Hi there, my name's Dean. I'm from London, London, England and I wanted to take this opportunity to discuss my experiences with narcissism. A lot of people on this channel have spoken about having a narcissistic partner, which is usually a story, but mine was a little bit different. My narcissism was actually someone who I felt was a friend of mine, a long-term friend, a friend who I believe would be a confidant and turns out I was wrong. But this way they said it that never work with friends. It never ends well. Should have healed the wound. I met my friend all the way back in 2005 at football. He was from a mutual friend and it was like a group of them. Out of all the group, he was a key cappy. Always had that sort of banter. Like he was always the prancer. Always good for a laugh. But at the same time he was kind of like the leader of the group. Every time he said something, everyone would stand to reason. Every time he had a plan, everyone would come. I kind of admired that kind of quality because I never had that quality growing up because I didn't have the confidence to have that sort of quality growing up. As years passed, it started at football. Then we had days in. We've had nights out. We had days out from computer games at his house, to bowling, to drinks at night. That sort of thing. Also as years passed, while I was either at university or in and out of work, he was solid in his job and he had for himself. Every time I came to his house, I always noticed that he had the newest fashions. He had the newest tech. He had a car. He had dogs. He had the coolest parents. I admired him because he's the kind of environment that I knew that someone could really grow from. I never had that growing up. I'm going to be honest with you. I kind of admired him for that too. As years passed, again, I was in and out of work. I think it was in late 2011. He came to me asking me whether I'd be interested in joining security with him because that was his job, by the way. He was in security. That's why he's able to afford all the stuff that he has. I was intrigued because the money was definitely appealing. At the same time, I wanted to do my own thing. I was in my own jobs. I had endless interviews. I never got went anywhere. Ultimately, I did get a job late in 2011. I was working in a gadget shop, which was a pretty good job. That's not the point. It was in 2012 when I decided to jump over to join security. It all started with a course, which I passed. The situation happened where it was a criminal situation. Things got held up. Then I got another job. I ended up getting a job working in a gadget store, which again was pretty cool. As time passed, I came to realize that my job was kind of, as far as requirements, but it was late in 2014 when I moved to a brand new company. Because it was more close to home, it was perfect for him. Also during his time, his new boss asked him if there was any people who would be interested in joining too. He put my name up. They got in contact with me. I met them. I had to fill out a few forms. I got back to them and that was it. I was in. I started in October 2014. Then I went to the job. I did a bit of training. I did the job. I'm not going to say I was the best, but people make mistakes and I did make mistakes. I messed up, but nobody's perfect and we're all human. I had his position. I lost it. I ended up moving from place to place until I ended up landing at his site. I ended up landing on his team where he was supervisor and I was under him. Again, I wasn't perfect. There were times where I didn't do everything correctly, but again, I'm used to the job. Who's perfect? Who gets it right the first time around? Then there were times where I messed up and he criticized me for it. I put my hands up and maybe their dues. I did need to step up and be better, which is what I resolved to do. At time pass, I came to realize that there was more to him than what I previously thought. That there was more to his character where he started acting out of the way which I didn't like. I'll give you an example. There was one time there was a leaving party and he expected me to be there at a particular time and I was late because I wanted to get a haircut because I wasn't going to get a haircut because I wanted to look presentable for the party. The moment he met me, he started turning on me, getting nasty, slagging me off and saying some nasty things. Then he walked away and I was there thinking who are you? At time pass, things happened. It was 2016 where it was the start of things. We went on holidays twice that year. First was in August, it was a bit of a day in Paris and it was during this time again he started acting in a controlling way. It was my idea for me, him and a friend of a friend of ours to go to Paris and he was controlling the entire thing even though it was my idea and I didn't like that. Also it was the case of first of all it was my idea to book a day in Paris but then I did that and then time pass and then before we went he started speaking about how we could have made it a few more days, we could have made it a couple of days, we could have stayed over but I was there thinking but then if this was the case why don't you bring this up before we went, before I book the tickets which would have made a lot more sense. But yeah he was kept talking on about it but at the end of the day it's too late because the tickets had already been booked so there's nothing I could do. Anyway we spent the day in Paris I thought it was amazing, it was amazing time. I believe it was actually the first time I was out of the country, out of this country in over 20 years believe it or not. But it was an amazing experience and it was a beautiful city. Then believe it or not it was like buses, two came at once, me, him, a couple of others who we worked with, we all went to Madeira, just before Christmas, two of them are actually from Madeira or half-married family from Madeira and again during this time it was again it was an amazing place, a beautiful place and because we had a car, they hired a car to take us all over the place because they didn't have like a frequent travel schedule. They didn't have like a frequent bus route or train service so they had to hire a car to take us from A to B. But again during this time he was acting in a way where he started being all controlling and nasty and manipulative and he started acting in a way which I was left thinking again who are you. Anyway we had that and then it was 2017 where things changed as far as I was concerned because during this time I think it was in 2015 2016 where I felt that everything that I was doing wasn't quite, it didn't really work out for me. So I came up with a plan. I started, I embarked on a journey of personal development and it all started with and and my way of doing it may be a little bit unorthodox because I because I thought that the people like Eva had the confidence and they basically just get what they want and some people some some people don't. I'm number two and so I came up with a plan to learn the skills to be able to to get to that place and it started with YouTube videos and it evolved from there. They went towards books, audiobooks, courses, webinars and the likes. But on this journey of doing this I spent more time doing that and spend less time with my friend and he knew and he noticed that and he won and was he happy about that? No he wasn't but I didn't understand why because at the end of the day it was I mean it's not like it's not like he didn't have his own life to live. He's not like he didn't have his own friends, he didn't have his own things to carry out so I didn't see it as a big deal. But anyway this is why I decided to focus on and for some reason he was he was unhappy. He started making snyder remarks about the fact that I don't know he probably thought I was abandoned in him. And then the remarks became more and more frequent until the point where is that I decided that I wanted to bring him into the folders to what I'm doing with what I'm doing is the reason why I have been so distant. So I told him about it and thinking because in the past he has he has been so supportive because situations have happened that he's supported me through it. So I thought he would support me through this as well. But was he supportive? No. But was he supportive? No he wasn't.   