Hey guys, it's Alex, welcome back to my channel. Today's video, I'm filming a what's in my purse video. This is actually a backpack I know, but I use this as like my everyday purse bag, whatever. Before we get into this video though, I wanted to remind you guys to hit that red subscribe button. I do multiple different types of videos. So you're in for a treat if you subscribe. Also follow me on Instagram because I'm working really hard on my Instagram and I would love it if you would follow me. So this is my mini Palm Springs backpack from Louis Vuitton. I got this a little over a year ago and I absolutely love it. I love backpacks and I know that it's kind of weird to carry a backpack as like your everyday bag, but if you just have this on your back, I don't have to worry about like a purse falling off my shoulder. I mean, cross bodies are cute, but sometimes I'm just like not feeling it, but this just adds to any outfit I think and I love it. If you guys wanna check this out, I'll leave it linked down below. I have the new 2020, 2019 version. So the zipper is really easy to unzip. She's made really well and I absolutely love it. So let's just get on into what's in my purse. So starting off, this is actually really surprising because I can fit all of this stuff in my bag. So if you're looking for this bag and I don't know if you can still get it, I know it's kind of super rare to find, but if you can get your hands on it, it won't let you down, it fits so much stuff. So I have my whole like vlog camera in here and this is the Canon M50 with a 11 to 22 millimeter lens. This whole thing fits in this bag and I don't know how I get in there, but let's just say I do stuff it in there, but it does fit. I can't believe it and I wouldn't ask for anything more. I wanted a bag that would fit my little mirrorless camera because I'm always like vlogging and stuff. So I want to be able to have something fit in a bag. Next, I have my tripod. Most of the time I don't put this in my bag. I just wanted to show you guys how much it fit. So if I do want to take this, it will fit in here. It is a little tight, but I make it work. But typically I have the camera and the tripod attached and I just carry it, but if I didn't want to carry it or if I was like didn't want to film the rest of the day, then I would just put it in here and I know it would fit. The next thing I have is this pad, which, you know, never know when that's gonna start, even though I actually do know when it's gonna start. So I don't know why I have that. Next, I just have this receipt. This is from when me and my trauma sister, Emily, went to the cheesecake factory. I guess I still had this and my mom Sherry just like screenshots these for points on this rewards app. I also have a penny in here that just like flew out of nowhere. I have my magic band, which is in the millennial pink shade. I actually really liked this one. That's why I kept it in my bag. I don't know if I can still use it. I think it still is attached to the Mind Disney Experience app or whatever. So I just have this in my bag because I thought it was cute. And when I go to Disney, I will try to use it to get in. Next, I have this limited use ticket from Sunrail because I had to ride the Sunrail for something for work. And it was actually really fun. And if you live in Orlando or Florida or whatever, wherever you have Sunrails, you should definitely try it because it's really cool and it was actually like really clean. It didn't feel like you were on a train. So I definitely like recommend trying it if you've never been on the Sunrail. The next thing I have is my little coin pouch and my keys. I love this thing because like it's all attached and I can just carry everything. And if I didn't want to carry this, all I would need is my phone and this because it has all my cards and my keys attached. Then I have my sunglasses and I keep them in this little pouch so they don't get like scratched and stuff because they were a little pricey but they are the Rabian hexagonal shaped sunglasses. And I really like these. These are like the only thing I wear now and I've worn them for a long time. So if you wanna check them out, I will also link them down below but I just have them in this little black pouch.  Next, I have my phone. I keep my phone in this pink little pouch. This pouch also came with the little pack of three but I keep this in here so my phone screen doesn't get scratched and stuff. Also I have this silicone case from Apple and if you guys haven't seen my review of the Apple silicone case, these cases are kind of delicate. So that's why I just keep my phone in this little pouch so just it will stay protected. Also I paid a lot of money for this phone so I mean you might as well treat it well. Next, because we're still in a pandemic I have a disposable mask. I always tend to have a disposable one because I hate having to hand wash masks and stuff. So I always try to keep a fresh disposable one in my bag but also just in case if I don't have a disposable one I have this cloth one or if I'm going somewhere more fancy which I don't go anywhere fancy but I have this gray and white mask. It's not white, it just has white straps but I have this cloth one and I do keep this at the bottom of my bag so I always have a mask with me and I know I always have one even if I forget my other mask. And then I just have some receipts from when I like deposited stuff to my bank and then I also have some Claritin because I do get allergies sometimes and Claritin seems to always help so I just have these from a recent trip I went on to South Carolina. I didn't know if my allergies were gonna act up so I just put them in here. I also have another penny. Then there's this little pocket in the back of the bag. I don't know if you can really see that on the camera but I have just some band-aids. I have all of these band-aids because you never know when you might need a band-aid. And I also have a mallet millennia receipt for my iPhone. Okay, I think this is when I traded in my phone. I just still have that in my bag. I don't know why, it's interesting. And typically I also when I leave the house a lot more like when I go out with my friends or go on vacations I will always put my birth control like in this back pocket here. But since I'm home I never really keep it in my bag. I just have it out on a counter. Then there's this little flap down here. This little pocket actually works. I don't zip and unzip this because it is so hard getting anything in and out. So I will do my best to try to get this to work but that's why I never zip it because it's so hard to get things in and out. I have an extra vlog camera battery just in case if I'm out and I run out of battery. Next, I have my fake love bracelets little screwdriver thing. Just in case if I needed to take it off for some weird reason I would have the little screwdriver it came with. And you can find these on eBay and stuff like fake Cartier bracelets. But I just have that just in case someone's like take that off or something weird like that which I don't think would happen but you never know. Then I have this little piece to my Canon M50. This is a little piece that slides into the microphone slot but it always falls out so I just decided to keep it in the little front pouch. I kind of forgot that was in there. And then I think this is the last thing. Yeah, this is the last thing. And it is a dime because my grandfather who passed away he leaves dimes for us. Believe it or not, it's true. So I just always keep a dime with me just for that little message, you know just to, you know, have a message for my grandpa with me. So yeah, I'm just gonna put all this stuff back in the bag. Yeah, even the little flap the little pocket in the front actually holds quite a bit. So it's pretty cool. And that my friends is everything in my bag. As you guys can see the Mini Palm Springs backpack holds a lot of stuff and it's just so cute.  It's definitely worth it and you can always just like resell it if you don't want it anymore or want a new bag. I hope you guys enjoyed this video. Make sure to give it a thumbs up. Subscribe and leave a comment down below telling me what is one thing you need in your bag cause I would love to know. Don't forget to subscribe and I'll see you guys in my next video. Bye.


