Ms. Mernick, Ms. Kabelka, and Ms. Moderna, thank you for agreeing to make an interview. So first, I'd like to ask each of you a bit about your background. I'll start with Ms. Mernick. So what was your maiden name? Oh, my maiden name was Nigro, N-I-G-R-O-N-I-Gro. And did you grow up in Arlington, or? I did. I grew up in Arlington. There were six kids in my family, and my parents also grew up in Arlington. So we have a long legacy of N-I-G-R-O-Ns in this town. And what about your family? So your parents live in Arlington, but what about your grandparents? My grandparents, one grew up in Lawrence, and one grew up in Charlestown. Then a couple of the others grew up in Arlington. They started a family business, so a lot of Arlington roots. So what elementary school did you attend? I went to Stratton. So what year did you enter the Otteson? Great question. Let me check my notes. 85, 86. So when did you graduate? I graduated high school in 1991. Did you begin in sixth, seventh, eighth, or ninth? When I went here, it was just seventh and eighth. It was called Otteson Junior High, and I did. So sixth grade was still at Stratton back then. We had sixth grade camp, whereas your generation always had fifth grade camp at the end of elementary school. We had it in sixth. And what about the grade in the Otteson? It was just eighth grade, seventh and eighth. We always had a canopy lake trip last day of school. So how did you get to the Otteson? Did you walk? Did your parents drive you? I walked, and I lived closer to the Winchester Golf Course side of Arlington, so it was a long walk. And walked most days with a group of friends, mostly friends, until they weren't very nice, but walked with a group of people. What about the days with Harshwood, like Snow Snow? Well, I had older, so I'm the fifth of six kids. So I do recall a couple of times with my older sisters were home from college or something. They might drive me on a cold day. But I don't think my parents really cared too much. So I was like, nope, you've got feet, they work. You're walking. So, Ms. Kripalka, what was your video? My maiden name was Devlin, D-E-B-L-I-N. And did you grow up in Arlington? I did, yes. I lived in North Cambridge until I was three years old, and then my parents bought a house in Arlington and we moved here. What about the rest of your family? So I have an older sister and a younger brother. We all grew up in Arlington. My parents both grew up in North Cambridge. My husband also grew up in Arlington, and his family goes back like four generations Arlington, his parents, his grandparents, his great-grandparents. So did you attend elementary school in Arlington? I did, I went to Pierce. And when I was finishing Pierce, my parents moved to a different house over by the Bishop School. So, but I still went to the Odyssey. So did you attend Bishop? I didn't, no. I finished at Pierce and then we moved and I came to the Odyssey. But back when I was starting junior high, there were two junior highs and four elementary schools went to the Odyssey Junior High. And three elementary schools went to the Gibbs Junior High. So Bishop was one of the elementary schools that went to the Gibbs. But those students, because they lived in the center of the town, they had a choice. So I chose to go to Odyssey because that's where all my Pierce friends were going. So what year did you enter? 1987, 88. And then my eighth grade year was 88, 89. So I left Odyssey in 1989. So how old were you at the time? I was, well, my birthday's in June. So I was probably 13, just about to turn 14. And did you begin in sixth, seventh, or eighth? Seventh, seventh. So Ms. Murnick and I were right around the same time. So it was a seventh and eighth grade junior high. We did sixth grade at our elementary schools and then came to the Odyssey. Did all elementary schools have sixths? They did, K through sixth, yep. And what grade were you when you graduated? Year eight. So I was here for seventh and eighth, left here in eighth, and went to the high school for ninth, 10th, 11th, and 12th. And how did you get to the Odyssey? How did you come here? So I live really far, pretty much in Winchester. So my dad would drive me in the morning most days. So Ms. Murnick, what was your name? My maiden name is Charis. So K-A-R-R-A-S. And did you grow up in Arlington? Yes, I did. So what about your parents, your family? My dad was from Greece. He emigrated when he was 25. My mom was born here. And we lived in Arlington our entire lives. So what elementary school did you go to? I also went to Stratton School. Did you and Ms. Murnick know each other? I know of her family very well, yes. So what year did you come to the Odyssey? I came to the Odyssey in 1978. So you would be in how old? So if I was in sixth grade, I would say about 12. And how old were you when you finally graduated? Probably about 14. So again, the same when I was here. It was only seventh and eighth grade. So how did you come to the Odyssey? Walked. Did you live closer? No, I lived near the Ms. Murnick's family. And we lived up by Stratton. So we had to walk down the hill to get here. But then on the way home, we had to climb the hill. So you all lived near Winchester, correct? Yes. So now we have some questions about the nuts involved such a building. I'll ask each person one question, but if someone wants to add an answer or has a different answer, please jump in. So Ms. Murnick, when you were a student here, how big was the building compared to that? I guess it was smaller because the whole addition part, I guess, were there two additions? I think it was a lot smaller. I think when we were here, the bottom part of the addition was there, so where the blue gym is in the music room. Right, but everything above that was not. So where the eighth grade built classes are now. So has there been any sense of renovation to the building? Yes, so I remember when you, I think the cafeteria, I've seen some yearbook pictures. That's how I knew. There were some pictures of this big circular window. Yeah, so the cafeteria had these really big circular windows that are different. I don't know what this one is. I guess that's the music room. And then where the seventh and eighth grade hallways are now, those two floors were added on. So Ms. Grafalka, what were grades like? Like getting grades? Or what grades in the school? Like, did you guys get report cards? Oh, yes. How did you view your grades? So you never saw your grades until you never saw your average grade for the term until the term was over. So you would do an assignment and you would get that assignment back and it would be graded. But there was no such thing as a portal. You could never see what your average was. You could go see a teacher and ask them, but there wasn't a constant awareness of where your grade was at for the term. And then at the end of the term, so similar four terms and then a year grade at the end, at the end of the term, you would get a paper report card that the grades had been added with a typewriter. And they would type in the class and it would have the grade that you got for that class. And they were the same letter grades that we have now. A minus B plus C. Do you think the grades were stricter back then? Do you think nowadays kids get more slack with their grades? I think so in some ways. In some ways, maybe not. The curriculum has changed and gotten a lot more difficult in some areas, but I do feel like teachers were strict and held you accountable for your work a little bit more than the COVID times. Yeah, I would say it was definitely more strict. Teachers were more strict, grades were more strict. And actually, I teach eighth grade. The transition from eighth grade to the high school was definitely more strict. If you wanted to take an honors level class at the high school, you had to take a test and get a certain grade on that test to take honors at the high school, where that doesn't happen anymore. So Miss Bonnaruna, how long were the school there? Six, seven hours? I think it was 8 to 230, would you say? Yeah. And how many periods were there? That's a good question. Anywhere between six and seven. I don't remember. Right? Six and seven? Seven. So I feel like you always had your four subjects, plus a language visit and a special, like that. That's very similar to what we have now. So Miss Bonnaruna, what was the library like? There were more in there. Not? I mean, the structure, the layout was very similar to now. I believe the card catalog machine was not a machine. Unit was right around here. And that's where you would need to go and look through the paper cards, using the Dewey decimal system and find the number to write down on a little piece of paper and go search for a book. So it was, yeah, a card catalog system was pretty much all that we used. I think there may have been a little one computer at some point, right, that you could maybe look up a book with that, like they have with the library. But it was very different. Well, and remember, this was open. Remember the open clusters? The open clusters? Right up above. They had what was called an open cluster, where there were no walls to the classrooms. So in these classrooms up here, it was just like it was completely open over into the media center. So when you walked in the main lobby, I remember there being a staircase going up. So the entrance to the media center, instead, there was a staircase right there that went up into all these areas that were open. That was the open cluster. And then the closed were the ones where our classrooms are now. Where the seventh grade is. Yeah, where the seventh grade is now. And they were just closed classrooms. So, Mr. Palca, I know Ms. Print had mentioned, like a singular computer where you could look up books, but like nowadays we have tons of computers. But what did you guys have? Did you have any typewriter or was it just? I don't remember using a typewriter, but I'm sure they were here somewhere. We did have, when I was here, we had a computer class. It was taught by a man named Roger Neal. And you would go to computer class, like you would go to fax or music and learn how to use a computer. Because it was so new back then. Nobody had their own computers. Very few families had computers at their houses. So you would just come and you would have a class where they taught you how to use a computer. And just for context, because I remember that class with Mr. Neal too. I don't know what we would have ever done on that computer. So if this was in seventh grade, I remember distinctly seeing the first email ever being sent by one of my professors, my freshman year of college. So that was being 1991, 92. And it was like a lesson, you know, year I'm hitting the hit send and it was sent to somebody in California and we all just watched. We're like, wow, like, why would you need to do that? So Ms. Monorona, was there a dress group for students? That's a very good question. I don't know. I remember we wore very casual clothes. Jeans were huge. Jordash and Levi's. Probably sweatshirts. I don't know, do you guys remember? Champion sweatshirts. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Guest jeans, champion sweatshirts. Yes, yes. There was definitely a dress. There wasn't a uniform, but there was definitely a dress code. Certain things that they didn't want you to wear. But, and we wore a lot of sweatshirts, you know, zipped or pullover. Yeah. So Ms. Monorona, what, like, foreign languages? I took Spanish. I know, I think there was Spanish, French, Latin, the three that I remember. Was it only those three? I think so, yeah. There was no Mandarin. They didn't have any exploratory options. So, you took your language both years. And you just, what about the cafeteria?  