My name is Marina Alex. I came from Moscow, from Russia, but I was born in the Soviet Union. Is it okay? Could you help us? Oh my God! Oh no, no! I think you should help us with the microphone. Yep. Fine? Are you sure? Let's ask about that our customers. Okay. Would you like to continue like that? No. We take always feedback from our customers, right? They don't know how to help us, sorry. Maybe we should... I will try to continue and we will adapt, right? Maybe should I stay here somewhere? Maybe it will be better. What do you think? No, it's better, right? Okay. And I was born in the Soviet Union. Who knows this country? Yep. And every Friday we watched Indian movies. It was very popular. And it was, you know, it was so surprised that people always smiling, always dancing. And it's like Ziti and Gitta. And they always were with beautiful color clothes. And I couldn't even imagine that one day I will come to India and I will even share my experience. And I'm very happy today. My story about saving life with agile. I am agile expert in sales, but one day I will, you know, every five minutes, every two minutes I will take feedback from noise, okay? Because for me it's very important that it is comfortable for you here and interesting, okay? And one day the business owner of one big medical group, about 40 clinics inside, invite me as agile coach to help them with agile transformation. And it was dentistics clinics. And I told him, no, because I don't know about medicine anything. And from childhood I was afraid of dentists. But he told me, Marina, are you agile sales expert? And I told him, yes. And he asked me, we need your help because our sales targets, it's like 40% in our clinics. And we need to be survived. We need to change something. We would like to change structure, culture of our 40 clinics. And okay, I say okay. I agree. But when we start, as agile coaches, when we start to help any companies, we should understand title of business. That's why I start explorer medicine, dentist. And I visit more than 20 different clinics and I found interesting things that medicine don't care about marketing, about service, quality of service at all. And it was interesting because in business we have another situation. And usually when I apply agile in sales team, I always take the worst team with worst sales performance. And in this case we did the same. We took the worst clinic from 40 clinics. And look, this is real pictures. It was my coaching room during six months. I worked here and I had agile coaching session in this room. And this is, oh, what's happened? This is was our starting. Our clinic was the worst one. 46% sales performance. Very huge, okay. It was 35 people inside and eight managers. Imagine, please. Eight managers and only several doctors. And the second problem, it was communication between doctors, between assistants, between managers. Because it was like small different countries in one small clinics. The second problem was they didn't care about clients, about customers, about patients. They care about money only. They didn't help each other. They didn't share their experience. And it was really awful situation. And we start, we start from applying Scrum. Because usually I apply Scrum and we created cross-functional teams. We adapt backlog. We had all meetings from Scrum and we created free roles. Team, product owner and Scrum masters. What does it mean cross-functional team in medicine? Imagine that we created free teams, about 12 people inside. And in one team we had head of doctors, for example, and security. And even security. It was another team. It was assistants, doctors and person who were cleaning. Who were cleaner of these clinics. And it means that we, first, our step was change structure. Because you could, actually it's about, it's mindset. For changing mindset we need to use special tools. And we need to change structure of company. Because in other way it will not work. And we change it. And it was eight managers and people. Now we get free teams, free Scrum masters and just one product owner. I would like to tell you about our backlog. In non-IT cases we haven't product. We have services, we have sales. And it means that we adapt our backlog. Our backlog has had two parts. The first one it's about targets. It's about money. It's about something that you could measure very easy. For example, how many new clients come, it's our goals. It means the first part it's goals for money, for some numbers. But agile it's about culture. It is culture. For changing culture we need to improve our way of work. We need to improve our communication. We need to involve different new process and something like that. That's why in our any backlogs we have second part. About innovations, about customer experience, about feedback, about how our customers are happy and something like that. Once again. We had one week's sprints. Each team had planning session on Monday for example. Every day they had daily stand-ups and asking each other free questions. They had visualization. They had demo. What is demo in non-IT teams? It's demonstration of result. For example, today our demo and all company come to see what our team created or achieved. Demo is demonstration of everything that happened with our teams. And the last one I think the most important it's retrospective. Suddenly retrospective is the first thing which company cancel after leaving agile coaches. But retrospective it's the most important for improving and for changing the culture and business process in everything. This was our way. And you know before I worked more than five years as agile sales coach and we applied the same process and we triple our sales during next three or four months. In this case after one month of applying scrum we had the first results. Attention. This is our first result.  We dropped from 43% to targets to 20. And all clinics, all people in this clinic they were very upset. Because before they didn't believe in agile. Nobody applied agile in medicine before. That's why we had some sabotage. We had a lot of conflicts about that. And nobody believed. Even in other clinics they thought that it's big mistakes to try agile in medicine. And imagine people who start do something in other way and start worst. And we decided to create one common retrospective. We invite all three teams and start to speak what's happened, why it's happened. And we found several problems. The first one, it started like competitors between teams. They started to steal clients. They started to be small free countries in one country. It was awful. They didn't care about customers. They started to care just about money. And the interesting situation, medicine assistance. It's like law cast in medicine. Nobody speak with them. Nobody involve them in some seriously process. And they wasn't involved in agile transformation. And after that people realized that they need to change something. And we found next results. This is really backlog. Who knows Russian will read it. And we sales increased from 20% to 64%. It was our first, how to say it, we were very happy about that. And doctors start caring about quality of service. They start share information with each other. They change financial motivation of medicine assistance. And people start speak with each other. Because every week they had one hour retrospective. They start trust with each other. But after that everything stopped. You know, it's very difficult to change our habits. It's even, it's very difficult to change our way of thinking. It's very difficult to change, to take responsibility for your decisions. That's why in this case they just afraid to change something else. Because they afraid that it will be worse than it was before. And the most important thing that we hadn't leader who will believe in agile transformation. You know, I believe that for any success agile transformation we need agile coaches. But we need leaders inside in company. Because employees they believe not agile coach from outside. They believe people who really walked in this company. That's why one morning I came to this clinic and found the business owner who invite me. And I thought that this is my last day in this clinic. And I asked him, why you come to this clinic? Why did you come? And he answered, Marina, I believe in agile. I know that we need agile transformation in whole 40 clinics. That's why I will come to survive situation. And he invite all people in one room, 45 people and ask who believe in agile transformation. And not just say believe. Who are going to pay from his salary for agile coaching. And 60% say yes, I believe I'm going to pay some percent from my salary. But 40% said no, I don't believe it. I don't care about that.  