Survey how many entrepreneurs people working for startups in the audience here? Wow everybody else is a VC Great or something else Great to meet everyone here We all love to talk about success. Maybe you like to hear about success a little less I don't know and talking about failure is in vogue But I find it often not that helpful if we don't get specific So I thought I'd just share a few lessons learned from failure over the last several startups Talk a little bit about background these lessons learned and what I think Is gonna be the most one of the most important skills for entrepreneurs? To refine and develop Background I think you know I've like many of you started and sold a number of companies over the years Born in Vietnam live there now My most recent company was a company called misfit wearables. We made wearable technology that was beautiful That was what our focus was on Look making technology beautiful or invisible. We're required by fossil group three years ago, and I left it's really a fashion group brand and Since then since leaving about a year ago. I've been investing in and advising deep tech startups Focus mostly on the climate change reversal. So that's what I guess pays the bills these days But I wanted to talk a bit about these lessons because over these several startups I've really I feel like I've personally had a chance to learn a lot. So I'm gonna go rapid-fire through this if you don't mind And try to be as specific as possible Hiring, you know, we all have to do that and I've you know over the in the very first startup one of the things I learned was it wasn't just about hiring for really smart people IQ IQ IQ Brain teasers. It was really about getting people with great skills Hiring for strength instead of of lack of weaknesses something that took a while for me to figure out and And I found out that this is something that's really held up over the years It's fun and you know and after learning these things as I felt, okay Let's just hire people with lots of experience and I and I That didn't always actually work out well and what I've learned is that it's really about trying to hire people with great wisdom How do you interview for wisdom in an interview in a you know when you're? Considering a candidate. That's that's not the easiest thing. I find that it's most useful To really work with someone even if it's like for a week a lot of this comes out and Finally at misfit one of the most important things we I learned there It sounds a little trite, but it's very true cultural fit above all making sure that teams are cohesive and that they bond well that they look after each other and Yeah, so these are the things that I've learned about hiring. I'm sure you've May have felt the same way in in your own journeys And at the end of the day, you know, it's about the the cell to great candidates to great recruits is The fact that you in the startup you get one of the great benefits is you get to do things that you're not qualified for Like what this kid's getting to do. How cool is that? You know when I was eight? I never had the chance to drive a Whatever a bulldozer like that and speaking of hiring And we talk about culture and whatnot. It a lot of it comes down to values. I think we talk about this a lot and But I also find that a lot of the discussion can be very watered down very deluded because a lot of the values that We see out there a lot of times on the posters, you know in in offices and whatnot. I find a very They're not specific enough What I found is that having values that Can actually help drive decisions that can be very cutting And oftentimes some of these values can be kind of controversial, but it very clearly defines who you are it defines who you are not Pretty important at misfit. We had our set of values be a misfit that is do things that are different We often ask ourselves is that a misfit thing to do and that really became a thing doing more with less and Be a servant leader leaders are servers first In and what we did, but I would just encourage you to really think for yourself, you know, it's this is It's about having values that Res that that's important for you and that you have conviction around that your initial team has conviction around and that you're gonna stand By and values are things that can change over time that you'll add and augment to I'd suggest keeping it few Instead of having you know, 10 I've seen companies with 10 company values, and I just find that very hard to To remember One of my favorite companies that has a really cool Vision and mission statement very clear set of values this company called V and they make a really cool Hearable in AI fitness coach and so the product is really cool But they what they do is but what a simple vision we exist to help people reach their full Potential in body and mind, you know a very clear statement there and a very cool product the No, so you've got your team. You've got your values now. We got to lead the team You know we talk about leadership a lot as well and again how to be very specific about things And I'll just share with you three things that I've learned over the years Having conviction is very important strong opinions, but I found that Some of the best people that we've had are people who have conviction But are able to change their minds that when they're wrong they say yep I'm wrong they admit it and they move on and it's not a big deal. I find that Exceedingly rare actually but when you have folks like that on your team, it's just it's just wonderful It's a great quote by Groucho Marx here and Along the lines of servant leadership, which I think is very important You know at the end of the day as the founder as a CEO as a senior team member of your startup Just you're serving your team members. That's your role. That's what you're doing day in day out So eat last fly coach keep that mindset for a long time we were well-funded for years and we Yeah, we always asked this of our leaders and and Finally stand up for what you believe in having strong convictions being able to change that's good but standing for what you believe in even in the face of of a lot of opposition, it's very important and all it's and There's a great quote I learned from a mentor that I think summarizes why this is important It's because the regret that comes from doing something that you shouldn't have Is often temporary, but the regret that comes from not doing something you should have is Inconsolable, you know, how true is that? I think it's one of these lessons that once again took me several startups to learn but you know Learning is half the battle, right? So have strong opinions loosely held eat last fly coach serve your teams and stand up for what you believe in And finally execution You can have great team great values Amazing leadership, but if execution is not at the core of what you're doing if building a company is not what's important to you versus Building a product then it's gonna be a hard road. So Build a business not just a product and If you're in building a business be lean Who here has read the lean startup? I feel like it's like standard Well, yeah, it's a great book if you haven't read it the quick summary the 15-second summary is this It's about always getting user feedback It's about knowing when to pivot change your business model in some way or your product in some way And it's about maximizing the number of pivots by minimizing the cost of experimentation. So that's it that's the summary of being lean for the most part and So the core part of execution Building business not just a product as a CEO. That's what you're focused on It really has anyone in the in the core team. That's what it's about and be lean as you do this and whether you are a sass Software company or a deep tech company working on biotechnology or something Everybody every company I find has a lean playbook that is accessible to them One of my favorite companies that's super lean a company called since Evo I'm gonna give I actually brought one of mine and one of these products is one of my favorite products They are shipped. They shipped over nearly a hundred thousand units built the hardware the cloud the app Just an amazing product and what it is is it's a controller for your air conditioning unit It makes sure these remote control air conditioning units By Wi-Fi controlled and that's the and you think you know They're doing millions of dollars in revenue. You think massive team, right? That's the team two people They've hired two more since then But it's just an unbelievably lean team that has really learned how to get to product market fit And so I thought in the last few minutes I would just wrap up with one final point and that is around What I think is the most important skill for entrepreneurs So, what do you think is the most important skill? I mean, this is largely opinion. I suppose but For me, it's a born out of my experience out of these few startups any any takers I'm gonna give the I'm gonna give a sensible unit to whoever Whoever gets it right, which is whoever recently Learning that's a great one. That's your the best skill. That's a pretty important skill someone here Yep I'm sorry Grit having grit being able to survive being the cockroach and never and surviving to fight another day a very important skill. Yes indeed Passion having passion having that conviction to go against, you know Common wisdom very important anyone out here. Yep The ability to adjust to adapt also incredibly important I'm sorry Empathy that's a good one empathy, you know, all of these things are really important, right? But remember we're about building a business here so I'm sorry listening. Okay, listening. I think you could probably build a business through listening Profit who said that? Oh, man That's right We can build products. Maybe not throw things Sales the stereotype is this right? It's not what I'm talking about You do have to sell the customers, you know move product and get Profit, right? Very important But you're also trying to convince people to join you for half the salary that they would normally make, right? You're trying to get investors to give you money when they probably should be investing in something a lot less risky, right? Trying to get partners you get your wall of logos, you know companies to work with you when they probably Shouldn't work with you because you might be running out of money in about three to six months And of course the media you're trying to get Tech crunch to write about you when there's really not a whole lot to write about but you just need the press so that you can get customers and so these are all incredibly important and that's what you're doing really as a founder as a Leadership team day in and day out is your your selling these different constituents to an extent So that that is an incredibly important role and Just to leave you with a few tips on the sales things not a talk about sales But I would just leave it to a few things first is doing your homework. You got to know what you're who you're talking to What they're interested in and what stories will resonate with them? And then once you've done your homework, then it's about telling those stories It's about you know if you're trying to get someone to write about you It's about making sure that you do a lot of that work for them and If you're trying to convince someone to part with their money or in some ways their reputation because they're gonna write about you Or support you in some way. It's about focusing on amazing value. That's there's no qualms about it People often ask what's the secret to sales? It's about amazing value and finally It's about showing up and as a great a wise man once said showing up Is 80% of life, right? So that's it. Do your homework tells so build a business Sales is what you're doing and to do so do your homework tell stories that resonate focus on Exceptional value and show up. Thank you so much for your time


Trey Young has been cooking in the playoffs and probably because he learned from the best and it's not his first time around superstars. Growing up he used to go to the CP3 camps all the time, he has very similar play style to him and he might end up seeing him in the finals.  So he basically met the entire net squad and look who's playing and look who's at home and we all know he still plays with that mama mentality after knowing Kobe for a long time. The two best pick and roll guards in the league maybe will get to see the mentor and the student face off in the finals.


Amiatrophic lateral sclerosis, ALS, is a lethal neurodegenerative multi-system disease. In 90 to 95 percent of cases, ALS is sporadic, but close to 10 percent of ALS is familial with inherited gene mutations from family members. This opinion piece proposes that ALS genes are associated with the piezo-2 channelopathy mechanism both downstream and upstream. This article was authored by Balash Songkoti.