We ate lunch at school. The cafeteria, the structure of the cafeteria was the same, even the way you'd walk in to get lunch. It was the exact same setup. Couple of things that looked different. The wall where the screen is now was an enormous mural, which they actually just took down a few years ago. And that was the same mural that was here when I went to school here. And the windows were these enormous circular windows. That's the picture in the year that Ms. Murnick showed. And when they did the renovations at the end of the 90s, probably 10 years after I had left here, they removed those windows and put in this rectangular windows that are in the cafeteria now. What was the school looks like? It was very similar. You had options, you know, whereas coming from elementary school, there was one lunch that you could pick each day and pizza was Friday. When we got here, you had different options each day. Even the snack station, like where the snack station is now, is that open? Which one? I don't know. But the snack bar, that was in the same place. So if you just wanted to get cookies or a juice box or something, you could go there. So Ms. Murnick, would you like to expand on what kind of food is there? I don't remember. I know. My memory is spotty on the food as well. Yeah. See, I think it was similar. You know, I remember the pizza. Probably I remember, you know, we had choices of cold or hot. Mm-hmm. Yes. Good question. So Ms. Murnick, was there a like outdoor recess? And what would you guys do during recess? I don't remember any recess. No. I don't remember how long lunch was either. I'm guessing it was longer than 22 minutes or 18 minutes. If they probably gave us more time back then, but I don't know. Did recess stop in your elementary school? I think so, yep. Like all the grade was the last recess. So I think six was the last recess. Yeah. We have some more questions on like, how the school is going to go. So Ms. Kappalka, who was the principal and like when was he here, or that? So I'm not sure, his name was Mr. Mahoney. I'm not sure when he started, but he was here for both years that I was here. The interesting thing that, for you too? Yeah. So the interesting thing that happened with my year is my eighth grade year, which was 1988, 89, was the last year that the Gibbs was open. So my class of students was the last year that went to the Gibbs Junior High. And then Mr. Mahoney retired and a man named Mr. Lamero, who was the principal when I first started working here, he was the principal at the Gibbs Junior High and he came when they merged the two schools, he came here to become the principal. So was there an assistant principal's or was it just numbers? There was one assistant principal, his name was Mr. Fortunato. He was also here when I started working 10 years later. Was he there for you too? So that, again, that was back in the late 70s. So they were here that long. Mr. Mahoney, do you remember who you had as a principal? Yes, same ones, Mr. Mahoney, Mr. Fortunato and Mr. Mahoney, who teaches here now is the grandson of the Mr. Mahoney. So we have, so that was his grandfather, the teacher who's in seventh grade. And how many students would be in this typical class? And like, what was your smallest class supposed to be? Look at those class pictures in here and count them, actually. I think it was pretty 20th, yeah. I do remember that the structure of the classroom though was a lot, it was very, very standard from room to room. Rows of desks, not a lot of clusters of desks together, really, it was more strict with seating. So, Mr. Palco, what did students often get in trouble for doing? Like, what were the typical punishments for those students? Well, I never got in trouble. What's that? I'm trying to think. I mean, I'm sure there were students that skipped classes. I don't ever remember any fighting or anything like that, like major things. I know there was a little area off the back, softball fields, actually it's the front, up the stairs that they called the shoe that kids would go and hang out before and after school, but I don't really remember. The shoe crew, the shoe crew, yeah. I don't remember kids getting in trouble. I don't remember what, right, but what they called it back then is demerits.  Yeah, I wrote that to a demerit in his attention. I got a demerit one time. Poking the person in front of me, like we were at an assembly in the cafeteria and I don't know if like a bag fell off or, nothing bad, but just like something that I wasn't supposed to, I was just supposed to be sitting there watching the presentation and it was my favorite teacher that gave it to me and I was so crushed. I was like, how could you possibly do that? Who was it? Mr. Boswell. Like he was just the greatest and probably had to set an example that like, you know what, you're misbehaving, you're supposed to be sitting here paying attention to the presentation and I wasn't, I was goofing around. So Ms. Monarona, did schools have hard drills? Did anything ever scary happen? Ms. Murnick could. I have one example. Oh, for that one, I have a couple, but I remember being in seventh grade when the Challenger Space Shuttle exploded and I was in sewing class. I think this ties into one of your later classes, questions about classes. Sewing or cooking, it was down the fax area and they wheeled in TVs on carts so that we could all watch the aftermath, I guess, of that and I just remember that. It wasn't here necessarily, but it was a big event in history and time that happened and we were in seventh grade. The other notable, I think, experience was when my older sisters were here and they're a couple of years, a year older than you maybe, there was a big walk out that the students staged a walk out so all the students to just leave the school and refuse to come and protest and walk out of the building at the same time because, and this might have been, there was definitely a time when they were renovating the high school, right? That the ninth grade. So that when I was in ninth grade, we were coming here to do our classes. Okay, so it might have been that year so they had to shorten, so at the high school, they could only have enough room for maybe three grades, right? So the ninth grade was sent back here for a year and I have a feeling it was that year that they had learned about some asbestos being in the building. Asbestos, asbestos, unsafe fibers like in the insulation. So it's not always harmful unless it gets airborne and loose and yes, inhaled. So I think there were a lot of people wanting to, you know, state their case that they wanted some clean air to breathe in this building, so. And how did those events affect like the arrest of the school then? I don't know too much about that since that was my sister's year, but I think when there was like, for instance, the Challenger Explosion or if there was some big event, I think it just made everybody come together in a strange way, you know? Maybe it unified us a little bit. Miss Murnick, was it hard to like, earn high grades or like, and what happened when a student earned poor grade? Well, I guess it depends on your parents, right? How you got treated at home for poor grades. I don't know, I never got any sort of failing grades or anything, but I think most kids and most of my friends too, if you had parents with high expectations of you to try to earn A's and B's. And they used to have honor roll, remember? They did, they posted it in the paper. Yeah, if you had all A's and B's, you made honor roll and you got your name in the paper. If you had more A's than B's, then you made first honors. And if you had more B's than A's, then you made second honors. And Miss Kruppel, were there assemblies and what would assemblies be? What would they talk about, what would they do? I don't know. I mean, I'm sure there were assemblies. I can't think of one that offhand that I went to, you know, that sparks a memory. What we must have had. That they have been impactful. I do remember since I got in trouble during that one assembly that it was in the cafeteria. So I guess they hadn't started using the gyms yet and setting up the chairs that way, like we do. Not that you know what that's like since we don't have assemblies now because we can't be that close contact, right? So Miss Monterey, did junior high west or did you have a sports team like when you were here? We had intramurals, which was, you know, after school like a club. And we also had just like Mr. Bartz, if you know, Mr. Bartz has left his legacy. He had hockey in the morning. He had softball. So similar to what it has been. We did not have a team. We just, you know, had activities that were an extension of school. To spark other fond memories, I'd like to ask each of you to answer these questions. So I'll start with the subject while at the U.S. And you at least share it with us. I think my favorite was probably social studies because I loved the teacher and we got to do a lot of coloring. So where was that? Miss Monterey, would you like your favorite subject? My favorite subject was also social studies and I had many of the same teachers, Mr. Boswell, Miss Martinetti. You know, I love science. I think we had Mr. Tobin, yeah. I think he was, I can't remember. He was history, history, yeah. So I love social studies and history. Do you have any favorite memories from those teachers?  Mr. Boswell used to throw tootsie rolls. Yeah, he used to have fun. Fond memories? I can't think of anything in particular. I just remember, like, I remember enjoying all of my classes. You know, as I got older, I remember people saying, well, no one really remembers middle school because it's not the best time. I mean, I always remembered all of my teachers' names and how much I enjoyed it here. It's probably why I became a middle school teacher. Not me. I actually had a terrible time here.  Teachers were okay, but I think with so much socially going on in my life, I wasn't as focused as I could have been. I do remember my teachers being patient, but just had a lot of friend drama. It wasn't very pleasant.  Pay it forward. Did you participate in any extracurricular activities at the school? Besides getting bullied. I was in student council. I was, too. You had a newspaper or, I don't know what they call it. I mostly did sports, and I don't think they had sports teams here, so it was like rec sports that we played in the gym. What about student council? So, in junior high, do you remember having any painful memories, Mr. Falco? Not really. I think the hardest part, Ms. Murnick was saying a little bit the hardest part about coming in here in seventh grade is even though it was only four elementary schools, there was a lot of jockeying for who was going to be and what friend group. And that was really tough to navigate as a 12-year-old girl, you know, and try to figure out what your new friend group is going to be. What about you, Ms. Murnick? Any painful memory is a bad experience. No, I just, you know, one memory I have is that there were, you know, socially different groups, but we were really inclusive with everyone. It didn't matter if you were the the jocks or the rats. Yeah, so we were overall a good friendly class. So, what about any positive or other just fun memories from the others? I mean, my memories when we were younger was also like what we did on weekends. Every Friday night we used to go ice skating. We used to go to the Boys and Girls Club for fun. We used to go to the Allington Center, but the thing is we walked everywhere. Yep, walk up and down Mass Ave. And without a phone. So, you couldn't call people. You couldn't call people, right? Free skate on Friday nights was a big one for middle school. Yeah. So, the biggest and most important question of all, what do you think made the autism special? Let's start with this one. I don't know. I think I say by eighth grade I found I found my friend match that helped me continue to navigate and then I felt more, I guess, settled here.  I think what made autism special back then is it really was a middle school before schools were called middle schools. So, typical junior highs they didn't have exploratory where you'd go and you'd learn cooking and sewing in a fax class and then you'd do music and then we had graphics, which actually that was our classes with Mr. Richardson. So, it was kind of behaving, having teams, you know, like 810s, 820s, like having those teams, that was really a middle school mentality before we were actually ever a middle school and I think that kind of it was way ahead of its time. Both the Gibbs and the autism junior high were ahead of its time and also like Miss Murnick, I think my friend group, I was just saying to these these guys before we started that my friends that I met here at the beginning of 7th grade, I still talk to almost every day now. I think, you know, what left an impact on me was that we got to choose. I'm pretty sure entering into middle school you could choose, did you want to be in the open cluster or the closed cluster? So, it gave us some ownership and to be in a closed cluster it was more traditional. You know, it was more structured whereas the open you had to be able to learn, you know, with a lot of distractions. So, they gave us some choice, which mm-hmm, right? Yeah. Well, thank you guys so much for coming here and we really appreciate hearing about the school. You're welcome. Thank you. Thank you.


