Hello and welcome to MIPTV and with me as always is the polymath of psychotherapy books, Bob Cook. How are you doing, Bob? I'm very well on this lovely warm day. Yeah, you've got a fantastic book for us tonight. Power is in the patient by Mary and Robert Goulding. Yes. So this is an interesting book, isn't it? So many people have known the Gouldings for redecision therapy. Correct. Is this slightly different? Is this something they may not be known for, Bob? No, this is again about redecision psychotherapy, this book. Right. We're going back 60, 70 years, 1973, so it's got its vintage. We're going back into history. But you know, redecision therapy, which was really one of the styles of psychotherapy, and Mary and Robert Goulding being one of the people of elders of TA who created redecision psychotherapy, wrote this book after the most famous book, I think, changing lives in redecision psychotherapy, which we've actually talked about here. Yeah. This is that book. What I like about this book particularly, which is why I'm bringing it here. Besides, you know, I like talking about redecision psychotherapy. But what I really like about this book is the emphasis on autonomy, taking personal responsibility for change in a client's life. In other words, it's really centered on positive change and also autonomy. So in other words, contracting is very strong around specific change and taking responsibility for the change in the here and now. And I know that you've talked previously about putting the new script on the road and getting a new script on the road. There's this link to that, this idea that you're helping clients break the life scripts that they've had created in childhood and carried through their lives. And they're effectively helping people develop a new script like a new actor would be to go out into the world and live with that script. I think you're right. And redecision therapy, especially Bob and Mary Goulden talked about going to the Child Eager State, looking at injunctions, impasses and helping the person make new redecisions in the child so they can integrate that in their adult and change their script. That's correct. That's redecision psychotherapy to a T. What I like about this book as well, which I don't think was, well, it was talked about in their redecision changing lives book, but really emphasized in this book is the Gestalt ideas, if you like, because they mix Gestalt techniques with transactional analysis, they trained with pearls and burn. How interesting. They put the two together. So how, what aspects of Gestalt would they draw on in terms of working with clients? Yeah, the idea of personal responsibility for change, the idea of really encouraging autonomy, the idea of confronting words like try, should, must, can't. They would, they would call that a con into person's victim state. So they would confront that and ask them to change their language to will and much more a sense of autonomy.  They did a lot of work and they talk about this book again about exaggerating, you know, body movements, for example, you know, so somebody is, I don't know, they're tapping on the, on the actual chair or whatever. So exaggerate that tapping or exaggerate that food movement, you know, that movement in the leg or exaggerate XXX. So they would be very strong and Gestalt ideas of exaggeration, experimentation in the service of positive change. Yeah, and I like the, I like what you're saying because one of the things that of course Pearls was, was very clear about in Gestalt was that the here and now was everything and any, you know, in the past or in the future was this an escape. He believed that was the escape from reality, to some extent. He said that in the Gloria films when he was working with Gloria. Yeah, and he said, you know, any attempt to go into the past or the future would be an escape and he would, he would focus on that and say, you know, you're going back into the past, but actually this is the here and now. It sometimes could come across as quite harsh when you talked about exchange those will do and, you know, more positive felt like a bit of the techniques they use in 12 step AA programs. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, where they, where they, you know, they, they, they don't allow people to escape into a victim place. Yeah, that's what. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. Yeah, a mixed of Gestalt experimentation, like I've just said, and the idea of what you said at the beginning, going back and making redecisions from when they were originally made. So they could change their script and be different in the present. Now that's different. I understand from some of the Gestalt philosophy because the way you just described it. So, so what I like about the Gouldings was the mix of gestalt actionistic techniques and the ideas of making redecision in the present and changing a person's script and using these what I call actionistic experiential Gestalt techniques to enable the person to enter a different part of the Salvi child ego state. So it's an interesting book, particularly. It is. And it does, it does kind of speak of a little technical integration, as we call it, way to disciplines in and very, I would imagine an interesting book for students to And you know what particular is the is the use of case studies and transcripts. Oh, in this book, they take case studies and transcripts as a way of looking and examining the interventions from a Gestalt perspective, and a TA perspective, which is the hub of the book, but the actionistic heightening experiences of Gestalt psychotherapy. So it's very good for students to actually have a have a look at the therapeutic room, if you like, or what's going on in the therapeutic conversation via transcripts. Yeah, so there's a there's a strong sounds like there's a strong base of of research on the research would be qualitative, in other words, taking a snapshot from case studies being yet and showing how it works. Yeah. And the final thing I want to get this in because I'm really hot. I really like this philosophical base. The title says a lot of the way. I mean, Goulding and Robert Goulding thought the power is in the patient, not in the car and not not in the therapist. Yeah, is in the patient. They have they are the people that instrument change. They are responsible. They are the people actually make the change not as burn often talked about the therapist. It's interesting, isn't it that that shift from expert to kind of a kind of therapeutic friend walking along. There's a smatching of Rodgers in there, I think. I mean, it was, you know, Rodgers came along in the 1950s. He was the real giant of the humanistic revolution. So I'm sure they will have met and I'm sure they will have been influenced by Rodgers as much as they influenced by burn. Of course, you know, therapy in pearls. So they, they will have really had a huge amount of influence these giants on them. And of course, they became, you know, giants in their own way. Mary and Goulding and were, you know, elders and the TA movement and helped shape the TA movement to where it is now. But I particularly like the title of this book and the philosophical humanistic ideas of the the change being in in the actual client and not in the expert therapist. I really come from that place myself. Yes. Yes. And I think it's interesting. You said the book was published in 1973. Yeah. And if we think of when the relational term came in transactional analysis, that was a long time afterwards. So there's an acknowledgement about moving from an, you know, from being the expert to to trust in the client. You used the word autonomy, the idea that the client knows best and can can self generate is is a fascinating one, even from a historical perspective. And I hope students reading this book reflect on this. Yes. Because often students get once they carried away, but they can actually, yeah, I suppose carried away with their ego and believing they are the experts in inverted commerce, but actually the change it resides in the client. And if there's no motivation for change, no responsibility for change, it won't happen. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I think I think the evidence is is right. Rogers did some research at Wisconsin and and that came up motivation to change the one of the key factors in in people wanting to. So we'll tell you about this book again. The power is in the patient, Mary and Robert Goulding will put a will put a link below. So click on to the link below and you can go and examine the book. It's always Bob doesn't get paid for book reviews. This isn't endorsement or a paid book review. You can get a free copy of the book. Bob is just showing his love of love of literature. So Bob Cook, thank you very much. Thank you.