This is about the radioactive Boy Scout. I'm gonna do some demos, but these are video demos of things I've done in my backyard, so I don't have any radioactive material. Nothing's dangerous. Nothing is of any interest that somebody get hurt. Also, I'm gonna give somebody a prize for asking the best question. It's a 1941 quarter. This is not just any quarter. It's a quarter that I retrieve from my safe deposit box that was in the World Trade Center. And it's heavily heat damaged. And if you want to, after the question answer, or during the question and answer session, I'm gonna play a video of my X-ray going into one-chase plaza that is their basement, where all the safe deposit boxes were moved. And you'll actually see me open up my safe deposit box. Plus, you'll see the other safe deposit boxes there. One reason for doing this talk is that I know Homeland Security's idea of a dirty bomb. And I just thought that it was not the best optimized type of bomb. If the person was familiar with playing with nuclear materials or nuclear hacking in quotes, they could build something more capable and more lethal. And also at times, I thought that maybe Homeland Security's model, well maybe that was disinformation, so that people would try to go about constructing something that was not very useful. Radiation, the most basic thing that somebody's gonna look for is gamma rays. Most people who have some type of radiation detector, the 99% of time it's just gonna be looking for gamma rays. The two sources, one second. For a dirty bomb, the two most likely sources are Cessium-137 or Cobalt-60, basically orphan type of nodules where these materials are sealed in with a stainless steel, sometimes stainless steel housing. And these isotopes are used in a lot of well-logged equipment, other industrial uses, thickness gauges. And throughout the world, there are a lot of these orphaned resources, or orphaned radioactive things that have just fallen into junk yards or wherever. Neutrons, a neutron has no charge. It's produced by a reactor. And if you bombard something with neutrons, you make them radioactive. They become an isotope of their own self. Radiation, alpha particles and beta particles. Alpha particles are helium nuclei that has a plus two charge. Beta particles are electrons, minus one charge. Basically, these particles don't travel in any great distance. They're only dangerous if you either ingest it or inhale it, and it stays in your lungs or in your body. These are attacks in the past that have utilized some type of chemical means. The Russian in London, who was poisoned with plutonium 210, he ate it, he was given a very massive dose. Plutonium 210 produces alpha particles. And again, he was given a massive dose. And I guess the reason for the massive dose was to send a message to people. In 1984, the followers of Baguan, this was in Antelope County, Oregon, poisoned the salad bars in a number of restaurants. What they did is they sprayed a salmonella into the salad bars. If you wanted to poison using, let's say, alpha, some type of a nuclei which produce beta particles, alpha particles, you could almost use the same technique. In 1966, the CIA and the Department of Defense sprayed harmless substances on the tracks in the subway system, just to see how far they would carry. These are supposedly harmless bacteria that they could track. In the subway system, I live in New York City, I work in New York City, take the subway every day. You notice that particles, any type of particles can travel great distances just from the trains moving them. Passive detectors, Geiger counter, iron chamber survey, gamma-cellation detector. Passive detectors are probably the most common type detectors. And again, this is a Geiger counter. This Geiger counter was actually made in the Ukraine Soviet Union where they have Chernobyl, the people there need industrial strength Geiger counter. Active detectors. Active detectors illuminate objects with the neutrons of gamma rays. And certain materials that'll be of nuclear interest will actually form a stream of neutrons from being illuminated. Or, radiographically, they would show up. Right now, I'm gonna run a video demo and hopefully everything works. Okay, this is the first video demo. That's an old-fashioned 1964 Civil Defense Geiger counter. The other side, you see this little yellow thing, which is also a Geiger counter and this is much more sensitive. And what I'm gonna do is that's a probe that sends up the gamma rays. I'm gonna open up the probe and the probe will also be sent to beta particles, beta rays. And on these old-fashioned type of... Can everybody hear the counting? Okay, good. On these old-fashioned probes, there's sort of a check source on the side which is a beta source. Now that I closed the probe, it's not really picking up anything. The other Geiger counter has a window in the back of it that you can pull off and it'll be sensitive to beta particles. This Geiger counter also has an alarm when you go over 0.30 microsabs, which I guess in the Russian Federation is the highest level of contamination to have in a residential house. It tells you that by the alarm going off. It's by the way on the internet is about $150, maybe $200. And it's probably one of the better type of a detector for personal use. You're right now pulling out a check source. It's Cessium 137 and it's right now against this one and you hear the alarm going off. Now I'll also have a closer look at it. And it is pretty hot. The one other thing that's happening is I'm detecting both the gamma rays from Cessium and the beta particles from Cessium with probe open. One other thing that is hard to notice is that Geiger counters generally pick up the design for low level radiation and they can saturate. If the radioactive source is that hot, they can saturate and after the needle pins, they can go back and forth or fluctuate. And it doesn't mean that it's safe. It means you should get out of there. And I have a close up of that source that's Cessium 137. It's five micro curies of Cessium 137. If that source was more than 10 micro curies, I'd need a license to have it. But it's only five micro curies. And these sources are available from, this one came from Spectron Techniques, but the sources are available from a number of different laboratories. Right now I have two minerals of uranium. I have a green mineral on the right. Well, I have a green mineral, it's turbinite. And radioactively, it's pretty hot. Then I have another one which is sort of brownish, smaller one that's beta-fied. It's not really that hot radioactively. And there's the alarm. I'm opening up the probe now. So six of the gamma rays are beta-fied. The beta-fied is much less radioactive. The green turbinite is about 35,000 counts per minute if you hold the probe right next to it. The beta-fied is about 2,000 or 3,000 counts per minute. It's really not, even though one mineral seems to be physically larger than the other one, it's not related to the mineral size. I'm gonna do one more. This is the 1964 Steel Defense Skiger counter. And I have it on top of a lead sheet. The sheet's about an eighth of an inch thick to show just the effect of shielding. And this is shielding from gamma rays. If it was neutrons, I would use a different. I would use something with a material composed of hydrogen. But this shows one of the effects of shielding. That's, again, the small gauge counter which just showed the background reading in my backyard. Oh my God, went back. Okay, the radioactive Boy Scout, his name was David Hahn. He lived in a suburb of Detroit. As a Boy Scout, he wanted to earn his atomic energy merit badge. He was a great social engineer. He called himself Professor Hahn and he wrote away to a number of different societies and groups to obtain information. He wrote away to the Czech Republic samples of uranite and pitch blend. He said he was a professor of physics instructor. He consomed government officials. He received a reply from one out of every five letters. He was about 16, 17. 94, 95. He also learned from government sources that beryllium produces neutrons. It produces neutrons if you bombarded with alpha particles. Also, if you bombarded with gamma rays, it'll produce some neutrons too. He had a number of chemistry books. He did a lot of experimentation in his backyard and in his shed. He had to go to the book of chemistry and he got great many experiments from that. He developed his own gunpowder, nitric acid and yellow cake. Yellow cake is the first type of refinement. If you get uranium ore and you pulverize it and mix it with a number of chemicals to precipitate it out to uranium, you'll end up losing yellow cake. So that's the first type of ore type of product that you receive. And it's also something that you would really consider toxic or an EPA type of a problem, somebody producing yellow cake. Right now, there are a lot of people in the country doing that, producing yellow cake, but nobody knows where they are or who's doing it. The only reason why I know of just questions that are answered on forums or questions asked on forums that deal with radioactivity. So you can sort of sniff out and figure out what different people are doing. He wanted to build a breeder type reactor, something that would solve the energy crisis. And he's a very persistent type, persistent person. He wanted to obtain uranium-235, which is fissionable, or whatever he could obtain. And he found that uranium-235 or plutonium was hard to obtain, but thorium and thorium from lantan mouths, the old type of lantan mouths, was somewhat easy to obtain. And he got copious amounts of mantles. One of the first things that he was working on is the neutron gun. A neutron gun basically is a type of device that produces neutrons, and it can transmute, not transmute elements, but make elements radioactive. So when you increase the number of neutrons in the nucleus, it's the same element, but it's radioactive. It's not a stable. One of his sources for neutrons, or one of his sources for alpha particles to use to bombard beryllium and aluminum with, was the americurium-241 that's found in smoke detectors. And it's just like a little button source. I should have bought a picture of it, but I forgot. He calculated that he needs at least 100 detectors to do, say, large enough stream of alpha particles to produce neutrons. He also was able to come across a large stage of radium. And radium, you don't see that around anymore, to radium dials for instruments that are used in the dark, or airplane instruments in the dark, or watches, because it is radioactive and potentially toxic. He was able to come across a, a, what do you call those places, a shop that dealt in older furniture, clocks, things. I'm gonna say an artifact shop, I guess an antique shop, sorry, antique shop. And he's able to find a clock that had a vial, I think quarter ounce of vial of radium in it. It was contained in it. The people or the women who originally painted dials apparently left them in there. And the way he was actually located that is he was driving by at the shop with his, the Geiger counter on his dashboard and started clicking very vigorously. And he wanted to see where that was coming from. So sort of very fortuitous. He had great perseverance, it's incredible. Okay, so he wanted to build his reed reactor and he has now his reactor startup. His neutron becomes the core of the reactor and he has tiny four-wrapped cubes containing thorium. He also has cubes containing carbon, using the carbon to slow down the, the neutrons so that they'd be captured by the thorium nuclei. The outer layers of the thorium, of the box were also contained thorium. And the shoebox size device was about 4,500 grams. It was about a little over two pounds. He didn't make any type of presentation or made any type of a thought that maybe things get out of hand, how do I shut this down? Today, all reactors that you can see that are built, they have control rods, which can basically turn the reaction off or on by pulling the control rods out or putting the control rods in. He had nothing like that at all. His reactor was getting more and more radioactive by the day and he started detecting radiation from five houses down.  