Hello and welcome back to The Craft Box. My name is Brent and today we're on episode 271 of the Wizard101 Death Walkthrough. Last time if you haven't checked it out already, we did a whole bunch of things. I can't actually remember, it's been way too long. I think we defeated Dr. Demented, yeah that was it. Did not enjoy it. I accidentally ported the Earth and I had my port mark way too close and apparently we're just getting straight into the dialogue today. So we're just gonna like read over this just because I'm such a good voice actor. Oh strange wizard are you looking for her? She's meditating in the next clearing. Yep, that was really good voice acting, 11R10, King's apple is hire me. So yeah, we're gonna head into the clearing. I haven't even finished having what I was having before recording so that's fun. I will refuse eating it until we die. Just kidding, we won't die, we're good. Um, yeah, okay let's head over here and see what we have to do. JK, we have to fight because we're good. Um, this sounds bad. What did we do? Why is this bad? I don't like leaving him but I mean, I mean we didn't really have a choice. It's not like we could say yes leave him or no don't leave him, that would be so cool. But no, that's not how it works.  Basically her only hit that she has is bugs. So um yeah good luck, good luck if she gets a shadow per pay, yeah we're screwed. She has I think 70% damage and a whole bunch of PS, so that's fun, minus 30, yep fair enough and no pip gain for 4 rounds, so good. So basically what we're here to do is to Headless and GG, wow what a strategy, I know crazy right? Um, I also do not have any cleansing which is really really good, it's probably because I was farming Mimic and had a really messed up deck and didn't think that you know packing cleanse would be a good idea because who needs cleanse you know right? I did not read this chat, whoops, it's fine though. It is a fine, oh we could also Kizma, oh the question is which one does more obviously Kizma, wow, okie dokie then, let's go for a Kizma, I mean we could go for a Kizma right now I suppose, yeah we'll go for a Kizma now, I should do it a lot. I mean she can't do anything until she gets a shadow perp and then she hits, basically how it is, you gotta kill her quick, 4 perp shadow spells so useful, any 4 perp spell really good or 5 I suppose if you have you know a good 5 perp spell, so yeah we did not crit unfortunately, but we did however kill right 4k, yeah we killed easy clap, we didn't even take any damage, she bailed, wait a second um yeah meanwhile I was just flossing over there, well they're just arguing but that's fine, um, yikes that's a plot twist and a half, people did say that's why I gave my children to pork to be taken safely away then I tried to fight back I failed I fled and I learned to forget but now it's time you remembered it's time to strike back for nimbus for imperia for your son perhaps you are right perhaps it is time let us convene at port arrow and prepare yourselves for war okay I am prepared for war I am already for it I'm pumped I can not get enough of war love it um let's head over to port arrow um I don't know how much we're gonna be doing today because I haven't actually been timing which is not good usually our time to try and keep it about 15-20 minutes so we could be in for a longer episode I don't know um that's fun wooden chest wow wow look at that 699 amazing so much gold um oh we're actually going a long way I did not realize that I always do this I always do this I just you know not realize where everything is probably because I haven't been here before and things are still new yeah we're just gonna have a nice wee um fun chat with Brent while we wait and you know what that chat consists of me talking about complete nonsense for like five minutes while we make our way to port arrow I hope you enjoyed um even though we're not there yet we still have another 470 counting miles or meters or whatever what measurement is it what what measurement do you think I'm assuming it steps right I'm assuming but I mean like how how big is one step you know like how big is that like how how much how many steps is there to take in the main questline like just think about that for a second this is this has concluded our chat of the day right in the comments down below how many steps you think it has taken us to go throughout the whole spiral the correct answer obviously is um none because I've been on the mount the whole time haha I got you then I'm just kidding just seriously right in the comments down below how how long you think we're here wizard their robots are going crazy it seems something's got in there and overrode their dead gum circuits it all started when that cow thing stormed into town red is a berry patch in summer and meaner than a hornet before breakfast never seen anything like it well come to think of it I used to have nightmares like this but ever you mind that the bull and the bots have people pinned in their houses you gotta help them wizard okie dokie we can do that I suppose uh we are gonna take out this and this and this and this and this and this and put on just the necessities which is two deonites two loolos and a sign of death boom easy clap one two three four five six we need also two of these two more and there we go ok first ask let's go here we go here we go here here here we go it's a frazzled error but I'd never seen that before wow that's quite cool that's quite cool so I did not change my badge I'm disgracefully unimpressed with myself how dare I do this oh look a robots wow just in time wizard you saved these evil robots from a vicious drop kicking now hit them with fireballs or whatever I'm the master of death thank you very much fireballs are way way too not good enough for me anyway I'll be back once I've defeated these error bots three two one ok I am a black hey there hey there cutie um yeah we are killing always good oh I am the crit wow we didn't even need it probably maybe I don't actually know I don't think we did actually neither I don't even know my damage anymore it's just two op plus nerf oh we did need it oh good job wow just as well I planned it perfectly so we have enough perps for dinner wow it was all planned before trust me I definitely did that because I'm smart and stuff yep 100% 100% how many more of these people do we have to defeat I'm not a fan of these guys they're just frustrating and not cool oh there's a different people in this one oh spicy well we did it anyway he's dead bye bye robot excellent work wizard I'll clean up here there are more dwarves to need your help dwarves I need my help but let's go and get the dwarves that was weird I don't know shush it's not me it's you um ok next house next I have sir this one and we have special people in here we just got to wait 10 whole seconds I really wish that there's sometimes the situation would just not be as long and sometimes I wish it was longer but you know it's whatever I suppose you can't win them all you know you gotta gotta take the L sometimes fun fact um hi oh wonderful now the wizard that wrecked the bases here what a great just to keep from reaching members you're not supposed to say that you maroon just point the hatch robots in the new mythy at the town and run maroon I couldn't run my share was untied maybe we should just fight instead looks like a few of the worms slip through your grass wizard good my squad deserves more personal payback yep let's fight I'll be back once I have finished fighting my way through these guys who I forgot prisms oh my gosh I'm bad that moment when you like realize you just made a mistake and you cannot undo it yeah we're fling okay I am back we are killing yes we are that was the wrong tab I was watching YouTube sure not me it's you definitely don't want to watch YouTube while recording probably not a good idea but um you know the worst things have happened um okay well that definitely killed gg boys easy clap now when we go out we may be an aerial sure aren't going anywhere and when we're done they'll face Nimbari justice I'll keep watch here wizard you continue on um we may or may not be in uh aerial sure really fast um but it's fine I checked if there was a yeah we are okay nope we're in the arc anum wow even better wow so fun yeah I was getting potions shush shush shush shush you it's not my fault I promise I was being a good boy before recording and you exactly what I needed and got it beforehand sure you didn't get your stuff that you needed okay you didn't fill up on potions yeah I bet I bet it you're playing right now you didn't fill up on potions go fill up on potions boy yeah that's right that's right let's head back to Poirot there is a there is a stream portal which is so useful because to the other one velocity no no stream portal so stupid Kings are fixed please I just want to stream portal everywhere everywhere but this is the last house let's head on in and fight the boss boy be spoilers whoa whoa Brent you being a spoiler yeah I am I'm sorry um the boss is a boss and yeah it's fun and that's probably gonna be the end of the episode we're running slightly over time probably today um but yeah hi wizard you are a stubborn one aren't you I kidnapped your friend sabotage that dwarf ship all to keep you away yet here you stand yes it's me Lord Vanitas my cabal friends alerted me that you freed the captain I thought you'd be coming back here and arranged a diversion dwarven machines are elegant in their simplicity intruding upon these systems was easy and it bought me enough time to complete my goals what poisonous goals might those be Vanitas what new treasons are you concocting Helena impossible you you're coming for you cheeky um we don't need these uh I mean there's not a boss but we're gonna do this on camera anyway because I think I think babe cheat nope babe does not have a cheat um he does have earthquake though so that's exciting I love earthquakes so much and we also boost oh my gosh yes and a right off the bat this game is just giving me everything today everything that I ever wanted and more it's like Christmas and Easter at once you know chocolate eggs and also presents like boom what could you ask for I don't know I don't know what more could you ask I don't know maybe it's like both of those and your birthday as well I mean that would be like crazy imagine having that all on the same day just kidding that's impossible and never will happen but you know you could always dream about it I suppose um yeah we'll play one more we'll do one more blade I was just thinking they're like should we hit and I decided no I decided no um mainly because he cannot at the moment at least um he does go first which is slightly unfortunate he can um earthquake next but you know what if we don't think about it won't happen and we just thought about it so it's gonna happen 100 if that happens it's it's our fault for thinking about it because they only earthquake when you want them to or when you don't want them to when you think about them earthquakeing they're gonna earthquake and if you think that they're not gonna earthquake chances are they're probably not but you have to like think you can't think about it you know like this is oh it's not even earthquake wow you you're bad you're bad you you tried to prove my point because like I I called his bluff that's right wow we blocked what what how did we block we have