All right, Wilson, should I go ahead and get started now? Okay, great. So everyone, welcome. This is the classic website blunders session for Bad Camp 2020. Super happy to be with you. So we'll go ahead and get started. So a little bit of an overview of what we'll be talking about today. Kind of introduce and set the stage. We'll go through what I like to consider 10 classic website blunders. And we'll talk about ways that you can avoid those blunders. And then, you know, we think, you know, process is pretty key to avoiding blunders consistently. So we'll talk about some process thoughts and then we'll kind of wrap it up a little bit. So to start off as an intro, who am I? I'm Steven Paschmi. I'm an account manager at Design Hammer. We're a full service website strategy design development firm based in Durham, North Carolina. We work a lot in Drupal. I'd say it's about half of what we do. We also work in WordPress and some other frameworks as well. I've been working in industry for over nine years and I've been involved in dozens of web projects. So I have had a chance to see a lot of projects go well and some of them have had some challenges. So I think it gives me a decent perspective on this sort of thing. So I'd like to maybe just ask if folks could maybe post in the chat, you know, kind of who you guys are. So I can maybe tailor this a little bit. So, you know, I'm wondering if we've got any folks that work at web agencies or creative agencies, any folks that kind of have their own shingle or if we have any in-house web or admin or marketing staff.  If you could just kind of toss that in the chat, that'd be great. And you kind of see who we've got with us today. Great. So we've got director of projects. Awesome. Welcome, Tori. So also, you know, just if, you know, I'm assuming most folks here have been involved at least a web project before, but some folks might have been involved in multiple website projects and some may be involved in many, many website projects. So, you know, you kind of have a different perspective as you kind of go through that. And I'm assuming everyone has been involved in a website project before. And, you know, if you've been involved in one and it went well, that's great. If you've been involved in multiples, you know, they do not always go well. And sometimes they can be stressful and sometimes projects can even fail. So some impressive project management statistics, you know, most organizations have a 70% project failure rate. On average, projects go over budget by 27% at an intended cost. And a lot of times budget overrun is the reason for project failure. And then, you know, aside from that, a lot of times projects fail to meet their intended goals. So even if it's finished on time and on budget, if it doesn't work, it's not really a success. And then it's really common that projects end up kind of orthogonal to what the organization's trying to achieve. And 75% of project managers believe their projects could be slated to fail from the beginning. So that's some pretty sobering statistics, honestly. So what I'm hoping to do is sort of talk about some classic blunders that I've seen in my time. And hopefully to give you guys some tools to kind of either avoid or at least mitigate some of the blunders, so you guys can have smooth projects going forward. And plan to do that in the medium of one of my favorite movies, The Princess Bride. So fair warning, there may be a few spoilers in the talk, but the movies went out for 30 years. So I hope that you'll forgive me if you have not seen the movie before. So should we build a new website? Why not? How hard could it be? So our story will have lots of action. We'll have fencing, fighting, torture revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles. But why, why The Princess Bride? Well, I mean, in a lot of ways it's a little bit prophetic, right, why do you wear a mask? Were you burned by acid or something like that? Oh no, it's just that they're terribly comfortable. I think everyone will be wearing them in the future. So as we are commonly wearing masks these days, thought it might be appropriate. So let's get into the blunders. So if in case you are not familiar with the movie, one of the main characters is, one of the main villains is Vizini, the Sicilian, and he references the classic blunders. And so he says the most famous classic blunder is never get involved in a land war in Asia. And only slightly less known is never go against a Sicilian when death is on the line, which in the movie it is. So in our case, we're going to actually talk about classic blunders revolving websites. So one classic blunder is a lack of a business case. And if you've seen the movie, you may recognize the scene. I believe he was in sideways. If you've seen the movie, you might recognize the scene. Wesley, the gentleman in the middle, has just woken up from being mostly dead all day. And he is asking, he's trying to orient himself, figure out what's going on. So he's, who are you? Are you enemies? Why am I on this wall? Where's Buttercup, which is a love interest. So it's really common that you see a project. And it's an interesting project. It's got stuff going on. It's trying to do some things. But it doesn't line up with something that the organization is trying to do organizationally. Or even worse, it's sort of a project in search of an audience. Because we're usually working with an audience. So it's important to think about, is there a real business case for a project? Particularly if you've got, if you're working kind of internally and with an organization, it's one of your own organization's project. A lot of times we'll also kind of reference a different movie. We kind of think about it as, if you build it, they will come. If you build this amazing website, then the audience will just materialize. And that's not always the case. So it's really important when you're, when you're thinking about this to make sure that the project actually has a use case or a business need. Because if you don't, you risk wasting a lot of time and money. And if you've got a project that doesn't have a business case, in a lot of ways it's kind of doomed from the start. So it's an important thing as you're sort of defining a project internally to take a step back from what you're trying to do and make sure that this makes sense for the organization overall. So an example of this blunder that I saw in action was we were talking with a very, very traditional financial planning firm. You know, and it was, it's very much, you know, you would have a relationship with them, have consultations. They worked with high wealth individuals. And they're the principle of the firm. Decided that what he really wanted to do was, was have a online subscription video platform for millennials so that he could give them financial advice. You know, this wasn't really a thing that the firm did and it didn't really have the, you know, internal capabilities to do this or even the folks to create the videos. And to give you kind of an idea, the first video that was hosted and I think the only video that actually was ever produced for this was the principle of the firm explained to millennials how much they could save by skipping their Starbucks for a year. So not surprisingly, that was an instance of a project that lacked a business case and did not go anywhere. So let's move on to our next one. Unrealistic expectations. And so it's pretty common that, you know, in our world where we're consuming websites all the time that folks can get an idea of what they would like, a vision, but maybe it's a little misaligned by the, to the resources that they have access to either by what their organization can handle or by what their organization is willing to invest in a given project. So I think this really commonly takes sort of two forms. One is sort of what can we reasonably expect for the resources that this project has? And so some sort of warning signs that this Blunder might be happening is, oh, I really like the Apple website. Can you make it look like that? Right? You know, the number of zeros that are involved in Apple's marketing efforts are, it's a pretty fair number of zeros, right? And so if you're not talking a similar number of zeros, it's maybe the wrong reference point. The other thing that I think commonly can happen is folks have sort of unrealistic expectations by what's a realistic degree of success for the project. Right? And so another kind of example of this Blunder that I've seen was folks that really want to start their own social network. And we've done a few of these and we've seen them succeed and we've seen them fail. And frequently the common denominator of whether something is successful or not is, is there something in this social network concept that is going to either provide a space for an existing active community or is there gonna be some sort of really unique compelling content that's going to draw a particular community to it? You know, if neither of these are there, you know, it's really uncommon for folks to actually upend themselves from Twitter or Facebook or LinkedIn to go to a new social platform just because an organization they happen to be evolved with has this platform. You know, so, you know, that's a classic Blunder that we have seen.  So you got to be reasonable of what can be done and what can be achieved. You know, so if you're unreasonable, the project may never start or it may never be completed or it could just kind of be cut to death with feature creep. So this is really important when you're kind of defining a project, but you got to kind of keep an eye on it throughout. The real thing, you know, a project that doesn't finish can't be successful. So it's really important to keep the entire project team willing to compromise and kind of have reasonable expectations because stuff's going to come up, things will take longer, right? And, you know, if you've got kind of the understanding that, you know, it's more important for the project to get finished than to be something that it cannot be, then you'll actually be able to get done at some point, hopefully on budget and schedule. So it's good to look towards similar projects when you're sort of setting your expectations. Insufficient schedule, that is a common blunder. So, you know, basically you got to allow enough calendar time for a project to be successful. Either, you know, if they don't, something might be delivered on schedule and it will not be adequate or they'll fail if they just can't get it done in time. And, you know, really if you kind of sign on to an insufficient schedule, the project's basically doomed from the start. And, you know, the more complex the project is, the more this is a thing, right? If you've got integration with third-party systems, if you've got, you know, different pieces that have to work together that all have to be built. Like those are things that cannot be very efficiently done in parallel. So they really have to be done sequentially for them to be done somewhat efficiently and effectively. So it's helpful, you know, when thinking about this to kind of take a step back when you're looking at your project schedule and really kind of game plan through the different, kind of how the project needs to flow, what the different approval stages are, and make sure that you've got that accounted for in the schedule because, you know, you can look at a schedule and say, oh, three months, that's more than enough time. But when you start to get in there and slice and dice it, you go, oh man, this key stakeholder that has to approve this, he's gonna be in Malaysia for four weeks, right?  