And I'm not sure why he had that thought to do that. And he totally, from what I've gotten from the internet, from forums, when people have a problem, they've been doing something with radioactive minerals and things seem to get hot and they sort of panic. What they tend to do is take everything put together and they're buried in some type of park, somewhere around, not in their backyard but some type of park. There's one interesting aspect about David's uranium engine and it's that the Nazis were also experimenting during World War II with uranium engines or reactor type devices. And if you look in two books, The Virus House, which relates to Nazi work with radioactive materials and Hitler's uranium club, you see some parallels between the work that he did and where the Nazi scientists were going. Also, if you look at some of the resources you realize that the Nazis were also trying to produce some type of a dirty bomb, something that they could drop where it would perform or just be a type of cancer type device, something that would produce cancers. What I think today, I think, again, he was a hobbyist. I don't think he's doing anything now. I did try to contact him a number of times with telephone and email and I got no response. I don't even know if I got the right person. I think World War II is probably three to five people who have some type of reactor type device that they have running. It's something that produces neutrons, something that is getting harder and reactively day by day. It's not a real reactor. It's more of a public health product or public health concern than something that being a terrorist type concern. I think today you can build something like what he built and you can make tremendous improvements in the design. Well, we don't know the neutron flux of his device. We don't know any of the gamma ray values. All of his notebooks, he burned. He was afraid when he took everything apart that maybe he had a real problem there. Maybe he thought he was coming after him. He just burned everything and tried to eliminate any type of tracks. The EPA or the Michigan EPA eventually cleaned up the site and what happened is he packed up the red toolbox in his trunk of his car and the day after that he was in terms of a neighborhood at around 2 a.m. And the police were investigating the break-ins that they had in the neighborhood and they asked him what he was doing and he didn't give the police a good answer. So the police checked his car. They checked the trunk and they saw a lot of strange things in the trunk and they asked him about the red toolbox and he said, well, don't touch it. It's radioactive. Hey, so, which is not the right response, but this was 1994, 95. That was an era when people were not sensitive about these things. So they arrested him. They put him in the police station. They towed his car to police headquarters. They were potentially afraid that maybe he had a time bomb, which why would you tow to police headquarters? Why don't you tow to a pistol range, a rifle range someplace? And they got other people, other authorities, including the EPA, DNRC, other authorities, take a look into this matter. And ultimately, David wasn't arrested, but they did go back and forth with his parents a number of times. Of course, today, if you do this, I think you're gonna be in a lot of trouble. Yes, he did. He got the merit badge. Although the Boy Scouts were at first, when all this information broke, the Boy Scouts were a little bit hesitant about giving them the merit badge, but he certainly exceeded the boundaries of any scout with a ton of energy badge.  And I think these orphaned sources of COVID-1960 says in 137, basically somebody would blow them up with a high explosive like TNT. And when they say high explosive, they're talking about TNT or something along the same lines like C4. It's just as easy as this source may be propelled by the explosion as that'll be broken apart. I've always thought maybe this was disinformation because if you have a radioactive source, you can do other things with it. And one of the things is that you could use it as a seed corn. Basically, you can make other things radioactive. If you make other things radioactive, if you don't have one dirty bomb, you potentially have many and you can build many. Okay, seed corns make other things radioactive. What would you pick? Well, we probably better off going with nano-sized materials. A nano-sized material is very, very small. It gives you right here what human hair is in nanometers. Red blood cells are nanometers. These nanotype particles pass through a HEPA filter. HEPA filter is a high efficiency filter that originally was designed during the Manhattan Project when they were developing atomic bombs. It'll pass through also just about any other type of filter including filter paper that some devices use to sample air. They sample air and then they collect the residue in the filter paper and test what it is. Also when you have nano-sized particles, you have an inner compound can be toxic at the nano-sized level because not only if you inhale it, it'll pass through cell walls and potentially irritate cells. Okay, build a perfect dirty mom, a nano-sized material. The NRC, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has a program on their website called the Toolbox The Toolbox shows what different of isotopes of different materials. They're alpha particles, beta particles, the energy that they release, and also the potential biological hazard of these materials. This is something that, this is almost a dual nature type of device that you could use it if you're a reactor site to see if somebody was exposed to compounds, how much potential problems they'll have in the future, but you could also use it as a designer type things for specialized designer isotopes to affect people or radio people. And again, you can make multiple bombs at different sizes. Nano-sized can be passed just by the air or the subway system. It can be passed by just trains passing. If you wanna pass it, otherwise you could use some of the Simples Black Powder which is readily available. Okay, next thing. If you do have multiple dirty bombs and I live in New York City, I take New York City subway every day, I work in New York City, and this is what I thought somebody would use as strategic targets. The fire department, hazmat trucks, the decon shower trucks, these are all fire department equipment, hazmat one, and this equipment is known by a member of Harvey, a fire department hobbyist. They know where the equipment is located. So the equipment is not hidden, but again, somebody tried to use it as strategic targets. The NYPD also has a hazmat truck at the base at Floyd Benefield, which is probably harder to get to. Let's talk about radiation alarms. What can settle for radiation alarm? Obviously, uranium minerals, radiologic procedures. If you had a spec scan or PET scan, you're injected with radiological isotopes. A radioactive drug is radio seeds, and that's where human being. Interesting thing happened to me coming home from work. My radiation detector in the New York City subway goes off and on public grounds.  I give them all the information, including my cell phone number, I expect some type of call back. So this was a Friday. And I even remember the subway call that was in, it's 5333. Okay. I get nothing back from the NYPD, so I was curious. The next day, I call New York City Information Hotline, a general hotline where any general information that you need, you can receive, get from them. And the operator did not know what the word radiation meant, and this is just incredible. So that was Saturday. Sunday, I called the NYPD the terrorist hotline. I gave them all the information, and they asked me what type of detector I told them was EcoTest, this was the serial number, I give them serial number. Then they asked a bunch of other questions, and I told them that I felt very likely with somebody who had some type of a radiological procedure, because a seed was, from top to bottom, is radioactive. And again, this is, they picked up a number of people who had this procedure before, meaning the NYPD, and they didn't realize it at the time, but these people were radioactive because of the procedure. Okay, what they didn't ask me on the terrorist hotline. Well, first thing, they didn't ask me to detect a saturated, that would mean that, it's very, very high radiation limit. They didn't ask me what the highest reading that I obtained, either. And that I was very, those very strange. They also didn't ask me if I received the readings, and from any foodstuffs that were nearby, or if any foodstuffs were located. Something else that I've seen in the past 22 months, and I can't understand it, all of the hot uranium minerals that used to be on the internet, and other source, private sources, have disappeared. And I don't know why that's happened, that all of a sudden, they're gone. And other people that I asked who had minerals or had interests, nobody had an explanation for it. I mean, I have no explanation. I thought at first maybe Homeland Security for some reason was trying to get them off the market, but this is country-wide or worldwide, and I have no idea. And if anybody has an idea, you can let me know. Next slide. The government, after 9-11, in the World Trade Center, the government basically had a disinformation type of, I don't know if you call it the policy, but it was the policy that the World Trade Center was safe to go back to, that the hazmat workers and the other workers can work there without any type of negative health aspects. The government says it's safe, but what happens if a very media-savvy terrorist says it isn't? What happens if somebody launches some type of attack where it may be difficult to obtain information that it was an attack and has a disinformation type, well, basically a disinformation type of policy? And one last time, one last slide. If half the terrorist, the Homeland Security has this 10-kiloton bomb, hypothetical bomb that terrorists could set off, hypothetically if they did have this type of bomb, what they probably would do is salt it. And by salting it, they put in cobalt or sesame zinc where they have a much longer half-life and that the area would remain radioactive much longer and people would not be able to return to that area. Also, these would be picked up by the air and the people down would have a high incident of cancer. And I've got something else, I've got something. I had one other demo and let me just, this is the last, this is the background radiation in my backyard, 0.08, 0.09. Microsoft's, I'm taking the back wall for the detector, so I can also, now in gamma