And since then after that after that he would embark on a campaign where not only would he continue to remind me of this but he would start to come in a lot more controlled and he would start doing things where he would, it's kind of like he was trying to get my attention but he was doing it in a way which was completely nasty. He would gas like me, he would insult me, put me down, he would he would he would commit to gaslighting actions and the likes. I'll give an example. It was at the beginning of 2017 after our holiday in Madeira. We had a conversation about where to go to next and I was fixated in going to Spain and I pinpointed where I was to go. I want to go to Barcelona but he wasn't about that. He said he wasn't about going to Barcelona. He said he wanted to go to the Canary Islands or something like that. Anyway we had this long drawn out conversation and it didn't go anywhere but he revaled that we would have his conversation later. But that conversation never happened because of this situation where we ended up where things happened and where it's like he where he's where things started falling apart. Anyway month later I go to I decided I wanted to go to Barcelona because it was it was June the beginning of the summer. I was the wolf, the wolf in the air, the birds were singing out. I was just feeling the vibe of wanting to go. I know for a while that he didn't want to go because he already told me that he didn't want to go. So I decided to book some tickets and I decided to go by myself. So I go by myself. With all the bells and whistles, I had an amazing time. And then I come back afterwards, a few days, about a week later, I come back to work. And he shows up because my team was on the day shift. His team was on the night shift. So he comes in for his night shift. He looks at me in a with a school face and he's all he's all snapping at me. Like shouting at me. All happy. He's saying I can't believe we went to Barcelona without me. And then I made him aware that he had already told me that he never wanted to go to Barcelona in the first place. So which is why I told him and then he responded with I want to go everywhere. So now here's the thing that I don't understand, right, is that he was he what months ago, months prior, New Year 2017, he told me he didn't want to go to Barcelona. He had no aspirations to go to Barcelona. But I go to Barcelona a few months later and he already has already and he really changed his mind. I don't even think about that. But um, one of the things that I that I came to to discover about him, which was the reason why we felt what I think fair the part is he started becoming a lot more controlling. He would he became into actions where he was, he was trying to control how how I live my life. I'll give you examples being because I tend to work out at home. I had I had a co worker he he he wanted he spoke to me about the possibility of me working out in the gym with him. And I said no, because I was happy with the workouts I was in at home. He was he wouldn't he wouldn't instigate himself and tell me, oh, we'll tell it saying, oh, you're working out at home. But it's not working because you look at you still you still have a shape. Well, which is nice thing for for friends to say to another one, isn't it? Other things including other things including he would also embark on trying to undercut me in regards to this, this person development journey I've been going on, making fun of it. Like he was trying like, I thought he was trying to discourage me from doing it, which which is surprising to me because for me, for me, I don't know about you, but when you're friends with someone, I want to expect your friend, I want to spend my friends if I'm doing something that was meant to be designed to be positive and good and for the way good. I expect my friends to be happy for me and support me and motivate me and drive me to make make make the whole thing happen. I had his vision. I was hoping that in fact, I was hoping that this is something we could have done together. But I guess not. I would say the last straw for me was what was um, what was there's this one task that I used to do or what I did at work when I when I was there. And it's like, it was outside of the task I was expected to do. It was part of the one part of the job on in the site. And and I was in a task which was outside the box of what my tasks are, especially to be done. But it led towards the time efficiency of the job. It gave it made sure, but me doing it made sure that everyone got the task done a lot quicker, which is good. And I did this. I did this. I use this little thing that I guess on with a few of my supervisors. I think I was five or six of them. And and no one had a problem with it. I I know no one had a problem with it. I even got a few thank yous for it. My my supervisor at the time. Um, I actually saw supervisor, you know, it's a long story. My supervisor at the time I was having problems with because I felt that he was becoming a bit. I thought that he was he is actually in a narcissistic way. I thought that he was being a narcissistic bully too. But even he came to me and told me where to figure a fee way to use some initiative. But my friend bear in mind that my friend wasn't wasn't one of the supervisors I utilize this with. He had no connection with my super my team in any way shape or form. But yet in his mind, he decided that because in his mind that he felt that my doing this task was wrong, that he thought that he needed to tell me about it. He needs to make a big issue over it. But at the end of the day, right? He had nothing to do with him. So the fact that he had no that he had very little respect for me to in a in a structured imagination, stay in his lane, or mind his own business, he wouldn't do that. He kept harping on and on and on about this whole is this ring that I was doing. Despite the fact, he had nothing to do with it. So I grew fed up by him keep kept doing it. So I so I took him outside one time and I issued him a warning not to do it again. Not only did he do it again. He did again four days later. I mean, this time he elevates it to a point where he pretty much embarrassed me for everyone. He embarrassed me for all all of our coworkers who is there he he shafted me for everyone over, shuffling me for everyone, show me I'm from everyone and he storms out of the room like like he's some sort of master. And it was at that point where I I had enough. So after that, I caught time on our friendship. I spoke to him and told him, you know what, our friendship is not. And I walked out, he kind of come after me and and speak to me and like try to to talk talk to me and resolve his issue. But but that was it as far as I was concerned, because it is like if he really wanted if he actually regarded our friendship a lot more, then he then he would have then he would have stopped doing it. But he he would have stopped doing what he did. But he did it anyway. And then after that, what happened after that was, was that there was this there was this path that that would that would that he would embark on, where he was, where he was one minute, he would say how sorry is for what he did. That was a big misunderstanding. How it was a big mistake. How how we can sort this out, we can sort this through. And how we can and this is a phrase I look back now and I and it makes me six of us done thinking about how we can fight for our friendship. But in the meantime, while he was talking about how we can fight for our friendship, he would continue to to come at me if I ever whether that'd be privately or privately or publicly, he would continue to insult me and put me down. So one minute he's telling me over the we can sort this out, we can fight it. So we can we can sort this out between us. We can fight for our friendship. Next minute he would insult me for put a barrage of insults, making fun of me pulling me down saying how how how much of a screw up I am how how no girl will take me seriously how I mean, it was it was it was too much. And then 2018 hit. And you know, and then what happened was, was that it was becoming too much not because of him, but it was also because of my supervisor, where I decided that enough was enough. And initially, I was going to quit my job. I was going to resign and I was going to leave. You know, I thinking maybe I was a bit bit hasty. But then I saw this video, which changed everything for me. And it was probably one of the spots videos I've ever seen. And instead of asking and instead of resigning for a post, I suppose my security manager, because I was unhappy with the situation that was transpiring in the in the building. And rest assured, rest assured, everyone knew about it. My manager knew about it. The building manager knew about it. And even the higher ups knew about it. And so, so ultimately, I spoke to my manager and I told him that I wanted to transfer out to the building, because it was becoming too much. And I just couldn't handle all the, the, the, the toxic environment that was embarking on around there. And initially, my, my, my, my, my manager at the time wanted me to think about it. But I, I said, I had my mindset set up. I made my mind made up. So we go into 2018. And he was still doing, doing all the, all the nasty stuff. And, but, but one day, one night, I remember his one night, I think it was in February. And it was a snowy night. And, and all the night shift. And my, my mate was covering on my, on my team that night. And he comes to me, like, apparently, appearing on the level. And he told me how he find, he, he, he found out, he discovered that I asked to leave the site.  Now, I, I know for a fact that that I didn't buy what he was, I didn't buy what he was selling. So I just totally rebuffed what he had to say. And this is, this is, this is the kickoff. He told me that after this, he said, because I wouldn't, I wouldn't bow down to his request, I should, should we consider my decision to leave. He wanted me to pay back the money that he, he paid for me in regards to my security job, like my security course. Despite the fact that every, there was many occasions when I told him, when he told me, after I offered him to give him his money back, he'd always say, don't worry about it, don't worry about it, don't worry about it. But all of a sudden, but all of a sudden, now the funk is hit the fan and all of a sudden is now giving my money back. Funny how that works, isn't it? Anyway, months passed. Anyway, I had, I had to continue engaging in a situation where I was trying to do my job the best of my ability. But yet I had to encounter both my, my mate and my supervisor who, who was treating me so horribly. And it's like, I, it's like, I had, and, and yeah, the other times where I succumbed to it, and I made some tremendous areas of judgment. And that all that did was it became further for them to use against me to to put me down. And then, and obviously, and also because of the situation that happened, I ended up, I ended up getting hurt by my, I ended up getting disciplined by my, my bosses for the act as I committed to. And