Thank you Helena and I do want to say a big round of applause as well to the previous speakers. I thought they had a great session and I love that I get to continue in this idea of enabling people with the right tools in this case with data knowledge and data skills. Thank you. Welcome everyone. My name is... We're just going to remind our audience that they can browse into the platform to send you the questions through the chat and that you are the last keynote or the last talk before lunch, the lunch break. So you're going to have that challenge, especially after that fantastic talk we had previous but we're looking forward to listening to you Eva. So all yours. Thank you. Yes please do put your questions in the questions box. So yes my name is Eva Murray as Helena already mentioned. I'm a senior evangelist with Snowflake based in London, responsible for the MEA region and my background is data visualization, data analysis and community building. And I'm really really passionate about bringing people together around data and helping them build their data skills. And something I also care greatly about is helping organizations to get business value from their technology and also get their people excited about data and about building a data-driven organization and a true data culture. Now let's dive right in. If we want to make data literacy the foundation of our enterprise data culture, you might be wondering well why do we need to do that? Why is that important? So I want to turn this question around. Can we afford not to make data literacy the foundation? And what are the risks of low levels of data literacy among your people? Helena mentioned a couple of statistics around people not being confident in their own skills when they make decisions. So what if your people don't know how to work with data and what if they're maybe even afraid of numbers? I think that's actually quite common that people say oh I'm not a numbers person please you do that. And what does that mean for those people and for the work they're doing but also for the company that you're working in and for your customers that you're serving? So there are a number of risks that are associated with those incorrect decisions being made. Sorry with lacking levels of data literacy and one being making incorrect decisions because if we have people who lack the understanding of how to interpret data how to analyze it and how to draw conclusions from it it's much harder for them to then really work with their data and with information they're presented with and to come to the right conclusion and to make a decision that's correct. So in that way there's going to be biases and assumptions that find their way into the decision making process but that we should probably avoid you know we as a whole. So how can you ensure that decisions are made based on data and one of the really important things to remember here is that data literacy is important at every level. I think we as practitioners as people working with data we can sometimes get caught up in this belief that very senior people who have done their jobs for many many years and are very confident in their field and in their part of the business that they understand data they know what to do with it they know how to interpret it and how to work with it but quite often that's not the case. It might be fine for the part that they're responsible for but they haven't necessarily had training in statistics and analysis in computer science and those kind of subjects and if they had maybe it was many years ago that they really truly had the the peak of their knowledge when it came to data literacy. So while we might think that they're very confident it's just as important to help them build their data literacy as it is for everyone else in the business. So we need to ensure that data literacy exists at every level of the organization so that everyone can make better decisions no matter whether they're big important decisions or smaller everyday tasks that we have to decide on. Another risk is that people lack understanding so often in a situation where we don't understand something people are actually afraid to ask questions and the less data literate they are the more they should actually ask a question they should ask about this data and they should ask about the insights we're presenting to them until they are truly understanding what's going on but of course it's understandable that we as humans we don't want to show weakness we don't want somebody to think we don't understand so if we can't understand it and we're afraid to ask questions it's just a disaster waiting to happen. So if there is a lack of data literacy and we might not know how much the person next to us actually knows how much they've learned at university or afterwards we can't rely on people understanding insights correctly and that is a problem and it's not just about what somebody understands but also how they communicate information. So when there's a lack of data literacy it impacts how people communicate it and how they understand it so both sides suffer the ones who need information and the ones who share information the one person that sends out information and insights maybe shares a dashboard with the rest of the team they might struggle to communicate information clearly if they're not very confident in working with data and the ones that are looking at this dashboard and are trying to make sense of the numbers and the information presented to them to make decisions they might struggle to understand what's going on and how they should use that information for their job and for their project and then thirdly another big risk is that data is treated incorrectly so when somebody doesn't know how to work with data they might create incorrect calculations and treat data incorrectly if they don't know the difference between a median and a mean well that can lead to big problems right and also if they don't know what the right way is to visualize data they can also lead to a problem and I want to use that as an example because I imagine a lot of you have worked with data and charts and been presented with dashboards and reports so a chart that many people understand is a bar chart or a column chart it starts at zero and you see the bars and you can compare the length to see what the performance is for example sales of the product many of us also regularly look at line charts and the current pandemic that we all still find ourselves in I think I see seen us look at a lot of charts and the line charts show us over time how many COVID cases there are for different countries so we can look at them and most of us probably understand them but there are types of charts that are much harder to understand but that people use because and I kid you not they look cool they look great they look fancy and that is also for me in this category of treating data incorrectly because the way we present the data also has something to do with it one example is a box in whisker plot and a box in whisker plot is often used in scientific papers and I've you seen it used in business environments and I've never ever been in a situation where I thought this is the best chart type to use in this situation because it's never explained it's never annotated people use it because they can create it and they think it looks good but it leaves the other side the ones that are trying to get information from this data it leaves them struggling to understand what's actually going on they don't know how to interpret it they don't know what to do with it so at best they just ignore the information at worst they misunderstand it and make some wrong conclusions so it's important that analysts and anyone else who works with data to produce outputs like reports dashboards and analyses to support decision making that they're trained in how to do their work just like in any other profession there are so many tools out there today that make it quite easy to work with data to build dashboards and reports and to share them in the organization and that's great because it makes data much more accessible for people it gives them a chance to interact with data and use it for their work but still it's important that what we put out there is accurate it's correct it's reliable so we need to treat the data correctly and we need to ensure that those working with data and creating the reports know what they're doing quite simply so we need a scientific approach we need to treat the data right and people need to understand sign statistical methods so having talked about these challenges that probably at least some of them resonate with you what is a possible solution how can we tackle this problem of data literacy and actually turn it around the first solution step in my opinion is to focus on building a data culture and that data culture needs to be focused on enablement and professional development so building the right skills with any organization among your people so they can do great work and this focus on enablement and on data literacy allows you to build that data culture that is strong and that supports your organization so you're essentially building them both at the same time you drive education programs around data and you have people teach each other for example if they've been in the company for a long time they have a lot of business knowledge but they're also really good at working with data they can share that expertise they can share their experience and help others gain the skills they need and while you're building people's skills in this way you're also helping to make this emerging data culture visible because suddenly people are seeing things happen they see training courses they see maybe one-on-one sessions presentations there's much more happening around data and if people are able to share it then you're starting to see a ground swell of engagement around data that really helps you make data part of people's jobs which is important for building that data culture now your data culture is going to change and evolve over time so it shouldn't be the end goal to have you know this data culture in a box it's really that journey that you're taking when you're gradually having people increase their use of data for decision making and data just becomes part of every process they engage in now a second recommendation for solving the challenge around data literacy is to also include non-technical staff as I call them in this whole process so make the whole data culture inclusive for business people even if they don't have a technical or data background because they can contribute their business knowledge and their experience and different perspectives now I'm going to give you an example I moved to London a little over two years ago and when I arrived I needed a mobile