And, you know, if you haven't thought through all of those pieces, you know, this insufficient schedule can not just be calendar, it can also be went into the calendar. So it could be a real issue that way. So a particularly bad example of this that we kind of sidestepped, thankfully, was a company approached us and they had an important project launch in six weeks. Most important thing in the history of the company. It was a new website. It would have an integration with an internal registration system that'd be ready in four weeks. And so they were talking to us six weeks from the launch date. Gonna have this registration system ready in four weeks. They'd need about two weeks to select the firm that they would do this because this was a competitive bidding process and they would need two weeks to test the final candidate. So we decided, we realized that basically at that point we would have effectively one day to do the project. So we, yeah, that's a good one, Tori. It's starting a three month project in October. Usually a red flag. Yeah, definitely, because there's holidays. That is definitely a thing. So we basically, we hit the eject button on that project but shocker, the site did not launch in six weeks. So another blunder is kind of absent or uninvolved leadership. And this one I think is a little more subtle because you might think, okay, we've got enough time, we've got enough resources, we've got a project that's aligned with what the organization needs to do. But if you've got leadership that just is not involved and they've 100% delegated, that can be a real problem because it's possible that the project manager working on the project just is not in tune with the leadership. And so what is finally delivered will be wholesale rejected by the leadership. So this is key through all the different stages of a project because you really need to make sure that leadership is appropriately involved, not in the day to day, but appropriately involved to make sure that what is delivered aligns with the organization and what the leadership is trying to do. So an example of us seeing this blunder in action was, so we were working with a client and they had a pretty odd organizational culture where basically there was a single person who had the vision of the organization in his head. And he was the only person who could basically say yes or no on things. The problem was he was also, according to everyone we talked to at the organization, incapable of sort of generalizing and looking at in progress work to provide his insight. They would just focus on the details of what wasn't completed yet. And so we said, look, this puts the project at risk, it's very likely to go over budget and over schedule because we can't be confident that what we finally deliver even though it matches what we have discussed will meet with what the ultimate stakeholder has in his mind. Surprise, when it was finally delivered to the ultimate stakeholder, we ended up having to do two rounds of major revisions and a significant increase of the project cost and schedule. So it's really critical to have the appropriate leadership involved from the get-go. Kind of related is a junior project manager. So frequently organizations will assign someone who does not have a lot of authority as the project manager for a project which they're thinking, well, these other folks, they have important things to do, so we'll just give it to this person and they'll just kind of get the emails back and forth, make sure that the dev team is working. But the problem with the junior project manager is often they don't actually have authority so they can't actually make decisions. And they may not even have the authority to compel the appropriate leadership to make decisions, which can just kind of have a project kind of careen off when a decision needs to be made and the project manager can't make it and can't make someone else make it. So it's pretty critical to make sure that you've got a, your project manager is empowered to either make decisions that the organization will accept or to make the people who can make those decisions be involved and make the decisions on the approved schedule. It's otherwise that project is likely to fail. So an example of one that we had in this case was we were working on a sort of an interesting project. It was a Drupal site that was a migration from Drupal 6 to 7 and it was a Drupal site that was used to effectively collect survey data. And the previous developer who developed the first version had done some non-standard things to web forms. So it was an instance of, we spent a pretty fair amount of time digging into the many different web forms that were used to collect this data. But as we got into it, we learned that there were many more undocumented modifications and the only real instance of knowing about this stuff was all of this web form data that would not come over cleanly into the Drupal 7 version where we were not hacking web form to pieces. And basically the junior project manager kind of dug in his heels and said, no, it has to come in, it has to come in. Eventually when we got the president or organization involved, she said, we don't need all this old data. Why did you think that we needed all this old data? So this was an instance of the junior project manager who did not go and ask and say, hey, there are problems, we've learned new things, can we change course? So that's a real issue with kind of having that junior project manager involved. So another major blunder, this is probably one of the big ones other than lack of business cases, failure of communication. So it's important throughout a project to have open lines of communication and to make sure things aren't missed, you wanna have a regular cadence and you wanna document decisions as they're made. Cause anytime that folks are like going without communication or making a lot of assumptions about what one person says versus what the other person hears, you know, that's a good chance Mr. Stain is creeping, which can result in need for rework, things being delivered that aren't in alignment. So, you know, it's really critical throughout the entire project to make sure you've got adequate documentation and that can provide the reminders of why decisions were made and when they were made. So, you know, meeting notes being circulated and approved, documented specifications, all of that sort of stuff. So an example of one of these situations that we've saw was, you know, we will sometimes work with other agencies and so we're doing some development work for a creative agency. And, you know, as we're talking with our client and the end client on it, we were getting the feeling that there was some misalignment between the scope that we'd been told and that we had agreed to and what the end client was asking for. So as we worked through the project that became more and more clear and eventually everyone got around the table was able to understand that what the end client wanted was roughly twice as complex as what we had been contracted to provide. And this was an instance where there were two big issues. One, the other contract was not sufficiently clear. There were a lot of ambiguities there. And two, the places where the project manager attempted to course correct back to what our client thought the scope was were not documented. And therefore they ended up having to eat about twice as much work. So that's a pretty significant issue if you don't have appropriate documentation. So another real issue is sort of designed by committee. So basically, if you have too many people involved nothing ever gets decided or there's no clear decision. So you can commonly have projects that are very expensive, very late. Everyone is at input and no one's happy. So it's ideal when you're doing this to kind of rely on a small group of decision makers who can make decisions then have the authority to make those decisions. So we were working with a large NGO on a UI redesign and they had an 18 person committee representing all the different business units involved in the design process. So project it was just the design phase. Project was expected to take four to six weeks required nine stages of revisions and it took weeks to convene the entire 18 person committee due to its size. So end up running six months behind schedule and at the end no one was really happy with the results. So designed by committee can be a pretty significant blunder. For smaller organizations, a very common blunder is the vanishing volunteers. So a lot of times when you've got a smaller organization they might say, you know what, we don't have a lot of money. Hey, we got this volunteer that's working with us. They can do this, which can be great until the volunteer's not there anymore. So it can be a problem either if the volunteer gets in over their head and they're just like, well, here is your unfinished project. And they're out or they could say, well, here's a finished project. And you guys have fun maintaining that. So we've seen that kind of in a few different ways. One with a volunteer who basically was just unable to complete something or more commonly they've delivered something and there are non-obvious problems that then become worse as the site lives and kind of goes about its business. And then another place that often comes into place is that volunteers, since they're working for free they usually get a lot of control over what technology choices they make. So they might be working in like, hey, here's this thing I wanna learn. I will do it for this volunteer project. And it's a content management system that three people in the world use. And then once they hand it off and walk away now the organization is left with a project that they can't support and they can't even really find someone who does this. So that is a major volunteer. And if you like that one, you'll love the next blunder blinded by buzzwords. So this is, I think, being distracted from the core goals of a project by like the latest fad or bleeding edge technology. That's not saying you can't use bleeding edge and that there's not reasons to do that. You might say, this is due to our budget cycle or whatever. This is a project that it's a major project. We want it to have architecture for as good for as long a runway as possible. So then maybe you invest some extra upfront to make something work. But in the Drupal space, how many Drupal sites actually need to be headless Drupal sites, right? It's not that common. Sometimes you've got performance, you've got very specific UI stuff you wanna work on. That's great, but not every mom and pop Drupal site needs that. And so we've seen that in kind of a couple of different cases. You know, one, we've seen platforms being selected either because they're the new thing or because this is what an organization kind of knows rather than being selected because it's a good fit for the resources that are allocated to the project and what the project's trying to do. You know, the things that we've been asked to do with Drupal over the years that we have done, some of them could have been done much more efficiently in another platform. Because Drupal's good at what it's good at. There are other things, maybe less good at. I've also seen it where companies like, you know, hey, we have a particular, we're a reseller for this. We need to use this hosting. Like that hosting doesn't really work with the