one percent block never have I blocked anything forever like I think I've blocked like two things in this whole world one's a natural attack okay that's cute I mean that would have done 1k but I mean it's not even like important to block that because you know we are kind of killing so yeah and it wouldn't have killed us unless it did 4788 which I highly doubt it would because you'd have to be a pretty good sheep ox ram thing to do that I think it's an ox but it looks more like a sheep I would know I'm from New Zealand um well gg easy clap boys shut them up things sound like they're quieting down let's meet the others outside okay we can do that we can do that so can you I can do that too that was weird I don't know care of that mess now we just need to get back to Nimbus wizard I assume you place the stream portal stream portal karis often talk of making something like that spark built a teleportation network connecting all of imperia spark good but we can't use it vanitas is expecting us your landing point in nimbus will be guarded we must take an arrow ship to another dock that mayor quill owes us a favor let's borrow one from him yes wizard you and pork go talk to the mayor we'll meet you at the arrow pad okay we're gonna talk to that we're gonna we're gonna finish this quest just because it seems cool we we're getting into like the whole pirate one-on-one stuff just kidding that's a joke okay you turn wizard and I'd lend you an airship to nimbus but there is the small matter of the mythies you were to help with these monsters are coming from your imaginations your stress your fear is bringing your nightmares to life I'm afraid there is no easy things but tell your people to stop dreading the past to look toward tomorrow believe the world is a better place and you will make it one together son that is the single cheesiest thing I have ever heard you listen to this Josiah cheesy as a fondue party as a fondue party still paradox chain being what it is it ain't impossible and if we're the cause by gum will be the solution arrow dwarves solve arrow dwarf problems thanks wizard we got it from here I'll send word to the arrow pad your arrow ship will be waiting okay let's head over on the arrow ship um and and then end of the episode oh wouldn't you like this is our arrow ship is everyone ready there's no telling what vanitas has in store for us vanitas is a serpent around the vicerain's neck he poisons our destiny for his greed he must be stopped I stand with you my lady we have to save spark even if he didn't come to save me uh us and we have to do it together let's go we must work together I don't know why that did it when technically we're like so far away but you know what it's fine we're gonna just um go with the arrow ship boarding nope nope over here yeah right there okay I don't know why it's right there weird but you know it's fine just boarding at the end come in mr spark ah blast this communicator he's not answering sorry lady helena I can't find your son if you left spark with vanitas he's no doubt in the central spire it's shielded against electrical interference so communicators are useless that spire is where we must go but the only way to get inside is from the citadel proper no doubt the vicerain will rally the justikari against us I'll see if I can find the prater and convince her of what's happening I'll scout ahead and contact you with any threats maybe this communicator is at least good for that hopefully we'll encounter less resistance than if we returned via the route they expected but let us be cautious wizard okay so next episode we will be heading in to the citadel again it looks like we have a nice wee dungeon or at least an instant so we'll be doing that next time thank you for watching them too like and subscribe if you're ready to subscribe press the wee little bell so you know exactly when I post another video and a member crafts outside the box


Today's teaching video is about family. We all have a family that we dearly love and respect. Look at this beautiful family of Miguel. Miguel dearly loves his family. And he proudly says, this is my family. Always happy as we can be. Here is my father, and here is my mother, my brother, my sister, baby, and me. To make life real special, there's Lola and Lola too, you see? There are lots of uncles and aunts too, oh how I love them all you know, oh how I love my family. To show respect for the members of our family, we say, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, good night, and goodbye. We also use these expressions to show respect for other people. Just like teachers, priests, janitors, house helpers, and playmates. Now let's see Miguel, how he shows respect for his family. He says good night to his mother before he goes to bed. He says goodbye to his mother and father before going to school. He says good morning to his father when he wakes up. He greets his Lola and Lola in the evening. He says good afternoon to Tita May when he sees her. And he says good evening to his father when he arrives from work. It is important to respect family and other people. Again, the members of the family are father, mother, brother, sister, and baby. Your grandfather, grandmother, uncles, and aunts are your extended family. Thanks for listening and watching kids, don't forget to like this video. Have a nice day.


Well, hello and welcome to Understand Men Now. I'm Jonathan Asley of JonathanAsley.com and I'm so excited to be shooting this short video for you today. Our topic we're going to talk about the three, or is it three, or three stages men need to fully commit to love. So, or commit to you. Before we begin, if this content resonates with you and you feel like you're ready to take that next step and you want to schedule the discovery call with me, check out the link below to schedule a one-on-one session with me to see if coaching works for you. Alright, let's talk about those three, three, three stages. Alright, I'm just kind of excited right now. So, let's first off, let's be real with one another for a second because in the dating process we human beings are driven by biology. We are driven by chemistry. We're driven by the chemical drip. And what I mean by chemical drip is when we feel really connected with another human being, brain chemicals are released in our brain that go out throughout our body. Chemicals like testosterone and estrogen and oxytocin and dopamine, the love drug, you know, the lust drug if you will. So, the first stage is we step into that place of lust and honestly whether it's man or woman but mostly men because we're driven from that biological perspective of we need to spread our seed, we need to be excited to get the erection going and that sort of thing. We are highly driven by lust in the early stages and and that's certainly true for men but you know men who are more emotionally mature and emotionally grown up aren't necessarily highly focused on that but for the vast majority of men we're driven that way. I mean when we get excited about someone we want to see them, I mean you hear this time and time again we we go from point A to point B to point C and when we like a girl we're gonna put effort into it. And there's no doubt about it, we're going to do that. The more the high quality man is also looking for a woman who puts in effort as well but not but and I just want to be clear but that first stage is actually just lust driven, it's limerence driven, it's driven by our biology and that's just a natural phase of getting to commitment. And so the next phase, phase two or stage if you will, is building trust with one another, building trust with one another and this is where a lot of people fail in relation. You know this is where there's a lot of struggle in building trust. Now at first it starts off with things like familiarity. Like I kind of repeat myself sometimes but you know you like sushi? Me too! You like snowboarding? My favorite thing to do or paddleboarding, let's go with that one because I live at the beach. Or you like Tears for Fears? My favorite band. Actually it's not my favorite band. My favorite band happens to be Joe Jackson. I'm a big Joe Jackson fan going back to the Look Sharp album in 1979. But anyway so for those women who like Joe Jackson, woohoo! Anyway but building trust first starts off with familiarity but then trust is built over time doing activities together, shared activities, hobbies, mutual interest. Start investing into each other's lives by supporting one another. That's what builds trust is being there for your partner. It's saying, hey I need a ride to the airport. Will you take me? Absolutely! You're my partner and I can count on you and it takes time to build trust. In fact this is the stage where most relationships suffer. Is that they just haven't built that level of trust and it's not just physical trust, it's emotional trust. Can I trust my feelings with this other person? And ladies you know this because your greatest fear is centered around feeling safe to be vulnerable with a man. And just like women, we men need to feel safe to be vulnerable as well. And men struggle in this particular area because we've been so conditioned to stuff our feelings. This is one of the reasons why the term emotionally unavailable is thrown around all the time. But it takes time to build trust and it first starts with that phase of familiarity. Doing things together, building the roots. And I talk about the roots in a much greater context in my private coaching program. But when you develop the roots that to sustain a relationship, you're gonna go to that third phase of commitment. And I want to lean into commitment in a different way today because ultimately when you've made that full commitment, I'm here, you matter, we are important, I've got your back, I'm not going anywhere, I only want you. That's really building the roots to commitment. So Dr. John Gottman talks about these three phases and he talks about first in the development of a relationship we start off focusing on our own needs. Is my needs getting met in fact, this is the struggle with a lot of relationships because both men and women are hyper focused on their own needs being met and not reaching that second stage of going, can I meet my partner's needs? Can I meet my partner's needs? So let me give you an example of that. So let's say, are you familiar with the five love languages? I talk about it all the time, but if you're not familiar, go Google it. But the five love languages are words of affirmation, quality time, physical touch, access service and gifts. So let's say the man you're dating is an access service person and you're a words person and you've done the test online. In fact, I highly recommend in the early stage of the dating is to go online, do the five love languages test. But let's say for example, your words and he's access service. Well, when when you're with a person that's actually leaning into deeper commitment, they go, wow, this is your love language. I want to meet that need. So first, it's I want you to be my need. Okay, I want you to meet my need of of access service. But I know your need is word. So I'm going to meet that need. That's going to the second step of the one of the routes that build commitment is I'm going to meet your need. And then the third and final is your needs become my needs. In other words, your needs of words actually becomes my needs as well. That's the real deeper route to love and full commitment when you actually make your partner's needs your own needs. I'll give you an example. You like to go to the opera, but your partner doesn't. But they know how important it is for you to go to the opera. By the way, I don't know anybody who goes to the opera, but I'm trying to figures, think of something like so obscure.  