And after that he came on the middle of the room and say very strong speech that he believe he will do everything for success. And if somebody don't believe and don't want to change himself goodbye. And it was very seriously speech with passion. And all people understand that they have leader, not just manager, who believe and they start believe. And after that all people involved. It was, you know, this is daily stand up. It's really picture. And after that all people start carry about customers. After that even security, you know, Russian securities they usually very seriously they do nothing. They just sitting near door and this is our Russian security. But in this case it was agile security. He was involved. He realized that they have one main goal in this clinic and he invite people. He try to help them. He ask what kind of TV they want to watch. He try to play with children because they were scaring a dentist. And customers, clients, when they come they start feel something different in this clinic. This is about happy of our customers. And they start, I forgot what I want to tell you. And after that, I remember in 40 clinics they had not marketing department at all because medicine is the last part of business who carry about marketing. But they need because now world is changed. We, for example, I have interesting story. I'm 35 years old and I have assistant. She is 21. And I ask her, how are you, if you decided to find very good doctor, how are you going? And she told me, Instagram, Facebook, Google. For example, me, never. I call to my parents. I call to my friends. I will ask for a good doctor. You see, we have different ways. And in this case, this small clinics decided to explain to executive that they need very good marketing department and they need budget for marketing. And they ask a little money and take short iteration like one week and decided to show them difference. And they decided to create Instagram. This is their, oh. This is their Instagram. They really think that if they every day will share their great examples of their work, their followers will be very happy. But then in one retrospective, they decided to ask followers, do you like our Instagram? Give us some feedback. And they were surprised because people told them, sorry, it's awful. I don't want to see it in my Instagram every day. And they changed. And this is their Instagram. They start to ask feedback from followers. They start to have different, interesting, beautiful pictures which help people with some advice and something like that. And people start to love it. But at the same time, just doctors, they start to have fun from creating this Instagram. All clinics were involved. And the main problem in medicine is to find good doctors and to keep them. Before Agile, about four good doctors per month left these clinics because they didn't like it and something like that. But after Agile, it started like one big family and we didn't lose our doctors and they start happy. Imagine when you come to a clinic and you meet happy doctors, happy security. It doesn't matter which, is it medicine or some shop. And they realized the main idea that the world changed and the clients don't want to be just patrons. They want to have a good service. They found that... Ah, an interesting story that some doctors were... We had some sabotage in the beginning and they didn't believe in and they didn't attend Agile transformation. And after several months, they come to us and say, I believe, I won't be involved, I won't be in the team. Because if you have sabotage in your company you shouldn't push them. You should give them time to believe and to come. And they start to improve their work because doctors afraid new way of working because it's about mistakes, right? That's why it's difficult to give some innovation in medicine. And they start to visit in other clinics. They start to find some good way of working and involved it in their clinic. And retrospectives, it's usually about improving. And this clinic, during five months, apply more than 400 innovative ideas in their work because cross-functional teams, self-organizing teams, it's about ideas from down to up. Not when you have just one manager who creates some innovations. That's why this is our future in whole companies. And Agile come to companies. They start trust to each other. They start to be very openly to each other. They start to speak. And in this case, it was one common retrospective. And doctors start to speak about their mistakes. For example, if we have in business mistakes, in sales mistakes, we could improve it and it's okay. But in medicine, mistakes, it's about life. It's about health. And they start to speak about numbers of mistakes. And found a great mistake in whole process. Young doctors from university who come to this clinic, they had a lot of mistakes because they just afraid to ask advice. And they just put out teeth, not and put, how to say it, implantant because they didn't want to ask help. And they start, they had, okay, they took five years and found how many mistakes this clinics created by themselves. And I was crying. People were crying because it's not 100. It's more. I wouldn't tell you how much, but it was really, it wasn't problem of the people. It was problem of the system. And after that, the doctors with good experience decided to share this experience. They start, teach young doctors. They start, they created different education, something like that. And if doctor didn't know how to help clients, he just could ask and another doctor just could help. And this is the main idea of Agile in medicine. It's not only about team. It's not only about happiness of people or customers. It's about lives. And like a bonus, Agile, it's about money. Because if you apply Agile mindset in sales, in marketing, in medicine, you always have the same situation. For example, this, you remember that it was the worst clinic and after five months it start the best one clinic from 40 clinics. And not only because they had 500, 100% of sales performance, they start the first one about new clients. Because all people try to be in these clinics because it's attitude, they feel it. And in other clinic start come to this clinic and teach Agile and in other tools. And for success Agile transformation, we need success story in our clinic, in our any business. Because people believe not when you tell about Facebook, Google, something like that. They believe when they really have success pilot team or story in their own business. And I think the best Agile leaders, they become from the first pilot teams because it was really, to be the first one it's very difficult for people. And then they teach in other clinics and they involve, and they share, they support them. Oh again, oh my God. This presentation once that you see it several times, 1,000 I think. And we had different Agile transformation in medicine, in sales, and after that we created a framework especially for non-IT teams. And we call it Sway, sales with Agile. Here we have ADAPT backlog, we have different roles. I will tell you, if you want you can come and I will tell you more about that. And we have Canvas. And couple things about Canvas. This clinic 35 people inside. And it's very important that all people security or head of this clinic realize what the main goal they have. What the main idea they have. Why they need this Agile transformation. And Canvas in this case help them to be, to understand everything what they need to achieve. And in this slide I put all steps of any Agile transformation for you. You could make a photo for you because any Agile transformation has some steps. The first step we create pilot team because we need to have our own success. The second step we should find which tool will help to change the mindset. Is it Scrum, is it Sway, is it Canvas or whatever. The next step it's support our team because during first month it's very difficult for people. Especially in pilot team. And when you have first success you should show the success all employees in all company. And in this case we created like show. What does it mean? We had 40 clinics and I as an Agile coach had clear goal that we need to change all 40 clinics. And we took this pilot team, we put camera everywhere and in other clinics they could see what's happening in this clinic in demo, in planning but not in retrospective. Because retrospective it's about deep communication. And sometimes I see some mistakes when people change something in small department but nobody know why, what. And I have a lot of cases when all people in company think that Agile it's just for IT. But not, actually it's mindset. It's our habits, it's our attitude to our clients, customers and to each other. It's about happiness. And the most important thing that it was the same people five months ago and now. But five months ago they were losers after five months ago they start success. What does it mean? It means that the system could change our people. But if you change the system, if you change the way of working people give you another result. And Agile works in sales, Agile works in medicine, Agile it's mindset. It's mindset which when you care about your customers, when you think every day what kind of value you are going to give your customers. When you openly, when you trust to each other and when you happy in your job. And this is my story. If you have any questions I would love to answer. I hope you like this story. And the main idea that it doesn't matter medicine, sales, marketing, I don't know, education. It's way of changing and we need to change ourselves and our business. Thank you. Who was the product owner then? Who was the scrum master? The product owner was head of clinic. She had pre-clinics, like a curator, I don't know how in English. And she, okay, product owner in non-IT team it's person who say what kind of numbers they should achieve. It's about vision. What should they do? But clinic decided how. And this is main different because they have a good budget. Now all clinics have open budget and they have some freedom. And scrum masters, you have two ways how to find great scrum masters. The first one just ask who want to be a scrum master? The first one. In this case they afraid everything because it's medicine.  