phone contract so I went to the store and I sat down with the sales rep and they took me through the options and I decided on a plan and of course they had to ask me some questions about personal details where do I live what's my date of birth my account details all those kind of things those were important and of course I had to answer those questions so I can get started but to complete the contract he also had to go through really long long form of other questions or other fields of data that he needed to provide to close this process and he didn't want me to have to sit there for another half hour answering all these questions that are not really important for setting up a contract so what he did instead is he just entered dummy values so he could proceed on the screen so maybe random letters or space or punctuation and I sat there thinking the poor person at the other end who has to clean this data every time a new customer is added so that the analysis can still be done correctly and I just wish that those people would actually talk to each other and that's why it's important to include people who are actually doing the processes in the business so if the data analyst and the data engineer who are on the other end of the process of you know a new customer being on boarded were to talk to the sales rep in the store and actually ask them questions about why is all this poor data in the database why are they putting these strange values in and if the sales rep could tell them it's because otherwise the customer experience suffers and the customer isn't going to be happy to sit there for so long then they could find a solution together so maybe instead of sitting there and asking all these and you know asking me all these questions and populating the fields correctly which takes a long time they just do the bare minimum complete the contract and then send me the customer an email afterwards that says hi either would you be happy to share more data for a five pound voucher or a 20% discount on your next bill so put the effort on the customer instead reward me for it but get good quality data and that's why I think it's really important like I said get those people together have the business people involved even if they're not dealing with data they probably are but might not consider themselves data people or be part of the analytics team but get their input on what's working and what isn't so you can find better solutions together and have more perspectives on what's going on in the organization and then the third step is to apply a framework and I have brought a simple framework that I like to take people through to figure out how to establish this data culture and data literacy so let's go through three simple steps when you start embedding these new ideas how do you want to go about it first step is to plan and prepare and it's really important to figure out where you are today and that is a very honest and detailed look at what's going on today what do you have this could be tools systems programs the people their skills the processes where do you want to be when what does success look like and what's to get in between so if you want to have a strong data culture that's quite vague what does a strong data culture look like what does using data for decision making look like for you and for your organization does it mean everyone uses data for decisions and also are they empowered to make those decisions or do they still have to give them to their manager to make for example and what are the timeframes you're working with what are maybe some budget constraints you're working in what skills and people do you have internally and are you hiring expert experts externally or do you want to build up your people internally and grow their talent and their skills then we move to step number two and that's to apply and execute so in this phase you would take your plan and you know your your goal where you want to go and find activities that support this goal some of you might know that for well over four years i co-hosted the social data project make of a monday and our goal was to help people become better at visualizing data and analyzing data and what we did as an activity was it's kind of in the name make of a monday every week we would publish a data set individualization and the challenge for the community was that they would take the same data and create an improved data visualization that tells the story in a better way so what worked really well there when it came to the activity is everyone was self-directed it was a free project they were not our employees they could participate if they wanted to everything was voluntary they could participate if they wanted to and they did because they wanted to build their skills and it in terms of the format of the project we had a very repeatable format it was scheduled it was predictable and it was actually quite simple every monday they could participate but they didn't have to do it every week they could come every two weeks every three weeks whatever worked for them but they would know that if they miss one week because they're busy at work or busy at home they could just join again next week so knowing that it happens on a monday was something that really gave us a chance to get a really big community going because it was just so simple so what i recommend if you want to establish some activities internally to build your data literacy among your people is to create a system that is very simple and easy for people to understand for example if you want a weekly activity and i do want to warn you it is quite a commitment you can start with something simple like office hours let's say you use a specific bi tool internally and you want your people to learn how to use it better or to maybe just have a chance to ask some questions to someone who is um yeah has some expertise in this tool maybe you have three different people who are really good users of this tool and they know a lot well between the three of them they could rotate so one does this week one does the next one does the third week and just for one hour in that week ideally always on the same day they are available via slack or teams phone maybe in the office if you are working in the office and people can come to them and ask their questions get their answers and move on so that way you're facilitating this learning process is not a sharing process very quickly easily and simply and an hour of someone's time every three weeks is probably not too much to ask you can also think of other activities that are less frequent maybe it's every fourth night or once a month you have lunch and lunch sessions once a quarter you have an internal showcase maybe once every six months you have an internal conference all those kind of activities that bring people together around data but they can share what they've built what they've created what they've done but also they can learn from others is a great way to engage people and to make them feel like they're making an impact and they're part of something bigger so once you've planned what you're going to do and where you are today and you've figured out the activities you would like to put in place it's time to then actually make them happen but also really importantly monitor what's going on and measure the success of what's happening so how are the outcomes and the outputs of data and your organization improving because people's data literacy levels are increasing and how do you define success and how do you measure it and I recommend finding a good balance between some of the more qualitative measures and some of the more quantitative ones so with this being said we have looked at our risks and we have looked at some solutions for addressing them what can you actually achieve well it's about equipping your people with tools and skills but it's not just about delivering training you're really giving them the skills to do that job to do their job well and be successful and you're taking away the fear of data they might have you're enabling them to get better at their job and to drive growth and innovation and if you can drive that within one person you can drive it in the company as a whole and you're helping people gain confidence and independence when they make decisions and I think that's something really empowering and really beautiful to have in your organization that people are more confident in the things they're working with and companies that are training their people they find that people gain skills it makes their jobs more satisfying it helps with employee retention and as a result also better decisions are being made because people just know more about what they're doing now if we go back to our make of a Monday example people learned by practicing regularly coming back week after week to build these visualizations and also they got feedback they got feedback from their peers and they got feedback from us as the hosts of the project it also meant that they could see every single week because we did this all via Twitter what everyone else created so they found a lot of ideas they found hundreds of visualizations all from the same dataset hundreds of different ways of telling a data story and that gave them a lot of inspiration and they gained the skills and what they did with those skills is they didn't just use them for making Monday they applied them to their own jobs and a lot of people actually found that they got promotions because they got so much better at visualizing data maybe they became team leaders maybe they made their company actually stand out a bit more because suddenly there was this person becoming an expert in data visualization and they also became unknown in the community and built their personal brands and achievements around using technology and using data to tell stories something else you can achieve is that you can find data champions internally that means identifying the leaders that are inside your organization and letting them teach and guide others so you might have experts in specific tools or statisticians who are really really interested in helping others learn and sharing their expertise with them and what you then as a company and as leaders need to do is to support them in building the leadership skills because they have the technical expertise already and they have that hunger to make an impact and help others they might not have been receiving any training on how to actually lead others and how to teach others and that's something where you can really empower and encourage them so they can pass on all this great knowledge and those people are really critical because they will drive adoption so for example adoption of software tools but also new processes and changes and they will help you drive that change to become a more data