platform we're developing in, but it's gotta happen. So, you know, that's a place where you're gonna invest a lot of extra resources, doing something for very minimal gain and maybe even limit the features that can be done. So another, I think probably key one is ignoring risks. You know, every project has risks, right? It can be due to, you know, budget, timeline, stakeholder involvement, unknown technical implementation. Everything's got risks and that's fine. That's part of the business, right? But, you know, if you take time to identify risk and then put some potential mitigation plans in place, then, you know, when something goes wrong, you're not back on your heels trying to figure it out. You're like, okay, we've talked about this. We know what our game plan is. This is how we can kind of roll forward with this. So, you know, there are a lot of different risks and a lot of these blunders, you know, sometimes you do have uninvolved leadership. You know, sometimes you do have to have a very large design group involved. Sometimes you do have to work with a non-ideal technology for the project, right? But by calling those out as risks, you're able to say, okay, we know that this is a risk. And then we know that we can now have a conversation around what are we going to do if this risk becomes a problem? So, two risks that I see almost all the time are sort of either integrations with undefined or in development systems or really aggressive timelines for complex projects and an unwillingness to define a constrained minimum feature set to get it out the door. Like those are two serious risks that, you know, you may be in a situation where you've got to do one of those but you don't want to ignore it and just kind of stick your fingers your ear and say, it's not gonna be a problem. Say, talk about it forthrightly. This is a problem or a risk. And then what do we do if this becomes a problem? So, we've talked about some blunders. Let's talk about how we can avoid these blunders. So really, we have a couple of different things. We want to make sure that a project aligns with your organizational goals. We want to make sure that expectations kind of fit with what resources are out there. Need to involve stakeholders for input, feedback and approval. Get potential users to help you determine what to do through surveys and user testing and then follow an appropriate process that's got a good method for communication, feedback and approvals in place so that, you know, when you're in the thick of it, you actually have a process in place to get stuff done. So, aligning with your organizational goals at one of the great quotes of Princess Bride. I like to think about a project as there's maybe kind of three classes of projects that organizations do. So one is, you know, ones that line up directly with the organization's core focus. You know, what are your values? What are you trying to do? This is key. Another one is sort of a discrete tactical initiative. Maybe that's a sub-site or something that a department does. And then another one is, you know, maybe a VP or a director or something. They are just really interested in doing this thing. They've got some resources for it. That's maybe more of a vanity project or a boondoggle, right?  So once you've got that framed, you want to sort of match your expectations with resources, you know, right? So you want to make sure like you understand what you've got to work with and then within that, do something that you can achieve. So you think about the difference between something that's like a core organizational project that's gonna have, you know, for that organization, a lot of resources to, you know, a department level project that's maybe, yeah, this is, we should really think of this more as a proof of concept, you know, because we're kind of building this with, you know, chewing gum and bailing wire. But, you know, ultimately, if you're not investing Apple level resources, should you really be expecting Apple levels of polish? You know, in the words of the Princess Bride, get used to disappointment. So you also want to make sure that you've got stakeholders involved, right? You know, from the beginning. So that's an important piece there, right? So you can kind of think about different times when you might want stakeholders involved. So when you're determining technical requirements, when you're talking about information architecture, because there's some potential political considerations there as well as user considerations, design, definitely, user acceptance testing, and then final sign off. And so this doesn't have to be the same stakeholders at each given stage, but if you've already sort of teed up the right people at the right time, you know, you can keep your project on schedule and minimize costly rework. So user surveys and testing, I just thought this was a great quote for that. You know, ultimately, a site's gonna be successful or not based on how users interact with it. So, you know, if you don't talk to users through some user survey or testing methodologies, you might end up with something that's organized exactly like an organization's internal political structure and not in a way that users actually can understand and interact with. So by actually spending time and discovery and planning to engage users, you can help head that off.  Have users participate in card sorts or tree testing to, you know, figure out how the content of the site's gonna have should be organized. And then also, you know, if you've got sort of a complex user interface, like maybe you've got more of a web app situation, you know, taking some time for some usability testing, either during design or, you know, doing some early mockups or something, that can really help polish off some rough edges. And then following an appropriate process is key. So, you know, if you have, if you follow the wrong process for your project, you can end up in a bad situation, right? So, you know, we find that having a document process is really key because that way we know, okay, at this stage, we know we need to have these approvals and we're not gonna move ahead until we've got those. And so that means that if there's an issue later, it's a good call on accessibility testing as well. And to kind of, actually posted not only thinking about usability testing, but also thinking about accessibility testing.  And then even before that, that you identify appropriate, like as the project is being composed, you make sure that the organization is willing to invest the organizational resources in that because that may involve creating new content, any number of things. So, it's an important thing to talk about early because it's gonna fear a lot of the rest of the decisions. But following an appropriate process can help you minimize kind of backtracking. So that's pretty key. So I'm gonna just kind of push through the last couple of slides quickly so we can have some time for a few quick questions. So we really think about the process in kind of four stages. So sort of project definition and resourcing, discovery and planning, production, and then post launch. So for project definition and resourcing, you gotta kind of say, what are we trying to do and what do we have to work with?  And if you're going to hire outside resources, you need to make that decision at this point. Then there's discovery and planning. So let's figure out, now that we've defined the project, how are we gonna do it? And so you wanna document project goals, audiences, metrics, success, determine content strategy and organization, identify specific technology implementations, using Drupal, using WordPress, using Square. And then go into production. You gotta give yourself time to do it right in the production process. So that includes your design process, development, content migration and testing. And if you've got, for example, if you're doing accessibility, you gotta make sure that once you've got your content migrated that you're actually doing appropriate accessibility testing of the actual content, not just the design. So there's a lot of different pieces there, right? And then post launch, once the site's launched, what do you do? So you wanna make sure you've got a process in place for ongoing maintenance, content updates, new feature development, right? Is that something you're gonna handle internally, work with a vendor on sort of an ad hoc basis or retainer, any number of things. But you wanna kind of have a process in place for the entire life cycle of the project. So in conclusion, use process, avoid blunders that do a project from the start, and then try to mitigate the effect of blunders that could potentially kill a successful project. Thank you, Bad Cap 2020. And I'll hold this up here for a second when I take some questions and then move on to the sponsor slide next. So if anyone has any questions, feel free to drop them in the chat, and I'll be glad to answer them in the four minutes we have left. Ah, I wish that Hopin actually had a little dot, dot, dot to indicate someone was typing. So that's a good question. We do, so the question is, how much formal documentation of the early discovery do we do? It depends on the project. We usually think about a given project, we wanna spend about 20% of the project budget on discovery and planning, and that's kind of handles both the discovery and then also implementation planning. We usually do it kind of in some stages. So we'll start off with sort of that strategic alignment step with some pretty targeted, a few page briefs that sort of identify the goals in the audiences. And then as we do user testing, we'll kind of build out additional information. And then we'll usually culminate our discovery and planning project to basically allow us to wrap all of the discovery pieces into one document that then has the planning technical pieces of how we're actually going to do what we've decided to do based on the discovery. So that ends up being like a 20 to 50 page document in some cases, but it provides a really good roadmap for the project build out. Another question, do you think having good standards helps avoid a lot of blunders or are they subject to the same issues of too many people involved, et cetera? So I think it depends a little bit. From a design perspective, if you've got if you've got good design standards handy, you'll commonly be able to stick within those guardrails pretty easily. If it's a little more green field, then if you have a lot of different people, you can have a lot of conflicting visions. Let's see, I think that's mostly it. Let's see, another question, are there any common DevOps blunders that clients end up committing? Big one I think is not making a plan to keep their platform up to date. I just see that so often. And then that's a silly blunder, right? Why don't you have a plan to keep your Drupal Core up to date? I think we got time for one last one. Given the remote world and maybe even before it, what's your approach to remote user testing platforms versus in-person? So we have been using Optimal Workshop for card sorting and tree testing for years, really happy with it. I think that if you're doing kind of more classical user testing, you maybe get a little bit more from in-person than card sorting, but for like card sorting or tree testing, I think remote platforms are really good. So that puts us at 145, so I think that is time. Thank you everyone. And if you've got other questions, I'm on Slack, just go ahead and DM me. Thanks a lot guys, really appreciate it.