You will be scrum master from Monday. Yes, sir. And we ask, it was some from team, totally. We tell them you have five days and just give us name of your scrum masters. They decided themselves. We had three teams. And I support scrum masters because for them it's new roles. And the best thing if you give freedom to choose themself. But product owner, it's some person who could make decisions. Who could say yes, we will spend this budget or not. Thank you. Can you also give me an example of our backlog? Yeah. For example, the first part about numbers. I don't know, one million dollars for three months. This is our main goal, for example, right? The second one, for example, 50 new clients per week or per, I don't know, months. Then in this case they had some numbers about implantants. How many implants? Because they had some medicine and something like that. And the second part, it's about feedback. It's about customer development, customer discovery. It's about how our customers are happy. And this is another part. This is about Instagram. It was because the main goal, one week they had main goal to know how happy our customers are now from one to ten. And they called them, they asked and it was interviews. Thank you. Okay. Hi, I'm Prabhakar. It's very interesting to see agile in sales and agile in medicine. Both are extremes in my view. So what I would like to understand is when someone is starting their transformations, the first thing in the IT, what we tell them is don't increase your target if possible, reduce your target because teams need time to set up and stuff like that. So how do you see that in the non-IT world? Could you repeat? I didn't catch it. The targets? Yeah. You should have some targets to meet. Sales people, right? The sales people, yeah. So when they're actually getting onto an agile way of transformations, should they be expected to meet the target in the very beginning itself? Do you see that happening? If I understand correctly, but I'm not sure. This is the easiest way to apply agile to sales because it's always about increasing targets. And this is the way how to sell agile transformation in the whole company. And sometimes IT people ask me, Marina, how we could sell, this is metaphor, sell agile transformation to our sales people because we're agile, our sales people are not. And I always say, invite them on retrospective, invite them to demo, show them what you're doing. And after that, they will involve and they will apply agile in their... I think part of the question was, do the targets always go up or do you expect them to go down? Ah, sorry, yes. Thank you so much. In the beginning, I applied agile in sales more than 170 teams in different business areas. And always, the first two months, it's always go down because it's a new way of working. They need to spend energy time for a new way. That's why it is always and this is a time when they need your support. Thank you so much. Just within five months, you seem to have achieved significant benefits. Now, how long has it been after those five months? And then how are you sustaining that beyond those five months? Curious to know that. After during one year, they increase 127 totally for one year. And did I answer for you or not? I'm not sure that day. How are you sustaining beyond that? Yes. So how are you sustaining beyond that? That is an important question. I think I need to translate. From the end of that one year to today, what has happened? How is it growing? How is it staying the same? They're still growing, but they're executive. They increase their plans. That's why now they're just about 100% for months. I mean, we will not have grow like that. Of course, no. It will be like that. Every day, they will try to achieve more and more because they're involved. Jai Ganesh from Delight, actually. My one question is, I saw your backlogs. How do you track and all that? So did you use any tools like charting tools in your daily scrum to track? For example, we use burn down charts, burn up charts, etc. Any charting tools did you use? In sales, and in this case, we don't use a board chart because we see numbers. This is our main things because we have exactly, for example, $1,000 per week, and we achieve it or not. This is our main type of how we measure it. Where can I find that? Yes, I will give you, I will tell you a link. You can find me in LinkedIn. I have two great articles about Agile and Sales in Agile and Medicine with very beautiful, clear English. Welcome to my LinkedIn. Hi, Marina. Thank you for the wonderful presentation here. My question is around, you spoke about the mindset change. And especially when you have eight managers and people reporting to them and it's always like, yes boss, whatever you say, how do you make them turn around? Any special technique that you can share? Yes, of course. There are three things. The first one is coaching. Individual coaching, coaching scrum masters. The first one. The second one is retrospective. The best thing is retrospective. But if our retrospective will be boring, yes, it wouldn't work. Retrospective should be as a working tool. You have more than 100 or 200 different types of retrospective. It depends what happens inside in this team. For example, we have black market marker. When all people, during one hour, nobody say anything, just writing. And different, different types, it depends what do you need to achieve with this team. But these are for changing mindset. And of course, another communication between people inside of team. You need good agile coach or scrum master who will believe in their success and help them. The one question. I will take it. Okay. When you're trying to change like a small company, especially high tech or software development, it's not that complicated to sell the idea of scrum or agile or anything like that. Now, companies out of IT, it might be a little bit more complicated. Companies like this one, like this size, how can you sell the idea in order to change the whole company? Leadership like team is a little bit risky to say let's change everything and see what happens. I have exactly way how I do it. I have cases, 3,000 people inside and more. The first pilot, it's your success story. It's your numbers. When you show executive numbers, they start belief and then create plan of agile transformation. You should not do everything in one day. It will be house. It will be awful situation. Step by step. But I love to start agile transformation from sales. Because sales department communicate with all departments. And if you change sales, you change whole organization at the same time. Thank you so much.