But they go, you know what? It's important to you. I want to meet that need for you. And I'm going to enjoy it because it's important to you. Now, let me just say this, you don't have to be attached to the hip on everything. Okay, this isn't about every single need is being met by your partner. But those important ones are really leaning into the deeper levels of commitment. So men and women need these three things together. And one of the stumbling blocks to these things is the fact that the vast majority of the population gets stuck in stage one, they're either in lust mode, or they're in my needs being met mode. That's where the vast majority of the population, I know ladies, you tend to think you're in all three. But I can tell you as a man single looking for love as well, I can see women are caught up in stage one, mostly and don't ever lean into stage two, even in the early stages of dating. So it's not a one way street here. It is both genders that do this. The reason why people get stuck is because they most likely haven't healed their childhood wounds and traumas or their adult traumas, and they're reliving patterns over and over and again. This is one of the reasons why I'm a big proponent of personal development, self help and spiritual work. In fact, if I haven't talked about this book before, I want to definitely have you check out the Untethered Soul by Michael Singer, the Untethered Soul, because this book leans into how to heal from the inside out. So you can be that person that can actually go, I want to not only give my partner their needs, but their needs become my own. And by doing the inner work, and certainly my book, What the Heck Is Self Love Anyway, is I mean, this is a must buy. I'm sorry. This is the beginning stage of every guy you date should be reading my book. Probably won't like it, but I think he should be doing it anyway. Because this is how we lean into a fully committed relationship. This is how we lean into it by recognizing the mechanics of a relationship. This is a demonstration. When I talk about the mechanics of a relationship, this is a demonstration to understand these stages. And the vast majority of people are unaware. So take this video and go, this is part of the road or the roadmap to creating it. I'm a big proponent. If you want to have a juicy, delicious relationship, then you check in with each other on a regular basis and say, what do we need to do to make this relationship work?  The work is, are you preparing to be in a good healthy relationship? And that is my invitation for you. Hope you found value in this video. Now, if you did, and you would like to, as I said before, schedule a call with me, check out the link below. I'm here to help. I'm here to teach you those deeper roots that help you sustain a healthy, happy relationship. And I'm honored to be your coach. Oh, by the way, pay us to comment, ask a question, anything I read, I read them all. So please go for it. All right, we're going to wrap up this video as I always do, I'm going to give myself a big, gigantic hug of self love, and I'm going to invite you to give yourself a big, gigantic hug of self love and then find someone else and give them a big hug of love, because we all need hugs, we all need love, because love is the antidote to all our inner antidote to inner suffering, but it's our antidote to peace. All right, gonna run. Take care. Have a great day.


If you're wondering if it's terrifying to be up on a big stage like this and a big room like this, I can tell you without hesitation or reservation, the answer is yes. My name is Mike Topa. I'm the director of web development for a small firm called Hobson and Company. I've been a web developer since the mid-1990s and I enjoy helping teams explore agile and lean practices with the goals of improving quality, communication and developer happiness. And if you've worked with agile and lean practices, you may be familiar with some concepts that come from Japan like Kanban or Kaizen. Both originate from the world of Japanese manufacturing and have since been applied around the world software work. Kaizen is about making constant small improvements and empowering individuals to discover and make those improvements. Kanban was originally a system used to monitor assembly lines and in the world of software it's grown into a system to help teams prioritize work, manage flow and uncover obstacles. The term I want to introduce you to today is omotenashi which describes Japanese customer service and hospitality. The application of Kaizen and Kanban to software work is something that has evolved over time. My goal in this presentation is to share some thoughts on how omotenashi might provide similar value for us to start exploring how we might adapt concerns, adapt concepts from it to our work and evolve beneficial practices. Kaizen and Kanban are concepts from management in Japanese manufacturing and so aren't really part of everyday life for most people in Japan. In contrast, omotenashi is very much part of everyday life in Japan is a significant aspect of Japanese culture. In Christelle Takigawa's presentation to the International Olympic Committee in 2013, she made omotenashi the key theme of Japan's successful bid to host the 2020 Olympics. She highlighted Japanese hospitality as something that set Japan apart from the other contenders. She began her speech by saying, we will offer you a unique welcome. In Japanese I can describe it in one unique word, omotenashi. Now before I go on I should probably answer the question that might be on your mind at this point. Why is an American white guy on stage talking about Japanese customer service at a Ruby on Rails conference? I'd like to answer that question by way of answering another question which is what do I think about when I think about Japan? First, I think about the time I've spent in Japan with my family. My wife Maria is a second generation Japanese American. She's an academic and studies Japanese politics and economics. She received research grants that brought us to Japan to live for six months in 2007 and again in 2014. My oldest son went to Yochien there which is Japanese kindergarten. She has relatives there and we've made almost a dozen other trips to Japan over the past 20 years. I've been incredibly lucky to have the opportunity to travel extensively within Japan and I've made several good friends in our time there. But having said all that, since I'm an American my knowledge of Japanese culture has inherent limitations and I have no relevant professional expertise so I'm not here to sort of mansplain it to you. Instead I'm here to share what I've learned in my time there from my own experiences, my wife Maria's experiences and from talking with friends I've made there. Having an outsider's perspective also has value as it's helped me gain a deeper awareness of my own culture and learn from its differences with Japanese culture. So what are some of the other things I think about when I think about Japan? I think about so many things. When I first worked on my draft of this talk I filled it with slides about Japan's high-tech modernity, its ancient history, its cultural heritage, its wonderful food, and even its amazing manhole covers. But for the sake of making sure there's actually some time left for our main topic I'll unfortunately have to skip all of that and limit myself to aspects of Japanese culture that relate to Omo Tenashi. So with that in mind something I think about when I think about Japan is orderliness and societal respect. I took this picture in 2004 back when pay phones were still a thing. This is my wife Maria using a pay phone on a subway platform in Tokyo. Sometimes the most mundane things can tell you a lot about a society. Notice that all the wiring is not secured at all. The power cord is exposed and plugged into an ordinary wall outlet. The handset cord is about the same as what you'd see on a home phone. This is because street crime and vandalism are rare in Japan. Compare that to an American pay phone where the only accessible wire is the handset cord and it's wrapped in steel. Tokyo is one of the biggest cities in the world. How long do you think a pay phone like this would last on a subway platform in a city like New York or LA? Also note how spotlessly clean everything is. In case you can't see the picture that well the subway platform floor is immaculate and the chrome railings and wall tiles are all shiny. Which brings me to the next thing I think about when I think about Japan. Cleanliness. For anyone who might not be able to read that it's a sign in a Japanese bathroom that says please urinate with precision and elegance. Things you may think of as inherently dirty like public restrooms or garbage trucks are just about always really really clean. I think about politeness, personal respect, and friendliness. Everywhere I have traveled in Japan I have always been made to feel welcome. This quote is from a friend of ours after she visited Japan for the first time and I can't think of a better way to describe the feeling. She said I just wanted to hug everyone. The Japanese are known for being polite but they're not generally known for being friendly but they actually are. Especially if you venture outside of Tokyo. If you make an effort to engage socially you may be surprised at the warmth of the interactions you'll have. I think about professionalism and decency. One of the things that struck me the most in Japan is that almost any full-time job will pay a living wage. People are treated with respect regardless of their job and you can pretty much always expect professional quality service. As an example the Shinkansen bullet trains these are the trains that go very fast go all over Japan and can get you anywhere about as fast as an airplane. These trains average 12 minutes between arriving at their last stop and then departing again. Five of those minutes are needed for passengers to get on and off which leaves seven minutes for cleaning the train. Now typically there's one person cleaning each train car. Those cars each have 100 seats so they have seven minutes to pick up the trash on the seats clean the floor wipe down the trays at every seat check for any lost items and since the seats rotate they also have to make sure to rotate them all to face the same direction for the new passengers. Doing a job like that well doing a job like that well in such a short amount of time requires having a standardized set of tasks that maximize efficiency and it requires executing those tasks with excellence day in and day out. Now here I am on stage at a software conference excited to tell you about how they clean trains in Japan. It's an ordinary job but when done so well it rises to the level of an art form one that Harvard business students want to study and this brings us to the idea of Omo Tenashi Japanese customer service and hospitality. A key motivator for why things like cleaning trains are taken so seriously in Japan is hospitality. In the U.S. we