The best part of WordPress is that it is completely open source and easy to use. That's going to start it with it and it is what keeps them using WordPress. So please give it up for Adam Walker. I think we might need to redesignate this the hat room. That was a really good introduction by a fantastic hat. So thank you for that. So I've got a couple of goals for this talk. One is hopefully to be an inspiration for each of you to use your professional skills for the good of your local community. Two is hopefully for us to have some good conversation and dialogue. So I'll try to leave a lot of time for questions and answers because I always get a lot of questions related to what I do. And three, just to be completely honest, is I'd love for you to sign up to be a volunteer at our London event because we need WordPress people that are passionate about WordPress and their community because the way that we build 48 websites in 48 hours is through WordPress. So I'm a big fan. I've been using WordPress since I believe 2004. Again, a lot of custom development on it. I have a team that does a lot of custom development on it. And I still keep a regular blog at one of the many links that you see on the screen there. So you're welcome to connect with me. Any one of the million ways that I've given you, which is probably too many. My apologies there. But I'd love to connect. And I'm going to be here all weekend and would love to continue to connect with the London WordPress community. So what is 48 in 48? It's an event where marketing professionals get together to use their professional skills to build 48 websites for 48 charities in 48 hours. The goal of the event is really just that we want marketers, we want professionals to be able to use their skills for good. You know, a lot of times when we think about going to, and I think this kind of goes into my next thing here, there we go. A lot of times when we think about giving back, or we think about volunteering for a charity, we think about doing things like passing out food or, you know, building things or giving away clothes out of shelters or different things like that. And those are all important. And those are all good. And I've done a lot of those things in my life. But I find that when I'm able to give back using my professional skills, I'm able to have a wider and deeper impact on organizations than I otherwise would. Because my time when I'm ladling soup in a soup kitchen has a different value than my time when I'm giving marketing expertise or consulting. And so the way I build my time is I'm a lot more expensive if I'm giving consulting. And so when I give that away to a charity, it's my way of impacting them in a much greater way because my time is more valuable in that sort of scenario. So we did this because the impetus behind this movement, my co-founder was a founder of an agency. He ran actually two agencies that he grew and then sold. And he found that a lot of times the people in his organizations wanted to give back. They wanted to be involved in the community, but they did not know how. And they didn't have a way to give back using their professional skills. And so he started thinking, well, what's, you know, we're a marketing agency. How can I use my team's professional skills to give back to this community? What's the most basic marketing thing that a charity needs in order to grow and thrive and just really do good work? And the most basic thing is a website. And so he started asking the question, okay, well, if we're going to build a website, let's do it over a weekend, let's do a hackathon type event. We're going to build a website. How many websites can we build in one weekend? And he started asking me, you know, we're dialoguing about this. And what I found out later is this is actually a setup. He already knew how many he wanted to build at the end of the conversation, but he's smart and he's a good salesman. And so he said, Adam, you know, how many sites can we build in a weekend? Can we build five sites? I'm sure we can build five sites in a weekend. How about 10? Okay, sure. We can build 10. Well, how about 30? Can we build 30 websites in a weekend? And I'm, okay, yeah, I could probably figure out how to do that. And he said, okay, can we build 50 websites in a weekend? And, you know, I hesitate a little bit and say, okay, I think we can build 50 websites in a weekend. Okay, I'll make it easy on you. We'll do just 48 in 48 hours to make the marketing work, right? And so that's what we did. In 2015, we launched with one event in Atlanta to build 48 websites for 48 charities in 48 hours. And I had no idea how we would do it. And I lost a lot of sleep for several months and would have nightmares about the event. And then we pulled it off and it was really amazing. And then the next year, everybody was so excited about it. We wanted to do it again. So we did it again. And then we made it our goal to continue to expand. And so we started in 2015 with one event this year, 2018. We'll do six events. One of those is going to be here in London in the fall and the others are in the U.S. So we're trying to expand internationally. And honestly, we did this because we wanted to do something big. I find that if you're going to set a goal, why not set the biggest goal you can possibly think of and then run really, really hard after it. And so our big goal for 48 and 48 is that by 2025, we would like to have 48 events in 48 cities worldwide. So we're in 2018 right now with six events. I'm hoping with the help of some great WordPress people, we can get to 48 events worldwide. So this is always the question everybody wants to know. How did you build 48 websites in 48 hours? So I started off with the idea that we would do this all custom because that's what my agency has traditionally done. We've done all custom websites. And so I thought, okay, we'll do custom builds. That was a terrible, terrible, terrible idea because custom builds aren't sustainable long-term. You can't validate code fast enough. A non-profit or a charity can't sustain a custom built website for a long period of time without having a lot of support and that support cost money. And so instead of doing that, we sort of moved towards a more templated model. So the first year we used Genesis themes and we built everything on Genesis themes and we scaled that way and it was great. And then later on, I'll get into this in a minute, but we used Beaver Builder now, which I'm a huge fan of and would advocate very much for. But first, the preparations. How do we build in 48 hours? First, it takes a lot of preparation from the charities. So we run the charities through three courses of work so that they're ready for the event. The first course of work we go through, they do things like setting up a Cloudflare account so that we can then integrate with Cloudflare later on on the back end and actually push the sites live at the end of the event with one click. We also walk them through, you know, how do you find where your domain is registered and all those sorts of fun things that charities have absolutely no idea about. Some of you are smiling so you know what I'm talking about. We also run them through coursework like trying to understand what their branding is.   Just trying to really understand the personality of the charity. Then we also run them through coursework around the website. So why do you have a website? Who's the target for your website? What are you trying to do with a website? What are the major features that you must have in the website in order for this to be successful? We really want to really understand that and that all translates into a document brief that the teams get at the beginning of the event and then walk through and really understand what they're doing, what they're building, why they're building it and really connect with the charity to do the best work for them. So the process, the weekend of, is pretty straightforward. We don't, you know, volunteers sort of show up without knowing much of anything on Friday. They do a very, very quick, very focused discovery time with their charities and this is not with the charities collaborating. It's focusing on the documents the charities have created and they do a call to find out how the charity, like to ask clarifying questions, you know, what's this mean? How do I do this? When you say this, you mean this, that sort of thing. And then they build. They just roll, so by the end of the first night, typically we have a homepage built for almost all of the charities and then usually the next day it was feature builds and sub-page builds and then Sunday is quality service testing, all the wrap-up you can think of, all the major stuff and Sunday night the sites actually do go live at the event, so it's pretty exciting. The technology around this, everybody always wants to know about that too. So we have had built a WordPress multi-tenancy setup, so we did not do a multi-site and so we wanted to do WordPress multi-tenancy so that they're all individual WordPress installs with individual databases and we can spin up those databases off of one core instance that we refer to as Methuselah, because why not? And so Methuselah has a core set of plugins and really one theme, which is the Bieber-Golder theme and all the things that we need to make the sites work and then we literally instantly spin up all 48 sites all at once and then we're able to deploy all of those at once too through the setup and through the system. If you want to get in any more into the technology I'll give you who you can tweet at. I'm not the technology guy for the team but I can talk the talk a little bit so I'll answer any questions that I possibly can. And then caffeine, there's a lot of caffeine so everybody wonders you know at a 48 hour event are you really there for 48 hours? An interest no, everybody has to sleep myself included, I learned a long time ago that going for 48 hours straight is a really bad idea and so everybody goes home and sleeps and gets good rest and comes back the next day refreshed and ready to go but really the event, it's a lot of work but it's really a lot of fun, it's a lot it's honestly a lot like a word camp there's a lot of community around it a lot of collaboration, a lot of people helping out one another and it's really becoming a thing where people look forward to it every year to see friends and meet new people and really make new friends so it's been great. So and my slides have stopped working. Oh there we go, okay. So seven takeaways after, sorry the main takeaways after seven events so we've done seven events now which means we've built, I can't do the math in my head but I'm gonna say like 350-ish sites somebody that's better at math can tell me don't tell me now and the first thing is always content is just a beast I think anybody that's ever built a website knows that content is probably the worst part of the entire process so I also run a digital marketing agency and it's true there too when we're working with larger clients they don't want to give us content and the charities also don't want to give us content and so we try to coach them through that process as best we can, we also try to let them know that content's nothing to be scared of you can do this, it's okay just carve out a little time and we try to frame it like that just carve out time, write some