rays, I can also record beta particles. This is a lead pig which you keep radioactive materials in low-level radioactive materials, maybe check sources, probably some minerals. And I'm taking a bolt out of there. I'm not using forces because this is radioactive really hot, I'm using forces because I have fat fingers and I can't really grab the bolt with my fingers. And this was a steel bolt and what I did is, in that pig, I have alpha source, alpha particle source and then I have aluminum foil over it and basically a small pebble of beryllium. So I'm getting neutrons in there and making this bolt radioactive. When I'm probably producing iron 55, which is also a heavy beta emitter and that's one of the reasons for it to be taken off the back. It has one side that's more radioactive than the other side. So now it's over the limit. It's over the limit for the Soviet Republic to have in your residence. Actually, there's a side of it that's actually much more radioactive than that, but this is just like a demonstration. Everybody can tell I live near an airport. Now I'm taking this apart, that's a little piece of carbon. I have a little wash from there. That's my powder beryllium, that's aluminum foil. And those are the old Coleman lanterns that contain thorium. So it's now for emitter. And this is more proof of concept that you can make things radioactive. The Apple particles, Hindi loom and beryllium and release neutrons. I don't know, any questions? Granite, all granite is radioactive. It contains a certain amount of uranium. Uranium's not an uncommon mineral. And if you go into Manhattan, which is part of Manhattan is radioactive, not radioactive, but there is granite in Manhattan. You'll pick up readings. I had another video or demo that I was gonna do. My father just had granite steps put in on his porch. And I went out to there and it was pretty hard. It was like, it should have been 0.08 on this detector as like 0.20. A lot of people getting granite or granite type of tabletops or granite type of kitchen areas. Yes? I read about them about four or five years ago. And I was just sort of amazed. And then I was also interested in radioactive minerals and collecting them. And it came up on some forums. You handle it for a short period of time. It's probably better. Like the green mineral that you saw, turbinite, is very hot. And also the flakes, the crystals there on the surface are very soft. They're as soft as my nail. So it's usually better to have them with the gloves. But wash your hands. Don't do it after you eat.  No, I don't go on the dock. Yes? Yeah, you could easily infect the subway system with it and just spraying the materials out because just by walking on it, you're gonna make it mobile in the air. And also the air currents because it's so small. Just air currents themselves will be transported. Also, there's not a type of method to remediate picking up nano-sized materials in a large area like not only the subway system, but in Grand Central Station or Penn Station and Transportation Hub. There are more and more companies every day selling them. It's not as difficult now as it once was. I'm talking about, let's say, iron or cobalt as a nano-sized type of product. Go ahead. I think lead is still the best that they use. I think what some places, what they do is they just seal it. But lead is like the best radiation defense against gamma rays. Neutrons, it's something different, right? No, no, no, no. So I can go ahead. Excuse me. Is churnoff radiation when you see a glow or bluish glow? Okay, no. I mean, you'd have to go to something that came out of reactor for that. Sorry. I really don't know. The Nazis built similar devices that were enclosed and some of them blew up or caught fire.  He was in like uncharted territory and I don't think BNRC or any public officials think that people actually are nuclear hobbyists building this type of devices or having them playing with, right? Yeah, they're wrong, sorry. No, I read the story. It was, I think, an apartment building. They're still in smoke detectors. I guess he was trying to relive his glory days. I don't know. I tried to contact him. I tried to, with phone, email, and I can't get ahold of him. Maybe he had a lot of people just for cranks trying to contact him, but I don't know. The radiation. Well, thorium is toxic and he dealt with a lot of toxic materials and he was heavily exposed there for a number of years. Also, the particle, he did use a mask when he tried to do these things, but some of these particles are very small so you don't know what's in his body. Uranium hexafluoride is used when they want to separate U235 from U238 in a centrifuge. I thought anything rich fluorium or compounded fluorium is very dangerous because fluorium is the most reactive of the elements. I don't know if uranium fluoride hexafluoride is dangerous because the only people who have access to it are government people or people in specialized labs. So I wouldn't want to be around it. If it's highly corrosive, it's corrosive, too. But, yeah. One other thing, the bolt that I made radioactive. You could touch it, feel it and everything else. It's not a problem. If I ground it very, very, very fine and somebody ingested it or somebody inhaled it in their lungs, potentially that iron would leach out into your bloodstream and it would combine with the hemoglobin in your blood and also reside in the bone marrow, potentially be a cancer source. If it was a nanotype material, it'd be much worse because, again, there's no remediation today if somebody inhaled nanosized materials and you try to remove from their body. The best analog to using nanotype materials as a destructive force is the pleated uranium that they used in the First Gulf War. And you had some portion of the spectrum of materials, actually the uranium nanosized range and the soldiers inhaled. Yes? Could you speak up? I'm sorry. Yes. I thought it was a person who had a medical procedure. Then I realized I never checked underneath the seat. I should have checked underneath the seat, which I didn't, I was excited. Yes, yes. No, you're right about that. And I could have overlooked looking under the seat because I thought maybe while his sweat had some, wait a minute, it was pretty hot. That seat was actually pretty hot.  I mean, I could have really, what happened is I was two stops away from my stop. I was sleeping on the subway, which is normal, people do that. And normally if you have a 20-minute stop away, 40-minute stop away, you could just get up for the stop.  I didn't realize it was my detector. And I got excited. I actually found something radioactive. And actually, they probably thought I was crazy on the subway because I was standing up and going like this to try to figure out where it was as a seat across from me. So I screwed up, I didn't find it. I'm sorry, go ahead. I know people, and by the way, I contacted the New York City Police Department and New York City Office of Emergency Management about this talk, and expressed absolutely no interest at all in coming to this talk. And to our shows, I don't think that what they're doing, I guess they're doing the best they can to New York City Police Department. I guess they listened to Homeland Security, which, I don't know, I mean, I think I could make a much more lethal, dirty bomb than they could ever come up with. But, yeah, I'm sorry, go ahead. I don't know because I only had about six or seven months. It's on all the time, by the way. And if I had a radioactive source, I could show you that it would go off. So this basically is a dosamoon or two. It could sum over a number of hours or days my radiation exposure. But it's also an instantaneous reading type, gag account. What was I gonna say? I'm talking, yes? Really, yeah. I mean, somebody could try using it that way. I don't think the Department of Homeland Security is that very creative in thinking about how to build things. Let me just give you a perspective. Somebody who's a hacker utilizes the materials that they have at hand. And usually you don't have a lot of money, so you have to be very resourceful. Like this kid, David Hahn, was very resourceful.  You don't have to think about how to make things work for the smallest amount of money. You don't think of all the possible materials to use. You certainly wouldn't think that, hey, somebody radiated nanotype materials and deposited in the New York City subway system or Penn Square, Penn Station, or different central stations. How would I detect it? How would things happen? Which would be very difficult to detect. Yes, yes. I don't have a great deal of faith that they're doing the best, I think they're doing the best they can, but I don't think they're as creative to understand what is doable. I mean, they did not realize what was doable when David Hahn put his thing together. I'm sorry. I'm a data security analyst where I work. You know, I've always been interested in science. Hacking, I was always used to go to 2600 meetings. I did publish an exploit against war dialers, which is about over 10 years ago, much more 10 years ago. I'm a survivor of 1993 bombing of World Trade Center, which for my experience, hold on a second. For my experience, people thinking that they could bomb the stock exchange and cause it to shut down, that's not gonna be the case because in 1993 what I did is, I was located to another building. I created a bunch of mainframe IDs for people and they ended up transmitting files back and forth through the mainframe into the lands. You know, we had, you know, you could use a binary transfer of the transfers so that was successful. My cousin on 9-11 died. He was New York City Fire Department captain. He was possibly promoted to Battalion Chief. I had my coin collection in a safe deposit box in the World Trade Center and I don't know, why don't I run that film here? My actual recovery of this from the World Trade Center, run it here. I don't see, there's no talks after me, so. That sounds like a good idea. And I'll still answer questions. Oh, it is being used. So unfortunately, the room is being used. I'll tell you, if you wanna ask more questions, ask more questions and then when I have to leave, and I'll just give you a little taste of what that, they give me a Q and A room. Actually, I guess say what? Why don't I move over to the Q and A room? So anybody wants to ask more questions? Anybody wants to see that film or that DVD of my recovery, yes? Yeah, the question, let me just read. The question was, why should I think the Department of Homeland Security is doing the best they can? And I have a very easy answer for that and you're not gonna like the answer. The answer is I'm a coward and the government seems to go after people who make waves. The government seems to have picked a number of people like in the anthrax, this is Dr. Hadfield, this other guy, then there was this professor up in New York State who was a professor of art and used bacteria cultures as a form of autistic expression and the government investigated him, the F.B.R. for a number of times.  No, no, I'll tell you the reason why. I'm fine, I have other reasons. I'm 54 years old, so I work at a place where you don't have young people, little people. So I have cancer, I have an autistic son. So I'm a coward, I just gotta, if they say, I'm serious.  I mean, they couldn't, honestly, the people that they caught, they couldn't make a good cup of instant coffee yet alone run a cappuccino machine.