driven organization and to help drive the data culture being established and companies that nurture these data champions they find they're more able to build really effective data and evidence communities internally develop stronger data cultures and they find it easier to navigate change and one example is St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia I've worked with them and they have students that are studying analytics courses, masters in analytics for example and the more senior students who've gone through the course but who've also acquired skills in certain technologies for example Chablow and others they act as mentors and teachers to the junior students so while they're teaching they're developing their teaching leadership skills but also they're helping junior students pick up new skills that they need for the program and these senior students have actually established a comprehensive training program including office hours including make up a Monday sessions and other things as well and you'll be able to achieve the delivery of better insights because as you have more people being data literate and being involved in the process more data is being used as inputs you have more ideas coming together you have more perspectives around the table and more diverse ideas from all these different people the technical business people the more experienced the more junior people so there's less reliance on gut feeling which is great but also every decision can then be traced back to specific data points so you can assess afterwards well was this the right decision and hindsight and if it wasn't you can actually figure out why you came to a wrong decision and then fix that process and the organizations that involve employees from across the company in these processes through you know specific groups and teams they combine the expertise around data and the business expertise and experience as well and then finally you also achieve some improved outcomes because data literate team members help improve overall outcomes for example creating better products for your customers better services improved services but also new products that weren't even there before because maybe they found something in the data that indicated to them well hey our customers are actually asking for something we're not offering yet and speaking of customers data literacy really helps us all become better understanding what the customers want what their needs are and their preferences and then delivering better internal products as well that enable us to really figure out what is going on and the companies that focus on using data literacy to improve these outcomes what they achieve is better analytics and reporting to help communicate information because the people that are creating these reports and dashboards and that share their findings they understand what it takes to really communicate data information and make it accessible to the different audiences so what are three things that you should do next you've probably noticed I love doing lists of threes and I think they're just fairly catchy and easy to follow so let's look at three steps you can take next the first one as I mentioned is assess where you are today and be really honest and it can be a bit painful because maybe things are not as great as you thought they were but it's good to know where you're starting from so that you can figure out how to improve what it takes you know what the next steps are etc and then find those champions because doing it all by yourself is going to be a lot of work and just quite difficult unless it's your whole job it's going to be near impossible to get all of this going just as one person so identify who the people are that are already passionate about data that maybe are already loving to teach others and share their knowledge and share their experience but also we have built a good network internally with the business and you know with different parts of the organization and then test and implement so when I say test what I recommend is with those activities that I've mentioned that you can use to get people involved and to get people empowered and enable around data test them out if it is a weekly office hour session do four of them do office hours for one month and see how they go ask the people who've attended and ask the people who post the office hours for their feedback how you can improve them what they need um what they maybe don't need or what they don't want so you can improve it before you then implement but also remind yourself that it's not about perfection it's not about nailing it the first time it should be something that evolves and that grows and these champions will help you because every one of these people will bring their own unique style and approach in their way of doing things so it doesn't all have to be perfect right from day one and that's why it's so nice to test things out implement what works discard the other stuff and then also work on new ideas because things will grow and other people will probably want to get involved as well so with that I'm at the end of my presentation and we have time for questions from the audience thank you so much Eva it was fantastic it's not easy to do it before the break the lunch break or the breakfast break or the dinner break whatever you are in the world in your case I have to say that if you're looking at Eva's background you see all these medals we have to tell them the truth Eva she she is or she was at triathlete now she I think she prefers cooking and just doing the bike training but she's a fantastic cook and a fantastic athlete as you can see all these medals from her past triathlons many triathlons right Eva is this correct that is correct yeah I did um I did a few triathlons I actually did a race on Saturday my first race in two years because of COVID so I'm now focusing more on running because it's nice and simple it requires less things than that's for sure that's for sure it's a tiring job anyway well congratulations on that and if you want to follow Eva and has nothing to do with data but she has apparently a very nice website I just discovered Trimi Greens right for cooking and baking is that that one I've actually I've actually stopped that one I have tried my data so it's trimydata.com I did have tried my greens for cooking but I I just ran out of time because there was too many things too but I do I do talk about cooking anyway so that's lovely we all we can all relate to that but let's talk about data and they ask you if you could extend a bit more on hashtag makeover Monday the project give us a bit more details because it could be used also as a tool and it's also a book so could you develop a bit more on that yes absolutely so the make of a Monday project emerged from something so Andy Kregel started it and he just did it like as his own practice he said I want to become better at using Tableau how can I do that well I'm just going to create you find some data on the internet and the visualization and then do a makeover and that's how he practiced and then it evolved so eventually in 2016 him and Andy from Tableau asked the community to participate it became really popular and I took over in 2017 so Andy and I ran this project together for the next four so years and really enjoyed growing the community and we our mission was to improve the way we visualize and analyze data one chart at a time and what I loved was that we always had new people joining and we had existing members helping us help others because we did this as a hobby so there's only so many hours in the day but when you have a community and this implies two communities in organizations as well when you have a community of people who are really passionate about something for example data and teaching others it makes such a difference because if somebody has a small question it doesn't need to be directed to me if they just want to know a very quick answer to a calculation probably anyone could answer that so it's really about removing this reliance on the leaders the official leaders with the title and saying hey everyone here can contribute something everyone here can help you out and it means that people automatically go into these roles of being teachers and what I've noticed especially through make of one day if you're the person teaching suddenly you have to assess whether you really understood what you're talking about because if you're trying to explain something to someone else you have to understand it first and that's the really fascinating thing for me there and we stopped the project this year because we just kind of ran out of steam with our day jobs but also we felt that it's time for someone else to come up with something new it was a long-running project the data sets are all still there so people can still engage can still use the data sets they're all freely available from the internet so we didn't use any confidential data it's various topics from politics economics environment animals sports health anything and it's just a great way for people to apply their spills and while we had most participants from the tableau community because as a tool it makes it very easy to share your data sorry say your visualizations we it wasn't exclusive to that we have people with power bi google data studio we had people from yellowfin micro strategy anyone can participate so if people are looking for sample data sets just go to makeoveroneday.co.uk and you can just do a bit of experimenting there fantastic Eva the power of the community is incredible and maybe i'm not maybe for sure covid has made us realize that the communities are even more important for all of us because we feel more isolated so we tend to gather find more support in any sense in the in these communities they're also asking regarding tools and references well it's a double question can we build data can we build data literacy oh can sorry can building data literacy be fun and are there any apps you can suggest so yeah i i definitely think it can be fun and it's really up to you to make it fun and that's why i love looking at quick wins because if you look at all the things you have to do or you want to do something will jump out to you and you'll be like oh i want to start with that why not start with the thing that's most fun and a food analogy is that i i used to always eat the thing i didn't like first i would have the best thing last and my dad said if you always eat the best thing on the plate first and you're always eating the best thing until the meal i finished and i thought that's actually really smart so while in the world of work there will be things you have to do that you're not necessarily always passionate about or really excited about make sure there's always a project or a way of doing it