The fiery horse with a speed of light, a clod of dust and a hearty hyacilver, the lone ranger. With his faithful Indian companion, Toto, the daring and resourceful mask rider of the plains led the fight for law and order in the early western United States. Nowhere in the pages of history can one find a greater champion of justice. Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear. From out of the past come the thundering hoofbeats of the great horse, Silver. The lone ranger rides again. The lone ranger and Toto had made their camp for the night in the forest near the banks of the Missouri. Toto was cooking the evening meal while the masked man was studying a map. Next landing to the north is called Goodriches. Map, right? A fellow named Slim Goodrich. He lived there with son. Cut wood, south to riverboat. This second spring, them there. They know you, Toto? Let me stop there one time. Better stop there again tomorrow morning. Find out if you've seen anything of Rio or his men. Ah. Have they much information to work on, Toto? Then tell you what. Fort Lookout came as hobby. Rio between here and Fort Benton. Yes. That takes in a lot of territory. What's the matter, Silver? Him hear something, maybe. Come to hear it now. Yes. Someone's coming this way. He put out fire? They just get out of the clearing and wait back among the trees. Come on, Silver. Here you go. Come on. The lone ranger and Toto took cover in the forest and watched the lighted circle around the campfire. The sound of running footsteps stopped, and they could see a dim figure among the trees on the other side of the clearing. Then it emerged into the light. It was a woman. Her dress was torn. Her face was scratched, and she carried a shotgun. She frightened Toto. Uh-huh. They're plenty scared. I wonder who she is. What could a woman be doing around here? Suddenly, the woman started running directly toward the lone ranger and Toto. We'll have to stop her and find out what this is all about. Please, wait a minute. We don't want to hurt you.  I'm sorry. I can't let you do that. No. Give me back that gun. Wait. We want to help you.  Now, why are you running? Why are you afraid? You can't make me go back there. I won't. Back where? You're one of them.   You killed my husband and my son, didn't you? No, ma'am. Won't you please listen to... Some of you did. They're dead, aren't they? Slim and kit boat. Are you talking about Slim Goodrich, any son? As if you didn't know. And you're Mrs. Goodrich? Let me go. I have a little money. I'll give it all to you. Just let me go.  What else can I think? They're not at the lambing. You and your outlaw friends have moved in. You don't suppose I still believe that story about their growing hunting? Mrs. Goodrich, is there a man named Rio at the lambing? Don't you know where your own boss is? He isn't my boss. I've been looking for him for the past month. To join up with him? No. To capture him and take him back to Fort Lookout. What? I'm not an outlaw. You must believe me.  Oh, what, Silver? Kimosavi, many men come this way. They'll get you away, Mrs. Goodrich. To someplace where it's safe. I can't believe it. You must. You can ride with me. Here's to them. Swiftly, the Lone Ranger and Tato saddled Silver and Scout. Tato scattered and stamped out the campfire. The Lone Ranger helped Mrs. Goodrich into the saddle. Then...  They rode deep into the forest before they rained up and prepared to make a fresh camp. But this time, they lighted no fire. Mrs. Goodrich was finally convinced the Lone Ranger and Tato were only trying to help her. She told them all she knew about Rio and his men and the events that led up to her running away from the landing. Slim came out here two years ago for his health and Kit came with him. But I was afraid. I'd heard so many stories. The Indians, the massacres, hold ups, outlaws. Slim's my husband and Kit's my son. And for two years, I'd been ashamed of myself. This spring, I decided I had to join them. So I took the Prairie Bell from St. Louis. It docked at the landing this afternoon. Or I should say it stopped for a minute to put me off. It didn't need any fuel.  No. Rio and Spur were there. They said Slim and Kit had gone hunting. And you don't know why Rio's taken over the landing? There's a lot of wood there that Kit and Slim cut this winter. He can sell it to the boats. That doesn't sound like big enough money for him. I don't know. He has a gang of 20 men with him. All I care about right now is my husband and my son. And that's all I care about. We'll find out where they are, Mrs. Goodrich. If only they're alive. Kimo Savi. Yes. 20 men. Maybe it better we bring troops from Fort Lookout. That's a long way. We'll have to see what we can do ourselves first. We'll have to find out what Rio's planning. And Slim and Kit. We'll try to find them the very first thing in the morning. It was long after midnight when Spur and Jake and the other men returned to the cabin at the landing. Rio handsome in a way but with a hard mouth and a vicious light in his eyes rose from his chair as they opened the door. The men were silent, watching him as he walked toward them.  Boss, you haven't found them. Why have you come back? The moon's gone down. We couldn't see anything. We did our best, boss. Your best. Couldn't you even find the woman's trail? Yes, we did. But she met somebody in the clearing downstream from here, somebody that had horses. She rode away with them. Her husband? I don't know. It couldn't have been Slim, Rio. He didn't take a horse when he got away from here. There were two horses. And you couldn't follow them? We lost the trail at a creek. We couldn't pick it up again, you fools. There wasn't enough light. We'll follow it in the morning. Now listen to me the lot of you. This whole thing is too important for me to get any more bungling. We'll find them. You've got to find them. The boy was hit, I swear it. He can't have gone far. We are out for $50,000 in gold. It's coming on that boat from Fort Benton. Maybe $100,000. If we pull this off, we're rich. If we don't, we're back to hiding in the woods, living like animals, being hunted like animals. One word of warning would be enough to spoil everything. Rio, it was you that stopped us from putting a bullet through Slim and the kid right at the start. I figured it would be better if they were around me. I never meant it. I've given you an order now to shoot them on sight. Get them out of the way or you'll answer to me. Is that understood? Sure, boss, but can we sleep a little now in just a few hours?  Go on sleep. But get out of here at the crack of dawn and don't come back until you finish the job. We'll finish it this time. At daybreak, the lone ranger and Tonto were hiding in the woods back of the landing. They saw half a dozen men saddle their horses and ride downstream. They're going after Mrs. Goodrich again. Ah, but they're not pick-up trail, Kimusabi. Tonto plenty careful last night. No, but that old deer trail runs close to the cave. No, they're not sea cave. I'll stand guard here, Tonto. I'll scout around and see what you can find. Ah, me too. There was no activity. There was no activity around the landing during the hour that the lone ranger waited for Tonto to return. And when the Indian appeared once more, he carried several dried leaves in his hand. What do you have there, Kimusabi? A Tonto fine trail made by two men over that way. Really? You look at leaves here. Dark spots on them. Ah, that blood. Somebody was wounded. That's right. Trail may be one day old. You can follow it. Tonto thinks so. Then let's go. It better we lead horses. All right. Come on, Silver. Come scout. To the north and east of the landing in a tangled hollow was a log cabin abandoned by a trapper many years before. It stood in a small clearing but was completely overgrown with vines now. Inside Kit Goodrich lay on the floor. His head pillowed on his father's coat. Slim bent over him. Another drink, Kit? No, Pa. Do you feel any better? I'm done for. Don't say that, son. I know. Listen to me. What? Don't stay here any longer. Get away. I'm not going without you. He is. You must. They're looking for us. They'll find his cabin before long. I've got my shotgun. So many of them. Get away now. The fort's too late. Now, Kit. You must. You know what they're up to. Go to the next landing. Upstream. Stop. Send a message to Fort. Look out. We'll do that when you're able to travel. No. There'll be more, Pa. Here, son. Kit. Kit. Now, Kit. Kit, hear your heart. Oh, Kit. Dirty killers. I'll get them. I'll make them pay for this. They'll know they've been in a fight before they've finished. The dirty killers. The Lone Ranger and Tonto walk through the forest with Silver and Scout following them. Just as they reached the hollow where the trapper's cabin stood, they heard a distant shout. Where did they come from, Tonto? The landing? No. They went closer than landing. That way. Those men we saw start out are circling around. Ah. But they may not come close to cave where women stay. No, but they may be heading in this direction. Maybe so. Here. You look at this ranch, Kimusavi. Ah. More blood stains. Ah. Tonto think man and boy in cabin. Me crawl close. Make sure, huh? Good idea. You wait here, Kimusavi. Right. As Tonto crawled toward the cabin, there was hardly a movement of the bushes to betray his presence. But the Lone Ranger was able to follow his progress almost to the door. Then suddenly, Tonto stood up. Kimusavi, you come quick. That boy in here. Quick back. Come on, Silver. The masked man ran across the little clearing and when he entered the cabin, he found Tonto bending over kit still form. Here, Kimusavi. This Woodridge boy. Is he dead? No. Tonto get bandages from saddlebag, medicine, herb, make drink. Go ahead. Tonto returned in a few seconds and carefully dressed the wound. The Lone Ranger had started a fire in the old stove and placed a tin cup full of water on it. Tonto had just begun to prepare the herb drink when Slim stepped into the doorway of the cabin with his shotgun level.  