Hello everyone and welcome back to For The Minions episode 37 of For The Minions, the weekly show where we talk about some of the possible replacements for Paragon. I am your host, the one and only man who's joining me as always is the lovely Mandy Mal, who actually looks a little good tonight. How you doing Mandy? I'm actually doing fine, thank you so much. And I know I say this every episode but I really am really excited this time because our little special guest host is a good good friend of mine and I'm really happy that he agreed to be on the show and that is so regal. So please go ahead introduce yourself a little bit, tell us how you got started with Paragon and all that good stuff, favorite hero, all the good stuff. Well when I was like 16 I guess I started playing MOBAs, I started with League of Legends. I never took it seriously and about two years in like at 18 I just stopped playing video games altogether but I got reintroduced to video games from a really good in real life friend of mine and he was playing Paragon and after like three games I was hooked. I got into the game right after Morgash was released and so I was on the second map. I never got to play on Legacy unfortunately but I just took to the game immediately and I was mastering heroes left, right and center just got really addicted to MOBAs again and then that led me here and now I'm a smite jungler for Reliance Gaming. We play in the Smite Amateur Invitation League and we're just looking to make a test seal next year so we'll see if we can actually pull that out. Best of luck to you man, who was your favorite Paragon hero? Definitely got to be Steel but a lot of people don't actually know me and a user who played Paragon with me, Maxi Man 99. We actually sent in the hero idea for Terra and we never actually got credit for that because Epic kind of just cut ties with us after that. They were like yeah we like this but we don't like this we sent two heroes and they didn't like the second hero but that second hero's skin became that Countess Samurai skin that was never released and we just got completely ignored and it was super important and it made me like really detest like I never contacted Devs for a very long time just for fear of that again you know and so but I definitely mastered Terra the minute she came out. I was super super happy to play her so she's definitely got to be second but yeah Steel's my one true baby for sure. I feel Steel was underrated I think everybody knows that Steel was strong but I don't think people realize how strong Steel was and just.  I did love when I would play Carrie I loved a good Steel support that was that was always fun I was like oh yeah let's get it. You were going to win lane because if you got a grass down to the bop or pushed whatever it was whatever time it was super super awesome yeah definitely. Alright so for this week we're going to change things up a little bit instead of doing the news and updates because we really didn't have that much news and updates I'll hit on them real quick as just there was an announcement from predecessors and they're starting to put the lane minions in finally but that's not the that's not the last thing they need to work on but alpha should be pretty soon and then for ethereal they they're starting to gear up for for the alpha release they're starting to hire people to do like trailers gameplay trailers and stuff like that that by no means means that it's coming out very very soon but they're just now hiring those people so it's good to see that they're making those preparations but the main thing I wanted to talk about this week instead of doing the news and updates was on in the last poll a lot of people are talking about how they've completely lost faith in these games and I will never tell anyone that their opinion is wrong because it's their opinion and I can totally see where a lot of these people are coming from however I think a lot of that doubt is misplaced I think what happened is a lot of people hook their horses to the core cart at the very beginning and now core has stalled out quite a bit they're not dead they're not going anywhere but they have stalled out quite a bit and that's caused a lot of people to lose a lot of faith that there will ever be any sort of paragon reboot and it just makes me wonder like are you not looking at predecessor at all because one of the complaints I see a lot is that they haven't seen like a demo of the game or any kind of gameplay or anything any one of sergeant smoky streams I'll link his twitch down below has plenty of gameplay like every single one of the streams for ever has had actual gameplay and some of it is server-based so I don't really see if that's the reason why you're losing faith then you know start looking other places that is pretty much my point there and I got a couple points I want to make in this conversation but maybe what did you have anything you wanted to say to them about this well I feel like I've gotten on this soapbox before so I don't want to kind of beat a dead horse but like I've said multiple times this is not typical gameplay development news like we don't we're asking these people for updates on a week to week basic a basis and it's not like groundbreaking things are happening every single week it's a slow process you know hiccups happen and they have to fix hiccups and nobody wants to hear about that as news you know they want to hear all this big groundbreaking earth shaking stuff as updates and if they're not hearing that they may start thinking oh well the game is dead the game is dead but you know we don't even like any triple a game you don't get this kind of behind-the-scenes look almost you're not going to get weekly updates on how a game is how a game's development is going so I think people need to kind of keep that in mind I know I know it's hard we're all excited we all come from the same place of we love to game so tremendously much that we don't want to let it go and that's the bottom line that's the same passion we all share so I understand where everybody's coming from but just try to keep in mind that it is a slow process just because you know it's it's could be looked at as no news is good news like they're they're they've got their noses to the grindstone and they're working so just try to have a little bit of patience have some faith and just definitely like Goose was saying it's out there the news is out there like with with smokey streaming and stuff like that but even even if teams are not going that far and like having a stream where you can visually see the process being completed almost you know with like ethereal and visionary and core that doesn't mean they're they're down and out and that doesn't mean we'll never see this game until the day that one of them officially says okay we're done that's when you can start to worry that's when you can you know say okay they're dead the game is dead but I don't think that's something we have to worry about as of right now so Regal do you have anything you wanted to say I just think I just think people just shouldn't set their expectations so high so early game development takes a lot of time like it just and it has for years and I mean yeah we're at a time where like things are coming out a lot quicker everybody gets updated on the new thing I mean we're buying phones once a year now you know I get it like technology is moving forward but you still have to have patience with people especially when they're community driven games like these these are small companies these are small indie studios this is not this is not you know dice this isn't yeah this isn't this isn't all these like big triple A names you can't you can just hold out hope if you believe in it and if you don't then like move on but there's no need to like trash on it and you know try to try to put negativity on something just because it's not meeting your standard of updates and oh I want to know what's going on like they don't need to tell you everything because then if they hype you up too much and they don't deliver you're gonna be even more upset and then that's more backlash so I don't know yeah I was very well said I think some of it falls on on the I think some of the fault does fall on the companies themselves is what I'm trying to stumble through here they they a lot of a lot of these companies have put out deadlines that they just could not reach very true so something I learned very early on in life is if somebody comes to you and says hey how long is this gonna take if you think it's gonna take a day you tell them three days that way if you get it done in a day you look like a rock star if it takes three days then you know you met the standards so that's that's something I think they needed to do like when core put out that that April deadline so early on there was no sentimental way and hell they were gonna make that deadline and they got a lot of people that including me really hyped up they can we're gonna have like a like 15 player alpha in April and it's gonna be awesome on the anniversary yeah it was a very romantic idea then I'm a predecessor I mean they did meet their deadline just barely but they did meet the deadline but you know it there was a lot of problems with it a lot of people like oh yeah maybe maybe they maybe they shouldn't have met that deadline maybe they should have pushed it back as Smokey will tell you though he'll he always says that you got to release it at some point you got to find those bugs at some point in time so you know not releasing it releasing it whatever but and then on ethereal they kind of you know they've pushed their alpha date back several times you know they completely redesigned their heroes which you know they don't want that of course they need to push it back then the other thing you know with visionary and ethereal both they're creating everything from the ground up so they're going to run into way more problems than either Omeda studios or made above are going to run into so yeah I just I'm just gonna keep being extremely patient I do have my concerns and I understand why people have their concerns but it's you know there it's not dead now and and I don't and I think people are saying that for the wrong reasons is the