I put my, and I raised my hands and I accepted the consequences. Anyway, times passed and I was still going through this whole situation when one day my, the building manager spoke to me and he told me there's this brand new site that was opened in an upsuit. And I accept it up. I said, I accept. And then he told, he gave me a few, he gave me some information about what the site was going to entail and what it was, especially on me. And he, he wouldn't even know when, when, when training is happening. Now, now, as far as my friend goes, he knew that he's, he's consistent, like trying to convince me that we could save our friendship. He wasn't working. So guess what happened? So enter the flying monkeys. One which was I felt was I was disappointed by because, because he, because she was one of the cleaners there. Sweet old African woman. We always, we go on about the house on fire, had a great rapport. And we always, we, we always get, get along because one of the things that things that we, we have in common was the fact that we share the same birthday. And we always had, and we always, and I always come in every year, bringing some cake. That's a, that's a, that's sharing, sharing occasion. Anyway, she, she jumped on the bandwagon and, and, and spoke to me telling me how I, how I should sort this out with my mate, which I, which I, which I was absolutely dismissive of until, and then when I spoke to her one time, or one of the things that he did, which included sending me a nasty, nasty text. She stopped, she stopped, she stopped. She didn't, she didn't get, she didn't get involved after that. Unfortunately, there was another one where who got involved, which was a super, which was a security, security officer that was on his team. And he, he too was coming to me telling me how I should give my, give my mate a chance. And even, and then I spoke to him, told him about the situation and, and the things that he was doing. And lo and behold, the next thing I would know was, was that the next time I would see my supervisor, the next thing I would see my mate, everything that I, I told to, to that security officer who was, who was trying to convince me to sort this out with him, lead back to my mate. And at this point, I just realized that I couldn't be trusted. Now it's a, it's at this point I realized that, that I couldn't trust anyone there, especially him. Um, anyway, I had to go, I had to deal with this whole situation up until it was late, August 2018, when, when I went on holiday for a week, because it was, it was my birthday, so I decided to take the entire week off that week. And it was at this time where I got contact from my, from my, um, that I got, I received contact from my book, from my manager telling me, calling me in to, to, um, do the training for the new site. Which never happened, but because um, things got held up. Anyway, I, everything got held up. But then, then, then I got a second contact, so, second contact after that. And, and my supervisor told me that my, my mate out on the blue was leaving. I, um, I, I never knew the circumstances why, but it just came out of the blue. Just, just out of nowhere. He decided to go back to his old, old company, because, um, because, um, the company that we were with, we were with one company, and then it, then it moved to another company, and it moved to, it moved to another company, and it moved to another company again. And, um, and he went back to his old company out, out of blue, and, and about a week later, he was gone. Um, so that, so that situation, that because he, he was no longer there, but I still had to contend with my supervisor who, who was also, who was also becoming a problem. And then, and then September was an interesting month, that month, that year, because, um, not only did, not only did, did training come up that year, that month, and I actually, and I moved onto the new site, but one of our other colleagues moved, moved on, that was on our team, he moved on too. So, he, he lost two, he said he lost two security officers on, on his team. And, um, so I moved on to the new, uh, as I went for the training, I moved on to the new site and, and I have to say, moving on to the new site was amazing, because, because one of the biggest things that was, that was the best part about it, was that it was a one-man site. During the day, it was, it was, um, reception, and during the night, it was security, and it was me and another guy, um, it was me and another guy who rotated during, um, each week. And it, what, I mean, what, what, I mean, it was such a cool site, because it was ecologically friendly, mixed technology, and the best part about it is, the peace and quiet. The fact that I didn't have anyone sitting there also getting, getting involved in my business, that was the best part about it. Unfortunately, I ended up losing this position form. Unfortunately, I ended up losing this position form last later, because, um, because this is a way, I think, I think it was to do some, like, to do some timekeeping, and fair enough, that's, that's how it goes. But during this time, two things happened. First things first, I started watching videos during one of the last hours on the site. Um, previously I was watching videos about toxic people, negative people, toxic people, um, bullies, emotional vampires, and then, and then we could, then I accidentally changed into the world of narcissism. And once I started watching videos about narcissism, narcissism, everything clicked. And it was like, I felt that, and not only did it click for me in regards to this situation with, not this situation, it also clicked with me for a situation I was, I was dealing with, dealing with prior, because, because I had this, this same type of situation with my sister, with my sister growing up, because, because for some reason I just felt, I, because I was going through a situation with my sister, and, and I came to realize how unbelievably selfish and entitled she was, and, and, and how much of a, a spiteful bully she was at times. And I didn't click what, as to why it was, but I didn't know what it was, but it was like, but it's like, with these videos, um, it all, it all clicked for me. I won't go into what happened with my sister, but I will, what I will say is this, if I told you some of the stories that she did, it would make her toes caught, toes curl and blood boil. And what made even more of a kicker was when I was going through the situation, I had, my, my friend was right there by my side, supporting me, telling me, ignore her, don't worry about her, keep, just keep going, forget about her. I know that my, my friend was also what, was, was, was just as bad, bad as she was. Anyway, like I said, I ended up using the site a few months later, and during this time, no, no, this time, um, a new year, my mate sent me email saying, happy new year, no offence kind of thing, and I just, I just rebuffed him, I shut him down, and then he turns around and starts sending me a nasty message again, nasty message again. Second time I heard from him was after I lost my, my new site and he, and he would, he would, um, send me, um, he would again send me nasty messages, nasty remarks, calling me a screw up, calling me a failure, that kind of thing, and, and it was also, it was also basis accusations in regards to, to the circumstances of why I lost, I lost the site. He, because, because, um, it does one, one guy who, who I also work with, and he, he told him, and he, and he assumes, and he, because he saw some adult stuff on there, that's what his, his, his angle was, but, but I know, but the accusation was completely baseless because, I, I, I know for a fact that, that, that, that, um, that, that his, um, accusation was completely baseless because, quite simply, it, it doesn't matter. But the, but the accusation, but the fact of the matter is that he wasn't there, he, and he didn't have any rights to, to, um, he didn't have any rights to, to remark about it. Anyway, um, anyway, I moved, I lost the position, I had to go to dedicate relief, which is pretty much, I was covering as and when I was needed.  And, and it never since then, but, but before that happens, he sent me this message with basis accusations and nasty remarks. Again, it was his usual MO, making fire on me for being there, being there, but, but it was, it was a, it was just so nasty and horrible. But this time, I didn't react in the way that he expected. I, this time, I thanked him for his, um, kind words of motivation and inspiration.  But I did it in a way where, um, it was a Freudian slip where I, I made it aware that I, I knew, I, I made it aware that, that, uh, that the only person he's thinking about in his whole entire situation is himself. And then, and then after, I think it was about a week later, I'm after, like, my constant watching of, um, last season videos, I decided enough was enough, I needed to go no contacts. So I blocked him from, from email, I blocked his number, I blocked his social media, um, connections. I just, I just, I just, I just quite simply cut him off. And this happened, this happened in, I think it was 2019. I had a couple of jobs, I left the job and I had a couple of jobs after that and then, then, then the lockdown here. And then, and then, and then during this lockdown, during the COVID lockdown, I did go shopping a number of times and there was one time where I actually saw him, um, in, in the local town and I saw him coming out of a local train station and I was on the bus on the way home. I don't think he saw me, but I'd say he looked, looked, looked relatively, um, troubled, shall we say. And, um, that was the last time I ever saw him. That was two years ago. But, but even though this happens, um, that wasn't the end because one of the things that, that I, I went through after the, the, the, the experience was, the biggest thing was for me, rumination. And it was like, I kept going through all the situations that took place and, and it was like, it, I just felt like it was going through my mind again and again and again and again. And I was like, I wish I just had the strength to stand up to him.  