think of hospitality as something we experience when visiting someone's home or maybe a hotel but in Japan it's also a key aspect of almost every business. When you do something like get on a train it's very much considered similar to visiting someone's home in terms of how you should be made to feel welcome. Bridgett Brennan who's a columnist for Forbes magazine put it well and described in her customer service experiences in Japan. She said, wherever I ventured in stores large and small I experience what would be considered white glove service back home delivered with a kind of warmth enthusiasm and salesmanship typically found in black and white movies. Omo Tenashi is the combination of two words in Japanese. A mote which refers to the public face that we show the world and nashi means without. Omo Tenashi means your actions are wholehearted, sincere and without artifice. Whether people genuinely feel that way while say working as a cashier at a 7-11 day in and day out is another question but the main point is that customers experience the service you provide as if it was always true. Uniqlo is a clothing store chain that started in Japan and has since gone global. To give you a sense of the quality of their service Uniqlo's CEO Tadashi Yanai said this when they opened their first store in Australia. He said there is customer service and then there is Japanese customer service. They spent a full year training the Australian staff to get them to a Japanese level of quality service. Imagine going through 12 months of training before taking a job at a place like The Gap. Now if you've been to one of the Uniqlo stores that have opened in the US over the past few years your customer service experience may not have stood out as anything special. The quote in my slide here from 2014, this is just a guess on my part but I think Uniqlo must have found it cost prohibitive to do this level of training as they've rapidly expanded globally in recent years. But to give you a more personal example when I was living in Tokyo with my family in 2007 I was responsible for our boys each day while my wife was working. After dropping off my oldest son at kindergarten I would usually find a place to explore in Tokyo with my one and a half year old son. I found out about a department store that had a children's play area on its top floor so we headed there one day. We were the first to arrive when they opened the doors in the morning and there were no other customers. Now in an American department store you might see the staff milling around and still getting ready for the day you know this early in the morning but in Japan they are there and they are ready to serve you. Department stores in Japan also have more staff than in American stores as you would never want to risk keeping a customer waiting. Now I had to head across the main floor to the elevator on the other side to go up to the play area and as I walked with my son in the stroller lined up in front of me on each side every 15 or 15 feet or so was a staff person and they would bow deeply to me as I passed by. I had experiences before with individual staff people but never with so many like this and it made me feel like royalty. It also made me feel a little bit bad because I wasn't actually going to buy anything. We just wanted to go play with Legos and Ultraman action figures in the play area. Similarly if you visit a boutique retail store like a nice clothing shop and make a purchase when you leave the person who helped you will follow you out the door and bow deeply staying bowed until you've reached the end of the block. Westerners typically perceive this as a selfless devotion to the customer. You get the impression that Japanese workers will do anything to please you since you are made to feel so well taken care of. That's certainly how I perceived it at first. But this perception is the result of our own Western cultural assumptions where we presume a hierarchical relationship that it's the service provider's job to do what the customer wants. That's not how customer service works in Japan. As a customer you are expected to respect the professional judgment of your service provider and respect their expertise. If you are a customer service provider in Japan and you have a customer asking you for something that isn't supposed to be part of their experience that means things are starting to go wrong. It means the customer has overstepped the bounds of their role. It's your job as a service provider to steer them back onto the correct path. Not surprisingly this happens most frequently with foreign foreigners visiting Japan who naturally don't know anything about Omotanashi. Situations like this put a Japanese customer service provider in an awkward position and they need to get things back on track as gently as possible but also firmly. To illustrate this I'm going to show you a brief clip of a TED talk from Dr. Sheena Ayengar. She's a professor at the Columbia Business School and is an expert on choice. White people want choice, how they choose, and so forth. At first I wanted to just paraphrase what she says here but realize I really couldn't do it justice. So here she is describing one of her first experiences when visiting Japan for the first time. I knew even men that I would encounter cultural differences and misunderstandings but they popped up when I least expected it. On my first day I went to a restaurant and I ordered a cup of green tea with sugar. After a pause the waiter said when does not put sugar in green tea? I know I said I'm aware of this custom but I really liked my tea sweet. In response he gave me an even more courteous version of the same explanation. One does not put sugar in green tea. I understand I said that the Japanese do not put sugar in their green tea but I'd like to put some sugar in my green tea. Surprised by my insistence the waiter took up the issue with the manager pretty soon. A lengthy discussion ensued and finally the manager came over to me and said I am very sorry we do not have sugar. Well since I couldn't have my tea the way I wanted it I ordered a cup of coffee which the waiter brought over promptly. Resting on the saucer were two packets of sugar. My failure to procure myself a cup of sweet green tea was not due to a simple misunderstanding. This was due to a fundamental difference in our ideas about choice. From my American perspective when a paying customer makes a reasonable request based on her preferences she has every right to have that request met. The American way to quote Burger King is to have it your way because as Starbucks says happiness is in your choices. But from the Japanese perspective it's their duty to protect those who don't know any better.  Let's face it the way I wanted my tea was inappropriate according to cultural standards and they were doing their best to help me save face. So she says at the end there they wanted to help her save face. This is a common reason why you may not get what you want in certain situations. She didn't realize that from a Japanese perspective she's unwittingly embarrassing herself by asking for sugar with her tea. So they are trying to protect her from herself. There can be other reasons for these kinds of situations as well which we can explore with a couple more stories. Here's one from my own experience where Japanese customer service professionalism collides with American notions of choice. In 2014 we lived in a city in southern Japan called Fukuoka for six months. And near our apartment was a pastry shop called Anderson's. It was our favorite it was a favorite stop especially for my boys as you can see in the picture here.  The cashier would also individually bag each of your pastries. I'm very eco-conscious and this would bother me. It felt very wasteful to me to use so many bags. So one time using my limited Japanese skills I mustered the courage to politely ask the cashier to use just one bag. Her response was to simply ignore me. I felt confident she understood me as I've had many other kinds of simple customer service verbal exchanges without any trouble. My Japanese wasn't good enough for me to feel comfortable pressing the matter further but on future visits I tried a few more times and they would always just ignore me. So why were they doing this? It's because they knew what might happen if they actually did what I asked. I would go home and take my sugar donut out of the bag and give my wife her egg bread and it would have sugar all over it from the donut and she would think to herself boy what a lousy job those people at Anderson's did. So in this situation they are not just trying to protect me from myself they are trying to protect others from me as well and by extension maintain their own reputation. Here's a third and final example of a customer service situation going a bit off the rails. This is a story my wife Maria told me. She was in a small tableware shop in Tokyo and it was admiring a handmade tea caddy which is for storing tea leaves. Unlike me her Japanese is excellent and is actually good enough that native speakers often don't notice her American accent at first. She was chatting amiably with the store owner and said that she would like to show the tea caddy to her friends back home in America. At this point his demeanor completely changed he stiffened up and he said oh you're from America you're not going to put paper clips in it are you? This isn't just about protecting her from herself or protecting others from her it's about protecting the product from her. He would prefer to not make the sale rather than see it used incorrectly. This may seem a little extreme so what's what's really going on here? Before I answer that question I have to provide some context for the next short video I'm about to show you. My wife Maria has recently gotten into a very ridiculous very fun and very self-aware Japanese heavy metal band called Maximum the Hormone. Now when you watch videos on YouTube they automatically recommend other videos that their algorithms think you might like and so she came across a video by Marty Friedman. So who is Marty Friedman? He's the former lead guitarist for the American heavy metal band Megadeth and it turns out he has lived in Japan for the last 16 years and has his own TV show there. So I give you Marty Friedman providing some advice for first-time visitors to Japan in an interview he did with the online magazine Metal Injection and it turns out it's perfect for what I wanted to say about this experience Maria had while shopping for a tea caddy. That's one of my favorite things about Japan customer service is off the charts just wherever you go whatever you try to buy what even from a convenience store fast food chain high-end department store the customer service is second to none they will really make your experience great but one thing I want you to know is unlike America and sort of like Europe special orders are not really going to happen this on the side or this with extra sauce or this with no sauce pretty much take that out of your mind and you're going to have a much more enjoyable experience the food is so incredible just go with it I mean how many times do you go to Japan in your life you know what I mean it's their way and if they try to do it your way it's not going to come out right and they're not going to have the same pride that they would have in doing it their way and so