Lecture 15, As-Salam-Alaikum. Welcome to the virtual university's course on business and technical communication. In today's lecture, we will be looking at memorandums, meeting documents and proposals. You will learn to plan, design and compose all of these memorandums which we normally call memos. Meeting documents will include minutes of the meeting and the agenda of the meeting and different types of proposals that you will need to write in business and technical writing. Now, memorandum or memo are brief informal reports that are used to establish your record. They generalize the communication process by transmitting the message from one or more authors to one or more recipients. Basically, this means that if there is a message that one author or more than one author or one sender or more than one sender wish to send out, then the memo puts down that message in a generalized form so that it can reach either one or more than one audience. We send memos for most of the time in business communication and technical communication because we have to communicate a lot of things to the juniors or superiors. And we communicate them as memos. You can use these memos for one-to-one communication. One person can write to another person or one-to-many. One person can write a memo to a lot of people. Or it can also be that some people have written a memo to a different person or a lot of people. These days, email messages are commonly used for memos. Email generally takes the form of memorandum because they are easy to use. You can easily transmit the message instantly from the sender to the receiver and you can get a reply within a few hours as well because obviously it has been received with speed. The memorandum is amongst the most versatile forms of organizational documents. The most variety is in memos. It can be used for different types of uses or different tasks. It is a versatile document. Its length varies a lot. Its purpose varies a lot. The audience is a different audience. You have to tailor and adapt your memo to the best fit. The memos could be brief research reports, progress reports to brief proposals and it is widely used to communicate technical and administrative information. In companies there is a lot of administrative information going back and forth between people and the most common form of communicating this administrative information is the memo. There are orders in a company to be exchanged, there are instructions, there are technical things that we have to tell on the operations side. For example, a manager working on the floor, most of the things communicate with the memo. The orders are given with less information. In a business environment, it is much more common to tell things as a memo. The words are informal. When you have to formalize the instructions, then a memo is sent. Memo and are written for various internal purposes. For example, they can be written to request information. If there is a need for information, then memorandum is used to make announcements. If there is a need to make an announcement, if there is a need to announce something in the company, then through memorandum that announcement is made. If there is a need to outline policies, then memos are used. If a company manager or MD or director has to tell their staff a new policy, then they will probably give information as a memo. Maybe they will put that memo on the company's notice board, send it to everyone and put a copy of it on the notice board so that people get it. Many times, when memos are done, the people working in the company who have to read them don't go individually, they just put it on the notice board. And sometimes they go individually or via e-mail. Even the minutes of meetings are used to send someone a memo. So that whatever meetings are done, the summary of the recap is sent to the people as memos. So in most organizations, memo play a crucial role in establishing a record of decisions, requests, responsibilities, results and concerns. That is to say, whatever decisions are made in an organization, or any requests that someone has made from one another in a formal way, or any responsibilities that have been given to different people in an organization, or any reports or any research that has any results, and apart from that, all the concerns of management, employees, all the problems, all the questions raised, are recorded in memos and sent to each other. Memo has different parts. There are different features of a memo and there is a distinct way of organizing a memo. The main thing that we will be looking at first is the memo heading. And it's a very distinctive element of the memorandum because it's used to frame the message in a very accessible and transparent manner. The way the headings of your memo are designed, one of the aspects of your memo will be the content. The person who reads it will be able to understand it very easily because he will be able to understand it in the heading. And the other aspect is that the way your heading has been designed or the words used in it, the person who reads it will also be interested in it. If the heading is like this, when he sees it, he will be able to understand what will happen in the future. So it's obvious that the readers will read it very carefully instead of thinking that the heading will be so confusing that they will not be able to understand what we will be able to read in the future. In this example, as you see, there are four different sections to the heading. They include the section which gives the people who the memo is addressed to, which says to, then it says who the memo is from. Then there is the subject line which gives what the memo is about and the date. In the first part, in this section which is entitled to, the writer will identify the recipient clearly. You will use the title if the recipient uses a title and the recipients may be one person or more than one person or a group of people. So depending on who the memo is going out to, that will be the people who will be addressed. You will not give a postal address on the memo because the memo is an internal piece of communication and it is assumed that it is going to people in a particular office from somebody within that same office. So in the memo, you will not write the two parts, but you will write the names of the people and if they have a designation, they will write whether they are the manager, assistant manager, etc. and their title, if they use a title, Mr, Mrs, Mrs, Doctor, Professor, etc. you will write that. Apart from this, in the section from, it will be written to whom the memo is from. In that, obviously you will write your name, if you have a title, you will write it, if you are the head of a department, plus your contact number, etc. What is the extension of your office? You can write that. So that will be the identification of the author so that it is clear who the memo is going out from. The third element is the subject which will give a clear detailed identification of the subject that is under discussion and then the date, obviously, so that it is clear when this memo was sent out and it can be on the record. The second section of the memo, which is the body of the main, body of the memo, is generally organized in such a way that the topics are in order of importance. The more important things, they come in the beginning, in one memo, and the less important things, they come after that. The key statements come first and then the details afterwards. So one way of, one organization pattern would be in order of importance. And then within that, for every topic or every area, you will put the key statements first and then give the details and then the key statement for the other topic and then the details of that. So whatever topics you are writing, if there is more than one topic in that memo, the most important thing is to write them first and the most important thing is to write them later. And whatever you will write first or later, the key points in that too are the key points of a topic. You will write them first and then you will share the details of that. Also the memorandum should normally begin with a brief summary statement. In the beginning, you should give one summary, one sentence or two sentences so that you can know what is in the whole memorandum. And this will identify the key topics and the scope of the information. In this one, we have been given the subject heading which is the request for an image digitizing system to support ongoing research and it gives the cost as well. This is the subject of detail. What is this memo about and what is it? Then there is a small summary in which it is said that what things must have been discussed in this whole memo. And as you will see, this summary is only two or three sentences. Then there is the background which is divided into different sections. Normally memos may be very long or they may not be very long. But if they are long memos, then the background area will be divided into sections as well. In this one, we have been given a problem and it is highlighted by giving it a heading of problem. And the author has given the background in terms of what the existing problems are. And then after having given the problem, then this author will go on to talk about how this problem can be solved. The elements of a usable memo, as we said, are the heading, the subject line, which will define the purpose of the memo, the introductory paragraph, which will give a summary. Then topic headings. If the memo is long, then there will be different topic headings. If it's a short brief memo, then it might not have topic headings. If there is information that is not very easily accessible in terms of text, then there will be visuals used to explain that text or to highlight that text. For example, there could be graphs or figures used. Another important element of a memo is the spacing of the paragraphs. You will not indent the first line of every paragraph. The first line of every paragraph that will not be indent on the inside will come in a straight line with the rest of the lines. In addition, the lines between the paragraphs will have a single space and there will be a double space between the different paragraphs. So, there will be no indentation, single spacing within the paragraph and double spacing between paragraphs so that the paragraphs become distinct from each other. If the memo is long and goes on to two pages, then there will be a header on the second page, which will include the name of the person who is sending the memo and the page number and the date. Also, please note that the memo will be different from a letter. In that, in a letter, you write your sincerely, etc. and sign the letter. A memo will not be signed by anybody because you will write your name, the sender's name in the form line in the heading of the memo. In a letter, the form line does not start, so it is necessary to write your name in the form line. Also, if you are sending more than one copy to different people and you have not written the name deliberately, missed out some names in the two section, then you will write their names at the end. You will give a copy notation. Who is it? Who is it? Who is it? Who is it? Who are the additional people who this memo has gone out to? Now, another thing, the main document that we will look at in this lecture is meeting documents. As I said earlier, there are two different types of meeting documents that we will be looking at, minutes and agendas. Memo's were things or memo's were documents that were used to communicate only in written form, so that they could be put down on paper and so that they could be a record of them. The other form of communication that is normally very common in organizations is meetings. Where people get together, it can be just two people or more than two people, they get together to discuss different issues. Now, meetings need to have an agenda. It needs to be decided what is to be discussed in the meetings and what has been discussed in the meetings needs to be recorded in the form of minutes. These two documents are tools which encourage productive and effective meetings. Agendas or minutes because of them, meetings are efficient and productive. If you sit in a meeting without any agenda then maybe you will get a toast or something positive. So it is very important that an agenda is decided that these are the things to be discussed in this meeting. Apart from that, if there