content it's gonna be alright, do the best you can and then we'll move forward from there the next lesson is set expectations early and often so I'm finding that when you're dealing with people there's a lot of misunderstanding that's surprising, I know everybody's shocked by that, it's ever been in any kind of relationship that there's misunderstanding but there's a lot that goes into really setting expectations and so we try to set expectations on the website when a charity signs up I actually recently recorded an entire five minute long video that walks through a whole analogy about what our event is like comparing it to a tiny house which is a house built on a tiny trailer which is like a thing in the US I don't think that's probably a thing here it's a little ridiculous but you should look it up they're entertaining especially in the process in a non-technical way and that was a way that I could do that we also send out a whole lot of emails we reset expectations over and over again we train our project managers to know and understand what the expectations are and to communicate those to the charities so that they know up front what's expected of them because yes this is a free website but there's also a lot of work involved from them because they're gonna have to write content and all that sort of thing and we try to make sure they understand there's also a free website but at some point you pay for websites whether you pay a hosting or whatever they cost money in the long run it's like a kit, you know, like you can have a kit they cost a lot of money I have five of them, I know they cost a lot of money and websites tend to cost money too not as much as kids, of course but they do cost money the next is plan, execute, learn and iterate and so you know when we did our first event in 2015 that didn't go very well so we executed the plan and then we we figured out what was wrong with the plan we learned from it and we iterated and the next year we did better we improved some things and there were other things that were wrong and the next year the same thing and so every event, literally every event there's something that goes wrong that I look back at and go I should have seen that I missed it how can I learn from that and do better next time I used to get better and better and the last is that WordPress is an amazing platform for giving back the reason I've used WordPress since 2004 is it's open source, it's free it's easy to use, it's easy to maintain after our event a charity can take their WordPress install and do anything they want with it they can download the whole thing, they can move to any hosting company they can just disguise the limit whatever they want to do with it as long as they don't ask me to do anything with it we're all set I love the community around WordPress I love how community-minded the WordPress community is and it's one of the reasons that we've been able to focus and grow as we've done this so again, back to my goals how you can get involved is a little bit of a pitch but I'm not benefiting from it the charities are benefiting from it so we are coming to London in the fall we would love to have the WordPress community support the event we're very excited about the event IBM yesterday about hosting the event in the Waterloo area right on the river, it's a really nice spot they have a really great and creative space that I think we're going to be able to use for the event and I've had a lot of other good meetings about it so I'm really excited about it and I'll be back so you can see the hat and it'll be a lot of fun working together and there's where you can sign up also again, just trying to promote the event a little bit there but not too heavy-handed about it alright, what questions do you have everybody always has a million questions about about what we're doing, so who's got a question we have a question right here so Jessica, thank you can you go first I did something similar in my bed like two or three months ago okay something like that with the Spanish WordPress community we had a few problems the problem we had was to get the charities we already got that's the biggest problem we have getting the charities to sign up, by mile that's the biggest problem we have I spend money getting charities to sign up for a free website then also it was not easy to get the people to do the job we were finally I think we did three websites just one of the real content but not the most content that was because the content problem I spent almost the time trying to explain about content which was not that easy we have training courses that help with that I think it would be good to train and send the charities all the information weeks before so they can have peer paths what they need to have for the event and also that was what I wanted to say so we start the training months before ideally and I should mention that getting charities is by far the hardest thing we do we actually need 80 charities to sign up in order to get 50 through the coursework because 30 are going to just wash out during the process we try to have 50 ready for the event in case that two wash out during the event which can happen for various reasons so if anybody knows a charity in the UK that would like a free website you can save me some money and you can help them sign up because I actively pay a salesperson and pay for like Facebook paid ads to get people to sign up to get a free website which is surprising nonetheless, that's what we have to do we want to help so badly that we will spend money to do it fantastic not done for us those are really good questions I'm glad, yeah so the first thing you should know is we typically will host a mini conference during the event itself for the charities where they can come in and learn the basics about how to use your website what you need to be thinking about as you're posting for social media so we'll do some general digital marketing training for the charities during the event itself so they can also meet the teams but then leave the teams alone to get some work done and get some training over here so to them we've got 30 days of free hosting and maintenance and what I would refer to as very limited support so it's email answers, that's it after those 30 days they can stay on our platform and pay for that I prefer that they don't and so we've got a year of free hosting from GoDaddy for them like ready to go and we've set up a partnership with a company that will migrate their site to GoDaddy for them for $100 we have no affiliation with that company at all that's just the cheapest I could find and so we make it really easy for them to move off the platform and go anywhere they want because I don't want them tied to us in any way it's probably more headache for me if they are so I'm happy to see them take their site in the flyway as it were and if they want ongoing support obviously we would encourage them to reach out to the community that built it and see if there's other people there typically some volunteers will remain engaged after the event we do not ask for them to do that we tell the charities that the volunteers will not remain engaged after the event but some do from time to time that would be helpful too does that answer all your questions? yeah, okay yes yeah first question about the teams that you put together so the teams are volunteers but do you have a representative of the charity who is working with as part of that not during the event the charity the team has access to the event sorry, the team has access to the charity by phone call on Friday night to ask clarifying questions they have a short meeting greet on Saturday other than that we keep the charities as far away as possible or the work will never get done they'll be looking over their shoulder the whole time the other part of the question how do you deal with as probably most of us know particularly like the way somebody looks they've got a big opinion how do you deal with that so one of the expectations we set early and often is that this is not client work, this is a gift and you get what you get and you don't pitch a fit, like I tell my kids and we just sort of say that nicely this is a gift to you it's going to go live, if you want to take it down the next day you can do that but this is how this works and if you're signing up for this process it's going to be done by professionals so it's going to look good if there's a difference of opinion they can do whatever they want after the event there's still some that are grumpy and we do the best that we can to accommodate that and as far as the teams go I should mention we have teams that come from agencies of all sizes they'll send teams of 2, 3, 10 to the event which is kind of fun because the team can kind of merge and gel together and really build some camaraderie also large companies like IBM will send a team, I think we're going to have 20 IBM employees at our event in 2 weeks for example UPS will send teams, people like that and a lot of freelancers also come together and they will join either existing teams or they'll create an ad hoc team together and have a lot of fun and finally I'll commit to sending teams from my company thanks for having a hat like that I'll borrow her hat for the event just for you can we work that out okay I know I just like that that's right what do you call a charity okay we're talking from time to time we're being sized for this certain event so we might join on the basis of that being a site just for one event not the main or the main website which I don't think will matter because that's a lot of work on it and also I'm hoping to pull that off and get over to you right yeah I mean we'll build microsites for charities absolutely and that's a lot easier and faster than building a full website for a bigger charity so yeah microsites are great thanks for asking that what kind of complexity not very so we do in order to maintain the integrity of the sites our platform is a closed platform so it's WordPress it's about and the beaver builder theme but we don't add any additional plugins because every plugin on there has been very very vetted by our team and so those 30 plugins you can do a lot of stuff we've got a calendar plugin you can do events, you can do donations limited donations so there's a lot of functionality there but it does what it does and that's it and so we tell the charities up front it's a marketing website it's not a high end functionality website but we're not getting into like member management and all that sort of stuff so is that a call kind of an assembly yes again we try to set that expectation earlier with the charities and then several more times there was two questions in the back I don't know if you want to your right we've talked a lot about teams are there any other roles that you would require to have one more developer on the marketing website so interestingly we need a lot of marketers on the teams in particular because we are using a page builder rather than actually coding but there's roles for we need organizers, similar to our camp organizers we have a good team started if you're interested we'd love for you to sign up and consider that we also need people to set up and tear down and help out and get coffee and just all the kind of things that happens during the event we also have typically support desk people so like we'll have