if you get refused please do not mistake that for unfriendliness please understand that what they're doing is that's their way and they want to give it to you the best way they can and a lot of restaurants don't allow you to take food away like doggie bag type of things that's mainly because they don't know exactly how you're going to deal with it afterwards and they want you to have it in the best possible form so tying this back to dr angar's tea and sugar story my pastry bag story and Maria's tea caddy story you can start to see the common threads there's a very strong focus on providing service according to strict standards of excellence the salesman Maria was dealing with definitely went a bit too far with his comment but it's an expression of his worry about a customer not having the right experience with the product so there's a reason I'm focusing on these stories about customers desires coming into conflict with the professional standards of Japanese customer service providers because that's where I think the most interesting lessons are for us and there are three lessons I've thought of the first lesson is about how we as developers do our work and how we work together as teams omelettanashi entails a rigorous approach to achieving consistent excellence for everything from cleaning trains to hosting the olympics and with developing software we have standards and practices that allow us to achieve excellence as well and you have them right and most of the places I've worked over the years when I started on the job my team didn't have things like a definition of done or mutually agreed upon ways to do things like testing or pair programming or if we did have them they weren't followed with any real consistency I just mentioned a definition of done if you're not familiar with this it's essentially a checklist of tasks you should complete before saying that your work on a feature is done the checklist is something your team works together to create and it should evolve over time as your team's practices grow and evolve its purpose is to help provide your team with a shared understanding of what it means to do quality work when you don't have a mutually agreed upon way of working in your team disagreements typically end up being resolved by someone asserting authority or by whoever decided to push their position more aggressively or a situation may end up unresolved lingering to plague the team again the next time it comes up over the years I've worked at major universities medium-sized tech firms small venture funded startups consulting shops and nonprofits and at all of these places I've experienced team environments like this where there are always some areas of significant dysfunction maybe I've just been unlucky but I've heard many stories like this from friends over the years as well so my impression is that these situations are more common than we might think this has led me to believe that just like every family every organization is dysfunctional it's just a question of in what way and to what degree and just like with families what you experience on a daily basis naturally comes to define your perception of what's normal making it easy to become blind to the dysfunction and the cost over time of that blindness can be high in terms of its effect on quality efficiency and team morale this happens because people are unwilling to have hard conversations or they don't know how to have them or they don't have the organizational support to have them in addition to that challenge there's a whole other challenge as an industry we're still figuring out the best ways to do things so even when you can bring your team together it's not always obvious what the right way forward is on any given day you can go online and find people arguing about whether scum is great or should just die in a fire or whether application monoliths are bad design and we should all just switch to microservices or whether test driven development is dead the world of software development is like this because our industry is fairly young compared to others this is both a blessing and a curse it's a curse because it makes it hard to figure out how to proceed when you're hearing really smart and experienced people tell you really different things about how to do your work but it's also a blessing because it means we have the opportunity to participate in the conversation about where we're all headed to learn different ways of working and decide for ourselves what works best for us so I encourage you to have conversations with your team that might be hard to work towards being on the same page for things like testing strategies having a definition of done code reviews pair program pair programming and so forth having those conversations first requires having an environment of trust and mutual respect sometimes you have to build up that trust first but when you do I have found that having a mutually agreed upon way of working is really empowering and promotes team harmony quality and job satisfaction so everything I just said is about teams the challenges are even greater when dealing with clients whether it's an internal client in your organization or your consultant working with external clients the Japanese customer service stories I've shared have all been one-time retail or food service interactions in our world we have ongoing relationships this is a huge difference doing things like ignoring a customer's request as a way to solve a problem like the cashier at the Anderson's pastry shop did with me that's really not an option for us and all the mistakes you can make working with clients over the years I've made them the most common mistake is over promising and under delivery unless you're lucky enough to have an especially enlightened management you will always face pressure to do more in less time and I've done things like meekly saying yes to impossible deadlines and that I exhaust myself and cut corners to try to make it happen and the end result is almost always damage damage to the code quality stress and damage to your health and damage to the client relationship or even after all that they still end up with some combination of missed deadlines and buggy code to give you a sense of what I mean this is a chart I made after I started as the director of the web team at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine it's an effort allocation chart showing the number of people we would need to do the work expected of us for the upcoming six months compared to how many people we actually had the blue bars represent the staff we had which were assigned to meet the needs of specific departments and small teams of mostly one or two people which meant the team sizes were too small but that was a separate issue and the red bars represent the number of people we would need to do the work that was actually expected of us until I got everyone together to make the estimates that informed this chart we didn't really see the big picture of the situation we were in the team had never done estimating like this before we use what's known as the swag estimating technique to generate this chart if you're not familiar with the term stands for sophisticated wild ass guess so it's by no means perfect but it's very valuable for providing a general sense of scope and scale when you're looking at a long time horizon and many many projects almost all the demand in that tallest red bar was coming from one department they had had a history of always getting what they wanted if we ever pushed back they would escalate their demands politically through the school's administration to apply pressure prior to this we had no means to really respond to this pressure other than to just give in and these demands for projects also came of course with deadline pressure which meant we would rush and not always do our best work leading to more suffering for us in the long run with bugs unhappy clients and poor experiences for users this marked the start of a very challenging but very worthwhile agile transition for the team we discussed and implemented good engineering standards and practices and stuck with them and over time this allowed us to deliver more maintainable and less buggy code giving our customers and users better experiences we also adopted agile workflow and project management practices that allowed us to articulate and visualize the bigger picture of what was going on with our projects together these changes gave us the ability to do something analogous to what Japanese service providers do when faced with difficult situations we were both protecting the client from themselves and protecting the product from the client importantly these changes also helped us develop the ability to have productive conversations with the client about how we had been working together over the years and how to find a better way forward and we even learned how to protect other clients from this client by developing skills for estimating and making data and charts available about our work to all departments we were able to provide transparency on where our time and effort was going which enabled other departments to to participate on a more equal footing and the higher level political conversations that would determine our team's overall effort allocation so having standards and practices is good but a huge part of what we do is creative problem solving every project we work on is a unique creation not quite the same as any other on a regular basis we are called upon to be insightful and ingenuitive to solve new problems this is very different from the Japanese customer service stories I've been telling you which are all about consistent adherence to standards and providing service in the same way every time an American friend of mine who lived in Japan for many years said this he said in Japan I consistently get very good service in the US I've had the worst service but I've also had the best so what is he getting at here at this point we know about the high quality of Japanese service and if you're from the US or have spent any time here you know about the terrible service that can happen but the best service he's talking about is when you're provided with creative problem solving when Marty Friedman was saying to try not to customize your order at a restaurant in Japan that's not such a big deal if we're just in the realm of preferences but what if you have a food allergy when we were living in Japan in 2014 we became friends with my Japanese tutor and her daughter had a food allergy he told me that going out to eat in Japan was often a frustrating experience for them while staff were always very willing to provide information about items on the menu to avoid trying to customize an order was difficult when they visited the US and when we went to good restaurants with good staff she was thrilled that the service they provided waiters would usually say something like oh it's no problem I'll talk to the chef we'll see what we can do we'll come up with something that's just for you there are parallels here for the kind of work we do with software creative problem solving is essential to the work we do and we need to incorporate it into our standards of what it means to do quality work to give you an example creative problem solving can sometimes even call for pushing back on a client's request and educating them on possibilities they hadn't