main thing I just I think people are very disheartened with core and that's the one that they had the most faith in and now that core is kind of going away then they've completely lost faith maybe instead of just completely losing faith go go check out Omeda maybe you didn't check them out before go check them out now check out undying and ethereal visionary should be popping back into the scene pretty soon visionaries the ones that they kind of got us all hyped up the most at first they were the only they're the first ones to step into the arena and pick up that torch and they're still going to be coming out with something you know state stay tuned to them guys and I mean they're kind of an excellent example of they released way too much information way too soon they burned that candle at both ends of that candle went the fuck out and they're trying to rekindle it but yeah I think a lot of you know speaking to setting realistic expectations and dates and stuff like that I think a lot of that came from the fact that these are indie companies they're all basically startups if you would you know put it that way they maybe haven't had experience in marketing it's not necessarily the development side of the game just the marketing side of the game and when it's the right time to say certain things and when to hold back and you know setting ex you know expectations to be just right and like you said kind of like maybe set it for farther than you really think because then if you you know nobody's gonna complain about something coming out early but yeah if you end up having to push dates back and I really appreciate what Smokey always says that like at some point you just got to put it out there alphas are for finding bugs nobody should I know people did but nobody should expect an alpha to be a hundred percent perfect so get it out there let the public get their hands on it and help you in a way they'll help you with the development of the game by saying this needs to be fixed this is good you know blah blah blah so I I just think that Smokey has a really good head on his shoulders when it comes to to this and I think he is a good example to look to if the way he's handling this so I would definitely encourage people if they maybe didn't have faith in Omita before like you said check them out if you're not and then even with like Visionary they took a hit like you said they were the first one to get in and they they kind of took a hit early on and now they're still trucking like they are not giving up they're still going at it but they've learned it's almost like twice bit or once bit and twice shy whatever that saying is that they learned not to put too much out too soon they've learned when is the appropriate time to release that information because you don't want to hype people up too much and then get the backlash of not living up to expectations I think real set it perfectly in the beginning that people need to have realistic expectations and at first the we weren't set up to believe oh hey you know this is happening this is happening fast this is happening now now I think we're all kind of learning together that this is a longer process than than anybody maybe anticipated yeah I definitely agree with that though for sure in the beginning like the hype train was way too real yeah we all jump on it like even even me just like word of mouth to my friend like well everybody go check this out you watch in the stream at my house on the big TV like the making the models over at Visionary games like isn't this crazy good you know what I mean and then it's it was just quiet goes down it's like well can't keep this train going anymore without without any more goodies like time to slow it down a little bit yeah it seems like it was a learning process you know hopefully a lot of them have learned yeah and like in these all these companies are self-funded I know a lot of people want to give them money if that will speed along the process but they all want to kind of produce something tangible before they do any kind of Kickstarter or ask for any kind of money which I think it's probably for the best because there have been some some scams out there people trying to play upon the Paragon hearts and make some money off of it and well that's also just respectable yeah here's a little something you want to give us a little something it's a lot more it's just a lot more respect yeah definitely I think that's about all I wanted to say did you guys have anything else you want to you want to kick in I just want people to you know keep keep believing I'm like little miss positivity and I want everybody to win and I want everybody to be nice and I just want us to all get along so just just keep believing keep up keep being positive like we all said if you don't believe anymore or you're not interested anymore if this process is just dragging out for you and you're not interested it's okay to move along you can let it go but you don't have to you don't have to shit in our nests while you're at it exactly like I said it's a perfectly valid opinion yeah yeah and that's if you just clearly have lost heart you know just maybe just wait for some bigger updates and maybe that'll bring people back around but I'm gonna keep covering it I'm gonna keep covering as much news as I possibly can for those of those of you who want it because I enjoy doing it and Mandy enjoys doing it as well and um Regal seems like you enjoy following these games too a little bit oh yeah for sure for sure I'm pretty stoked about ethereal that's my that's my breadwinner right there they can make it work they can make it work man that's that's a that's a great game right there very innovative yeah yeah yeah it'll completely change that change things if they could if they can make it work that's the biggest gift it'll completely change the genre I think it would be the end of the all but we'll see we'll see that's but that's that's where my eyes are definitely like on the most I'm very excited by it as a jungler main to I mean having blind assassins you know like that's kind of there's like three different junglers in their like setup right now like that's kind of it's kind of intriguing to me so yeah you go assassin berserker or uh go the the sky slider exactly exactly get off with a tank or a night as they call it yeah exactly yeah flex picks that's what they're going for cool beans yeah a lot of a lot of eyes have turned towards ethereal well and it's beautiful oh yeah it's beautiful and it's early and it's beautiful you know and so that's that's positive like the super positive that's that just means it's only by the time it gets released and by the time they balance it out and if they make it work like when we get there I imagine what it will be right and that's that's what I'm looking towards that yeah maybe I've clinged on to the vision but I don't know they haven't filled me yet everything they put out top notch that's true that's true hope that gameplay is top notch as well yeah and they didn't rush anything really right and it's hard to imagine it not me because they're so painstakingly taking care of this game you know like this is their baby look at the items the item art was fantastic I know so it's like you know they're gonna they're gonna put it put in the work where it counts too so good stuff all right well speaking of ethereal let's move on to the poll results for this week and the poll results this week let me pull them down here we had this was the uh the first of the month always do you know the most excited poll you know which game you're most excited for uh core was 26 percent predecessor was 30 percent ethereal at 40 percent and phoenix rising at its usual 3 percent so they were at 4 percent for a little bit I was I was I was proud of the little guys but uh yeah ethereal uh they took the lead in the last one and they are uh maintaining that lead now um kind of a big change is predecessor is kind of overtaken core in popularity and uh it's I mean it's pretty even that's about as that's the most even the numbers have been since I've ever done this poll I think I think so and I'm just so excited that those three percent have remained so loyal I love you guys whoever you three percent are I love you keep it keep it going and I know a lot of people say it's like you know three people that actually worked for visionary whatever no it's like I get you know usually about you know 1500 votes on this so it's it's definitely more than three people it's definitely more than three people yeah yeah so keep going you three percent I love you so that is gonna be it for the poll results let's move on now to the highlight reel for this week um I actually got some from you guys and remember if you want to send in a highlight it has to be a prerecorded thing I of course can't you know just load up a replay in the paragon anymore but if you do have one previously recorded on like a YouTube channel or you just got one you know on your on your