several WordPress people in each event that are sort of WordPress specialists that just sort of sit out in a lobby and the teams come to it because a lot of the teams say from agencies and agency may not use WordPress but they may want to be involved in the event or IBM for example probably hasn't used beaver builder a lot but they're going to have a great team there and so we have a WordPress person that can help coach them through that process of oh you're trying to do that with beaver builder and then they go from there so we try to have two to five really WordPress specialists at every event if at all possible so yeah, sign up Mark check all the check boxes that apply Hello Of the client in the world and the charity websites how many of those do you find after they've been launched and after they've been released obviously there's a job to maintain the content now, do you typically find that what 50% one user might understand the content and 50% none of you or do you find that what is the percentage that you find we can't maintain any of the content and we train them to do that now how many of them actually are updating their site on a regular basis I couldn't tell you but I can tell you that our goal for this year is that 42 of the 48 websites at every single event go live because our first year was significantly less than that we want to make sure we're building sites that go live the other six out of the 48 will go live but they're just always extenuating circumstances like hey we have an event next week that we're raising funds for we can't have a new site launch right now for example but we do train them on how to use the website we also have training videos I think it's WP101 it's installed on the back end of the website for them and it's got 70 training videos on how to do anything imaginable and so they've got a lot of training and support on the website there was one question here in the front row I was going to answer the second question similar questions to the makeup of the teams oh right so I can go into a little bit more detail so typically a team will have a project manager a graphics or UX person often some type of front end person though that's it's helpful but not always required often a content person again helpful but not required a wordpress sort of specialist the teams the ideal team would have those five roles but I mean some teams have two people that just know wordpress and understand digital marketing and they can crank out two websites in a weekend and that's fine I've been on those teams supplemented in New York where we had one guy and he ended up being the only one that showed up from the team that he signed up with and I was like okay let's build a site so we built two sites together and it was great but there's a lot of peripheral support from the rest of the community at the event to help with whatever is lacking on the team so typically there are 20 to 25 teams at the event and so each team will end up building more than one site some will build two, some will build four it depends on the size and scale of the team well and how many we have there's one back there I think I know somebody first in the law gotcha that's great of course you manage it, I'll be quiet I was wondering if you were confident that the development would like to contribute that you would not find the time to join in person is it possible to contribute directly and how will that work? yes so we do have remote volunteers you can volunteer during the weekend of the event as a remote volunteer when you sign up additionally after every event we have a post event volunteer team that exists just to fix issues front end people are really great for that in particular we're building sites in 48 hours there's going to be bugs we take those bug reports put them all on the Trello board and then we have a team that knocks out each of those issues after the event we'd love to have some remote volunteers we need to make sure that's in that presentation next time you mentioned relating to the charities the pre event workshops that you run do you do something similar for the teams or does anyone just turn up on the day? we're working on that to date we haven't done a lot of that we have done some training videos for the teams in terms of how to get started but we've not done any actual coursework with that trying to figure out if volunteers would actually be willing to go through any courses or not I think maybe watching a few videos might be easier if we're going through actual courses but I'm thinking there might be some by the time the London event rolls around seems likely it's a really good question you're using Beaver Builder I was just wondering how much design you would do from scratch and how much you're going to have 10 plates to use in the future so we're using Beaver Builder and we're also using an additional add on what's called the Beaver Builder ultimate I forget so Beaver Builder has its own starting layouts and then Beaver Builder I forget the name but it also has starting layouts so we've got between the two of them probably 50 different layouts to start with and so what we do is we encourage teams to begin there with one that fits the needs of the charity and then highly customize those after that some teams will start from scratch because they're more confident and they really understand Beaver Builder and how it works but I find that the most effective teams will start from some existing layout and then highly customize it from there Hey Ross where are you if anywhere we're looking into UK specific charity issues like GDPR I'm going to all the GDPR sessions here first I'm also, I'm trying to dialogue with several agencies that have a lot more experience in this area to be sure that we're covering all of our bases there it's very important to me to make sure that all of the legal standards are met and really all just the standards are met for that so if anybody's an expert in any of those fields I'd love to chat with you that would be helpful I'm going to the sessions I'm talking to more agencies I've even had some conversations with a law firm here in the UK just to be sure that we're following all the guidelines I just wanted to clarify what your definition of charity is in the UK we have a legal status of charity but we also have public schools religious associations community associations right would you entertain them as well or do they have to have the legal status of charity typically just the legal charities so the criteria for the charity is very broad it's essentially a legal charity first generally non religious non political so that we're not hitting any extremes there and can't be on the extreme fringe of any sort of hot button issue the example I'd love to give which you'd probably appreciate is in America guns are a big thing so we probably would not do a website for a charity that's advocating every human own automatic weapons like it's not legal or it's not political or religious but that's probably a little too far to do that otherwise it just has to be small so under three million dollar budget we'd like for them to have a staff person of some sort have a part-time day maybe and that's pretty much it so we really want a big spectrum of as many charities as we can find I think schools will also be a little too complex is the other the other hard part of schools I've done some school websites with my company and there's a lot going on there it's a very interactive session I love that that's why I left a lot of time for the Q&A the question is already over but it's often to see how the audience is interacting with you but I would also like to ask a question so did this project influenced the way you were looking at volunteerism and how yeah I think it's helped me to to it's something to recognize that people tend to specialize and when we can engage people to volunteer in what is their specialty there's a lot more value in that and that's not to say it's not valuable to you know ladle soup at a soup kitchen there's a lot of value in that and honestly I would argue there's maybe more value to me personally if I do that because of how it impacts me as a person but there's a dollar value that's exponentially greater when I give my professional services away so I'm trying to not just advocate that with 40 and 40 but in all areas like where are we professionals to help more people in need I totally agree any more questions from the audience we still have a little time left if you want to last chance but you can always find me with the hat so yeah how has it impacted your company yeah so I run a digital agency and the charity at the same time which is entertaining it's helped us to gain some credibility we're a very small agency we started very small I never worked in a large agency before and so now I'm able to interact with more large agencies in a more credible way because you know I get it if I was a large agency I'd look at my tiny little agency oh you don't know what you're talking about but because I've done all this and I've interacted with larger agencies it's just given us a little more credibility to be able to work with them and do other projects so it's a very indirect impact but it's been a good impact upon someone and I'll be around all weekends and I've always got the hat so if you want to find me please do it yeah one last question from Tom thank you that's a great tool and I don't know if it was a chance to about how we can support that but on a personal level you talk about what happens after the event the website for what happens after the event yes I'm so I've learned this at every event I go to now I try to leave way before everybody else to get real sleep because I can't I'm too old to do this I can't keep up with all the younger people and I got five kids I got to keep my energy levels high so I tend to go back and sleep reasonable hours at the hotel I've got a younger staff that sort of stays and make sure everything's good and after the event I'm completely spent but two weeks the next three weeks we have two events so I've got to really conserve my energy carefully because it's going to be intense so this has been great thanks so much for coming thank you for giving us very interesting and inspiring talks so please one last a big applause for Adam Walker about GDPR