thought of when I was working in a consulting shop we had a client whose business was to make buildings more energy efficient they would retrofit buildings with new windows doors installation and so forth they wanted us to build an online calculator for them for prospective customers to provide information about their buildings and then receive cost savings estimates they already knew how they wanted us to do the calculations but as we became familiar with everything we had an idea for what we thought might be a better way to do it we asked if they had actual cost savings data from previous customers and they said yes so we said great if you're willing to share that data with us we can do some statistical analysis and use that to have the calculator provide more accurate estimates they seemed intrigued but also a little apprehensive they said well you know we've we've always done it this way and they hadn't worked with us before and so they weren't sure how much to trust us so they said no now at that point we could have just said fine and just gone ahead with their approach and they probably would have been perfectly happy but instead we came back and offered to develop and run an initial analysis and share the results with them and show it how it compared to their old way we said that if that point they still wanted to do it their old way they wouldn't have to pay us for the time we spent on the analysis so they said yes and once they saw what we did and we stepped them through it they really liked it and adopted our approach now there's a whole talk I could give on interviewing clients and eliciting business requirements but my point with this example is to illustrate the value of asking questions and creative problem solving a key question is when does a situation call for adherence to professional standards in order to avoid giving into unrealistic demands and when does it call for client education and creative problem solving I believe the answer is that many situations call for both you want to adhere to engineering standards to maintain quality and morale and you want to offer alternative creative solutions to problems when necessary this is the key point of my talk there's a lot we can learn from Omotanashi for ways to think about having high standards and achieving consistent professional excellence but given that the nature of our work is also about creative problem solving we also need to always be open to new ideas and new ways of doing things for example if a deadline must be met and we don't have enough time to do the work well can we defer certain features until later or can we start with simplified versions of certain features or are there other creative ideas we can explore that don't require compromising quality or putting the team on a death march these are the kinds of questions we need to be asking but how exactly do we go about having these kind kinds of conversations with clients conversations that can often be difficult in the world of Japanese customer service customers are expected to respect the professional judgment of their service provider in the world of software development we're educated on programming languages frameworks tools workflows but we're not taught how to behave we're not taught how to clearly articulate and diplomatically present and defend our professional judgment a key part of the education of doctors and lawyers is how to behave with their clients and coworkers doctors know how to handle themselves and the pressures of an emergency room or how to persuade a patient to make more healthy choices by cultivating a perception of knowledge and expertise for their professions doctors and lawyers are typically treated with great respect even when they have things to say that their clients don't want to hear now I'm not suggesting we all have to go to school for a million years like doctors and lawyers do and spend a million dollars in the process but what I am suggesting is that if you want to be seen as a professional and treated like one that means pursuing technical excellence providing creative problem solving standing up for the quality of your work and always being courteous and diplomatic awari that means the end my slides are available at the link here you can find me on twitter at amtopa I'm going to leave you with another short little video this is a moment of zen this is an example of creative problem solving and teamwork these are my two boys when we were in japan in 2007 and we were living in a small apartment in japan they call it a one ldk one means it has one bedroom l means it has a living room d means it has a dining room which is also the living room and k means it has a kitchen which is also the dining room which is also the living room so this is a small place we had set the boys up in the bedroom my wife and I put a bed in the living dining kitchen room so this is the morning my boys are having breakfast and my younger son decides he wants to have access to my older son's drink but he doesn't want to have to bother moving that drink so together they construct an extended straw and you can see my wife in the in bed they're still furtively trying to get some sleep


Welcome to the Highline College CTC link how-to video series. In this session, we will show you how to activate your CTC link account and how to sign in so you can have access. First, open a browser and go to the Highline College website at www.highline.edu. From this page, you'll find the CTC link identifier at the top and click on it. You will then be directed to the CTC link information page. From this page, click the login box. This will take you to the CTC link sign in page shown here. To activate your account, you will click the link at the bottom of the sign in box that says first time user. We are now on the first time account activation page. To get started, click on the field labeled first name and enter your answer. Next, tab to the last name field and enter your answer. Our next section is the date of birth. This field is an eight-digit format, two digits for the month, two digits for the day, and four digits for the year. Next, use your tab key to move to the ID type field. You will have two choices when entering your ID number. To find your options, click on the arrow inside the dropdown box for the ID type. This will give you the option of using CTC link ID, new, or your student ID, SID, old, depending on which number you currently have. For purposes of this video, we will activate our account using the old SID number. I will enter my number in the field labeled ID. When you have completed finishing the data filled boxes, move your mouse to the bottom labeled submit and click on it. We are now on the page called set your password. First, we will choose three different security questions labeled as a hint question. Use the dropdown arrow inside the hit question box to find your options. When you locate the question that you want, you will click on it and move to the answer box to type in your answer. You will repeat this process for each of the three security hint questions. After you have completed the three hint questions, it is now time to create a password. Use your tab or mouse to move to the password field noted below. Your password must be at least eight characters long and include at least one uppercase letter, one lowercase letter, and one number. You can also use special characters if you would like. Do not use part or all of your first name or last name for security reasons. You will be entering your password twice. First in the password text box and again in the confirmation password text box. Once done, click on the submit button located at the bottom. You will receive the following message. Your account has been activated. This is your CTC link ID. Attention, once you click OK, this box will disappear. So please be sure to remember and store your CTC link ID right now and before you click OK. Once you click OK, your CTC link number will disappear. You will now be on a page that says account activation successfully completed. Please close your browser before logging in to CTC link. Click on the close box here. You have now been redirected to the CTC link sign in page. To sign in, you will enter your CTC link ID number in the first box. Then enter your password in the second box. After entering your CTC link ID and your password, then click on the sign in box located at the bottom. This will now take you to the CTC link landing page. Move past this page by clicking on the box titled student home page. You are now in your CTC link portal with access to various Highline College resources. Congratulations! You have successfully activated your CTC link account and signed in.


Hi, this is Don, and I want to take just a couple of minutes to show you how to solve a chi-square test for independence using Excel and PhSTAT. It's a little bit different, and so I thought I would show you how to do it. Here's our problem. This is from chapter 10, and it says we've got a contingency table that shows a random sample of adults that rated their local schools and their national schools. And at alpha equal 0.05, can you conclude the adults ratings are related to the type of school? So we want to say, are they independent or are they dependent? So we're going to use StatCrunch. We click on add ends, I'm sorry, PhSTAT, and we're looking for multiple sample tests, and we're doing a chi-square. And it asks us to put in the level of significance, which is 0.05, and then it wants a number of rows, which is two, number of columns, which is four, if I'm counting correctly there, and we clicked OK. And it gives us a table that looks kind of strange here because it's just set up for us to input our data. What PhSTAT does, it will create the basic Excel spreadsheet for you with all the right formulas and linkages based on the number of rows and number of columns. So if I put our data in there, let me go back here to our data. I wonder if I can do this. Control C, and go back here. Control V. Yeah, I pasted the data in. And immediately we've got our answer here. It gives us our expected frequencies. Over here it's showing you, you know, the calculations, and here it gives us the summary, number of rows, number of columns, degrees of freedom, which is the rows and columns minus one, which is larger or in other ways, n minus one times n minus one, which would be one times three is three, I should say it that way. OK. It gives a critical value of chi-square. It gives a chi-square statistic of 148, which is way, way out beyond 7.8. So we should reject the null. It gives us a very, very small p-value. So I hope that helps. Just for the heck of it, you know how much I like to see the graphs of the distribution functions. I'm going to use StatCrunch to calculate the critical value of chi and also show us the graphs. So I'll go to Calculators, whoops, there's chi-square. We've got to put our degrees of freedom, which remember was the rows minus one times the columns, which was three, four minus one would be three. So three times one would be three. And we want always, in our hypothesis test, we're looking at the right tail. So I need to put in there our alpha, 0.05, and it draws the curve force that we can use. Calculator gives us our critical value, 7.18. And if you just checking, that's the same value that the pH stat gave us. So I just thought I would throw that in.