system um send it on over to me and we'll see if we can get it in here and and and display it for everybody and show everybody your former glory in paragon but yeah let's get on over to the highlight reel tibulator 96 on rickner has spotted a low health calari walks right around those minions charging straight at her she is of course going to try and slip into the shadow realm hits her with the shock therapy she he can't see her right now misses that hook but does pick her up with the ultimate he's going to use a luxury to take her down our good friend ruba is back with a clip that highlights how crazy overpowered quang was after the version 43 update I mean he was already pretty strong but after version 43 he seemed seemed like his power level went through the roof he's attacking into these minions swinging in he's got that life still he doesn't have to care about that shit but here comes shimmy she was uh starting a family feud there with the purple buff she's gonna have to get out because she is very low already and she hasn't done shit to him she's a she has stacked up all kill but all kill isn't enough he takes down phase takes down shimmy and now twin blast thinks he's one piece but he does not want a piece is that uh that health regen was just nuts oh shit here comes thing mal full health thing mal versus uh what 10 percent um quang maybe 20 percent health quang not probably not going to be good quang go and try and get out of here thing mal's chasing down that thing mal is level 14 and quang is level 20 though and here comes thing mal over the top he doesn't see the aurora aurora catches him with the cryo system and they are able to take down thing mal as well and then ruba included a bit of a joke here yeah yeah I agree fine I'm okay with events that are unfolding currently our next clip is from up suicidal play in narbash and the blue team is trying to take orb prime they do have a ward down so they they know they know narbash is there but he's going to try and sneak in and steal this orb prime against three members of the enemy team he takes a thunk to the noggin but he's going to start channeling that crash bang boom the orb prime is very low he knocks everybody up and takes the orb prime and he's going to try and get out of here but they are pissed they're trying to chase him down to take him out he's using that speed boost to try and get away he's going to flip around here in a second lands a thunk on severhog and walks away if ever there was a dab word of the moment that was it right there got a bonus clip right here from i am adam we aka the richter main he's sneaking up on this rampage I included this one because this is so nostalgic I used to do the same thing at the start of the game I'd wrap around that pole and catch the offlaner pushed up way too far he does miss this hook right here and they play a little cat and mouse for quite a while rampage is going to try and go into the jungle and back richter knows what's up comes around the side rampage is facing the wrong way and uh I am adam we finishes what he started all right guys I hope you enjoyed those highlights uh for the topic of discussion for this week I was talking to to regal a little bit and he was talking about um competitive smite play and and and you know how these how that could kind of translate into some of these newer games as we've talked about on the show before um a competitive scene is kind of important to amoeba and it'll be important to any of these games going forward but I had realized that I don't know anything about competitive play whatsoever and regal was spitting out some stuff that was extremely interesting to me so I figured that would be a good topic for discussion this week so regal you you uh kind of competitive smite you you're in the amateur was it the amateur console league or something like that you were saying yeah it's uh it's sale so sale basically um sale is an amateur league that is uh it's community driven so they've they've gotten gems from high res and so we play for like the in-game currency but it's a good platform for us to practice against other people who are taking the game seriously but aren't necessarily in the pro leagues yet and and kind of like a way to get us ready to compete in the in the pro leagues on the console side because on the console side it's an open bracket um every year and the top two teams from the open bracket face off against the two bottom teams in the console league and whoever wins those those fights those matches they get to be the pros that year it like at the bottom teams and then you get a chance to be you know making money making salary claim video games so that's where i'm at right now i'm trying to transition into you know getting paid to do this so it's kind of like a farm league and baseball sort of yeah almost almost it's exactly what smite minor league is to the smite pro league smite minor league is basically like a farm league right so um you know these players are really good ranked players or whatever and they're they're picked and you know now subs or people from the pro league leave or have accidents or whatever happens maybe somebody has a kid they they draft somebody from the minor league you know what i mean it's like a farm league oh wow you're just you're going through it all year you get a chance to to compete at the end of the year to get a spot and sometimes if if teams are short you and you're you're good enough in the minor league like you might just get picked up so um and in the in the console side of things there's there's the open bracket at the start of the year and then mid-year after the mid-season land there's uh there's another relegation so there's another open bracket in which the two bottom teams from the first phase and the two top teams from another open bracket battle it out to see who can actually make it to the world championship so if these two top these two bottom teams like made it in from the first open bracket but just like didn't hack it and then like two other people like two other teams make it in from the second open bracket and just knock them out now they have the chance at the world championship and the other guys just lost you you know what I mean it becomes very very competitive um like you have to stay on your game um so yeah but that's where we're at um and sales sales just a really good platform um tj created in 2017 and uh after its first split um the playstations might lead came together and they did an event and koja fox who's uh he's a coach in the spl this might pro league um and his team they they competed on the console side of things and they placed first in the brawl championship and then they had like a huge stream event and that brought in like a bunch of viewers and the psl eventually shut down and the people from that league joined in on sale and it made like one big super league and so this this is the closest thing to smite minor league for console and that's like where we're at now so now we're now we're getting gems from them and we can beat and it's a hell of a lot of fun but it's a hell of a lot of work so how do these teams form is it usually just friends that just make a team and then enter the bracket or is it you know that's how it happened for me or um yeah i mean some some do it that way um me i i was just playing games with my friends and i saw that it was an open bracket i'd been playing smite like i said i've been playing for just over a year now and i was like this would be a lot of fun um and my my carry unkept jupiter he he was a semi pro player in league of legends he was a pro player on we for a call of duty we call a duty man i could never do that you know what i mean but i i could never do that you know what i mean i can barely play the tennis uh it's just not my it's just not my game there's no way i'm gonna be aiming a gun perfectly and playing that competitively um so he's just really a crazy gamer um and him and i just put together a team of our our paragon buddies are really really good paragon buddies and you know some life change things happened and there's a couple three agents that that were within the the sale league and after going through like 15 supports and seven solos and six mids we we finally got our team and wow you know now we're here so it's uh it was a it was a long journey and there was a lot of a lot of crap involved but uh you make it work that sounds like something i definitely could not do while still doing youtube like it's definitely definitely hard um i tried to do it it's well my twitter fans probably hate me because i'll put out a schedule and i'll still be 30 minutes late to scream but i just have a very busy life and uh my phone's constantly going off so uh i just don't uh i don't always make it on time but i do my best because i want to be as active with people as i can and bring light to what people do in the scene just uh you know i'm just a regular dude at the end of the day so um it's cool to like see somebody