Hi everyone, Joe for jaspys case breaks.com coming at you with 2019 2020 Panini court Kings basketball 4 box pick your team at number 11 now Given away the Palak first off. I think all card ship Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, so we're gonna randomize the Palak into one person the break unlike some of the break credit ones We do this is just a one-for-one one team one entry Pretty easy So big thanks all of these folks right here. So let's just copy everyone's names Take out that blank spot for the where the pelicans are supposed to be Let's roll it. Let's randomize it name on top after eight. We'll get the pelicans in this four box break good luck one and eighth and final time after eight Congrats to Robert There you go. Robert runkle after eight with the pelicans Let's put the little rooftop near your name so you know you won that team There you go Let's print let's rip So I think Jason marked it with those little sharpie marks right here. You can see So, you know, they're all from the same case So the next four box break will be the last four box of that particular case All right, so there's the final print out. Thanks everyone and good luck Brandon Richards. What's my favorite candy? probably A some sort of lemon drop Hard can like an old lady candy like a grandma candy. That's what I like hard candies Sour over not So maybe like a sour skittles. I think are pretty good too Although I wish I was more of a hard candy instead of I don't like the chewy candies as much Are these all that's an autograph right for them trying to Pull out these cards right here but yeah, if I go to a local drug store and What's what's the brand? So I've got to be a particular brand too. Not everyone does it right Really you got to go to like a Yeah Bracks Bratch, I don't even know how to pronounce that bratches lemon drops Those are the ones Level two Kobe white That's that's the one about how this break works There's RJ Barrett level one It's been aged since I've done a court Kings behind Carl Anthony Towns is Segu Dumboya fledgling expressionist You think Segu Dumboya is into that? He's just like I'm like I say I'm in my expressionist period right now It's out of 179 that goes to the Pistons Austin and he's like F that impressionism I'm all about expressionism We got Daniel Gafford air apparent autograph That'll be for Chicago Ben Goldberg one of his many last fought mojo teams got a big group of teams at the end to close this out 47 out of 49 Is that it? Yeah, that's it I keep getting tripped up the Court Kings boxes remember they used to have those box toppers Brandon Richards, what's your what is your favorite candy? I also like dark chocolate Talking like 70 80 percent apprentice artists Tyler hero maestro. Oh nice Kobe white level three It's another one for the Bulls Ben the Tyler hero, of course will go to James And maestro Zion Williamson That will go to uh Robert who won the pelicans in this break Got your Brandon a uh a candy bar type guy A milky way or a payday 75 out of 149. We've got Damien Jones to 179 autograph Impressionist Inc for the Atlanta Hawks Taion with that one And back here. We got a Malcolm Brogdon 128 out of 149 brushstrokes Pacers that'll be for Sean. Jose Zepeda. What's going on? How are you? All right next box our our racks expensive. I think you can get like a a regular bag for a few bucks at a CVS or ride aid or Walgreens or whatever you have near your area apprentice artist Zion Williamson Another one for Robert and pelicans Luca Samanich level one Donovan Mitchell And behind the Marcus. Oh, there's two behind the Marcus Aldridge. It's a couple autographs first one is Jonah Bolden High Court For the Sixers that's going to be for Robert 159 out of 179 and the The last autograph is Avery Johnson Spurs That's going to be for Ben Goldberg And the Spursy Spurs Out of 99 69 9th out of 99 All right Fourth and final box figure team 11. Good luck everybody Working hearts this Jose good Being safe, I hope as well First steps Rui Hachimura I feel like these These sneaker type cards Always seem to do well in secondary market. I don't know out of court king is not sure but There's Jared culver Ben with the wizards We got These guys here taco fall Another first steps Darius Garland to 149 and a couple behind Lugadaches of Damien Jones to 99 High court signatures Taion and the Hawks Brandon saying your work week due to covid reduced your hours to 40 So now you have a normal work week. What do you do if you don't mind? All right, there's Luka Donchich Revealing a Hakeem the dream a la juan autograph. Yes on card autograph. Nice That's a good-looking card right there For the Rockets that goes to Sean Sean Maddock Nice 47 out of 49 That's pretty cool. Nice Luka Donchich for Rokeo and the Mavs as well And I know that some of even some of the second year stuff can do okay on a secondary market And there you have it folks We've got four more boxes left from this particular case. So check it out jasper's case breaks.com This was break number 11. I'm Joe. I'll see you next time for the next break. Bye. Bye


Last night I saw Kiki's delivery service in in the theater on the big screen This is the second in the series of Miyazaki films that are showing Only one time each every month for the rest of this year in Regal cinemas anyway if you have not seen Kiki's delivery service and it's hard to imagine that you haven't because it's one of the most popular Animated films of all time much less one of Miyazaki's most popular films Second only to Totoro, maybe I had seen it twice before once many years ago on DVD I think and then recently just a couple of months ago I watched it on my phone on Netflix, maybe I don't recall but both times I saw it before I felt like it had a lot in common with Totoro in that it was very thin on plot It's more of a character piece Which Miyazaki is so good at and is aimed at young children Kiki is aimed at an older Children's audience Kiki herself has just turned 13 Which according to her family's tradition means that it's time for her to leave home and continue her training as a witch on her own in Another city a city or town that she needs to find on her own in that sense. It's a straightforward coming-of-age story She finds a place for herself. She Finds new friends and new family really She experiences a loss of confidence her magic seems to fade and of course a crisis comes and she has to get it back and Again in that sense, it's a traditional coming-of-age story The as I said the two times I saw it before I felt that it was very thin on plot This time though seeing it on the big screen. I saw more in it then I expected and more than I had seen before and I really started to understand why People identify with this movie so much. Why they love it so much. Why they see so much of themselves in it. There's there's there's something Very sad about this film. I Felt that the times that I watched it before but I wasn't really able to put my finger on it when Kiki Goes through her personal crisis and and comes out on the the other end She's lost something She's lost a sense of childlike enthusiasm. I think but more than that she She comes to an understanding that She wasn't appreciating the people around her the new friends in her life. I Think because she wasn't getting exactly what she wanted from them and as a consequence of her Unwillingness in her failure to embrace these new friends and new new family She felt that they were not embracing her and as part of her growing up She came to realize that the people these new people in her life Do love her She has made a difference in their lives. She has touched their lives and And that they in turn have touched her life and she wasn't appreciating that That's what I got out of this film this time around. It's it really is a beautiful film It's another beautiful example of Miyazaki's ability to build character and His ability to tell a story without dialogue and in a number of Points in this film. He's doing it not only without dialogue, but completely without sound not only is there no music There's not even any sound effects. I noticed that happening a number of times in this film Summarizing what I'm saying here. I underestimated Kiki before and I think I've realized my mistake. I've learned a new appreciation and respect for Kiki I hope you will learn to respect the film the same way. Please take another look at it next month We'll be castle in the sky, which is a Miyazaki film that People never talk about you never hear anyone talk about castle in the sky. It's a truly great film I haven't seen it in many many years and I'm looking forward to it and I will definitely review it when I see it Pretty much exactly one month from now See you then Please remember to press that like button It helps my videos get seen and then subscribe so you can come back next time I do science fiction book TV and movie reviews all the time and please consider becoming a patron There's a link in the description below


Cosmic rays were discovered in 1912 by a man called Victor Hess who took a balloon high up into the atmosphere and then in 1938 a man called Pierre Auger, a French physicist, discovered by putting Geiger counters a few meters apart and eventually 300 meters apart that there were huge showers of particles coming down in the atmosphere. Cosmic rays are the nuclei of the common elements like hydrogen, helium, iron that have been accelerated to high energy somewhere in the universe. They are continuously bombarding our atmosphere and some of them reach us at sea level a million go through your body every night. One of the fascinations about this is how nature organizes itself to produce particles of that energy. One of the really really interesting questions that we're trying to answer is how and where are these particles created. I'm standing on little arm scruff looking at the site of Havera Park. The rock is actually inside the area and you can see over there where the mast is what was the center of our laboratory. Well the detectors that we used to observe the cosmic rays and to observe the showers were large tanks of water. The water was looked at by a device called a photomultiplier and we picked up Chernkov light which is produced when particles move through a medium with a speed which is greater than the speed of light in that medium. When we finished we believed that there was one particle above 10 to the 20 electron volts landing on a square kilometer every century. We now think the number is maybe a few per square kilometer per millennium. In 1990 I wrote a paper saying that we really needed to build a detector of a thousand square kilometers if we were going to make some progress and this idea was picked up by my friend Jim Cronin and when I met him the following year at a conference the first words he said to me was you're not ambitious enough we're going to build five thousand square kilometers and eventually we did that at least three thousand but in Argentina. Well the OGA collaboration has around 400 members. There's 18 countries involved typically about 400 people sign our scientific papers. The key features are large tanks of water which are on a grid with a spacing of 1.5 kilometers. They're very like the detectors that have a park and there are four fluorescence detectors which overlook the water Chernkov detectors and when it's dark and there's no moon we get coincidences between the two and this allows us to make some very very accurate measurements. One thing that many people have been searching for since 1966 was a decrease in the number of particles at the highest of energies. That had been predicted shortly after the discovery of the microwave background radiation. Microwave radiation provides a sort of shield around the earth a shield that is a hundred megaparsecs thick and it prevents particles of very high energy reaching us from larger distances. We've found a correlation at about the 40% level with active galactic nuclei which are very very powerful galaxies with massive black holes at the center and at the moment it looks as if Centaurus A which is a powerful radio galaxy only four megaparsecs away from us it may be the source of a lot of our higher energy particles. The great thing about working in cosmic rays is that you have to know some particle physics, you have to know some astrophysics, you have to know a lot about quite smart technologies and putting those together has been really great.