Okay, so I'm going to explore how green finance taxonomies can be seen as a way to implement environmental treaties. Definitions, green finance taxonomies are classification schemes set in criteria for determining when an economic activity or asset or sector can be considered green. The definition of green obviously differs according to taxonomies, but it generally amounts to saying that the activity contributes to a given environmental objective. What I'm going to try to defend in this presentation is the idea that exactly like other mechanisms designed by multilateral development banks, for instance, safeguard systems or the World Bank Inspection Panel. Green finance taxonomies can also be seen as a modality for implementing environmental treaties. I will start by doing a sort of genealogy of green finance taxonomies or sort of a small history of green finance taxonomies to explain a bit better this new objective study. Then I will try to see how these green finance taxonomies enable implementation of environmental treaties at the level of economic activities by designing specific criteria. And finally, I will see how the implementation of these environmental treaties through these green taxonomies can be done thanks to reducing climate transition risks. First couple of elements on the genealogy of green taxonomies. So the first two green finance taxonomies that I could find are actually tools that were designed by the OECD and the IFC, the International Finance Corporation and other digital development banks to track climate finance and not only climate finance but also finance dedicated to fight against deforestation and fight against the depletion of biological diversity. So this is the Rio markers at the first line. These are criteria to follow finance deployed for the Rio conventions. And then this concept of climate finance taxonomies was reinterpreted by the climate point initiative which is a London-based NGO focusing on climate bonds as its name can tell. And the professional banking organization called the International Capital Market Association who both developed their own classification of green activities for the purpose of the green bond market. The green bonds being debt titles for which the proceeds is allocated to an environmental beneficial activity. And then in the third time this concept was implemented by national regulators like the People's Bank of China or the EU Technical Group on Sustainable Finance. So national institutions. I'm going to focus on the taxonomies by Chinese authorities and the EU taxonomy. Let me just give an idea of their characteristics very simply, a very simple way. So about their legal status, the Chinese taxonomy is an administrative measure issued by the People's Bank of China, whereas the EU taxonomy is just a report at the moment. It's an open standard. If you want to label a green bonds by this taxonomy, you can, but it's not necessary. And it will become by the end of this year a delegated act drafted by the Commission under the regulatory framework set by the taxonomy regulation which reached a political agreement by the end of 2019 between the European Parliament and the EU and the European Council. So that scope of application. So one is mostly focused on the green bonds markets. The other one targets more broadly financial standards and reporting by financial market participants and large companies. And finally about the structure of these taxonomies. Both actually are based on national industrial classification and both define criteria. So it's a bit more complicated on the EU side, but it's the same principle. You have the example here with just one criteria, one activity for one activity, regarding the Chinese green taxonomy. So you can see all the here the categorization of economic categorization, the criteria. And once the national industrial classification code and then the reference to an international convention. Just to explain very quickly how environmental treaties are implemented to economic activities through these green finance taxonomies. You have, I will say there are three different modalities through objectives of these taxonomies through criteria and through interpretation. So let me go back to the objectives. So I give here as a first example, I will just go through examples because obviously these taxonomies are extremely dense and sophisticated. So it's more possible to explore everything, but it's an example with the EU taxonomy. The article six of the regulation states actually that an economic activity that is recognized as having a substantial contribution to climate change mitigation. So one of the type of green activities has actually is the definition of these activities based on the objectives of the United Nations Framework Convention. The red words are copy based from the article two of the United Nations Convention on Climate Change and obviously on the objectives of the Paris Agreement. Let me see. Yeah. This is a bit different in the Chinese taxonomy. Since the taxonomy follows first the necessity to stick to national conditions, nonetheless, it has as an objective to facilitate international cooperation green finance and therefore implements international practices and international standards. Regarding criteria, the law is also international treaties are also implemented through the criteria applied to each activity. So this is an example in the Chinese convention, there would be many examples as well in the EU convention, in the EU taxonomy. Regarding interpretation, the EU taxonomy regulation states that for many of the activities defined as green inside the taxonomy, the taxonomy should be interpreted in line with environmental elements. So here just an example with the send off send I framework for disaster risk reduction, applicable to adaptation activities. So one of the types of the green activities. Let me then reach my last point. The idea that climate transition risks can be also a conceptual tool to implement to show the implementation of international environmental treaties through green taxonomies. Climate transition risks are defined as a financial risk related to transition to a lower carbon economy by opposition to risk related to the physical impacts of climate change. So paradoxically, environmental treaties generate such transition risks just take the Paris agreement. If you follow the IPCC's estimate of a carbon budget that would enable to reach to to to respect the goal of the Paris agreement. We could only exploit between one fifth and one third of world's proven reserve of oil, gas and coal. So you can imagine that there is a huge transition risk for any company having businesses in Ireland. Yes, if we respect actually the goal of the Paris agreement. But actually translating this international this vague international commitments down to the level of economic activities can reduce this climate transition risks. It's very clear for instance that fossil fuel activities are not in green taxonomies with exception in the Chinese taxonomy. This possibility to use the taxonomy as a way to reduce transition risk has been already taken into account by the European financial regulators. This is the article 501A of the proposal for amending the capital requirement regulation, which proposes to lower capital requirements applicable to certain types of projects that would prove that contribute to one of the objectives of the EU print taxonomy. So consequence lending to green activities would be less expensive. This is what is called a carbon shadow pricing, which then could set a complement or an alternative to carbon markets, which is then specifically important, given the that debt systems are at the moment at the core of the response to the economic crisis provoked by the coronavirus. Thanks.


Creative Journey is one of our oldest and most important outreach programs. It started about six years ago. This program is created for veterans. We have every third Friday of every month, any veterans can come here and make art with us. We have two separate classrooms. One is all about making pottery, and the other one is all about paintings. We have volunteers, local artists, that come and help us. And you don't have to be an artist to do this. Anybody can do it. We are here to help you. So every year or so we do pieces that are done as a collaborative pieces. So this series of small canvases that a local artist kind of prepared and our veterans work young together. We actually, when this program started, it was very specifically towards veterans that endure injuries in service. And art is so therapeutic. We are not art therapists, but when you come and make art, it makes you feel better. And so any veteran can come and make art with us. Well, it seems like we have a little family of veterans that come every month. Every other month there is a bus of veterans that come from the VA hospital, which is a bigger group, but we have a little family of veterans that come every month. And it's just their outlet, it's just their place to go and they never want to miss. One of our oldest veterans that come here is in his mid-80s and his wife has to drop him off, but he will never miss. I think he in the past few years missed maybe one of the creative journey events. And so you can tell that people just love it and enjoy coming here and have a creative outlet. You can choose between pottery and painting. We choose simple hand-building projects and if you come next time you get to glaze your project as well. So you will go home with a completely finished project. With the painting we have canvases. We use simple images that people can try to copy. But we also work with professional artists that will help you to get more comfortable to create. It is available to all veterans. Anybody can come in. Contact us at Columbia Art Center, either Brenda Oliver or myself.