try try to make it where people want to be at least see people taking the steps to get there because not it not everybody even knows how to how to get started in it so yeah that's very true do you think that that model that that smite goes by is a good model do you think that should be adopted by some of these games going forward or do you think there should be some changes to that um i think it's i think it's a decent model um i just feel yeah no i feel i actually i honestly do feel like it's a good model because you're giving especially when you're starting out if you're just starting out a competitive scene um like you you want to leave that open to as many people as possible because you don't want to pass over any time and one thing my carry has always said whether we've beaten teams or lost against teams um whether the person's been you know in gold or in diamond he's like everybody has a right to compete and at the end of the day ranked is very different from competitive it is a lot different especially in smite smite it's fend for yourself when you play competitive there's no fend for yourself it's play as a unit right so i i get it so everybody has a right to compete and i feel like if you're if you're leaving it as an open bracket you're you're leaving it open to as much talent as possible um like for for example like smite smite really took it far though like they they extended their beta because they wanted to host land events with like cash prizes during the beta oh really and their beta their beta had like 74 million hours of playtime before they reach long holy crap that's like that's huge like they were paying cash prizes in beta with just like little online and land events and like so they were building their community like super super early yeah and then when they launched they they got the best eight teams from north america and europe and they paid a two hundred thousand dollar prize pool for their launch and then they the winners of that they got a custom skin in the game on a character that they chose and that's happened every year since oh wow now the prizes are more they they now there's the world championship and the first year of that that was 2.6 million dollars and the first place team got a 1.3 million dollars of that so like smites like there's a lot of money invested into esports too like you gotta have you gotta have sponsors you gotta have investors you gotta have organizations that are partnered with you right like it's not uh it's not like hey we want to be competitive how like let's just do it um you're you're gonna have to like start out and build your community um by doing like events putting some of like your developer money up and then just hope that you can attract enough big names big orgs big sponsors to to fund you along the way because uh gets gets pretty pricey because at the end of the day um who wants to spend eight to 14 hours a day playing a video game um and then they're not they're not gonna you know you need to make it worth their while right i mean i i get that i get that you're playing video games for a lay i'm not i'm not saying but that they're putting as much time as an athlete would into sports true and if they're gonna be getting paid millions of dollars every year um and if esports is surpassing hollywood in terms of entertainment and how much money it brings in then you need to make it favorable for the player so yeah so yeah i think i think let leaving it open to people is good um but make sure that you're you're making the right moves to attract the right people so that you keep that going you're an actually develop and yeah i had no idea that smite had a competitive scene during their beta um yeah they they were like huh there's a lot of like really good players here let's extend the beta and just like host some online and land events we'll just like see what happens and the results like i said into 74 million hours of play time like that's ridiculous in a beta alone so and you you uh you touched on something there that i kind of wanted to bring up along with this topic ranked and competitive play are two very different things just because someone's good at ranked doesn't mean they're going to be good at competitive play and just because somebody's good exactly you know in a competitive team doesn't mean they're going to be the greatest ranked player ever i mean those skills will will you know crossover some you know like uh i'm sure the top ranked player will would be able to fit in with a team but exactly there's going to be solo queue habits though and we've experienced that right like we met we met like the third best uh Zeus player on console and we tried him out for mid and he was just like he was kind of like a solo queue jackass and like i won't say names like i'm not going to point you know i'm not going to like throw his name out or nothing but like he he just he had a lot of solo queue habits he didn't play with his team he just you know he would he would he just did a lot of dumb stuff and it threw games for us and it was just because he was really good at what he did he was a really good mid laner but he was he was good at he was good at his lane what he needed to do nothing else like no team playing very little but you gotta be able to follow callouts i'll make callouts and support and that's the thing if you need to die for your team then die for your team and yeah that's a call that has been made sometimes and yeah i can imagine like a solo queue a solo queue commando would not want to do that you know it's just self and more selfish you play more selfish you play more play for yourself because you're not trying to feed because in ranked if you feed then then you're getting spammed with toxicity because we all know how so what was that guy's name again Mandy you've been awful quiet what you got yeah i was wondering if there's anything regal that you think these games these four games that we've been talking about is there anything that they absolutely have to do if they want to get into the competitive scene i'm sure that's you know kind of far on their radar for now they want to get a game up and running but is there anything in your opinion that they have to do if they want to be successful in the competitive scene i would say start out make sure that you have a healthy player base and that you can retain it make sure that you make sure that you have some proper balance like don't just don't just hop into the game and be like okay games launch let's get ready for for esports like no like let's let's have a balance let's see how see how everything performs balance the heroes accordingly then see about maybe adding ranked if there's enough even interest in ranked you know then like you know see how many people are hitting that top threshold see if it's worth it to start investing in your competitive scene and then from there you know if you're doing well just start hosting online events and whatever use can start raising from that through streams whatever the hell you know make start making those lan events and try to try to grab those sponsors cool and uh yeah just go from there it's it's baby steps i mean like high res high res isn't the biggest company ever right you know and they are the third most talked about moba wow so it's when you when you search up uh moba esports on the internet it will say legal legends dota 2 it's like like that's that's the order they're they're the big three right now and as much as like two of them are i would i would classify these games into subgenres now at the top down moba and a third person moba because they are they are separate things they do have separate mechanics they are separate realms but true um at the end of the day they are the big three so um yeah high res isn't huge they they do well but they're not they're also not a AAA studio they're not they're not EA right they're not they make free to play games and they do they do a really really good job of it but yeah i think if they can do these these games can definitely i thought paragon yeah yeah pcl kind of that was fun to watch there for a little bit it was it really was it was super entertaining brought a lot of viewership i loved nerf didn't even know the guy existed before pcl you know what do you know you learn a few things from competitive as well and and when you have when you have a competitive scene you're drawing in more people because people want people have an innate instinct to be competitive everybody wants to be the best a little bit right everybody wants to climb those leaderboards everybody wants to see where they're going to be um and people want those pros to look up to so that they know how to play the game how to manipulate enemy players how to do all these things um so it's it's definitely it's it's healthy for the game i think especially if it's competitive by nature don't wait on ranked don't wait on ranked like paragon did don't wait on another topic we've covered yes they definitely