This father a boy. Put down that gun, Slim. Not a chance. This is where I start to get even. Maybe it wasn't either of you two that killed my boy, but there's more than one that's going to pay for it. You're the first.  The curtain falls on the first act of our Lone Ranger story. Before the next exciting scenes, please permit us to pause for just a few moments. Now to continue our story. Slim Goodridge, believing his son to be dead and certain that the Lone Ranger and Tonto were members of Rio's gang, leveled his shotgun at them. You shut, Kit.   Don't lie to me. I'm telling you the truth. He isn't dead. But he will be if you don't put down that gun and give Tonto a chance to take care of him. I couldn't hear his heartbeat. He's still alive. He'll be your fault if he dies. You mean you're trying to save him? All we ask is a chance. You're not part of Rio's gang? No. Put your mask on. There's no time to argue about it. Do you want your son to live or not? Well, it may be a trick, but I've got to take the chance. Yes, please, please save him. That's better. Go ahead, Tonto. When Tonto's brew was ready, the Lone Ranger cradled the boy's head in his arms and he was able to drink most of the cup. Then he sank back. The masked man covered in with blankets and before long the easy rise and fall of his chest and a stronger pulse proved the crisis was past. Slim studied the boy's face. I think there's a little color in his cheeks now. Yes, I think so too. Whoever you are, whatever you are, don't make any difference to me. I'm on your side, Mr. You were on your side, Slim. Against the real? Yes. Now we have some news for you. For me? Your wife's here. My wife? She's in St. Louis. She arrived at the landing yesterday afternoon. And she fought? You mean Rio's got her a prisoner? Mask Man, I've got to go. Wait, wait, Slim. She's perfectly safe. She was Rio's prisoner, but she ran away. Tonto and I helped her to find a hiding place. Where? Only a few miles from here. We'll take you to her as soon as it's safe. It won't be safe in this neck of the woods as long as Rio's around. That's why we must get rid of him. What's he up to? At the landing? Well, when the first boat with Gold from Fort Benton stops there, he'll hold it up. He won't hold up the first one. There'll be a company of soldiers on board heading back to St. Louis. Well, then it'll be the second one. Unless we make sure it's the first. Huh? The first boat from Benton is due to pass here any day now. I'm going to write up, stream and stop it. We'll warn the captain that Rio's here, and then we'll... Tonto, we'll go over here or something. That's right. The men from the landing. Ah, and then come this way. Quickly, the Lone Ranger and Tonto prepared for a siege. Silver and scout were led into the woods in back of the cabin, and the masked man and the Indian had no sooner returned than they heard the sound of horsemen forcing their way through the underbrush and heading toward the clearing. The door of the cabin was slammed shut, and the Lone Ranger and Tonto took their positions at the two small windows. I'll take the first one, Tonto. The Lone Ranger's first shot caught Spurr in the arm. The outlaws dismounted, took cover, and started firing on the cabin. The Lone Ranger and Tonto returned their fire. For five minutes, the forest echoed to the roar of gunshots, and then the outlaws learned to respect the aim of the men defending the cabin, and the shooting was faced at longer and longer intervals during the next few hours. But there was no indication of giving up the siege from Rio's men. Spurr, with a bandage around his right arm, was directing their fire. Don't shoot unless you can see him. You heard me, Jay. I thought I saw the Indian. Listen. Somebody riding this way from the landing. He's real. Don't show yourself, boss. They're in the cabin across this clearing. Be careful. Keep low, boss. Who's in the cabin? I saw Slim ones. Who are the boys? We haven't seen them yet, but there's an Indian and another armory. Looks like he's wearing a mask. Yeah. You're local. Must be the trapper who lives here.  Let me see. Watch it. Why, that dirty... Did you get him? No. You can see why we haven't gone after them. They shoot straight. Yeah. All right. Leave them where they are. What? You're all coming back to the landing with me. Boss, you said... I said get the Goodriches, so they couldn't warn anybody what we're up to. Well, it's too late for that now. The first boat from Fort Benton is only a few miles up the river. It's late in the afternoon. They're sure to stop at the night at the landing. You hear that, boys? Tonight's the night. Well, I want you all inside the cabin at the landing before the boat docks. Spur and I'll be the only ones who can out to meet the boat. But as soon as they put down the gangplank... That's what we've been waiting for, boss. Yeah. Come on. Leave the Goodriches here. Do you expect them to follow us? I don't know. I do. Well, hi, Taylor. That suits me. Come on. The Lone Ranger and Tatto could hear Rio and his men riding back through the forest toward the river. You're going after them? Yes, ma'am. Just to? Rio's planning to stir up a hornet's nest. To make sure that he doesn't escape their sting. That's right. He's just... He's got it. He's got it. Fifteen minutes later, the Lone Ranger and Tatto dismounted on the edge of the clearing. A steamboat whistle sounded up the river. There she comes. That's right. How to think all outlaws inside cabin. You look. Horses in corral. Backer cabin. They'll need them for their getaway. Ah. And there are no wind in backer cabin. Yes, I'm thinking the same thing you are. We could get to the corral from here without being seen. Ah. We'll wait and see what happens from the boat docks. Boat come now? Yes. There's two of them out of the landing. Ah. One of them. Rio maybe. From the descriptions we've heard, the bigger man must be he. There are plenty soldiers on boat. Yes. Rio sees them. My guess is that he's changing his plans. Huh. It doesn't matter. There are enough charges against him already. All we have to do is make sure that he's captured. It was true. Rio was changing his plans. And as the boat nosed into the dock, he gave spur new instructions. Get back to the cabin first.  We're not going to take all those uniforms. Right. Period. The boat was made fast. The gang flank lowered and the first two men donned were the captain and the lieutenant in charge of the troops on board. Welcome to Goodrich Landing. Oh, hello. I don't believe I've seen you before. My name's Smith. I'm in charge here while Slim's away. I see. Well, we need some fuel. There's plenty of oil cut and waiting if you have them interloaded. Yes, indeed. I'll get them at us right away. Captain. Yes, Lieutenant. Look who's riding out from the woods, daughters. A mask man. Yes, you know him, don't you? An outlaw? I love to kill him.  Smith, give me that gun. I said give it to me. That masked man is the lone ranger. Hey, lone ranger. Smith, where are you going? Rio had been thinking fast. A masked man. A masked man who was really the lone ranger. A masked man who had been in the cabin with Slim Goodrich. We have to make a break for it. I haven't got a gun, but I've got my knife. There's no time to warn the others. In another minute, the Lieutenant would know Rio's real identity.  Get up there.  