QuickBooks Desktop 2023. Bank reconciliation reports month number one. Let's do it within two weeks. QuickBooks Desktop 2023. Support accounting instruction by clicking the link below giving you a free month membership to all of the content on our website broken out by category further broken out by course. Each course then organized in a logical reasonable fashion making it much more easy to find what you need than can be done on a YouTube page. We also include added resources such as Excel practice problems PDF files and more like QuickBooks backup files when applicable. So once again click the link below for a free month membership to our website and all the content on it. Here we are in QuickBooks Desktop. Get great guitars practice file. We started up in a prior presentation going through the setup process we do every time maximize in the home page going into the view drop down. We've got the hide icon bar open windows lists checked off open windows open on the left reports drop down company and financial. Let's take a look at the P to the L ranging to the changing just for the month of Jan 01 01 2 3 to 12 not 12 01 31 2 3 Jan I said Jan customize it font into the number into changing to 14 oh yes K then we're going to go to the reports drop down again company and financial this time that balance sheet you know where we're going customizing it 01 01 2 3 to 01 31 2 3 font in numbering changing for it in OK dokey yes CK there's the process that we do every time we've been doing the bank reconciliation tying out as of January 31st our banking bounds to the bank statement noting that it's not going to match typically if you have a full service accounting system because of the difference being the outstanding checks and deposit it deposits which we can see by going to our banking drop down looking at the reconciled this is our checking account as of the 31st that's the ending balance the beginning balance is off because that's our beginning balance problem we've been discussing for the first bank reconciliation continuing on noting over here if everything was perfect if it was the second bank reconciliation as we'll see next time the easier reconciliation going forward the beginning balance would be 30,000 and tying out to what we would have here and then the additions and the subtractions would be the same resulting in our cleared balance being the same as the bank balance which does not mean once again that our book balance is the same as the cleared balance the cleared balance represents the beginning balance which cleared in prior months and all the stuff that we checked off it doesn't include the stuff that's not checked off the stuff that's not checked off is it wrong it's stuff that we know about before the bank knows about it because we entered it before the bank had the information to do it on their end I'm going to hide the other stuff past January so these unchecked off stuff that was written before the cutoff before January 31st will be the reconciling items so just a quick recap remember this is the reconciliation process quite necessary if you do this reconciliation and if you get to zero then even if you don't even read the reconciliation report you've done a huge internal control it's worthwhile to do but if someone was to ask you for the bank reconciliation report then they're not looking for this big bank reconciliation process they're looking for the report that's going to be tying out and reconciling our bank balance here to the book balance now note that although this is under the reports area you can go to the reports drop down banking and look at the previous reconciliation you need to remember that this report is different than other reports all these other reports pretty much are being made from us except like the budgets basically they're being made from us doing the data input so they're being made from our data input this report however is being is something that's tying out it's a reconciling report it's an internal control report that's added on to and has to go over and above you know something needs to be added the reconciliation process needs to be added also note that you want to make sure to save the bank reconciliation reports because it's harder to get back to the previous bank reconciliation reports because if QuickBooks was was to make those bank reconciliation reports static it would be more difficult to change something in the system in other words you might ask what would happen if I reconcile everything I check these items off and then I go into my check register let's see if I go to my lists and I go to my chart of accounts and I go into my checking account you can see that these items have a little little asterisk that means they're in the process of being reconciled and then we'll check them off when they are reconciled what if I reconcile them and then I go in here and I delete the transaction well that's going to completely mess up my bank reconciliation now because now the data is not there the bank reconciliation doesn't work the reconciliation cannot really just cope with something being changed like the double entry accounting system has because you deleted something that was part of the bank reconciliation so that means that what you want to have is a static bank reconciliation printed out so if something was deleted after you did the bank reconciliation then you can kind of go and compare what you have in your books to the bank reconciliation and to see who you know what was deleted and then look for who did it who done it but but in any case so let's go ahead and finally do it then I'm gonna hit the button are you gonna hit the blue button or not that's what I'm here for okay let's hit the blue button we're gonna reconcile it so uh ever ever have to call the bank for your balance try online banking okay they're trying to sell me online banking we have a whole nother course or section on that congratulations your accounts is in balance all uh marked items have been cleared in the account register select the type of reconciliation report you'd like to see now you have the choice of the summary or the detail or both we're going to look at both of them now but just realize that the summary report is easier to look at but actually doesn't give you the information you need if you give the summary report to an auditor who asks for a bank reconciliation they're not going to they're not going to that's not going to give them what they want because it's not showing the detail of the outstanding items so you have to have the detailed report even though QuickBooks adds way too much stuff in the detail report that you don't need so let's go ahead and and look at both of them also note that when you first create the report this report displays current data it shows all transactions that were reconciled on the given date it also shows transactions that were unclear okay so when you first create the report it looks like all other reports and you get this nice drop-down thing and whatnot but after you close this report and go back into it you might see it in a different format it might look more like a pdf file or something like that so just be aware so again a little bit a little bit wonky a little bit different because of the nature of the report being different than the other types of reports let's customize it and go over here fonts and numbers let's bring the size up a bit and and expand on this a bit we're going to say okay yes and okay now this is the summary report now the summary report is great to kind of give us an idea of what is happening but once again it doesn't give us the actual vital information that we need so let's start with it so we've got the clear let's i'm going to collapse everything first let's see if we can collapse everything and just look at it in the simplest form now the beginning balance doesn't tie out here because that's the thing that we noted uh was was not showing up on the first balance we're okay with that because we added the 25 000 as part of the items that we checked off so and that's and this first part doesn't matter too much because we have the bank statement so this first half is kind of mirroring what we did on the bank statement and then we've got the checks and the deposits these are the cleared transactions these are the ones that we actually checked off again if we had a proper beginning balance this would just mirror what's on the bank statement so it's just really telling us hey this is the bank statement side of things that's why it's kind of redundant and then there's the cleared transaction 61 241 85 so 61 241 85 that should tie out exactly and it's not something that's really necessary because that's really where the the statement starts meaning this is the bank statement amount what i want to know is what's the difference between it and the book amount this is the book amount there's the 88 645 25 that's what's on the balance sheet that's the real bank reconciliation if you ask an auditor if you gave a bank reconciliation to the auditor that's what they're looking for but the difference is the unclear items the items we didn't check off outstanding deposits outstanding checks the problem here is that it doesn't give us the detail it just tells us that there's six checks that are outstanding and that there's one deposit that's outstanding so the problem is that we would want to know what those are so we can verify that those are actually valid checks by checking after the bank reconciliation date to see if they cleared the bank and we just don't have the details so that's why this report is kind of useless in practice although gives us a nice good overview of what's going on so we had six checks that weren't checked off and one deposit that made the difference of 27403 40 which is the exact difference to reconcile us to to the register balance what's on our balance sheet and then you have the new transactions down here which again aren't really part of the bank reconciliation process these are transactions that happened after january why is it on the bank reconciliation for january bank reconcile i don't know it doesn't seem like you really need it but they give you the transactions that happen after that point in time here as well okay so that's a nice summary but doesn't give us really what we want in detail because all i really want is this number and these six items listed out as well as this one item listed out to get to this number i don't need this stuff up top it's redundant i don't need this stuff down here because it's after the cutoff date so let's go to the second bank reconciliation report this is the detailed report same thing but now they give us the detail as indicated so i'm going to customize so now we've got way too much stuff because now we've got the same redundant or unnecessary stuff but the detail of it but it gives us the stuff we need too so this is the one you want to make sure that you actually print out because it does have the stuff you need on it so we're going to say open this up was that too much so we've got the the cleared stuff so once again this is all the stuff that we actually checked off this is the checked off stuff and then it doesn't let me collapse these huh and then we've got the deposits so these are the clear deposits that gives us our cleared balance again which is just in essence where the bank statement starts where the reconciliation starts because that's the bank balance and then the difference is the unclear checks these are the ones we didn't check off but this time it gives us the detail we want if i want to double check and verify that these are valid entries i can see whether or not these items cleared after the cutoff date or after the date of reconciliation january 31st and so that gives me some assurance that those are valid transactions as well as the deposit and that gives us then the register balance the balance that ties out to the balance sheet the stuff below it is stuff that happened in february which isn't really necessary for the bank reconciliation for january so it seems redundant the heart of the bank reconciliation is right here you've got the cleared balance uh and then you've got the unclear stuff to give us to the register balance as of the date of the bank reconciliation now again what you want to typically do is save the bank reconciliation report at least the details report possibly both of them because when you make the second bank reconciliation report sometimes you can't get back to the previous one so you might want to have a hard copy record of it and part of the reason for that is that if you were to delete stuff as you're going forward so you deleted some of these checks or some of these checks then that's going to mess up your bank reconciliation and and that and quickbooks has no way to just automatically account for that now you've also you've deleted something that you had said was reconciled so what you have to do then is take the reconciliation report that you printed before stuff was deleted compare it to the to your actual data of stuff that has been deleted and try to figure out what happened and then you go find the person that did some prior period stuff and you know you yell at them stuff so that's what you do so in any case uh that's that that is that we'll go on to the second month in future presentations it should be easier for the second month