Let's get to my favorite part, the Q&A of the day. But get out of here, if you gotta get out of here. Let me stop this banner. Oh, hey, I smoked all my crypto. Let's be honest, sometimes that actually would have been a better thing to do. Let's see, Vicky, my man. Not financial legal tax advice, channels for entertainment purposes only. Dan is okay, but not expert in financial life. These are Dan's opinions. Do your own Dan research. The reality is okay. Yeah, Pate Pato, it is okay. I don't, like people look at this and first of all, you have to understand, we're gonna see some more pain as far as the price action, but nothing's, it's not going to zero. Folks, it's not. I lived through the dot com era and that was supposed to go to zero. And of course, if you've listened to Krugman, he said, who I believe won a Nobel Prize for Economics who said that the internet would wither away and die. And of course, all the sites were worthless and we don't need them. Now here we are. So let's see. Eric said, a clickbait is personally defined. True titles are what to aim for and goes how they are perceived assets. Thank you, debatable, but I'll take it. I'll take the compliment. Rob, what do you make of the drama between Simon, Zach and Alex on Twitter? I want to trust that Simon's our best interest, but it's hard to trust anyone in this current environment. It's true. So I did a tweet yesterday and I asked, because Twitter Spaces is like the big, the new big thing. Everybody seems to wanna pile into and talk about and get all their great information. But some of these Twitter Spaces, all that is is just a bunch of people talking forever about their opinions and not much facts. And I asked that question here specifically. I said, can someone catch me up? Because I mean, some of these Twitter Spaces are 10 plus hours. And a lot of people said the same thing. It's too much. A minute long will be appreciated. All you do is talk over each other. Everyone thinks they're a subject matter expert. Someone put, Aaron says it's absurd. Let's see. FCX updates, I don't know what that is. Well, in Cardano, mainly just rug pulls, Ardano and orbit. Yeah, I understood about that one. John GB sums it up quite nicely. That's pretty much it. So the thing is, what's going on here is, I just sit in the background and wait for the dust to settle and go from there. I really like Simon's plan so far. Of course, the more that you look into it, people will say, no, that's not what we wanna do because we're Celsius and we think we have the answer. We're gonna do Bitcoin mining, even though we showed that other Bitcoin mining operation is in the negative by $8 million a couple of days ago. And of course, I mean, we took a look at the mining operation. I don't think it's gonna work. So I don't trust Celsius, so I'll go with Simon because let's be honest, his track record's a hell of a lot better and we'll go from there. Could that be wrong? Could be wrong. That's just what I'm gonna do. Let's see. J2 day, what's the good news? The good news is that really if you take a look at it, like you already know what's gonna happen, right? The only thing that's truly scary is the uncertainty. Does anybody think that we're gonna hit new all-time highs this year and that we're gonna start to have a major bull run going into 2023? Does anybody think they really truly think that? Or do we all just kind of know? Just not our heads go, yeah, the price actually gonna suck. And of course the crypto products that are actually good and do things and have real utility are gonna grow and they're gonna absorb the other ones that don't really do too much and that's it. Prices will go down. So of course you can take that any way you want to.  Some people say I'm gonna sell, it doesn't matter. For me personally, I just look at it and go, well, and we talked about this yesterday in the video in the clickbait title, that's right. That you can not be here and you can not DCA but sometimes for me I look at it and go, well, it would be who of me because I don't know what the bottom is and no one knows either. So for me, I think it's the good news. If I just can stick it out for the time horizon of three, four, five, six years, probably do pretty well. I'm not gonna do well next year though. I'm not gonna do well towards the end of this year and I accept that. That's it. Erin says, you're looking to ergo. No, but I need to. I need to do a lot of things. I'm just falling behind. Like today I need to go and we have new doors installed, the condo. I need to go do the painting because we have people checking in in like five days and I haven't done anything. Beardy, when you use gym socks. That's true. Crypto Esquire says, you forgot the upside down question mark. See, it was in Spanish. I should have. Renaissance in trouble because of Alameda. Everything's in trouble because of FTX and Alameda and the contagion. I don't think it's, but you're right. It's very true. Vicki the link, Bickford. That's a good one. Hello, Tesla. Hello, Rusty Bot. Hello, Matan. John color says next year is gonna be worse than I think. No, that's, that could be right actually. Here's the question though. Could you, could you, could you absorb that? Cause next year will be a recession, I think. And if we're in a recession and then the unemployment rate starts to rise then people start losing jobs. Can you get through that? Can you get through that now? That would be the big question. I think next year is gonna suck. Phantom coming back strong. I like Simon. I have seven out of the black fight. Yeah, I put in, I put in like 25 bucks because black fight, they came and they said, Hey, would you like to talk about us? I'm like, I don't even know what you guys are. And they go, we're black fight. So I said, well, let me see how it works. I put 25 bucks in, I think a year or so ago. And I just didn't like the whole process. So I just stopped and I left the money there. So I lost 25 bucks. I'm okay. Vigenta says, Rob, I staked the dot on ledger, picked up a few dollars more than a week, but still says inactive, it's way later. So when you're staking dots, some, there's a minimum requirement. And I think it's over 100 and correct me what wrong here. I wanna say it's 197 dot you have to now stake. And the, and it just keeps going up. It seems like, I don't know why, but that's what it is. Test is around in recession. I have to agree. There are plenty, there's plenty of jobs at Twitter. Look, there's jobs everywhere. There's jobs galore. It's just who wants to work those jobs? I mean, when I was younger, I worked a lot of jobs. That's it. Pate Pato says, all my friends who have been into crypto never read a white paper, not even bitcoins. Now they all gave up on crypto. I'm still here.  And that's another thing. If you haven't read the Bitcoin white paper, it would be hoove you. We did this on the channel a couple of weeks ago. It's nine pages long. It's very simple. And when you read that, you tell me what Bitcoin is supposed to be as opposed to what people say it is and what it can only do. It's an interesting thought experiment. I'm curious about the Oculus wallet and thoughts. I don't use it so I can't tell you. I just use a ledger. That's it. I just wanna ask a question. Anyone else having problems sending near from Coinbase? Proves you no problem and all the coins, no problem getting out. I just moved some things this morning because I buy in Coinbase. I move into my ledger and then I'm safe. I didn't have a problem this morning, but things change. Rob, you will do well this year. And next year you can have family and friends. Have enough to live on. That's pretty much it. I'm above the ground. I'm healthy for now. And I mean, look, living in a pretty nice area are nice climates. So I'm pretty happy. Some people hate this climate. I personally enjoy it exponentially. Holy smokes. Bicky says, I lost silver in the 80s when the American board of trade went bankrupt. Lots to learn at 50 years old. Interesting. And that's the thing about precious metals. You can custody them yourself, but you have to have them delivered. My brother does that. Seems to love it. But it's a lot easier to self-custody crypto. Ah. Norman says, are we really going to 14K? I'm not so sure. Maybe. I'm not sure either. But it's not looking tremendously fantastic. Ah, great question. Brandon plays drums. What's your view on taking a loss for capital gains tax purposes and then re-entering? I think I've done it before. Did it with XRP? It's called wash trading. And apparently it's illegal in equities because those are registered securities, right? Stocks. But since we don't have cleared guidance, thank you, Gary. That means that we don't know what crypto is. Is it a security? Is it a commodity? Is it a currency? Nobody really knows. So I sold all my XRP right after the lawsuit. I took a major loss. Then I just bought it back. I didn't buy everything, but I bought a good amount back in because I'm like, why does it lock on these rates? And you get to keep some enormous losses. On the flip side, if XRP wins the case and they go up and it goes to $1,000, then of course I'll be happily to pay the capital gains, but I got to keep those losses. And that's what's it. And then also, if everybody's curious, I'm partnering up with Coin Ledger, which is a tax software company specializing in crypto and digital assets. And we're gonna do a series of information videos. We're gonna have a registered CPA, CPA is plural, who specialize in cryptos and digital assets to be on the show. And we're gonna just sit here and answer all your questions. So we'll do an education series of videos to show you how easy it is. You can ask the question that you want to the CPAs.  So if you're scared about taxes, don't be. We're gonna make it simple, as simple as possible. Okay, thank you. I can move other coins off Coinbase. I've moved near a few times, but for the last few days and nine attempts, there was an error message with near. Near, I just stick it in my, in the near wallet, and then I secure it with my Ledger and I stake it. It's very simple. I have a video somewhere. I don't know if I did it though. Yeah, I don't blame him. I'm scared to death of taxes too. Bobby Shouts, would love to see that. Yeah, Sharon says, it annoys me that BlockFi didn't pay their last credit card reward totally understandable.  