I guess it, I guess it was survival skills, I guess, because it was like, I just, if only after everything that I'm currently, I am, I learned about how to deal, deal, deal with narcissism and that. I was, I was there thinking, I wish I knew this a lot sooner. It could have, it could have saved me so much heartache and, and it's like, I'm, I'm still in, in that place.  And I'm still having a situation, but I'm in a better place where I am since I was, I was in a situation. And I've, and I've embarked on, on carrying on, on this, this personal development journey. And, but I'm Saturn because at the end of the day, right? At the end of the day, right, he had everything going for him. And it's like, he had everything going for him, but it was a case that he didn't know how to capitalize on it. He didn't know how to bring it all together. I mean, I have my issues, I have my flaws and I have my weaknesses, but compared to him, but compared to him, I'm pretty much, compared to him, I'm pretty much, I don't know, give me a name of someone who, who has it all. I had to think about that, but give me a name of someone who has it all, who has it all together. Because I'm that guy, especially compared to him. Um, I don't know what to say. I'm sad to put the situation because I wish, I wish, I was having a situation because it was like, we were friends for over 12 years and, and over, over something so completely minor, he just flushed our friendship down the toilet just like that. But that's okay because I came to realize that in life, when you put certain elements on the pressure, you, you, you ultimately see its true value. With sand, you can make the most beautiful shards of glass or these will most beautiful glass sculptures. With rock, when you put rock under heating pressure, you know, comes rock, rock when you put pressure on it, diamonds.  And my, my make, I see we, my make, I see you fold it. I mean, and they, that's how it goes. Well, I think about, I mean, I can understand that, but one thing I can't understand though is narcissism. Why is control so important?   But I mean, but why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why is it the case that you have to bring other people down when you could, when, when, when could it be a lot more fruitful to just build yourself up, learn to love and accept yourself. And this is something that I have struggled to do in my life, but I'm bound to do that now. This is one of the many things that I have, I'm starting to learn to do in my person on this journey that I'm on. And I'm in a place where I feel that I'm, I feel, I feel great for the first time in my life. I feel great. And as far as our friendship is concerned, I look back now on, on me, me and my friend's friendship. And I can honestly say that our friendship had only ever worked when I felt bad about myself. But as soon as I started making, making moves to improve myself and then all of a sudden he, he was having a problem with that. Like he's the, he's the positive. Like he's negative. Was it the positive, positive police? Whereas like he's saying, oh, he can't do that. Why?  But I'm not, but if this is the way he choose to live his life, then, then he can knock himself out. But I, I should, I no longer wish to be like that.  And I, and I feel happy and positive about that. And I know that I'm gonna, I'm gonna make it.  And it's like, um, and I was, when I knew I was about to become 40, I was, I was freaking out. But I know that I have all the resources with me that I can make the whole thing, whole thing happen from put, from the personal development stuff to the workout stuff. I have quite, I thought I have it all together. And I feel great. And, and I'm, and I thought I'm only getting better. I mean, I have a phrase I use to, to describe the journey, the journey that I'm on. And the phrase is 2.0. I'm, I'm at 2.0. And I'm, and I'm only, and I'm only get, and I'm only getting started. And I mean, I don't have any, I mean, I'm not, I'm not trying to say, I don't have any friends, but I'm hoping one day that I can, I can find that support network who is going to do be that prime force to make this whole, make this whole dream happen. And we'll see. So, I guess that's it. I want to say it's an opportunity to thank you for listening to me and for, for embarking on the story with me. And I, and my advice to you is don't ever think that it's too late to to, to, to reach for the stars and, and search for your dreams. Because, yeah, unfortunately, you're going to encounter, encounter people and they're usually people that are close to you who are going to attempt to drag you down for whatever reason it may be. But as long as you fill it within yourself that you can make it happen, that's the most important thing. And if these people are not, are not going to support you and believe in you and be the prime force to make it happen, you don't need them. They, they, they, they gotta go.  If they, if they can't believe in your vision and dreams, they gotta go. Simple as that. Simple as that. And this is, this is kind of what I wanted to do. That from now on, I'm going to meet, when I meet new people, I'm, I have, I, I have now, because of everything that I've been through in regards to narcissism and that, I have one strike rule from now on, which is that if you, if I meet you and we, we kick, we, we, um, what's good?  You do it again. You're done. It's as simple as that. That's my, um, that's my, my, um, I guess, I guess you can say that's my boundary, I suppose.  And now I have very low tolerance, I have very low tolerance for that. So anyway, like I said, um, I suppose that's it. So like I said, thank you for listening to my story. And, um, and I wish you everyone the best luck on your, on your journey beyond narcissism. So, um, thank you. Take care.


It's the start of a new era for the Leechlake Band of Ojibwe as members were sworn in today to serve on the next government board. Archer Elmore tells us what the council hopes to bring to the future. The people of the Leechlake Band of Ojibwe have officially chosen their next leaders. They were inaugurated onto the council today and a ceremony held at the Northern Lights Casino in Walker. And to say the council is looking forward to take on their roles is an understatement. You know it's just nice to be back. I missed a lot of people from the Caslake area and I just want to really make a good network there between District 1 and the main headquarters again in Caslake. Many on the council are returning members. There's Steve White representing District 2, Robin Michelle Howell for District 1, and Archie LaRose, a secretary and treasurer. It's an honor and privilege getting re-elected to secretary-treasurer position. I've been elected five times as secretary-treasurer in one time as the chairman. It was just like a second chance.  I was at the front office for many many years. I've been basically the administration for the tribe for this will be 25 years. And will faithfully and partially discharge. And will faithfully and partially discharge. For their next term, the elected council members will be looking to help the youth. Currently there are talks to build a new wellness center on the reservation. And the short-term commitment is reviving our sports and rec looking and taking a hard look at our health. You know a lot of our kids need that physical activity and we got to bring that back and revive it and make it more stronger for our people. The first thing we have to focus on is our strength and wellness of our communities right now. I think there's definitely some crisis in our areas so I'm trying to I'm trying to work on that. With the board comprised of many different voices, another thing council members will be working on is coming together as a team. We might have our differences or we might have our things how we look at things but we have to work together as a people, as leaders and on behalf of the reservation band members as a whole we got to do the best we can to represent them. Reporting in Walker, Shromor Lakeland News. Elected officials of the Bug and Agasig School Board and the Leech Lake Housing Authority were also sworn in at today's ceremony.


