engineers understand it as well so that you can then prioritize your items as well. And then making sure that you achieve the objectives that you need. I do think it's really important for product managers to keep reiterating that. And it sometimes can get very lost when you are doing your daily engineering task and then executing them, not knowing why you're doing so. So it is, I do encourage you guys as engineers to also push back to your product managers and say, I don't know why I'm doing this, explain why and demand that answer. Because you do need to know why you're doing some stuff, right? And your task. Product analysis that is a daily exercise as well, sometimes maybe not so disciplined, but I try to get into a routine. The first thing I open up is Tableau, look at numbers, digest them, breathe in my numbers and understand why it's going down and find some hypothesis. Because the next thing I know is someone's going to ask for a report and then we've got to submit the report. Backlog grooming and prioritization, which is really an art. There is, maybe there's some signs around prioritization and we'll talk about that. But priorities, spending a lot of time thinking through is the first thing to get out because everything is important in this day and age and everything needs to happen first. But what is the first, first, first thing that needs to happen before the next first that needs to happen? So prioritization is a very big part of a product manager's duties and actually doing this every two weeks and then going into grooming with the engineers as well. So I talk really fast and I'm just like that. So stop me. If you guys need to stop me and have questions. Okay. So this is, this is an open sharing session. All right. So I like to think that product management is a sign and then there is the art part of it. So I guess you're not, you could be very familiar with the scientific method. I think product management as a practice has evolved across over time. And I was also just sharing this experience earlier with someone just now. You know, I, I miss the days where I am writing my user stories on in very small font in a very small find it pen on a posted note and sticking on the wall. And I really miss that experience because right now you have Jira, you have Trello, you have all these different which is more digital and virtual because you have a lot more virtual teams and clearly so cause, you know, if I put it on a posted not everyone can read it, right? But there's just something about crunching that posted and throwing away and calling it done that really drives a lot of satisfaction for me. But anyway, so product management is practice has evolved across time. I think scientific method is really here to stay for a while.  So whether is it a bigger rollout? Whether is it incremental changes to a certain feature? I think product managers are taking practice a lot more common now. So it's all about being a scientist, literally going into a lab and being through on your lab code and be a scientist, find some observations of why you think the customers want a certain feature and one have a certain problem understanding what the customer problem is all about. And that goes into your observation. And in the next part, what we do is we ask ourselves a lot of questions to then what is the right solution to put in front of the customer? What is the right experience? And some of that really comes from your user research. We spend a lot of time in front of customers interviewing them, putting prototypes in front of them and actually even observing what they tap, how their fingers move from screen to screen to really understand where do you want to put that button? So all down to that minute detail. We form our hypothesis and every hypothesis would then come with what is the outcome that we want to drive? So hypothesis would be, you know, if we do, if we build this feature, then we increase the company or bring certain satisfaction to the customer. So then we create that hypothesis. It has to be clear, concise, and it goes into acceptance criteria. And then we put it into execution. We work with you guys, the engineers put into sprint and then we execute. Obviously, I think the hard part is when the data doesn't show what we needed to show and then it's finding out why doesn't it show in the way that we think it would be and then come back and iterate again. OK. And then the art of being a PM, which is I would think 80 percent of the job, it's really all about the communication and drive with the team, with the stakeholder, with different people in the company and with the with the users as well. One big part is all around the product strategy. Decide why you want to go down one path and sticking with that decision. Sometimes it can be the wrong decision and then learning from the mistake and then kind of correcting it. Like I say, prioritizing features for implementation is a huge thing and understanding why one thing has to go above the other. But of course, I think the other area that product managers sometimes we forget is around tag debt and tag debt, bugs. This topic is super hot and, you know, because product releases is all around. Let's put up something shiny and new to the customer. But at the same time, causing a lot of tag debt. So good product managers should really be aware that tag debt does require some prioritization and actually dedicate some capacity for that. So I do encourage if there are product managers in the room to do that as well. Managing stakeholder expectations. So sometimes when you put out a feature, it doesn't go, you know, things don't always go up. Sometimes things go down. So managing the expectations is important, of course. And then bringing the product to market and deciding working with product marketing, working with PR on the communication. And what is the positioning? How do you bring forward the value proposition of the product to the customer and explaining that in layman's terms so that they understand it as well? So that's the problem. And lastly, I think in us, not really something that can be very data centric would be, you know, being empathetic to the user, really putting yourselves in their shoes, walk their experience, understand their difficulties on an everyday basis. So and then putting that into how do you translate that into finding a solution for them? So I have a list that I think can be good from my experience from the people that I work with. I think can be good, but I'm sure the list can be more. And if you have more, please share that with me. But I think for a good product manager, this is what you need to be. Number one, you need to be obsessed, obsessed with the user, obsessed with what they're doing, obsessed with what they're experiencing, the problems that they have. And then obsessed with finding them a solution. Sometimes I get so obsessed, I actually dream of my products. And that's when I know I'm in it to win it. And I just did last night for for something that I'm building. So that's a good sign. But being really obsessed with the user, don't stop. Just be obsessed