is an informal meeting, then that also happens. But when an agenda happens, then it is easy to come back to the point. The two principle meeting documents, as we said will tell the participants what is to be discussed in the meeting and then minutes will record what actually occurred. Let us first look at the agenda. Because obviously, before a meeting the agenda is planned. Minutes are written later. An agenda is a simple list. There is nothing complicated about it. It is very simple and it is just a list of things which need to be discussed in the order in which they will be discussed. The first things that are planned will be written first and the meeting that will be discussed later will be written later. So it will be a simple list of 1, 2, 3. Along with this, if there are different people who will discuss different things, then their names will be written along with the topics. So basically, a list of things will be responsible for discussing them or who have agreed to lead the discussion on specific matters. A lot of the times in meetings a meeting may be called by a manager, but there may be different supervisors within the meeting who will be bringing forth different issues and who have discussed with the manager earlier that we will bring up these points. So then their names will be included in front of those points. Agendas, as I said help to focus a meeting on a variety of topics and the core topics and they also allow you or the person who has called the meeting to control the pace and the flow of the meeting. The agenda is that things do not go here and there. The main topics that are discussed if there are a lot of things to discuss in the meeting, then it becomes easy to discuss. And the items and the topics that have to be discussed can be discussed easily and the decisions can be easily discussed. So it helps to act upon having a solid agenda helps to act upon what needs to be discussed in the meeting. If meetings which do not have agendas or which do not have published agendas generally seem unfocused and unproductive. A lot of the times the person who has called the meeting might have an agenda in his or her mind but it has not been published. It has not been printed out, typed out written down and given to the people who are attending the meeting. So even though the person who has called the meeting has an agenda they have a plan of what needs to be discussed the people who are attending the meeting do not know what needs to be discussed. And as a result the meeting can somehow sometimes seem unproductive to the people who are attending and sometimes it can also become unproductive because it is only in the mind of the person who has called the meeting and he or she may waver from the point. So therefore it is important that if you are calling a meeting you should prepare and circulate an agenda of items to be discussed for each meeting. Circulation of an agenda before a meeting will allow your audience to enter their responses to the items that you will discuss and it will help stimulate the discussion. Obviously those of you who have to attend the meeting if they are already aware that these specific points will be discussed in this meeting they will also think about them and they will also know what we have to say about these topics and due to this your discussion and your meeting will be more productive. So those of you who are attending the meeting do not have any idea about what the meeting is about just know that our boss has called a meeting and he or she is going to the meeting or he or she is going to the meeting with fear that I don't know what will be discussed. So then the result will be that he or she will sit quietly in the meeting and no discussion will be possible with you and you will not get their ideas and maybe your ideas will not reach to the meeting. So it is very important that the agenda should be circulated and given to people so that they can think about it. Agendas may be circulated by either email or hard copy which means in paper form actually print it out and give it to people. Now both have their advantage the advantage of hard copy agendas is that these agendas may be brought if there are papers in someone's hand they are circulated as hard copy and given on their desk so they can take that paper and give it to the meeting and on that they can take notes of the meeting about the points which are written about these points. The advantage of sending agendas by email is that they reach people immediately and there is no risk of being lost because we did not get them because emails reach everyone in their inbox. Paper form can be that someone kept it on a desk and lost it under a file so people who are experienced in leading meetings recognize that both hard copies and electronic copies of agendas and email copies are important but they are also aware that these are usually misplaced as well. Paper form can be easily lost. E-mail is often that people read and delete or leave it in the computer and do not take out the printout. When there is a meeting after 2-3 days they forget that the agenda was exactly that they have a vague idea. So experienced meeting leaders bring extra hard copies so that those who do not have hard copies can catch them. So there should be enough copies of the agenda present to circulate amongst those people who are present at the meeting.  There could be different points. You will list them in numerical form. For example, a report by Mr. Hamid on the investigation of possible security software. The second thing to be discussed in this meeting will be reported by Ms. Sara on development of database prototypes. The third thing will be discussion of possible hardware platforms. Now in this third point it is not indicated who will be leading this discussion and who will be basically who will be putting forth these ideas. So it is assumed that this will be a general discussion. The fourth and fifth points also are general. It does not say who will be discussing them. So it is assumed that it will be the meeting leader or the person who is called the meeting who will be in charge of the meeting at this particular point. The reviewing of deadline for projects and agenda for the next meeting. So if you notice in this meeting the agenda for the next meeting is also circulated. So it is probably a meeting which is a regular meeting. Maybe every week or every month the agenda for the next meeting will be given from the beginning that we discussed this today and in the next meeting we will discuss these areas. When a meeting is done then what is discussed what actions are decided all those things should be recorded in some way. And that record is kept in the form of minutes. I will show all of you have heard of minutes but a lot of you may not be aware of exactly what they involve and exactly how they are taken because you have not been involved actively in taking down minutes of a meeting.  Whether the meeting is between two people or whether the meeting is between whether it is a large meeting with a lot of people present minutes need to be kept in some form or the other. The minutes maintain an institutional memory of all actions taken or proposed and key points of discussion. Whatever actions have been taken in a meeting and the actions that have been suggested and those that have been suggested and the key points of discussion and the main things that have been discussed in the meeting through the minutes are recorded in a formal way. Other than this the concerned people who may not have come to the meeting but it is important that they know what happened in this meeting through the minutes they can also get information. So, apart from keeping a record minutes are also used to inform appropriate people who were not present at the meeting. They can inform them of what key actions were taken and what decisions were taken and what items were discussed. Minutes can be both formal and informal. Formal minutes are often required by by law, by federal state, local laws, by laws, charters, regulations and then they will obviously be more organized. They will be they will be more disciplined in a way that they will be governed by a set of rules which will be dictated by whoever wants the minutes whether it is if it is the federal state for example that is requiring minutes of a meeting for a government body then maybe that state then has some guidelines on what needs to be included and how those minutes will be formatted. Also formal minutes are usually distributed to the members of the group before the next meeting starts. So, the things discussed in the last meeting are distributed to the group in the next meeting. These are the things that we discussed last time. After they have been distributed then they also need to be approved. A lot of the times some people might say that the things we discussed they did not have this decision they had this decision because people might either remember differently or the person who has written the minutes has recorded them differently. So, a lot of the times they are not approved directly but they are approved after amendments have been made. So, that might take some time of the meeting as well approving minutes of the previous meeting and making the necessary amendments. Some minutes are legally part of public record and are available to anyone, the general public. So, those minutes may then be put in archive or files which are accessible to people who have not been part of the meeting or who are not part of that particular organization. Often however, organizational minutes are private and confidential documents which should be distributed to only to appropriate individuals. Sometimes there are minutes in which the general public may be accessible but most of the things discussed in a meeting are only for the organization and maybe not everyone is accessible in that organization. Some minutes of meetings are accessible to the entire organization or are allowed to see and some meetings are accessible which are allowed only to very limited people. So, if the minutes are confidential then each page should be stamped with a message such as confidential do not distribute so that it is very clear that this paper or this record is not to be shared with anyone apart from the people who are in possession of it. There are some things which are usually included in formal minutes and those are specifically the name of the group meeting and what kind of meeting it is. For example, if it was a general meeting, an emergency meeting, a board meeting or it was a meeting devoted to one single issue, a meeting called specifically to discuss one particular topic etc. So, whatever people who are in that meeting or who are included in that meeting their name plus what kind of meeting it is. There is a regular meeting and an emergency meeting etc. Those things will be mentioned in the minutes. Apart from this, where the meeting was and when it was. This will also be written. The people who attended the meeting, who did not come, who were present and who were absent and apart from that, they were listening to what was being discussed in the meeting. Apart from that, if there is a public meeting where there is a public meeting and there is a large audience, obviously the name of the audience will not be written, but if there is a private meeting, then the audience of that meeting will be written. So, basically who attended and who did not attend and any other people who were present, their names will be written. Also, it is very important to note in a meeting, who called in the minutes, who called the meeting and at what time it was called. So, where we will also record when the meeting was held and the exact time of when it was held it is also pertinent to record when the meeting was called. The order of that meeting should be held, when it was issued. When that decision was taken, it should be given to the public committee or with information of the meeting. Also, we need to in minutes we need to record a report of whether or not the previous meetings minutes were read out whether they were discussed or not and also we need to keep note of the fact whether the previous meetings minutes were approved and if they were approved, were they approved directly or were they approved by the amendments. Minutes will also include summaries of any reports presented to the group and any action taken on them. This action could be acceptance, approval, endorsement, referral, etc. So, whatever