He did. Is pooling.safe? I did a video. Let me show you. It's safe because you control your keys and that's the big thing. So this is Dante's crypto. It's free. It's always will be free. If you go to module five, how do I? How do I use a MetaMass wallet? How do you simple swap? How do I up to the firmware for my Ledger? How do I do my taxes? And this is where it gets to staking Theta, staking Cardano, staking Avalanche, staking Polkadot. That's the one you need right there. And then how to stake Adam or Cosmos. And the near protocol one, I should have done the editing already. I just didn't do it yet. But it's very simple.  Coin Ledger question. Coin Ledger question. Is there a risk linking via API? There's always some risk, but if it's read only and they tell you very specifically, if you don't click on read only, meaning that it can only read the data, it can't write the data. I am not the person to say that I know definitively everything that has to go on with like read and write data. But as I have been told, if you can only give access to read data, you can only read the actual transaction that you have in those exchanges to pull the data in. Now if it's read and write, it means that they can change certain things, but they have a failsafe that if you even do that, it won't accept it and it'll kick you out. That's it. Yeah, you know, Theo, someone asked me yesterday, they go, Rob, you look kind of burnt out on crypto. I'll be honest with you, sometimes I do get burnt out. Like yesterday, I just wasn't really feeling it. And like I was looking for some things to talk about and you know, because there's interesting things like, damn, there's nothing really interesting. So I did that thing about DCA, but I still have a little bit of low energy. But it's just like investing, right? Sometimes you don't wanna do it. Sometimes you don't wanna deal with it. Sometimes you don't wanna do taxes. Sometimes you don't wanna just deal with anything. But my philosophy is this, I've always been successful just to be able just to show up and grind people down. Or just to grind away, I guess. You just show up, keep doing the same thing. It's like in the army, just show up with the right uniform and usually get promoted. The same thing here, like not every day am I gonna be super high energy like, this is fantastic. It is, it's a slog, but I hope that if you see this and you can say, well, you know, Rob's here, I'll show up and I'll learn some things and maybe I'll find a catch a glimmer of info that I can use for my portfolio or my strategy. And that's what it's all about, right? And of course you're gonna have a ton of energy when the bull market comes like, I'm a genius. I can't do anything wrong, but that's not where all the money's made. That's not where all the profits come from. And that's it. That's why I show up every day. Improve yourself and improve those around you. That's pretty much it. And admit when you make mistakes, like I've done many a time. Yes, pay, this is my kid. Let's see. Just kidding, he's not. Great, thanks for showing up. That's it. When the hype is over, you can tell it was honest, but you know, sometimes it doesn't even matter who's honest. Sometimes it just depends on the greater showman.  It's like they have massive utility. It's just how it is. Good days, bad days, that's right. Beardy. Rob, what's the exact top for Bitcoin two cycles from now? It's a great question, Beardy. So we're talking about the two four year cycles. So yeah, four, seven. So in 2033, in the next bull run, I predict that Bitcoin will be somewhere between $10 and $10 million. I can guarantee it. Market, market, yeah. James Dean, I've reduced DCA by 75% in the past couple of months, I like to play in the game. Yeah, me too. There's some I buy every day, Bitcoin is something that I buy every week, mostly the alts, and I've shifted that away. The only thing I buy every day is Bitcoin. Oh man, have you seen Guy? Guy looks burnt out because he's getting burnt. He's in Abu Dhabi, or I think, yeah, or UAV United Arab Emirates. I always chuckle because when we had his discussion, he's like, how do you guys do it for the heat because they live in El Paso? And I said, do you either love it or you hate it? And Guy's from London, so he's just miserable some days. That'll be okay. Where do you store your data? It's a great question. So it's in my Daedalus wallet, which is also secured with my ledger. I love the Daedalus wallet. Some people hate it because it takes so long, but I know it's secured. I'm running things in the background. I just will do that. Bill Bones with the Avogaci, I destroy the like. Linkstaking camp, oh, that's gonna be huge. I thought we could stake it already. I guess not. Oh yeah, Kim's got utility. It's funny. The best thing about a man is a free jerky membership unless you're beardy. Hey, you know what we should do? We should give away some wrenches, make some admins. Who's down? Let's do it. You on YouTube. Who wants to see? Who's down? An admin. Norman, congratulations. Who have I seen a lot here? Well, Guy's been here for quite some time. Ben and Mertesha, you already won. Crypto Esquire, you already won. Pickle, not yet. Guy is looking rough. Random boxing guy, I would remember that. Let's see. Norman? Oh, you're already a moderator. Yeah, Pate Pato, I'll get you the next one. It's a very bold prediction. You have a point. Old Bear, you already won. Crypto Esquire, you already won. Bill Bones, keep coming back. He'll be there soon. Tesla, beardy, Mr. Wolf. Guy Fox, I think I gave it to you. And now I see all the wrenches. Gary, I'll get you the next one. Gary LeBlanc, next time. Trinity, I don't know you that well. There's never too many wrenches. And that's, I think that's it. Okay, Joker. Our Joker, next time. Right, fair enough. And let's see, what else we got? Any other questions before we take off? Dubai hates guy, I don't think that's true. Looks like someone got a case the Mondays. Have you ever said that? No, I've never said that. Office space, classic. Ah, okay. Tika Von Rensberg says, Rob, I have friends who invest 10 bucks a month with me on ETH or Bitcoin, moving ETH or Bitcoin to a safe wallet costs too much. What do you suggest? Well, the thing is like this, what was this? It depends. Like there is a fee, of course. However, there's either a fee of a good amount or 100%. So if you're investing 10 bucks a month, maybe you could think about leaving it there for, I don't know, two or three months. And if you lose 30 bucks, if that kills you to lose 30 bucks, I don't think you should be investing in the crypto. That's just me. If I needed 30 bucks to survive, I am not gonna put it in the crypto. I'm gonna put it into food, I'm gonna put it into my electricity bill, all sorts of things. So that's what I recommend. Don't invest more, you can afford to lose. And if 30 bucks is too much, and that's in 10 bucks a month, don't do it. Crazy man, always bad. It's not always bad. It's all you look at it, really. For the, where'd it go? Robert says, do you still keep any crypto in a crypto Roth IRA? Yes, I do. It is called, I trust. And it does go against my principles of not controlling, really, because you wanna control your private keys. So with them, again, if I, for some, and we talked with this to great detail about the coal mangling of funds, they don't do that. They don't have loans, but can you trust anybody? Who knows? And then with that one, I say, let's go out and ride. We've been doing it for two years. If things go down, at least with Coinbase custody. Look, if Coinbase custody goes down, that's where they keep your crypto. Guess who else is going down? MicroStrategy. All their crypto is gone.  So that's too much, don't do it. Second of all, if Coinbase custody goes down, that means that MicroStrategy goes down, Sailor goes down, everybody goes down. I think now you're gonna see the market go way below a 10K Bitcoin, just saying. And that's it. There's also another option. You have to take a look at it though. It would be to, this is what Dr. Payne does. He does it in a trust. And to do a trust for your retirement account, you have to hire lawyers, there's some documentation to do, a lot of filings, and it gets kind of pricey. So if you wanna go that route, you can control your ledger or your private keys, but there's a lot more stuff involved now. And I haven't done that, so I can't speak to it. I just know that it does exist, that's all. And I don't even know if it's, if you can do that state to state. Not for sure, because I've never done it. I just think things easy. Go to iTrust. There's not even a monthly fee anymore. Yeah, if aliens land. And that's also true. There's no golden parachutes. Yeah. Honduras, Bangston's. I think I hope I said that right. I'm following my same strategy that I had in 2018, 2019. Same as mine. I was DCing all the time. It was not fun.  It feels like you're just throwing your money away, sometimes. But starting out DCAO was great, so now I have funds to repeat. And then we get to do the fun things, which is like in the bear, in the bull market, go, hey, I've got a lot of options. Hopefully, and thankfully, I have a plan that I created to sell. That's it. All right, buddy. It's okay. All right, buddy, that's it for today. So look, if you like this video, give it a thumbs up, consider subscribing. We do this stuff every single day. And I know that the news isn't the happiest in things, but there's always a different side to the same stories to take a look at. I'm not here to give you hope, Ian.  I'm just here to give you a reality and a secondary look at what's happening. And that's it. So that's it for today. Thanks so much for stopping by. I appreciate you guys, and I'll see you on the next one. Adios, have a good day.


My name is Lila Iyer and I'm a first year engineer at Purdue University and I wrote Ellara STEM Girl to inspire more girls to take interest in STEM. My name's Ellara and in case you didn't know, that's the name of a moon of Jupiter. I really wanted her name to be something unique and space related because astronomy has always been one of my biggest passions and I also wanted her name to be kind of racially ambiguous because I know some names can be associated with a different race and I wanted her to be able to relate to everybody. Sally Ride. Has anybody heard her name? There's like four main factors that lead into why girls lose interest in STEM as they grow up. Being a minority, fear of failure, stereotypes and lack of role models. So those are the four topics that I really wanted to address in my book in more of a playful manner so girls were exposed to them but they could also were given a way that they could overcome them in the way that Ellara does.