or an activity where like yeah that's really fun and for me doing make of a monday while it was extra work you know the afternoons in the evenings i just also loved seeing other people grow and engage so it could be that for you it's a specific topic topic maybe you are really really passionate about football so use football as a way to work on data literacy whether if it's for yourself well maybe it's football data sets it's analyzing results from games that help you figure out how to use a piece of software or how to figure out certain calculations and it's in the organization and people say we don't all want to do football well maybe you have maybe every week someone else gets to pick a topic and they provide a data set or something that you can all work on on a specific problem uh i think it's really you have the freedom i give you i give you permission to make it fun it shouldn't be just lecture style or you know all these statistical analysis which can seem very daunting i think if you can think of a way like oh i would really like to do this find a way to connect to data find a way to you know while you're having a really nice meal figure out well what what role does data play here and whether it's where you ordered your groceries and okay what does the supermarket know about me the supermarket will almost suggest certain types of chocolate or coffee to me well there's data in there and maybe that's a little research project you do to see how do they actually do that what are the algorithms behind suggestion engines so it's finding the interesting things in the everyday life connecting them to data and then using that to help you build your own knowledge and skills and in terms of apps um i guess you're talking about mobile phone app i haven't come across one yet doesn't mean it doesn't exist but there are quite a lot of initiatives out there around data literacy and if you just do a quick google search the first page will probably give you the top ones excellent well we run out of time Eva but i'm gonna leave you with this sentence of yours i love it i'm gonna say building data literacy is fun it's up to each one of us and as a suggestion eat the best beats on your plate first i always do so by the way just in case so uh eva marie thank you so much for joining us from my snowflake obviously it was lovely listening to you we hope to see you very soon otherwise next year until then i say goodbye to eva marie and uh thank you for coming to big things conference 20 bye bye


and you become that person. Back in the ancient days, if you wanted to be a disciple of somebody else, what you're saying is, I want to be you.  So the definition of the first definition is a follower, a learner, who's growing in the character and competency of Jesus. A disciple is growing in the character and competency of Jesus. The character, his holiness, his internal life, right? His virtue, and his competency. Being able to do the things he does. So the disciple is growing in his holiness and in his actions. That's the first definition. The second definition of a disciple of Jesus is asking two questions constantly. What's God saying to me, and what am I doing about it? What's God saying to me, and what am I doing about it? What you see in the lives of the great saints is they lived perfectly in the will of God, right? And how do you live perfectly in the will of God? Well, you ask, and you listen, and then you act on it. It's one of my favorite questions to ask when we're working with young adults, and their young adults can be so angsty, and what are we going to do, right? Young adults from Bronx, yeah, you're with me, right? No, you guys don't experience that at all. They're just like, oh, what's God doing in my life? And it's so nice to be able to boil it down.  What's God saying to you? Okay, good. Now, what are you going to do about it? Okay, so that's definition number two, and definition number three, and they're all kind of related, but is living as Jesus would live if he were you. Living as Jesus would live if he were you. And how did Jesus live? I'm going to suggest that he lived in three directions. He lived up towards the Father. He lived in towards his disciples, and he lived out on mission. It's a triangle. I'll help you stick in your brain. He lived up, he lived in, and he lived out. Up in prayer, in in communion, and out on mission. John Paul II said there are three commissions of a disciple, prayer, communion, mission, up in and out. You want a good little gut check of whether or not you're living as a disciple of Jesus? Take an audit of your life and put everything you do for him under the category of up, in, or out, and see which one is unbalanced. Most Catholics I know, we're pretty good at in. We like each other. We're very good at up in prayer. And then there's usually kind of a startling space when it comes to out. And if you want to be a balanced life as a disciple, we need to be living up, in, and out. Okay? So what we see then in the upper room is we have these men and women who have been trained in this lifestyle. They've been taught, teach us how to pray. Okay, that's his character.  They try to do those things and it works and they come back and they receive more understanding. Some spirits can only be cast out through prayer and fasting, right? There's this constant apprenticeship that happens with these disciples where Jesus is replicating himself in them. And yet we know that something was still missing. They had become leaders. They had become his followers. They had fallen in love with him, but it wasn't until Pentecost that they became spirit-filled leaders in a new way. And Jesus understood that in order for them to truly be fruitful in their mission, in order for this apostolic age to be birthed, he not only needed men and women who are good leaders who understood what it meant to live the Jesus-shaped life, but they needed the power to do it. And that's where Pentecost comes in. Again, I talked about it last night. Peter, filled with the power of the Holy Spirit, all of a sudden is a different man. But what that Holy Spirit is doing is activating in him the Jesus life that had been formed in him for three years. I'm going to say that again. What the Holy Spirit did on Pentecost was activate in Peter the Jesus life that had been formed in him for three years. Peter had been modeled into a little Jesus, right? Christian, a little Christ. And now filled with the power of the Holy Spirit, he's able to then go do the same thing that Jesus did, which was identify, walk with, empower, form, and launch. Where the apostles go to the ends of the earth, everywhere they go, they're identifying, they're pouring into these leaders, they're replicating themselves. Be imitators of me, St. Paul says, as I am of Christ. Second Timothy 2, 2, teach others to teach what I've taught you. I think that was right. That was close enough. The general idea, Mark, was there, right? Teaching others to teach what I've taught you. There's replicating DNA, and that's what it means to be about spirit-filled leadership. That at the core of fruitfulness in the church are men and women who are growing as spirit-filled leaders. And I would propose that the solution to what we're seeing of this loss of Christendom in this movement towards apostolic age, the solution for the church to be able to be fruitful, the solution for the church to be alive and be all that she's created to be is the growth, development, the sustainability, and the empowerment of spirit-filled leaders. The church is always healthiest when she is a movement supported by institution, not an institution supported by movement. I'm going to say that one again. The church is healthiest when she is on the move developing enough institution to support that movement as opposed to we are an institution and we have to try to pump movement into it. And the only people who are capable of generating movement, the only people who are capable of sustaining movement, the only people who are capable of discerning how much institution is necessary are spirit-filled leaders. John Paul II said this. He said, the church on Pentecost was born on the move. So the church was launched out of those doors to transform the world and then you see through actually the apostles that when institution was needed they had councils they were able to discern but it was always at the service of this movement of God. Okay? You with me? Okay, so I'd like to give you four characteristics of a spirit-filled leader. These are not an exhaustive list. You could probably come up with a hundred characteristics of a spirit-filled leader. These are just four behaviors, characteristics, common traits of a spirit-filled leader. And I want you to receive these as a bit of a gut check is to say and the activation or the work that I'm going to ask you to do at the end of this workshop is to kind of do a self-evaluation with the Lord is saying, which one of these am I living and growing in and where am I lacking? And be real gentle with yourself, okay? This is not like a condemning thing. Nobody's going to be looking at your list. Nobody's going to be like, really? You don't do that? No, it's going to be just a you and Jesus moment where you can think about how do I step into greater and greater expression of these things. Okay, first one, a spirit-filled leader has a ton of solitude and silence, but you didn't see that coming. Solitude and silence. There's a book by a guy named Henry Nowan called The Way of the Heart. Highly recommend it. It's a book about the desert fathers and mothers where these men and women that as the Roman Empire became more and more Christian, they realized that in order to live a radical life for the Lord, they had to literally flee into the desert that because they were no longer able to be martyred, they had to kind of martyr themselves by detaching from the cares and concerns of the world. So you have like Anthony of the desert who goes off into the desert for years and years and years and is so transformed by his solitude and his silence that when the Lord calls him back into mission, when he comes back to the people in the nearby town, he's so transformed by his time in the desert that literally the whole idea of a halo around saints comes from this guy. There's evidence that like he glowed with the presence of God from his time alone, his time not speaking, his time letting Jesus build in him a fire, build in him a living word that then when he was called to proclaim it, came from a source of abundance as opposed to a place of scarcity. A spirit-filled leader needs to become very comfortable with silence. A spirit-filled leader needs to become very comfortable in desirous of time alone with God, with no distractions, with no noise, separating from everything else and building within