Okay, hello everybody and welcome to Collaboration, Organization, Cooperation and Technology. This webinar is brought to you in cooperation with WINGS, Worldwide Initiatives for Grant Maker Support, and we will be hearing a little bit about WINGS from Daniela Santos in just a couple of minutes. And just a little bit about myself. My name is Kyla Hunt. I'm the webinar program manager here at TechSoup, and I will be your facilitator today. A little bit about the staff here, our presenters here at this webinar. Today we will be having Briggs Bomba from Trust Africa speak a little bit about his collaboration efforts with the Zimbabwe Alliance, and we will then be hearing from Michael DeLong from TechSoup. He's our community manager here, and we will be talking a little bit about technology tools that will be able to aid you in online collaboration. And then also assisting with chat. Today will be Becky Wiggins, so if you see her name pop up in that chat box, that is who will be answering a lot of your technical questions that you may have about connecting to go-to webinar. Again, any of your questions that you may have, go ahead, type those into the questions pane. We will be keeping an eye out on them, and we will be reading them audibly to the presenters later in the session. And so again, we will be first hearing a little bit about who Wings is. We'll then be hearing from Briggs Bomba about the Zimbabwe Alliance, followed by Michael DeLong about online collaboration tools, and then a little bit about from Q&A from the participants. So, Daniela, why don't you go ahead and unmute yourself and tell us a little bit about Wings. Daniela, are you on? Hello, everybody. Yes. Hello, everybody. I'm Daniela Santos. I'm the Program Manager for Wings. Wings is the Worldwide Initiative for Grandmakers Support. We are a network of networks, and we are global. Our mandate is global, and we are the only truly worldwide network that represents and serves the broad community of grandmakers, foundation, and philanthropy support organization. Our mission is to strengthen philanthropy and the culture of giving to mutual learning, support knowledge sharing, and professional development. So if you'd like to know, if you don't know about us, would like to know more, please visit our website, WingsWeb.org. We'll have a lot of news coming up next month. Okay. Thank you, Daniela. I really appreciate that. And then before we really get started with the content of the webinar, what we wanted to do, what we wanted to do was go ahead and start and provide the poll, a little bit of a polling questions, just to get a feel for who you are. So the first question is, are you involved in any collaborative efforts? And it's a very simple yes-no question. And so far, looking at who has responded, it's about 100% yes. So that's actually really good. I think that then hearing a little bit about further collaborative efforts will be really helpful. And then hearing a little bit about polling will be, or a little bit about technology tools will be even more so. So I'm going to close this in five, four, three, two, one. I'm just sharing that. And it does look like about 89% of you out there are involved in collaborative efforts and 11% are not. And just going ahead and hiding those results. Let's go ahead and go to our second poll. What is your primary interest in joining this webinar? The first option to get more insights for my current collaboration to prepare for new collaborative efforts, to reflect on past collaborations and just general interest in the topic. I'll give you guys just a couple of moments to fill those out. I'm going to close it in five, four, three, two, one. And let's take a look at those results. It looks like 20% of you are wanting to get more insights for your current collaboration. 40% are wanting to prepare for a new collaborative effort. And 40% just want to get more information about the topic, you just have a general interest. So thank you guys. That's really going to be helpful in just allowing our presenters to correctly speak to your needs. And so with that, what I'm going to do is I'm going to go ahead and give the control over to Briggs. And I'm going to unmute him so he can speak with us. Just give me one moment while I do that. All right, Briggs, you can go ahead and show your screen. Briggs, are you there? Hi, everyone. Hi. Okay, can you hear me? I can't. Yes, can you hear me? I can. You sound really good. You can hear me? Yes. Okay, thank you. All right, so I'm going to be talking today about Zimbabwe Alliance. This is a collaborative, it's a donor collaborative initiative which has been in existence for a little over two years now. So the way that we work is that this is an initiative that is hosted by Trust Africa. And Trust Africa is a pan-African ground-making organization which is headquartered in Dakar, Senegal.  And this is a collaboration of like-minded partners. We work within a human rights framework to promote vibrancy with society and democratic transformation in Zimbabwe. The Alliance itself brings donors into society together in a spirit of collaboration with the idea of being to leverage limited resources and increase collective efficiency and also maximize impact on the ground. Our background, as I said, is 2009 when Zimbabwe was coming out of what was one of the worst ever economic crisis for any country. Inflation was over 500 million percent. Total collapse of the economy, more than 90 percent unemployment. Political tensions were very high, but you still had people who were here trying to figure out how to make a living and how to build a better future. So in an inclusive government which brought together the key protagonists in the political conflict was created, we saw an opportunity, we saw an opening resulting from the lowering of political tensions and the potential that was there for some kind of economic stabilization for us to come in and support civil society in playing a crucial role to ensure that the opening gap that we started to see will be widened into democratic momentum and would see its success with democratic transformation in the country. And the reason why collaboration made sense at that particular time was really around how a number of groups could respond in a timely manner without having to invest each individually in the infrastructure that you need to start to making grants in ZIM and pursue other strategies that we're looking at. So a collaborative effort offered the best framework for a timely intervention, particularly for funders who were new to this marble question. So there's always a question of how different people meet, you know, how people, there was a time when a lady by the name Nombonis Ogasa from South Africa came to Washington D.C. on a hunger strike. She was on a hunger strike, 21-day hunger strike to raise awareness about the humanitarian crisis in Zimbabwe and the plight of Zimbabwe refugees in South Africa. And I worked together by that time I was working in Washington D.C. in direct of campaigns for an Africa Solidarity Group called Africa Action and I worked together with Miss Cynthia Ryan who is the principal of the Schooner Foundation to host meetings for Nomboniso. We took her to Congress to have briefings there with people who were working on Zimbabwe meeting with different actors and stakeholders in Washington D.C. And her examples of solidarity was quite inspiring to us. We had all been involved in different ways with the Zimbabwe question, but here was the lady who was putting her life on the block escalator to bring attention to what was happening in Zimbabwe. So after Nomboniso's visit, Cynthia and I kept thinking about how we could do more but also how we could do more together. This event had been better. So that searching and thinking ended up resulting in us organizing a dozen or so funders in Washington D.C. to come to a convening which was specifically looking at the challenges and opportunities of funding in Zimbabwe. That convening was hosted by the Wallace Global Fund and then at that convening we also made sure that there was representation from trust Africa so the Executive Director actually came from that car to attend that meeting. And then from that process it became clear that if we cleared a collaborative framework we're going to be able to respond quickly. We're going to be able to derive quite a number of advantages from that process and then that's how the collaborative itself began. And currently we have Trust Africa based in Dakar Senegal. We have the Skouna Foundation based in Boston in the U.S. We have International Development Exchange based in San Francisco and with the Wallace Global Fund who are based in Washington D.C. We're at a point where we are because of the opportunities that currently exist in ZIM the countries just heading towards a watershed election and everyone sees this as the most defining moment for a generation so just about to have another convening so that we can expand our numbers have a convening and then also discuss the opportunities that are there at the ground. So the way the collaborative itself works is that these different funders pool resources together. Trust Africa hosts these resources as a fiscal agent but also Trust Africa serves as the management for the alliance so the technical things around grants administration around managing the program work that's undertaking or pushing forward the work of the alliance on the ground that's all done at Trust Africa. And then everyone participates in everyone who's a member who's putting resources into the collaborative pool participates in the steering committee and that's where key strategy decisions are made, police ensuring that we are all moving together that's done at the steering committee level but it's a process it has taken a bit of an evolution for us to actually come up with a clear sense of the government structures that we even used to have a management committee at one point early in the game but then we realized that we just a steering committee and a single institution playing the role of management was working. So we coordinate since we're all scattered all over some are in Cape Town some are in Pretoria, Dakar I'm in Harare right now with people in Washington DC San Francisco so a lot of our coordination actually happens electronically and then we create a few opportunities where we're able to meet physically and the approach that we take to making a difference in this map involves convenings so we seek to set the agenda for change by convening people on critical issues of the day or in a way we feel that there are gaps in understanding it could be the context understanding the context so that people can come up with context sensitive responses we've been taking the initiative to facilitate that space creating those convenings and then usually from there we also identify initiatives