As he disappeared into the forest, the lone ranger reigned up beside the captain and the Lieutenant. Oh, hold on a second. Easy. Hotty mask, man. Meet Captain Daly. Hello, Lieutenant. Good evening, Captain. Good evening, sir. That man you were just talking to was Rio. The outlaw? Rio. 20 of his men are in that Lieutenant. We've driven off their horses. They can't go far. Right, sir. I'm going after Rio. It was getting dark when Rio first realized that what he had thought was the echo of the chestnut's hoofs was actually the sound of another horse behind him. He made a mistake. He could have turned into the tangled undergrowth, but sure of the chestnut speed, he continued along a trail that let out of the forest and into a wide open valley. Come on now. Let's go. The chestnut answered his command with a burst of speed that reassured Rio. Reassured him until he turned in his saddle and saw the great white stallion flash from the forest and the distance between the masked man himself being closed with every second. Rain up! He'll never get me! Run, Diablo! A lone ranger had been expecting the outlaw to open fire, but as he drew closer, he saw that Rio's holster was empty and he urged Silver on. Montelle! Now Silver lengthened his tremendous stride. His Silver Shodhoof spurred the ground. The chestnut tried gallantly, desperately to respond to Rio's quirk, but there was no horse in the west that could match Silver's speed. He was at the chestnut's flank, his saddle, his withers. Now nose and nose they raced. As the lone ranger made no move for his gun, Rio knew that the stories he had heard were true. He would never use a gun on an unarmed man and hope came back. He swerved aside from the trail. The lone ranger held Silver to the side of the chestnut. For the last time right up, you'll have to shoot to stop me. No, you're wrong. The masked man leaned toward the racing chestnut and grasped Rio around the waist. Rio fell himself being lifted from the saddle and instead of resisting, he threw himself at the lone ranger. The lone ranger was knocked from the saddle and the two men fell to the ground with a masked man underneath. Rio's fall was broken and a flash his knife was out and he raised it ready to plunge it into the lone ranger's heart but a hand of steel grasped his wrist and stopped the downward thrust at the last minute. Slowly he forced Rio's hand back inch by inch. A sudden twist and a knife flew into a plump of bushes. Rio wrenched himself free and sprang to his feet. I told you you'd have to use your guns. There are better ways of having your kind. The lone ranger's right caught Rio's jaw and Rio charged back at him. Even larger than the masked man and confident of his strength, he was determined to win and at first the fight seemed to go in his favor. The lone ranger was forced to give brown to his bull-like rushes but then he started moving in and with a sure skill his blows were driven home. A right and left and a right and left again and now Rio was sobbing with exhaustion. Another right to the jaw and he dropped to his knees. His shoulders sagged. Oh God, don't get me again at him. You're finished. That's what you mean, Rio.  When the lone ranger returned to the landing he found that the soldiers had rounded up the rest of the gang and Rio was placed in irons with them. The following morning Captain Daley's boat started down the river with its full cargo of soldiers, gold and outlaws. The good riches waved goodbye from the doorway of their cabin and even Kit was able to watch from his cot near the window. Goodbye. Well, Annie, there she goes. He has to live. Are you sure that you won't mind it here but just Kit and me? You know better. It won't be lonely. It won't be afraid. Lonely? With the two people who mean most to me in the world? Oh, of course not. And afraid? Why, no, Slim. I know that no matter what happens we'll always have a friend in need. A friend in need? We couldn't have a better friend than the lone ranger. This is a feature of the lone ranger incorporated, created and produced by George W. Trendle, directed by Charles D. Livingston and edited by Fran Stryker. The part of the lone ranger is played by Brace Beamer.


5. Creative Writing Activities for the ESL Classroom Much of language learning comes through language experimentation, steering away from examples and formulas and attempting to arrange your own ideas into words. No matter what a student's goal may be in learning English, they will eventually have to do this by leaving the classroom and using English on their own. Activities like creative writing are one method to encourage the practice of experimentation and expression in ESL students. In this post we're going to look at 5 different activities students can use to put their thoughts into writing. 1. New Year's Resolutions Celebrating a new year is practically a universal tradition and all students have goals. Writing down new year's resolutions allows students to practice various usages of the future tense. These include using the future simple to talk about plans, expressing future hopes or wishes with the present simple, and expressing desires for the future with the present simple. Before you conduct this activity, decide what specific language points you want your students to practice, and make a few sets of decorative cards. These can be anything from squares of different colored paper to more ornate card templates found online. To begin the activity show your students some new year's resolutions of your own, as examples of what you expect them to write. Have students write three of their own resolutions, and check for mistakes once a student is finished. After correcting any mistakes, let students choose one decorative card to copy their resolutions on. They can keep these cards in notebooks, folders, bags or anywhere else, where they can easily see them and remember their goals. 2. Letters to the Future Even though the letters students will write in this activity are addressed to the future, that doesn't mean the language in them has to be limited to future tenses. A few different themes for letters to the future include. Obligations and rules, have students write letters to their future children explaining their family's rules. It's important to take care of yourself, so you must sleep well. Also I don't like to study, so you don't have to study. Memories, students write letters to their future selves, describing something that happened recently, that they hope to remember in the future. Do you remember the school festival? I ran in the relay race. I helped our team win. A day in your life, write a letter to people thousands of years in the future, describing what daily life is like in your present. I wake up at 7 o'clock. I cook breakfast. I usually eat. 3. Cultural Ambassadors Students choose something unique to their country or culture, and write a description of that thing, as though they were introducing it to someone who had never heard of it. The language points used for these explanations can be as simple or as complex, as you want them to be depending on the language level of your students. If you really want to get in depth and creative, everyone in class could work together to compile a cultural guidebook. Everyone writes one description, and then provides drawings or photos to accompany their writing. You can put all of these together later on paper or online. 4. Travel Itinerary Usually or in small groups, students choose a place they want to travel to, either within their home country or abroad, and write up their dream travel itinerary. In addition to the imaginative aspect, you can help students practice practical skills by requiring them to look up, and include things like real bus, plane, train departure times, real hotels, or short descriptions of sites they want to visit. You can format this activity in a variety of ways to match the language levels of your students. For example students at the elementary or pre-intermediate levels, could create a table of each travel day with a short simple schedule of their plan for each day. Meanwhile students at the intermediate or advanced language levels could write fuller, more detailed descriptions of their travels. If you wanted to expand this activity a little bit more, you can have students present their travel itineraries to their classmates in order to introduce each other to different destinations. 5. Reactions Show your students something interesting or thought-provoking, and have them write a few sentences that either describe what you've shown them, or express what they think about what you've shown them. This activity can be a good regular warm-up to help students practice grammar, you have already gone over in class. As your class goes on, you can prompt students to write more and more complex sentences. For example when you first introduce this activity, you might ask students to write something like, I like this song. I think the singer is cool. Then sometime later, you might ask students to write something like, I like this song because it's upbeat. I had never heard of it before but I want to listen to it again. Take a TEFL course and start teaching English around the world. Thanks so much for watching. We are ITTT the leading provider for TEFL and TESOL training courses. If you like this video, please subscribe by clicking that button down here, and click on any of the videos here on the left for more interesting teaching tips for getting certified to teach English abroad and online.