ourselves this place, this sacred space, this desert where I can constantly retreat to even in a moment where I can be with the Lord and I can receive from him than what is needed to go out. Henry now talks about this living word that the Lord wants to build in you is like a furnace, a fire that's within you, that every time you open the door of a furnace, heat comes out. But if you leave the door open, it burns out. And too often when we get excited about mission, we get excited about missionary work and ministry and all this, we think it has to be this kind of constant giving, constant proclaiming, lots of words. We're a very talky people which is ironic because I'm up here talking, right? But I promise this has come after lots of prayer, okay? No, but the point is we even hold up those who are constantly proclaiming as the models of missionary life and there's nothing wrong with that and there's something true about that. But all missionary activity, all fruitfulness originates in a desert, in a detachment even from the fruit of that missionary work. Jesus went off into the desert. St. Paul spent many, many years in obscurity, in tarsus, making, you know, what did he do? Not tense, yeah, tense, right? He's just so intense. What's he doing? He's not just wasting time. The Lord is building something in him. Building something in him. And then even Jesus, after preaching for a long time, went, oh, what does he do? All the time, he retreats to the mountain to be alone with the Lord. And it's only in solitude and silence that we can really come to know ourselves and as we come to know ourselves, can realize how desperately we need the Lord so that we can actually have compassion for others. Compassion is born out of recognizing our own lack so that when we see lack in others, we're not thrown off by it. We're not judgmental of it because we know they need the Lord just as much as I do. And I know that because I've met him face to face and I've seen in my nakedness how much I need a Savior. Silence and solitude, practical tip. I'm gonna give you four characteristics. I'm gonna give you four practical tips to immediately put this into practice. Silence and solitude, practical tip. Do it, like turn your phone off.  And if you're like me, the first three minutes will be not quiet. It'll be, your brain will be going in all different directions. It'll be all of a sudden remembering all the emails I didn't send and all that, right? The next three minutes will be wondering if I'm in quiet. Be like, is this silence? Am I being quiet right now? I don't know, it kind of feels like silence but I'm not sure, right? Then the next two minutes will probably be some real contemplative moment. So now we're at eight minutes. The last two minutes will be wondering when the 10 minutes are up, right? I'm like, oh, I just gotta be really close. So here's the practical tip. Set the alarm, throw it on the other side of the room if it's on your phone and then finish the time. If you're an athlete, you know that the best rep in a set is the last rep, okay? If you set out to do 10 reps, the best rep is that last rep. I can't tell you how many times the Lord has put something new in me in the last 30 seconds, the last 10 seconds of a time of solitude and silence with Him. Finish whatever time you set out to do and be gentle with yourself. Don't set out to do 30 minutes if you've never done this before. Do two minutes. Do four minutes, whatever it needs to be, okay? So that's number one. Solitude and silence. And then the practical is actually do it and set a timer. Okay, second characteristic. I call it heartbreak, heartbreak. A spirit-filled leader has allowed themselves to have their heart broken for what breaks God's heart. And the reason this is so important is that when the Lord breaks your heart for a person or a place or a thing, when the Lord breaks your heart for something that's breaking His, out of it emerges new vision and a pathway to how to solve that heartbreak. So what do I mean by this? Heartbreak, and let me make a clear distinction. Intensity is not a fruit of the spirit, okay? Intensity is not a fruit of the spirit. Zeal is.  Intensity, I can develop intensity. I can pump myself up and then get ready to go. Zeal is something that is God-given that propels me to a noble end, okay? And so heartbreak is often the thing that goes right before a gift of zeal. We see this in a book that I'm sure you've read many, many times, Nehemiah. We've all read Nehemiah, just a jogger memory. It's right before Job, okay? In this book, we meet Nehemiah who is the cup bearer of the king, which means when the king wants to drink, Nehemiah is there and he hands the cup to the king, right? Which is kind of a nice job. It's also kind of dangerous because if the king develops a sickness or something, who are they gonna blame? Nehemiah, so it's nice, but not great. It's at the time when the Israelite people are in exile, but there are some who are left over in Jerusalem and because they've been conquered, the walls of Jerusalem have been destroyed. Nehemiah hears about this and hears that the people who are left behind are getting ravaged by all these different tribes because they have no protection. Listen to Nehemiah's response. When I heard these words, I sat down and wept and mourned for days. I continued fasting and praying before the God of heaven. Something snapped in him. He was wounded by the Lord. His heart was broken for his people who had no defense. And why was his heart broken? Because God was looking for somebody who was willing to have their heart broken. Who was willing to receive this wound. And then Nehemiah, when his heart is broken, he doesn't immediately try to fix it. He doesn't immediately put together a step-by-step plan. What's he do? He weeps. He mourns. He fasts. Everybody's favorite thing. He fasts. And he prays. And he sits in it. He sits in it. And then out of that emerges this new vision for the Lord's plan for the people back in Jerusalem. So he goes to the King. He says, King, I need time off. I need some money. And I need some of your soldiers. And I need permission to rebuild the walls of the people you've conquered. What?  Like, that's totally foolish. Why would the King agree to this? What does the King say? Oh, all right, how much time do you need? How much money do you need? Sure, take some soldiers. And go ahead, yeah, go rebuild the walls of the people. And so Nehemiah goes, rebuilds the walls, and with Ezra brings the law back to the people. That's one of the greatest celebrations in the Jewish calendar. What do we see there? A man who was open to having his heart broken by the Lord. The Lord pierces his heart for a particular need. He weeps, he sits in it. He fasts through it. A new vision is granted to him. And in boldness, he goes and does something about it. And the Lord rewards him, works through it, and something is accomplished. I experienced this firsthand. When I graduated from Franciscan, I moved back to Ann Arbor. I was trying to figure out what to do with my life. And I thought I was going to be a teacher. I wasn't sure about that. And there was this ministry in town called Renewal Ministries. And Dr. Ralph Martin, Peter Herbeck, were the founders of this, History and Shields. And I had known them my whole life. I mean, Peter was one of the men I referred to last night who took a vested interest in my spiritual life. And so as I was feeling kind of called to do some sort of ministry, Peter was the logical guy to sit down and talk with. I said, Peter, I'm sitting in his living room. I say, hey, do you think Renewal Ministries has any space for me? And he leaned back and he was like, well, not really. But let's pray about it and see what God does. And ironically, I got a job as a teacher, a gym teacher, so sort of teaching. And that's okay. We can make fun of ourselves, you know. And but the sister who hired me gave me Fridays off to pray and to meet with Peter to discern what the Lord might be doing. So one of these Fridays, I'm sitting in an adoration chapel, praying for my generation, praying for a new vision, praying for whatever the Lord want. And all of a sudden I found myself weeping, and not like cute crying, not like kind of like, oh touching like tears pouring down the cheeks, like snot coming out of my nose, and this like travailing prayer, like uncomfortable, and not particularly manly, and just kind of like, what's happening? It just was raw. And I just was pierced by this heartache for my generation. This holy discontent had fallen on me. My heart was breaking for your kids and grandkids and your friends. And I just, I didn't even know what to do with it, but literally it still drives me. That's why I do what I do, because the Lord has pierced my heart and I sat in it and he gave me a vision for what to do about it. It's a dangerous prayer to say, Lord, break my heart for what breaks yours. But that's what a spirit-filled leader does. Okay, silence and solitude. Heartbreak, number three. A spirit-filled leader lives with humble receptivity. Humble receptivity. As the spirit-filled component makes, you know, points to the difference between just secular leaders and a spirit-filled leader is the power source that which we have, the gifts that we've received in order to live this out. First Corinthians, let's see. Now there are a variety of gifts, but the same spirit, and there are a variety of service, but the same Lord. And there are varieties of working, but it's the same God who inspires them all and everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the spirit for the common good. And then St. Paul lists a bunch of them. Wisdom, blah, blah, blah. All these are inspired by the one and the same spirit who apportions to each individually as he wills. Then he talks about, we are one body with many parts, right? The hand can't say to the foot, I don't need you in the eye and all that. One of the things we need to reclaim as a church is the belief and the conviction that everyone through their baptism and confirmation has been given a gift, and often many gifts, not just for their own edification, not just for my own holiness or so that'll look good on a resume. I've been giving these gifts for the express purpose of building the kingdom. And without my gifts, the body is suffering. We need to reclaim this holy obligation to not hold our gifts to ourselves, friends, because the body needs all the gifts. The body needs every part of it to be operational, functional, and mature in order for it to be fully healthy. St. Paul talks about this in Ephesians 4 where he says some are called to be apostles, prophets, shepherd, teachers, evangelists. And he says the point of these things is so that we may grow into full maturity in Christ that we are lacking as a body if you hold your gifts to yourself. We are lacking as a body if the leaders of any community, of any family are not identifying and helping each member identify their particular God-given, spirit-filled role in the discipleship and evangelization of the whole. I'm gonna say that one again. This is an idea of what we call communal discipleship. Everyone has a role to play in the discipleship and evangelization of everyone. Do you get that? We're not all called to do what I'm doing. We're not all called to do what ma'am you're doing.   