local initiatives to support through grant making and then our focus is also around capacity building for the differences of society organizations that we're working on and also advocacy so you can summarize our approach by two words change and sustainability so on the change side really we are pushing democratic change social economic change and then sustainability which involves our capacity building we are looking at the sustainability of CSOs and one of our early motivations when we're coming into ZIM or into Zimbabwe we realized that it wasn't just a question of a shortage of resources but it was also a question of those who were not being served by available resources so we've made a particular focus on reaching out to traditionally marginalized groups such as your cultural activists we've worked filmmakers, poets artists of all sorts women's groups especially in a patriarchal setup like ours and community based in grassroots groups and their youth groups as well so in terms of some of the projects that we've worked on the flagship project that we are actually working on right now in ZIM is actually the setting up of an NGO center that's basically creating an infrastructure in terms of physical space resource centers your reference libraries computer work stations your meeting space that people can use industrial printers basically creating an infrastructure where traditionally incapacitated groups are actually able to access this infrastructure and these resources and this IT equipment in a way that helps them have greater impact on their work we are an alliance so this collaboration initiatives that are alliance oriented actually send a piece of our work so we look out for initiatives that go beyond the individual so we've been supporting coalitions and common platforms where civil society organizations are actually able to coordinate strategies and also share perspectives in terms of key processes that are happening constitutional reform elections we've been doing work with cultural activists doing work with community activists also one of the major projects we did was around democratization of local government and then another very important area of our work has been in the area of promoting the Zimbabwe diaspora re-engagement for participation in the country's reconstruction and democratization some of you might be aware that the crisis that I talked about at the beginning those hyperinflation, the collapse resulted in it's estimated that more than 3 million Zimbabweans left or some say a third of the country left so there are a lot of Zimbabweans now in South Africa, in the UK, Australia, New Zealand some in the US and all of us so part of our efforts is to support initiatives that organize the diaspora for contribution to processes that are happening back home on the development level but also on the political level and then the collaborates to framework itself at one point like peeling an onion there are so many layers to eat and for us the outer outer layer which is what brought us together was really this common geographical focus on wanting to make a difference in Zimbabwe but beyond that we had to come to an agreement on a shared perspective of what is actually wrong in Zimbabwe so the characterization of the crisis itself and we've had to invest quite a bit of time to have the same characterization of the crisis because for some it's easy to even personalize the crisis and then for others you're looking at more structural issues so investment of time in developing a shared perspective on the context and the dynamics that are shaping the crisis in Zimbabwe has been very a critical process without that it's just impossible for us to be able to move to other layers so there's been also once we come to an understanding shared understanding of the perspective then we also need to have a shared strategy basically at least a discussion around what's the best way to respond to this so all of those meant quite a lot of back and forth and facilitated processes that allow all of us to come to the same page and so it's been an ongoing shared learning process but the collaborative itself has created a safe place for us to put all our thinking on the table and then move from there and then in terms of what this has meant to the partner Zua on the table I agreed a few lines here from and for him you're saying the collaborative itself prevented a duplication of efforts mark these groups that are on the table but it also gelled in with South Africa's approach it reaffirmed the approach around collaboration dialogue, consultation and then South Africa was already working on a similar process in Liberia and the experiences on either side have been feeding into each other so South Africa collaborates with Humanity United on a major civil society project in Liberia so there's been another platform for learning, sharing experiences and that has worked and then South Africa is a Pan-African institution as I said we currently have projects I think in 35 countries on the continent so already there's a well-developed network across the continent which is important when it comes to solidarity movement building, the advocates that I refer to so the collaborative framework allowed South Africa to avail itself or to offer itself as a service to other grandmakers who want to come into this space but who do not have that kind of background and then for Cynthia Ryan the principal of the Schooner Foundation the benefits have been both political and philosophical Schooner Foundation is a small family foundation so it says as a small family U.S. based foundation they never had this stuff they never had this stuff the due diligence required to understand the complexities of the ever-changing situation on the ground not the means to find the best local organizations doing the work as well as not having the mechanism to find the groups that are not registered there's a 541C3 so South Africa is a fiscal sponsor or anchor for the Alliance it is a 541C3 organization so it has also allowed groups like Schooner Foundation to put in small resources but because of the partnerships with the other Alliance members these are leveraged for greater impact even if you put in 100,000 others are putting in more money and then you're actually able to become part of a process but you know producing much greater impact so there have been challenges obviously and I think part of it is it's even a cultural clash in a way where for small groups they tend to be small don't organizations whereas some of the bigger groups actually believe that the best way to proceed is larger grants so even issues around where do we focus your more professional civil society organizations that have technical capacity or the hard work of pulling up and supporting those on the margins so there's been a bit of those clashes but I think an open process and a commitment to more like a consensus driven process at the state and commit level has been able to help with that so we also had a tough experience early in the process when one of the anchor organizations for the collaborative itself had an internal crisis that was debilitating but they had key responsibilities in the alliance so we ended up losing quite a bit of momentum and to recover some credibility as well with a number of stakeholders so what one group ends up doing is if they're prominent actors in the collaborative will end up affecting the others as well so that's been one of the challenges so I have he is saying now I figured how to move this thing so like all collaborations we had to learn about our individual and organizational cultures approaches and principles what to compromise and what not to compromise what to prioritize and what to believe for later in many ways it has been an opportunity to deepen our understanding of ourselves particularly of our identity and principles Cynthia says we learned that it was necessary to have a paid stuff managing logistics and communications and being the link between the different partners we learned a difficult lesson when a crisis at one founding partner organizations affected several others and I want to say very beginning we actually thought that we were going to do this without some kind of a secretariat to the project we just thought that the founding partners would be able to come together and then share the different responsibilities and tasks among themselves but then we realized that all these different groups already have their own mandates so once you have that to try and save time for the collaborative workers it was just not practical so we ended up investing in actually developing a staff complement to run the collaborative but also trust Africa ended up fully integrating this and then I think for all of us on the collaborative despite the challenges one would say it has been worth it for trust Africa they used to have a number of grants in ZIM but all are now connected they are much more harmonized under the plan of their alliance and they are also leveraging their resources together with others and for groups like SCUNA they feel that it has added value to the grants that they are making and the benefits of having different actors with their own perspectives, sharing ideas, tactics, strategies balances out some difficult process of letting go of total control over how the money will be spent in the process trust and respect for others with different views, points is fostered and developed so it has been worth it how are we doing on time because the remaining slides this is really sorry there are really just examples of the projects some of the projects that we have partnered and then right at the end is a sort of accomplishment we feel like we have been able to secure civil