reports were presented, their summaries were not complete reports, just a brief summary and what action was taken on it. Apart from this, the different items discussed in a meeting, their summaries or if important issues were discussed, their summaries will be mentioned in minutes. So, all these summaries of reports, summaries of all important items that have been discussed. Minutes will also include a record of all formal motions. Along with the name of the person or the individual who made the motion. Also, there will be a record of the vote on all motions. So, a record of that vote including the number of votes for the motion and number of votes against the motion and the number of people who were abstained, who did not take a particular side. You will also record the time that the meeting was formally concluded. So, you will name the time when the meeting started and also when it concluded formally. When I say formally, it's important to note that a lot of the times meetings end formally but people still hang around in the room where the meeting was held and they talk informally. Those are things that will not be included in the minutes and that time when it ended in the time of the meeting. So, you will not include the meeting after formally ending. So, it's important that we note that when the meeting will end formally. Informal minutes also include the date of the meeting and the names of all members attending or absent. Just as it will be in formal minutes, it will be in formal minutes but the informal minutes will focus more on summarizing key points of discussion and listing of discussion items to be performed by individuals or the group. In formal minutes, there will not be so much detail about what the motions were presented and what was mentioned but in formal minutes, the main discussion will focus on them and key points will be summarized. Now, the third thing that is very common in business situations, in organizations, in business and technical communication those are proposals. In a proposal, authors identify a specific problem and state how they will solve that problem. So, a problem is identified and then is given as to how it will be addressed. Most organizations rely on successful proposal writing for their continued existence. Now, because every organization is faced with a problem, it is important that those problems are identified and proposals are written so that those problems can be solved.  Proposals are carefully prepared and just as carefully reviewed by granting agencies. Now, obviously if you have made a proposal, you need to prepare it very carefully because it is going to be read very carefully by whoever is going to be granting permission to carry out what you have suggested in your proposal. So, it is very important to write a proposal carefully because it will be carefully reviewed and after that it will be approved. I think that the proposal is not only strong with the air, in a proposal if you are doing a lot of good things but there is no doubt in it, then there will be no life in that proposal. So, if your company has a lot of credibility, but there is no doubt in your proposal, then there will be no life in it. So, it is not only the name that is important of the person who is writing the proposal or rhetoric that is included in the proposal. There needs to be solid information that is given in the proposal. Successful proposals demonstrate that you understand the scope of the problem, its background, its theory, the application of it and furthermore that you have developed a valid and well-focused approach for reaching proposed objectives. So, you need to be clear with these things you need to have a scope, you need to have a focused approach for reaching the objectives that you are proposing in your proposal. All proposals will develop a plan of action in response to a specific need or problem as I said earlier. There will be a problem that will be identified and that will be taken. Some proposals are external. They are written in response to a request for proposals. So, there has been a request Someone requested from outside of the company and as a result of that a proposal can be written. Or the proposals could be in response to an invitation to bid that has been published by an external organization for example. In a newspaper someone has asked for a bid and for that your company wants to write a proposal. These are external proposals which will be read by the company but also by the outsiders. Other proposals are internal written in response to a need within your own organization. They will not be shared with anyone outside but inside your company there is a need to write a proposal and that is why the proposal is being written. Your proposal must show that you understand the nature of the problem and that you have a specific and well developed plan for arriving at a solution. So, whatever the purpose of writing the proposal whether it is external or internal the audience you need to have a well determined scope and focus of the problem and you need to have well defined you need to have a well defined and well developed plan for finding the solution of that problem. A lot of proposals have one structure generally they share the same structure for identifying the motivating problem the objectives and the proposed course of action. There are three sections in the proposals. What is the problem? What is the thing that will proceed with the proposal? What are the objectives? What do you want from the proposal what do you want to do? What actions will be achieved? Now, in the general structure you need to learn the basic structure of a proposal and you need to be aware that they share a general document architecture which is usually modified to suit specific circumstances. There is only one general structure for different circumstances it is adapted. The structure of a proposal can be broken down into three parts the front matter the body which will include the introduction the technical approach management requirements and the work plan and the end matter. Let us have a look at what these involve. The front matter of a proposal includes the letter of transmittal the tricycle page summary, table of contents of figures and tables the body will include the identification of the motivating need or the problem. In the front matter you will have detailed list what will be included in this proposal. In the body the problem due to which this proposal is important you will identify it. You will also develop the immediate context in which this problem has been highlighted give a little background in which context the problem has been highlighted what is the need why this problem was highlighted what were the results of which this problem has been raised. The external proposals you need to be sure that you are responding to the published need if the proposal is in response to an external bid then you need to be sure that you are actually on the same track and that the motivation has been identified which has been identified by the outside agency is met in your proposal or is addressed in your proposal. In the body you will focus your proposal by stating the key technical issues as you perceive them underline the motivating problems. Any key issues any technical issues which you are proposing about which is being discussed you will highlight them you will focus on them and any motivating problem under which the proposal you are writing you will highlight it regarding your technical issues. You will also state very clearly explicitly what your objectives are. As a result of this proposal what results do you want clearly you will have to tell in your body. You will also explain and identify completely and fully the technical approach you are taking to reach your objectives. Any technical way in which you will reach for example if you are bidding for the construction of a building then you will have to give the technical details of how you will construct the building what equipment you will use etc. You will have to write the technical details of how much resources you will use how much material you will use you will also ground your technical approach which you will tell in technical in a brief explanation of the theoretical background so that when you are telling your technical approach you will get a little background which is applicable theory the way you will make things the analytical models used in it if any previous question has been asked and what are your ideas and hypotheses you will include. You will also present your method and design for reaching your stated objectives as I said earlier as well you will state clearly how you will reach your objective you will most likely make reference to figures it is technical information that you are presenting you will most likely be using some kind of figures to explain that technical information state also how relevant data will be acquired and if you need to collect any data to make your case wrong and to reach your objectives and also apart from stating how it will be acquired it is just as important how it will be analyzed so you need to also describe what the analysis method of the data will be then you will analyze it you also need to explain clearly how you will manage the development of your proposal project because proposal reviewers pay strict attention to this section because here you are showing that you have the required know-how to bring the project to completion when you tell all your technicalities that this work will be like this then you also need to tell how you will develop your work how you will manage it because the proposal reviewers will also want to see that you can complete this work successfully or not and in this section you will present the following information you will give a timetable you will list the required facilities and resources you will list all the material and equipment that will be used and all the personnel which basically means the human resources that will be used or the people who will be involved in that project if need be then you will include their resumes in appendices whatever you will tell that these people involved in this project so that the people who are reviewing the proposal they will know that the people involved in this work what are their needs you will include a work plan in the body sometimes called a project plan as a separate section if your proposal is lengthy if it will be a long proposal then you will give a work plan separately preliminary project plans or initial project plans are also sometimes appropriate in feasibility and recommendation reports a lot of the times you will be giving preliminary short project plans and then you will give longer proposals if you are giving feasibility and recommendation reports also most project reports refer to all or part of previously existing project plans if any projects have already been made then most of the project reports refer to them the end matter of a proposal will include a bibliography in which you will give a list of the previous proposals or reports or you have read to write this proposal you will include resumes as I said earlier if you are involved in the project and any appendices which will include any additional information that you feel should be read by the reviewer but is not absolutely necessary to put in the main text so these three things you will not be given in the end matter bibliography, resume or appendices proposals may be written either written or oral they may be for government agencies or for the private sector so it is keeping in mind whatever type of proposal it is written or oral if it is oral then generally informal if it is written then obviously you will follow the formal format there will be no such format in oral other than this for government agencies or private sector you will keep this in mind when you write a proposal so basically in this lecture today we discussed memoranda or memos and how to write different types of memos in a business environment we looked at the different types of meeting documents which included agendas and minutes and we looked at proposals and the structure of proposals what a proposal is and how a proposal is structured the different elements of a proposal I hope you will find these things useful when you are actually applying them in your business I will see you next time Allah Hafiz


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