We're all called to play our role and when we all play our role together, the body is healthy and the church is alive. And too often, we're siloed. We're worn out. We're trying to be kind of like all things to all men, which is a false understanding of that word from Paul. Or I'm trying to do this. I'm trying to do that. I'm trying to do this. And I don't know who else is out there to help me. And I got to hold on to this little thing because I've been doing it for 30 years. And I used to be really good at MCing and people used to say I was good, but now I'm not sure anymore. And why isn't anyone asking me to speak? And this seems like such a small role and blah, blah, blah. All these lies, all these divisions that the spirit or that the devil sows into our communities, instead of saying like everything I have is a gift. Everything I am is from the spirit. None of this is something I can claim or own. It's that I'm cooperating in what the spirit is doing in and through me. This was like drilled into my head the first time we ever did a monthly meeting for our young adult community. Okay, so first one ever. We didn't have a place to meet, so we were meeting in a middle school gym. And so we were going to have mass. We were going to have a dinner and a talk, because that's a good format for ministry, right? We all know that. Mass, dinner and a talk. It's great. And so Peter, Herb, and I got there early and we got everything ready for dinner. Okay? We had tables. We had chairs. We were ready for dinner. We did have food, I think. I mean, eventually. But we were ready. The scene was set. Tables, chairs. Woo! Let's go. And then we went out to go greet people, because that's actually what we're good at, you know? And all of a sudden, our wives came in. Kate and Debbie walked into the gym. And I'll never forget this. Kate came up to me, my wife, and she was like, hey, why didn't you guys get the gym ready? I was like, what are you talking about? It's ready. We have tables. We have chairs. And she was like, oh, sweetie. Like, just go talk to people, okay? So I go talk to people. And she and Debbie are in the gym for a little while. Mass is over. I come up. I give my announcements. And we're going to go into the gym. And we're going to have some dinner. And you're in for a treat, you know? And they go in. And I walk into the gym. And all of a sudden, kind of like out of like, Mary Poppins' bag. I don't know where this came from. But there were tablecloths and flowers and lamps. I don't even know where they got them from. Like the fluorescent lights were gone. And there were lamps everywhere. And there was like this kind of like aroma in the room. It like smelled good, you know? And I'm like, what the heck? What happened here? And what it was, it was, Kate has a gift, a God-given, spirit-filled gift for hospitality. One of her primary gifts, we've discerned this, is she enhances environments. Whether that's the environment of the heart that's in front of her, helping the person in front of her be to develop, or a room. She's just really good at helping people feel welcome. She's really good at setting the scene. She would never, ever, ever stand on a stage and proclaim something. But without her creating that environment, we would have really missed something when it came to helping people feel welcomed, helping people own the fact that they belonged in this space with us. So, humble receptivity. And I said humble because it's true humility to know your gifts and to operate in them. It is not true humility to know your gifts and not operate in them.  It is the proud person who decides when and how they use their gifts. It's the humble person who lives in and through their gifts. That was a good line. We should meme that one, that was pretty good. Okay, okay. Finally, fourth one. So we have solitude and silence. We have heartbreak. We have humble receptivity. And the fourth one is bold proclamation. A spirit-filled leader learns how to boldly proclaim the full gospel all the time. Full gospel, full time. And the only way we can get to bold proclamation, well, there's lots of ways we can get to bold proclamation, but the things I want to highlight about bold proclamation is this. First is we have to know and be able to articulate our story. We have to be able to know God's plan for humanity like I talked about last night, but we need to be able to know His plan through the lens of our story. His plan becomes your story, and that's what you're proclaiming to people. When the apostles went out to all the ends of the earth, they didn't go around saying, Jesus Christ is the Lord of the Universe, and I know this because it happened in Peter. Jesus Christ is the Lord of the Universe because it happened in Philip. They say, Jesus Christ is the Lord of the Universe. He set me free from my sins because He did it in me. I know it's true because I've seen Him. I've touched Him. I've heard Him. I've consumed Him, and my life is different. So first, John, the first letter of John, John says this, what we have seen, what we have heard, what we have looked upon and touched with our hands concerning the word of life, that is what we make known to you. One of the reasons we're not bold in proclaiming the gospel is because we're not totally convinced of what He's done in us. We're not totally sure what our story is.  I mean, because you're going to be like, well, this is what I've experienced, and they could say, no, you didn't. Well, yes, I did. No, you didn't. Yes, I did. You know? I mean, eventually, they're just going to have to say you're lying, which I guess they could. But it's an incredible weapon to be able to be like, all I want to share with you is what God has done in me. This is what life was like. This is how I came to know Him, and this is what life is like now. This is my story. And the conviction to be able to proclaim it is so much easier, so much more authentic when it's pouring out of your own life. It's a lot harder to just kind of preach to an idea. No, you're not preaching to an idea.  Okay? So that's the first reason we need, the first kind of grounding in bold proclamation. Another way to think about bold proclamation is this. We have to actually bring people, a spirit-filled leader is willing to bring people to decision points. One of the reasons I think we are where we are with my generation is because, yeah, we were sacramentalized, and we were catacys to some degree, but nobody ever asked us if we believe. Nobody ever asked us and gave us a choice. We just got shepherded through all these things, and I was sitting down with a cousin of mine the other day, and I said, you know, dude, why aren't you Catholic anymore? And this was in the midst of a much longer conversation. And he said, you know, I don't know. He's just like, nobody ever asked me if I believed any of this stuff. The proclamation of the gospel has to include the opportunity to respond. A spirit-filled leader realizes that to just say these things, to just feel good about, oh, I delivered the message, but I don't actually bring people to a decision point. I don't actually say, do you want this for yourself? Are you in or are you out? That is a critical, critical piece of this puzzle, and we are terrible at it as a church. And you know why? For two reasons. One, we're afraid of failure. We're terrified of being rejected. Friends, a spirit-filled leader has to get very, very comfortable with failure. We have to learn how to fail fast and fall forward and keep moving. I was at, oh, is that my signal? No, I got five minutes left. I was at, I went to London to visit the church where Alpha was born. It's called Holy Trinity Brompton. It's not Catholic, but it's a beautiful community there. And Nicky Gumbel, the guy who's the pastor there, at the end of one of their services, got up and he said, okay, we're going to celebrate invitation. And I thought, okay. I don't know what that means, but that seems kind of silly. And there was this line of people on the stage with him. He went to the first person. He said, okay, how many people did you invite to this last Alpha? And he said, I invited five people. And he was like, great. How many people came? And she said, three. And everyone was like, oh. And the next person, how many people did you invite? I invited 25. Awesome. How many people came? 10. And they went down the line. And the numbers just got bigger and bigger and bigger. So finally, there was this little old lady at the end of the line. And Nicky was like, how many people did you invite to Alpha? And she grabbed the microphone from her, which was hilarious. And she said, I invited everyone in my neighborhood. And a ripple went through the crowd. And Nicky said, oh, well, how many people came? And she grabbed the mic back and she gets this huge smile on her face. She goes, nobody. And the place went bananas. And she walks off the stage like she says, and I'm sitting there as a red-blooded American, confused out of my mind. I'm like, why are you celebrating this woman? She failed at an epic level. This isn't how this is supposed to work, you know? And so I'm totally distraught. I can't figure this out. I'm like, British, I don't know what's going on here. And so afterwards, I go up to one of the leaders and I was like, you got to explain this to me because this makes no sense at all to me. And she said, well, it's pretty simple, Pete. She said, we celebrate the invitation because inviting is really hard. It's really hard. And we want people to feel totally confident that their job is to invite. It's not their job to decide because they can't. The decision to receive the invitation or not is all on the person.  