society's voice in key processes advancing democratic transformation I think we have been able to get platform social society groups to dialogue coordinate strategies and collaborate we have been able to have rapid response work in the case of attacks on human rights defenders extending welfare support, even involving paying bail for people who are basically political prisoners and political detentions we have been able to build solidarity in the region and internationally contributed to that and very importantly we have been able to help bring back the Zimdiaspora for which these are actually people who were the most educated, they are the ones who had opportunities to live so they are skilled experienced so we have been facilitating a process for them to come back we are actually working right now on a project where former students of these schools that are now dilapidated but these students are now in Europe in the US through the work that we are doing with the development foundation of Zimbabwe they are playing a role in contributing to the rebuilding and rehabilitation of their schools and also issues around capacity building for rural and urban cancer representatives to identify and engage in democratization of local government so I will leave it at that and do I need to do anything to hand over power to you? I will take the control over in just one second. One question that I was going to ask Briggs that came in which is can you give us some tips on how to overcome some of the cultural challenges when it comes to collaborating? One of the things is actually being able to, you know, a preparedness to engage openly and compromise. Know what you can compromise on because if we were all going to the hard line on where we are coming from it was just not going to work so knowing that compromise on certain things is actually not a sign of weakness but it's facilitated to the process to give and take so that's and then the second thing has also been consultation processes with people on the ground because sometimes we found out that it's easier for the collaborating partners to come to an agreement on an approach if it is if it is substantiated by testimony from the ground so that consultation process with people on the ground in terms of what is the best way to move on. This has actually helped us where some are feeling like no, no, no, we should focus on these areas but then people on the ground, their voice has been very important so that consultation is key. Great, thank you Briggs, I really appreciate that. With that I'm going to go ahead and give Michael control so he can go ahead and get into his section which will be focusing on a lot of technology tools that you can use to help with your collaboration efforts and in that sense I do have a question from Helena asking in terms of key learnings have you used specific tools to plan, monitor and or evaluate collaboration and so Briggs be thinking about that and we will come back to that question after we hear Michael's section so thank you very much, that was a lovely, lovely section and Michael take it away. Hi, this is Michael DeLong, online community manager for TechSoup, part of TechSoup Global Thanks Kyla for having me here today I'm honored to be on this panel and thank you Briggs for that fascinating presentation. TechSoup Global, founded in 1987 as a CompuMentor, helps nonprofits globally get and use technology to heighten their impact. Through its websites, events and community building initiatives TechSoup Global also helps companies and foundations optimize their philanthropic impact. TechSoup has distributed 8.7 million technology products worldwide in partnership with 47 donors which include Adobe, Cisco, Microsoft, Symantec and many others. 167,000 organizations have received product donations from TechSoup with 37,000 of those outside of North America. You see here on the slide it says that 38 countries around the world have been served by TechSoup but we're excited to announce that we can now say this is 39 as we've recently added the Philippines as part of the launch of TechSoup Asia in partnership with Microsoft. To learn more about TechSoup global and its partners and initiatives visit www.techsoupglobal.org So I'm here today to talk about online collaboration tools and online collaboration is quite important to my own team which is the online community and social media team. As a distributed team, we have team members stationed around the US from Seattle to Los Angeles and have members who frequently travel around the globe. TechSoup Global itself has offices in Warsaw and London and many of us work cross-departmentally within the organization and with partners all over. When collaborating online, one important tool to consider is a project management tool. My own team recently has adopted Huddle as a project management tool which is a new product available through TechSoup in North America. As donation programs differ from partner to partner availability in your own area may vary. Huddle is a collaborative online service providing online file sharing and management collaborative communication, project management tools and more. Non-profit organizations and foundations can benefit from Huddle by sharing and editing documents inside and outside the organization managing projects and tasks and communicating via whiteboards and discussion threads. A project management tool is a great way to stay organized and accountable and to keep all of your information in one place. One of the features I personally love about Huddle and some of the other project management tools I've used is that it integrates well with whatever email setup you're currently using whether that's Outlook or Gmail or something else. It's handy to push messages out from the tool into people's inboxes and it's even more convenient that they can respond from their own inboxes back into the tool without having to log in. Moreover, all of the communications related to a particular project wind up in a single place which really makes searching for information mercifully easy. A San Francisco Bay area non-profit I recently spoke with the emerging arts professionals network has found project management tools like Huddle to be invaluable. I recently spoke with the managing editor of their blog who uses the write board and calendar functions to set up a fairly airtight process for suggesting, assigning, submitting and publishing work with auto reminders sent to each of the writers. As all of the fellows are busy with their own full-time jobs having a tool to keep everything organized and easy to see is crucial for the non-profit. An editorial schedule is just one way to use project management tools collaboratively and could also be used by non-profits and foundations for a variety of uses including fundraising events, planning, grants tracking, program management and more. A last great feature I want to call out with the calendar and the project management tool is that under a particular umbrella project you can create multiple related projects and view those in a dashboard. Whatever deadlines and tasks you have assigned in those individual projects will aggregate to the master calendar in the dashboard view. This is another invaluable tool for keeping distributed teams on the same page. So I'm going to demonstrate a little bit what that looks like. Huddle is a fairly new tool for my team so we haven't gotten it completely set up but I'll give you an example of what this might look like. So we used Huddle recently to help plan our annual digital storytelling challenge and as you can see here there are a number of different deadlines and tasks assigned in the calendar and this one here is with a weekly meeting which is assigned to everyone in the working group. So if I go to one of the other workspaces that's under the related project of the community and online social media team I can go and create a task and assign that a due date and then you'll see that when I go back to my dashboard view what I get is the deadlines from various projects rolled up into a master view in the calendar so that's very useful for keeping everybody on the same page and creating a calendar that can aggregate a number of different deadlines across projects. So there are dozens of project management tools out there all with different sets of features so choosing the right project management tool for your own team can be a bit daunting and it's a decision that should be made carefully and with thorough research and testing. A recent article on TechSoup by Laura S. Quinn of Idealware outlined six important features to consider in a project management tool. The six areas include planning project managing tasks sharing and collaborating on documents sharing calendars and contacts managing issues and bugs and tracking time. If you want to read the full article I've created a short link here which is http colon forward slash forward slash b-i-t dot l-y forward slash t-s dash p-m. In the same article Laura goes on to say almost everyone we spoke with desired a single project management super tool that included all of the functionality they cared about. However no one was using something they were actually happy with in this capacity. In fact there was little agreement on which functions should be included in such a tool. So it's unlikely that one package will meet all sophisticated project management needs or all of the areas listed above. This quote highlights just how careful your decision making process needs to be when you're choosing a project management tool that's right for you. When the online community and social media team is choosing their own project management tool we've gone through a number of tools that just didn't seem to