So YouTube team keep it clean what's going on the same grave here with another video and then this video It came out about maybe like an hour ago that the Colts finally Put an end to The quarterback Andrew Lux season. It's a wrap now. He's officially put on injured reserve I know he was on the the physically unable to perform this for the entire season now and and No, you know what actually think they actually had him on the roster because they were He was inactive for games. He was yeah, he was inactive for games So he was on the do not playlist. So they took him off the PUP. I guess they just felt like he was gonna have a shot to play but Unfortunately, it's not gonna happen.  I mean because of your Andrew Luck is their guy. That's their quarterback and whatnot And I can't even say it's better bittersweet because Andrew Luck is their starter. That's their main their main guy But they do This just means we get an entire season of Jacoby Brasette's work and I don't think he's been bad for them and he has The team is limited the team is limited on what? Like the the skilled players and whatnot the quality of players at the different positions that For what he does on a full on a limited team. I think it's pretty good He he don't do too bad in my book and I really like Jacoby Brasette. So hopefully next year for the Colts sake They can build a better roster Since Andrew Luck should be back by then they can build a better roster and they can build a better team So they can actually compete a little more.  So, yeah, I guess this kind of does make it a little easier They're not easier for Ravens because you know, they they can come out and lay a dud to anybody but um Because the Ravens do play the Colts this year so that game I'm sure it's still gonna be interesting And yes, James Griffin, you're right It does this does kind of put the label on um Andrew Luck as him being injury prone because this ain't the first time He's been hurt. I believe it was his ribs last year this year. I'm not even sure what it is But he has gotten quite a few injuries. So he is starting to get that uh He's starting to get that label Unfortunately for his sake and for Colts fans sake too so We'll see man. We'll see how we'll see how the Colts continue to do. I don't see them I don't see them competing in their division man As much as I want them to and because like I said, I really I really like that dude Jacoby Brasette me I really like him when he was in New England I was like I would have a phone because I didn't really get to see him do too much because he didn't I think he got that like Thumb injury or finger injury last year and they put him on injured reserve and Because he had started the one game against I think he started against the bills when the Patriots played the bills last year So you really ain't really get to see too much out of them and then with him being on the Patriots. It's like Since that system works so well for the quarterbacks I couldn't really get like a clear judgment on this guy again couldn't get a clear Analysis on Jacoby Brasette, but um now that he's in a different system different team and he's running the show This is his team. It's not like it's time. Well, it ain't his team It's Andrew Luxe team, but right now it's his team because he's the only guy But I'm just watching him man. Like I said, I love how he plays me. I love how that dude plays really I really do so I just I Love seeing his like his passion and not even not even just him putting up good numbers Because his numbers and his numbers are just like so-so or whatever. I think last week They said it was the first time he threw two touchdowns in a game But he's essentially a rookie. This is really his first year Because last year he played one game. He's just a backup, but then he This is his real first body of work. So I just Not not the numbers so much was what I love, but I just love how he plays. I love his passion his just his attitude and He just seemed like he's determined to make himself better. He's determined to get better and I Mean he got a lot. He got a nice future me. I don't know how it's gonna work out with the Colts I'm sure nobody wants to um Nobody wants to be a backup. Nobody is interested in being a backup. So We'll see what happens with that But he is a great backup to have Hope he was set this is gonna be one of the better backups in the league come next year Unless he ends up getting traded again and gets to start a spot. Anyway Appreciate y'all ma'am. Thank you And I'm out. That's it for Andrew Luck for this year, man. Rest in peace to his season


They just caught him, and they just hammered him this year. Go, guys. Let's go, TD. Boy, God had a cut-off shirt always. We're going to have to really stay alive on this pass rush, OK? I know they're max protecting. I love his first technique. Nah, right before the game. But he's always on the sideline coaching. Half the time, I don't think he actually sees, watches the game. He might be on the sideline on defensive bench talking. There you go, man. It's a beautiful day. Weather can't get no better than this. We're about to tighten up, man. Nobody's going to pass me the wood, man. Nah, for sure. Every game. Ryan and the tights. Nice play. Great job. Somebody stepped up, man. We just keep doing that all day. We'll be just fine. Take over the zone. Uh-huh. Take over the zone. Take over the zone. Go as hard as you can. Make it a crit. Every plate. Go as hard as you can. Go as hard as you can. It sound like you know the camera. That microphone's on you. Yeah, I did it a little bit. Yeah, I did it a little bit. I was turned up this game, though. I ain't going to lie. You got the field. At the 25. At the 20. You got the field. At the 15. At the 10. Ain't a lot. Once he broke down, when I seen him catch that slant, I said, but that's his number one rock right there. Bang, eight. Man, I knew. I knew you were going to be excited on that sideline. For real. Hey, ready to play? Tight seven. Falcons, nothing. I have no idea what's going on in that touchdown celebration, man. You're going to be excited. You're going to be excited. You're going to be excited. You're going to be excited. You're going to be excited. You're going to be excited. I'm just jumping in the circle. Ryan, under pressure. Hit, falls out. Always around the ball. Hey. I thought I was going to get the ball for a minute. He definitely ran in there. No, you know I did. Casey got it though. P is going at it on an NFL Sunday. Don't know about better more energy than Bates, bro. No, nobody does. On TV, Time Ops, Bates is running the field, and let's go. Let's go! Oh, yeah. I was hyped up to see it now, man. I was like, we still got a chance with these boys. All right. Oh, man, they do this thing every day. Yeah, they say all, they always saying that. Let's go, buddy! So we gon' come with it. Raise the blade. We gon' come with it, baby. City need it. The city need it. Like, grabbing his hair like that, bringing down the hair on top of your head. Let's do this, man. A lot of people would die for this. Why not us, man? Pick each other up, over there. You got it, man. We get to do this. We get to do it. Remember that. Logan with his pre-game speeches. Uh-oh, this was excellent. This was unbelievable. I was trying to break the tackle. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You couldn't score like, you got to pick your feet up a little bit. Yeah, that's what I'm saying, yeah. I need more practice, bro. I need more practice. Now, I'm the first person over there, and he just does, does not, you know what I'm saying? Bro, Cordo really don't got no celebrations, bro. Honestly, A.J. Moore got good celebrations. Oh, yeah. I love it. I love the way he's scoring. I love the way he does it. Nah, for sure. That was a ball. Oh, good play. It takes the stamp. Gives it inside. Jack, Bob, Barber. No, seven, three. Look at all that energy. Right here. Hit the player in the game, right here. I'm trying to get like him. Hey, we got a player like the best going to lead right now. That's a fact. That is a true fact. And what I love about this team is that they're such a tight group together from the beginning. So, you know, being able to welcome me in with open arms and then being able to work with these guys on and off the field, you know, I get to just see more of this which just leads me to be more connected with them.   You just, you just never know. Just gonna give you a heads up. I'm mic'd up, so I'm the fed today. What? Yeah, I'm the fed, bro. It just, it just really much, looking out for your brother just in case. Of course, you know a guy might not say anything crazy, but you know, it's just kind of funny we always joke and laugh. Absolutely, absolutely.  I've had to make sure that everybody knows that I'm mic'd up, whenever I'm mic'd up. And over the years, I've been through everything. I've been mic'd up in, you know, really big wins, playoff games, and even getting injured. That was the worst, because I found out that I sent some crazy stuff after I got injured. So, I mean, this is a great way to get the fans connected with us, but we also wanna make sure that we, you know, be good role models as well. If you might Darren base up, I think you're gonna hear a whole lot of profanity. That's what I would definitely say, so. He's not changing for anyone. Not for anybody, I mean, this guy's the type of dude, you know, pre-game, got his headphones in, he's rapping every single lyric. Oh, God. Shit, hey. Oh, God. When I went down the water on the walls, I didn't hear the water. Oh, God. Out loud, he doesn't care about who's next to him, anything like that.  The one thing I will say is that you probably gonna hear it easy a lot more than you would normally when he's mic'd up. Right, right. Easy work on three, one, two, three. Easy work! Yeah!