with it. The next thing is be very decisive with priorities. It can be quite common where priorities change. The change could come from the top, it could come from sideways. But I think a good product manager, if you decided something with a team, kind of stick with it as much as you can, if you, because it doesn't produce churn. So I know my engineers would really not be happy or not like it because they plan all this work. And then now they have to kind of look at the funnel and kind of change things around. Change is not bad, but it has to be reasonable. It has to have an objective to why you're changing things. But be very decisive. I know I've come across and I myself have been in these situations where I just cannot decide what features to put out first. And I just cannot decide at that point. I always tell my team, just give me one night, let me sleep on it. Maybe it will come in a dream and then I'll decide. But yeah, I think being decisive is important. And being able to have that patience to then get opinions from everyone. Everyone will have an opinion about a feature. Everyone will have an opinion about a product. Being open and listening to that opinion is one thing. Taking it in, you don't have to respond. You don't have to agree, you don't have to disagree, but it's just about intake. And then kind of sorting that through, right? And deciding what is actually important to take in, what is just noise, when to say no and when to say yes. So I think having that capacity is very important as well. And being product managers, you have to be very open all the time to take in feedback because trust me, users are very... I would say that users sometimes a little bit unkind. But if you have, if you've done something wrong, they'll be the first to tell you. If you've done something right, they will never say anything. So that's just how it is. And above all that, you know, empathy and all that art behind it, it's always leading with data. So I think these days you would see more and more common where observations should be driven from data. It should come from the statistics that you've collected from a certain feature that you put out, from a prototype that you've put out, you know, from the user research field. Put all of that into data, put all of that into observation. And then if someone actually has an opinion, you can actually say, this is the data and this is what it shows. Of course, sometimes when you launch something to a smaller crowd versus a bigger crowd, the data would go the opposite way. I think then product managers could manage that via your rollouts, you know, throttling, don't go zero to a hundred. We've done it sometimes, brought some machines, brought some servers down. So, you know, maybe a good thing is always paste your rollout and then watch your data on a daily basis. But yeah, leading with data, that is very important. And I think it's just this never giving up in terms of making the best experience. Of course, not being perfect, right? Because it takes a lot of coding to be perfect and there's really no such thing as being perfect. Bugs will always exist. No one can promise me a hundred percent SLE anyway. So I think, but having that, you know, push, always push the team to make sure that the experience is the best that you can offer and having that as your intent. And lastly, this is my favorite. You are, the product manager is kind of the glue. I think if the product, good product managers should be the glue to hold the team together. You bring clarity to the team. You bring a meaning to why the team exists. So, and I think for me, you know, I don't know if Michael, you've realized that, but sometimes you will bring treats in to make sure that we pep up the team as well. So yeah, being that morale booster to everyone, right? Because everyone's working really hard. So yeah, I think product managers, this would be a special thing to add to your everyday for your team. I think it would be good to kind of make sure that you build a team in that way, right? So I'll end here by talking about, you know, as product management career for you. I think if you have the capacity, the patience, the never giving up period of wanting to make things good and putting things out there good for users, yeah, it's definitely something you wanna consider. But there's also a lot of communication, a lot of collaboration in this day and age because development is not just your team and yourself. It's actually horizontal with a lot of teams. You are dependent on so many different people. So being able to collaborate with people and having that attitude of forever learning as well. I think that's very important, that's right. So that's all I have to share today. If you've got any questions right now, please feel free to ask them. So you have 15 years of experience in this area. So in your opinion, in your experience, what are the user gaps in? Gaps in. And in the user gaps of lockers that defense a product from a company. Or from a desired time frame of a company. Right. I think there's so many I'm trying to decide what's the good one to share. So I think having clarity of if a product is, and I hope I'm gonna say your question, but having the clarity that if a product or if there's a certain direction that you're going with is the one that the company wants to take. Because sometimes the product manager can work in their own silo and not realize that, oh wait, the company is moving in a different direction. This is no longer prioritized. And then suddenly something gets blocked. Or very frequently right now in my everyday with grab because it's such a big ecosystem, we are so dependent on everyone else's code. So I work for, my area of work is called consumer experience and I basically manage the homepage. One small page, but oh, there's so many things to do. So we are so dependent on every single team making sure that their priorities are all online. And spending time doing that alignment can be a really long time. So I think alignment and making sure that it's the direction that the top ones as well is quite important. Just to make sure that you don't get blocked or you don't suddenly have to stop work and then change direction and then lose all that, good code that you guys have written. So follow up to the question is that so that you establish that is, that is the communication is important and it's key in determining that. Is there any kind of teamwork that you follow that will make this communication easier? Well, that's a really good question. So in most of my experiences is all about why are we doing this and does it get us to the goal that we need to get to as a company? Obviously there are company goals and then there are the problems that we wanna solve. And of course, all those are interlinked. So we always have that as the biggest, I guess the biggest card to use, right? Like whatever you're doing is not gonna meet this. Is it gonna get us there sooner? Is it gonna get us there right now? So that is usually the card that we would play as a trump to everything else. Yeah, thanks. All right, thank you very much.