We have no control over that. And so she said, we want our people to go out emboldened to invite because it's just really, really hard. It's hard to use some of your invitational capital. It's hard to put that on the line and run the risk of rejection. But we're never going to get over the hump of personal piety to public proclamation, to sharing the gospel if we're afraid of failure. And fear is not of God other than fear of Him, right? Where the spirit of the Lord is, there's freedom. Freedom from fear of failure. That's a lot of Fs. Freedom from fear of failure. All right. Solitude, silence, heartbreak, humble receptivity and bold proclamation. I'm going to end with one story, final story. And before I do that, I wrote a little something. It's called Game Changer, the Role of the Holy Spirit in the New Evangelization. It's very short. It's only 21 pages long. It's a quick read. It's only a dollar. They have it at the bookstore if you'd like to pick it up. I don't want to take any of them home, so feel free to grab one. It's a great thing to give to a friend. Game Changer, the Role of the Holy Spirit, one dollar at the bookstore. That's my least favorite part of any time I have to do any of this, so got that out of the way. All right. Game Changer, the Role of the Holy Spirit in the New Evangelization. You're welcome. Solitude and silence, heartbreak, humble receptivity, bold proclamation. I was on an airplane just a couple weeks ago. And I was one of my first trips since the pandemic was kind of calming down and I got reassigned to a seat. And then what was weird about it is I got reassigned to the seat and then a woman came and sat down right next to me and she had been reassigned to that seat as well, which was weird on so many levels because I was like, I'm still in that kind of COVID mode. Like, yeah, get away from me. And she was a little uncomfortable too and she were kind of joking and talking and all of a sudden, and nothing's really happening. And at some point, we're just kind of talking about where we're going and I'm telling her what I'm doing and she's going to visit her mom. We just had a heart attack and she said this thing. She said, yeah, I've never been a particularly religious person but I might have to give it another look because my mom had a heart attack and the person who saved her life was a Catholic priest. It was like, okay, doorway, you know. Like, hit me with a sledgehammer, you know. So we start talking and she started asking questions about my life and let's put it this way. What happened, what unfolded was completely unexpected but she started to share her story with me and I've never met anyone more wounded in my entire life. She had been literally abused in every conceivable way, my nearly every man she had ever respected or, you know, looked to for protection. She was as broken and wounded as any person I've ever met and at one point she actually looked at me and she said, Pete, when I was a little girl, after having been abused by my father, I was laying in bed and I cried out to God and I said, God, save me, help me. And she said, and I didn't hear anything and he didn't show up and he didn't save me. She said, why should I believe in a God like that? And so, something, you know, a living word was born in me through my silence and solitude. In that moment my heart broke for her. I realized I didn't have what I needed in that moment. I had no idea what to say to that. So I said, I'll be right back. And I went to the bathroom and I stood in the bathroom and I just said, Lord, what are you doing? What do you want to do with her right now? I need something. I don't know what to do. And I felt like Jesus said in my heart. He said, introduce me to my mother as in his mother. And I remembered that I always travel with a rosary and it's the fisherman's rosary. It's made from fishing wire and it has John Paul II's fisherman's cross at the end of it. And I thought, please, God, let that still be in my backpack. And so I went back to her and I went in my backpack and I pulled it out and I said, I have a gift for you. And you know what the most heartbreaking moment was? And I said, I have a gift for you? She recoiled because no man had ever just genuinely wanted to give her something. And I said, no, no, no, don't be weird. Like, this is okay. Like, it's just a gift, you know? And she looked at me. She said, nobody ever gives me gifts. I said, well, I'm about to. And I pulled it out and I said, do you know what this is? And she looked at it and she said, that's a rosary. It had to be a nun when I was little. Right? And that literally had been beaten out of her. And so I explained what the rosary was and I explained who Mary was and then I looked her in the eye and I told her about Jesus, about his love for her and about how the only person who could possibly understand what she's been through, the only person who could relate, was him. And that I didn't know why she had been through this. I didn't know why God wasn't there for her in that moment that she needed, but he could understand. And I said, and this thing I'm about to give you, this rosary, it's not a lucky charm. It's not a get out of jail free card, but it's a way that you can connect to God. And she took it and she started to cry and she put it around her neck. And I thought, okay. It's a step. And she said, thank you. And then we prayed together. I have no idea where she is now. I have no idea what God's doing in her life. And that's just like a more dramatic example, but when we live as spirit-filled leaders, we're able to understand and have a living word within us that we could actually share with somebody else. We can have a heartbreak for the lost and for the heartbreak of God. And we can actually receive what we need in the moment and then we can boldly proclaim the truth about who he is. Amen. So would you pray with me for a moment for this woman? And then when you leave here, your homework assignment, because I went a little long, your homework assignment is to look through these four things and say, Lord, which one do I need to grow in? And then start to create a plan for how to grow in it, okay? All right. Lord Jesus, thank you for this time. I thank you for that. You've called us to be spirit-filled leaders. I thank you that you've brought me into contact with Shannon.  That you would train us in what it means to walk in your spirit and to receive everything we need. And Lord, break our hearts for what breaks doors and let us be bold in proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God here on earth. Amen.


Alright guys, what's up? Welcome back to the channel.   Check them out. As you guys can see, they're a bit taller than a normal curb. So they're at a pretty good height and yeah, they are nice and slippery. Check them out. Fair bit of skating's been done here already by the looks of it so pretty keen to rip into it. A local skateboarder I met posted this spot up on his Instagram and I kind of lurked the comments and I found where it is. Where this spot is, it's like a back service road kind of thing, I guess for like delivery trucks and stuff to come through. So the road's pretty quiet. I wasn't too sure what I was rolling up to. I didn't want it to be like a super busy car park. Then I'd be in the wave of everybody and I'd be really self-conscious about my skating too because everyone's kind of watching. But yeah, I'm gonna get warmed up and I'm gonna rip into this spot. Pretty good view of the highway from here actually. That was very, very sketchy but I am taking it. Busted up out here guys. I can't complain about the heat because it's not hot here.  Sorry about all the static footage. Like I've just got a tripod filming for me today. Definitely different compared to having a filmer. Going back to not having a filmer again. Got to adjust but I'll be okay. Soon hopefully I'm gonna hook up with some people to skate and then I can get some better. Skating, footy. That's not static on a tripod. I don't know how John makes it look so casual and easy. I've got to study some of his videos I think.  This would have been the spot. Roll up in the afternoon, get like a drink or something to eat from the store here and then skate this kerb until sunset. Can pretty much learn a bunch of ledge tricks on a kerb like this. Providing there's a kerb like this near where you live. Can be fun. Can be educational. Skate, educational I suppose if you're learning new tricks and stuff. I've actually got another set of wheels at home. Brand new, the Formula 4. It's just a regular conical shape. These are the lock-ins. They were fun for a while but I think I'm gonna go back to the conical shape and they're the rules. The rules are getting a bit dirty though. I think I need to clean them but I've got another set of bearings to chuck in. I've got some G3's I might chuck in as well. Yeah probably gonna get rid of these wheels. One thing I definitely need to work on is like locking in like front tails and back tails. I can always kind of get in, hold them for like a second and then I fall out. Which is weird because when I no-slide I can like lock it in. Even when I do a switch no-slide I can lock in and like hold it for longer. So skating, things like this definitely helps you in a way of kind of training not only your muscle memory but your mind to kind of figure out and break down what you need to do to learn a trick because there's always a trick to the trick. Like it could be something as simple as moving your foot further backwards or like putting your foot further up on your tail a bit more. Popping a bit later or popping a bit earlier. Never underestimate little spots like this because the spots like this that gets you learning tricks and then becoming more confident at skateboarding and then from here you can take it from this little red curb here to like a bigger ledge maybe a hubba maybe even a rail you know so never underestimate spots like this because they're super fun nine times out of ten especially if you don't get the kick out and I think being back here out of the car park over there no one's really coming back here matter the public view I could probably skate here all day and wouldn't get kicked out. I've been here for about two and a half weeks now and it has not rained once I thought it was gonna rain today because there's a bit of overcast in the morning and then yeah the sun poked its head out but yeah it's true what they say it never rains in Southern California actually it's not true because last time I came it rained for like two weeks straight probably not two weeks probably rain for like a week and a half last time I come I think that was in November December 2019 so yeah super glad it hasn't been raining this trip. I just dropped a comment on Dan Corrigan's last video of him skating this new park in La Puenta I believe it's called with some of the Powerwell dudes and someone replied to my comment saying that I should meet up with Dan I said like I'd love to and he just replied right now I don't know if you guys can see he said his can once his ankle is healed so yeah probably not a big deal for a lot of people but I've come a long way I've literally come from the other side of the world Sydney Australia to come up here and skate with other skateboarders and skate youtubers so I'm very excited I don't know if you guys can tell but I'm happy. If you've made it this far in the video thank you so much for watching had a lot of fun skating those red curbs I'm probably gonna go back there a bunch it's only kind of like 15 minutes down the highway but I'm probably gonna go back there a bunch to skate hopefully learn some new tricks on but yeah if you guys enjoyed this video let me know in the comment section below more skating to come shout outs to everyone watching these videos and following my journey so far over here it's been a wild one it's been crazy but it's been fun but yeah once again guys thank you so much for watching and I'll catch all of you all in the next video