need to put ranked in as soon as they can and not rely on a third-party ranking system and do not ever lock the hero behind a paywall genesis is genesis i know i know i know we're not talking about that game but i have to make that heard come on rampage what are you doing you're gonna mess up the balance of your game how are people supposed to play here how are you gonna get numbers and stats for a hero that's only played by people who have money yeah get out of here she's gonna be she's gonna be broken in two weeks and it's gonna be pay to win and what are you gonna say then oh we're sorry right gotta you gotta fix that all right um go ahead maybe i had yeah i had one more question if you have any tips for anybody who wants to get where you are um what what would you say to someone who's interested in maybe trying to to move up to to take those steps to get to the minor leagues and then maybe the more professional play a lot of ranked play a lot of ranked and do you get it honestly with the new system just do do as good as you can in your first 10 games because it's gonna matter the most qualifiers don't happen anymore smite specifically um if it if it's any MOBA we can just go with the play a lot of play a lot of ranked try to find some like-minded people um people that you you innately have good synergy with and uh queue up with them play with them as much as possible and you know just just do it just try look for those look for those little tournaments look for those little ins and outs and just try because like if you fail you're just back where you were you're just you're still just playing video games for fun but if you go somewhere then you're then you're taking that step just take a step you got nothing to lose it's it's like you really don't it's we're just playing video games we're all just gamers guys cool i like it that's really good advice all right is that it for the topic anybody else got anything no i think we're good okay right on let's move on into plugs regal what do you got the plug brother uh twitter uh at so regal so underscore regal um i got a youtube i got a twitter but you you're gonna hear about all that if you go to twitter twitter is probably where i i'm the most active you'll know what's going on on everything else if you follow that so oh right on mandy anything to plug i have something to plug what can you believe it i i actually put out a video on youtube um i did a kind of like a review um my thoughts and opinions on genesis so if anybody's interested in what i have to say go take that out and then i'm streaming of course oh thank you thank you very much um i put out a cooking video which are pretty rare for me but i do put them out sometimes and people seem to enjoy them um did uh beer-based at war ribs from world of warcraft so if you want to see me cooking some shit go take a look at that and also um i'm starting to be a little more active on instagram it's mainly just weird and or gross pictures from work um it's uh the mongoose gg not mangoose mongoose i made this back when i was still the man the the mongoose but yeah the mongoose gg um i'm kind of been trying to do like a caption um competition see if anybody can beat my captions uh the first picture i put on there was a very very strange drawing and um i forget what the caption output was because people immediately beat it somebody was like oh it's the it's the picture of ron weasley it's the long lost portrait of ron weasley i'll give you five dollars and somebody else said this is the funniest one it's kind of mean but it was so funny i said britik is that you oh yeah i saw that and i cringed i was like that's my brother you can't you can't talk about my man's like that it was funny though i would if if if somebody said the same thing about me i would laugh at it so all right it was pretty it was pretty fine i'm sure i'm sure he chuckled i'm sure he chuckled i know right so uh yeah you guys can check that out if you want to but um i think that's gonna wrap it up for this week i hope you guys enjoyed the show sorry that i changed it up a little bit i was just i really wanted to get um get that topic covered and and and done with so we should be moving to regular scheduled programming next week but for now this is the four of the minions crew signing off you guys have a good one see ya man go


Expressions of local government are those in which the people are closest to the government and the government is closest to its people. It's a great opportunity to achieve those things that you think are really valuable that makes a community a community. I think it's meaning edge government. Obviously it's a government closest to the people. Local government is all about working with the people on every single thing they see or touch during a day has some local government element to it. It's about the people in your community and what your community sees for its future and how they want to go forward. To me local government is incredibly rewarding. It's the best thing I've ever done. Local governments in British Columbia are made up primarily of municipalities and regional districts. There are 162 municipalities and 27 regional districts. Municipalities consist of cities, towns, villages and districts. And regional districts are a federation of municipalities and unincorporated areas called electoral areas. Regional districts enable municipalities and electoral areas to enter into partnerships to deliver services in a cost effective way for citizens. Local governments are involved in many parts of daily life from water, sewer and policing to land use planning, roads and recreation facilities. The Community Charter and the Local Government Act set out the purposes of municipalities and regional districts which include providing for good government of the community, providing for services, laws and other matters for community benefit, providing for stewardship of the public assets of the community and fostering the economic, social and environmental well-being of the community. Local governments provide for the community by following the rules and legislation, following proper meeting procedures and making transparent decisions. Local governments provide services based on the needs and wants of the community. Municipalities may provide any services that they consider necessary or desirable, such as building inspection, garbage collection, community parks, street lighting and sidewalks. And regional districts may provide local, sub-regional and regional services that are too costly for a single municipality to provide, such as a large recreational facility or a major sewage system. Local governments pass by laws for a variety of purposes, including establishing meeting procedures, regulating land use, regulating an activity such as noise and nuisances, or requiring certain actions such as obtaining a business license. Local governments provide for stewardship of the public assets of the community by collecting taxes and charging fees to pay for local government administration, staffing, debt services, and the services provided to the community. Local governments foster the economic, social and environmental well-being of the community by creating business retention and expansion programs, adopting growth strategies and plans that encourage affordable housing units, and creating active transportation networks. Local government officials are elected every four years. They are elected as mayors, counselors, and electoral area directors. Local government is different than a business and other levels of government. Unlike a business where there is often one person in charge, a council or board is a collective body. For municipalities, each vote around the council table is equal. For regional districts, votes around the board table are sometimes variable based on service participation or population. A local government is more complex than a private sector business. It has more diverse responsibilities and communities that it must serve. It must build and maintain many different relationships, including with other local governments, first nations, the provincial government, and the federal government. While there are clear financial rules and limits, a local government's work is primarily about balancing different community interests to find a path forward. Local governments are different than other levels of government because there is no cabinet or opposition. In general, local governments decisions are debated and made in public. All of the council or board is accountable for a decision based on a majority vote. Once a decision is made, each elected official needs to work to implement it, even if they opposed it in earlier discussions. Also, there is no built-in referee chosen by the whole body as a neutral voice to monitor conduct. The chair of the meeting has certain powers to maintain order at that meeting, but it's the individual responsibility of each elected official to know the rules and follow them.