blue stars raider rookie majae hey what's up jonathan blue stars a petri raider rookie how are we doing today are we doing today jonathan there's a troy anderson raider rookie there's a um alvin kimara blue stars isaac spiller wandale blue stars uh cd berry's your favorite player nice he never really got to watch him much blue is seen there's a blue stars of dan jones daniel dimes sender guards on the guardians now what the heck carla gordon raider rookie blue stars of juju there's a retro series jim kelly hollow Sutton and alante taylor raider rookie matty corral raider rookie base so my house tj watt steelers rookie's jamal gridiron kings there's a hollow raider rookie carrier elam for the bills jordan davis jordan davis and jalen carter that's a lot of weight coming at you that's a thousand pounds coming at you they lighted up of gary wilson not quite but it's two big guys there's a nice one there we got a rock uh brock perty raider rookie nice just named him starting qb greg dolchish raider rookie i didn't even know they were in the same division that's cool it's kind of some long trips there you got to go all the way up to uh minnesota and uh green bay good luck guys box five and guys got select team all coming up next halfway full let's fill it up calvin awson there's a my house hollow davante adams hollow jordan davis or jordan uh brooks there's a rookie lighted up ken walker back was strong there's a quay walker a j brown legendary logos birds tyquan thorton hollow clad and dan bellinger there's a lighted up mohomey there's a blue star as raider rookie nailer danie gray raider rookie and your blue jr there's a damian pierce nice one there blue stars texans skylar tomsen set single season records for intense completions yards and completion of percentage last year that's crazy blue stars of minka so g know how to better year than russ ever did in seattle blue stars of george kittle the g willie gared wilson jets charles cross raider rookie blue stars of david muck americk and guys select team all coming up now one more box will be there blue stars of christian kirk uh select team all each uh box will give you um three greens to 89 trying to see some big ones there four teams per spot and four promo spots per spot purchase i think he's gonna have a better year this year than last year bret but yeah i'm not i'm not a huge russ guy i think i'll have a better year this year though with shan peyton brye rob rookie diamond hands is cd there's a hollow christ jones raider rookie binotto damian pierce raider rookie it's a howie long retro series it's a hollow raider rookie fedarian mathis kevin harris that's true very true i guess he could but it would it would be hard jalen herz dominators rookies jahan doxon hutchinson for the lions benzema saudi team it doesn't even say like the name of the team it just says benzema saudi team adds midfielder name still in the workshop tdp doesn't even say the name of the team that's hilarious 51 million for fabinho good lord man they got a lot of money to throw around blue stars raider rookie ingram that is crazy why it blue stars another raider rookie blue stars got sauce go jets on the second blue star sauce fedarian mathis we did hit a downtown we hit it in the last six boxer it was a uh it was a brady downtown brady downtown keenan allen blue stars blue stars of stafford jalen nailer i'm jahan doxon two packs left must be must be how you doing today ladies got a blue star geandre switch that's on the stream yeah how we doing today ladies ladies blue star of cordial baddison on the back got me asking questions all righty there guys that will do it for our optic football retail six box number 10 get those right out to you thank you guys ladies uh star wars is full star wars is full guys appreciate that what you said that just makes me this reminds me of dealer no deal there hi howie hi howie have you seen the key and peel from mad tv the dealer no deal yeah oh my god no i haven't seen that one i've seen the it's so good i've seen the snl skit with um oh who's the guy who played zoro no bandaris yeah bandaris he was like contestant he had no idea what he was doing what was the promise that's funny it was pretty good that was pretty much what the key and peel one was i didn't know what was going on you would like hit the button go no deal yeah yeah we didn't get nothing no you won five hundred dollars oh we're gonna pay the rent today i didn't see that but i can imagine it's good it's good it was mad tv so it was before key and peel it was those two they were together it was really good skit we're gonna pay the rent today all righty guys we are up to select team all a full case random division style got four left four left yeah i i wasn't around i wasn't even born probably when it was live but i have seen a good bit of it for sure with jim carrey uh the wanes yeah that that show is really funny too that's a good sketch show jamie fox a little bit in there i think all righty guys i think we might go on and uh do these star wars first and then we'll try to keep on filling here can do these star wars here first all righty guys we'll do star wars now um it was set to go at midnight anyway so we'll get it going here um we'll circle back to team all and the mega dual case let me get the names typed in here for star wars and we'll get the first one going we got three we got three and not tonight chris not tonight no no you want to come take over though chris we could probably go all night i'll just go home at at two righty guys let me get these names typed in um these are random hit styles so we'll be uh don't we type it in the night or the uh hits as we go um we'll do a random at the end let me get these going um so that we'll be ready i saw they got a new one uh he got a new one maybe um it's on courtes's desk but uh lane brought it in earlier can it be for this one that's what i'm that's what i'm saying i saw him carry one in earlier though all righty guys got the names typed in let's get going here in just a minute the paper the paper is like falling away from the trays it's like breakers to life filling quickly guys for um for wednesday all righty guys let me get the case we'll get started on star wars three of them coming sounds good chris sounds about like what i do just wing it you know all righty guys so we'll get going on star wars here we'll move these select divisions righty guys let's get going on star wars number 46


In regard to understand the political behavior and political participation today's session is comprised of the case discussion on a case study that is the voting behavior in rural and urban areas of Punjab. Punjab means definitely the province of Pakistan. Why the case study of Punjab? Because having a larger population, but that population is firstly divided into rural and urban areas, then the various classes those represent the population of Punjab. We are having upper class, we are having middle class and definitely there are the lower middle class is also there in the province of Punjab. So the demographic profile is quite interesting. So if we may try to understand the voting trends of Punjab, we can apply those trends into many other areas. The electoral and voting majority of Pakistani citizens has not reached its good standards yet. But there are definitely some determinants, some factors. Those influence the voting patterns in Pakistan like ideological and brotherly system that is very much strong in determining the trends of voting in Punjab specifically and specifically in the rural and urban areas where the brotherly system is very much strong while deciding the voting pattern. Then there are experienced of Pakistan regarding the non-party elections in 1985 and that election specifically highlighted the issue of brotherly system in the politics of Pakistan. Because on the basis of brotherly politics, the ideological affiliation that is seen on the basis of ideological affiliations, it got further weakened and the brotherly trends and brotherly politics, it was much strengthened. In the case of Punjab, brotherly and caste system are key features of the political culture of Pakistan. If we listen to these terms very much in daily life, during the election campaign, we get to hear that the candidate is from the brotherly, so he has a lot of hopes in this area. And on that base, the candidate, the leader has given the ticket. This is also in the cities and in the regions, especially the brotherly and caste trends that are dominated by brotherly politics, ideological and party politics, but if the candidate is from the caste, the caste is from the brotherly, then he buys a ticket from his home, from his area with a specific number of votes, from his party. So this is very alarming that if a particular area's political culture, its base, its foundation, even today in the 21st century, is that on the basis of brotherly and caste, people are their affiliations instead of party priorities or instead of some ideological affiliation. So in this way, following this method, how is it possible for a strong democratic system or democratic traditions or institutions to be able to measure the importance of any society? So when we look at Punjab's case study or want to determine its features, we can see that in the last many elections, the brotherly and caste system was the main determining factor while deciding the majority of the casting of votes. In the same way, when the system is established after the elections, the cabinets are formed on the basis of the winning votes, then also the brotherly politics and caste affiliations are seen in the dominating rule. So in the Punjab's case study, where we saw that if we look at the background of the brotherly politics from Pakistan, then the brotherly politics remained a part of this area. Even after becoming Pakistan, from 1985 to 1985, when non-party-based elections took place, then the elections that took place, the trend was very dominating, where the affiliation of candidates, more than their party, their brotherly and their caste was dominating while getting the majority votes. The majority of the people were casting their votes on the basis of this type of affiliation. The majority of the people were casting their votes on the basis of this type of affiliation.