stick for us. So we created a page in our wiki which is another online collaboration tool which I'll get to in just a minute. And we listed out all of our must have features and some of the top contenders for us based on research. And from this we developed a Google dot spreadsheet which is yet another important type of online collaborative tool. So we could see how the tools compared in different categories. Now I would really recommend this type of online collaboration decision making process. These types of tools like wikis and document sharing tools allow stakeholders to view and edit documents all at one time and it will tell you when someone else is looking at the document and it even allows for chat within the documents for any important decision making that might pop up on the fly. Besides Google Docs another popular online document sharing and editing tool is Windows Live Skydive. Now this past winter at TechSoup we were working across several departments to launch the Microsoft Global Impact Map which you see a screenshot of here on the slide. And I've included a link as well if you'd like to visit the Impact Map. It's a recent project that's pretty cool that TechSoup Global has worked on. At any rate we were working across many departments and had to organize a complex system of sourcing, editing, and publishing stories and we were using a really wide variety of resources both inside and outside of the organization. So the shared spreadsheet and bio-sharing capabilities of Windows Live Skydive really helped make the process smooth and easy to manage and track. There's some other files sharing and online document resources which include Dropbox which allows for the transfer of large files including video and audio and they have both free and paid accounts. And there's also Evernote which is a great tool for creating living documents that can be shared. So in my role as online community manager at TechSoup, I work with a large core group of dedicated volunteers and they live all across the country. So these volunteers oversee the TechSoup Discussion forums where folks from the social benefits sector come to discuss technology and get their questions answered by peers and experts. The TechSoup Discussion forums are an engaged online environment that is flexible and consistently adapted both in terms of the technology platform as well as the policies around community behavior. In setting the policy and in keeping the forum volunteers up to speed on all the latest technological enhancements, I have found Evernote to be an invaluable tool. Evernote allows me to create living documents that are easy to share and can be accessed from just about anywhere. I have the client downloaded on my iPad and my phone and both my work and home laptops. And it can also be simply accessed online via a web browser. So as changes in policy and process take shape during the online discussions that I have with the core group of forum volunteers, I can go in and make updates to existing training documents in Evernote that reflect these and they're easy to share with all of the volunteers. And the documents also allow for multiple privacy settings in case there's any sensitive information in there. You can share with everyone or with everyone who has the link or you can set up special permissions for just those people whom you want to see the documents. So earlier I mentioned Wikis as an online collaboration tool. A wiki is a website that can be edited by multiple users online using a simple interface that's very easy to learn. Wikispaces is one of TechSoup's donor partners and we use Wikis quite a bit at TechSoup. There are a number of ways Wikis can be used to collaborate online. One example is to create a wiki that over-arches an entire team, working group or even an organization. So while the online community and social media team has recently adopted Huddle as our project management tool for larger campaigns and projects, we also maintain this team wiki that you see here as a team hub and collaborative brain which keeps all of our information organized yet accessible. Wikispaces might also serve a more singular purpose within an organization yet remain a collaborative space for those with commissions. A great example at TechSoup and a personal favorite of mine is the TechSoup Global Editorial Style Guide. This is a really great example of how a wiki might be used to set policy and structure around a specific topic in a non-profit or foundation yet act as a living document that is much easier to update and modify than a binder or a handbook. Another way a wiki might be used is for a specific project. So this is the wiki we used for our recent annual digital storytelling challenge. We had started off using the Huddle project management tool, but we moved to a wiki as we were working with more than 30 partners all over the world. The wiki created an easy access way for all of those stakeholders to pull relevant information without having to create their logins. This model is a really good example for when you might have many stakeholders who will need to get information quickly, but may not necessarily be adding new information to the project or making their own edits. When TechSoup partnered with Connecting Up Australia and TechSoup Canada last year for a tweet chat that we produced, wiki was a really perfect way for us to collaborate across different time zones and to keep our information organized and easy to pull off the wiki into tweets in real time. Whatever type of online collaboration tools you choose, there are some key lessons and considerations to keep in mind. One is to save some time for real time. Many of the tools we've looked at today are asynchronous, but whether it's in the flesh or still online, you really can't be making a human connection. When you can't meet in person, there are a multitude of audio and video conferencing tools to try for virtual meetings. Tools on TechSoup include GoToMeeting, which is by Citrix Online, none of TechSoup's partners, ReadyTalk and Better World Telecom. Other products include WebEx, Adobe Connect and the recently popular Google Plus Hangouts. With Google Plus Hangouts, you can meet with multiple members of your team face to face in real time with little more than an internet connection and a webcam camera and of course you do need to set up a profile on Google Plus as well. Last consideration is the importance of adoption and adherence by all stakeholders or team members. While there are many tools out there to use for online collaboration, it's good to pare it down and keep it simple when possible. The danger of using too many tools is that you wind up searching for information all over the place, which becomes very time consuming. So if you can set a strong policy and keep everyone on board with the process and tool from the outset, it really saves a lot of headaches later. One of our teams here at TechSoup, the community-driven innovation team, uses the idea of non-negotiables. One of these includes the project management tool they use and when new members come on board, there's a clear expectation set that they must use that tool. And I just wanted to tie this back to something that Brig said earlier that struck a chord with me. Of course he was talking on a much more macro level, but on the micro level it's the same problem of the duplication of efforts. So setting that clear policy around which tools are used and how can really help contain that information and keep duplicative work from being done. And so with that, I'm going to wrap things up. Thank you so much for your time today, and back to Kyla. Thank you, Michael. I really appreciate that. I'm going to go ahead and take control back so I can get my little questions slide up. All right. And so if you do have any questions, you can go ahead and type those into the questions pane. We did have, again, that question that came in near the end of Brig's presentation. I'm going to go ahead and unmute Brig's again. And we did have another question come in that was similar to it, which was wondering if Brig's used any online collaboration tools in his collaborative efforts. So, Brig, if you wanted to go ahead and take that question. Yes, we have. One of the big projects that we did was to develop a video, a short video for Zimbabwe Alliance. Unfortunately, I didn't send a link ahead of time, but it's on YouTube. For anyone who wants to get more information if you just YouTube Zimbabwe Alliance, it comes out. It's a video profiling our partners, the work that we're doing, and a little bit of history for the country. So we did that project, and it's scattered all over the world basically as we are, and we used Basecamp in terms of sharing schedules, the files that we wanted to share. We also used Dropbox for large files sharing. We've also used Google Docs and we would not function without Skype conference. So all of our steering committee meetings are basically done via Skype, which colleagues know cost us nothing. So that has worked, and then things like meeting wizard for scheduling our meetings, coordinating affineability, we also have, like we have Cal that we use for putting all our files related to the project online, and all guys in the steering committee are able to access those files online. So I wouldn't say we are that heavy on these tech tools, but yeah, I'm seeing more and more how we would not have been able to function as efficiently without Skype, without having used Basecamp for our video project, and then, you know, those other things. Thank you. Okay, great, thank you very much, Briggs. And I'm not seeing any other questions coming at the moment, and we are almost out of time, but I did go ahead and put my email address in the chat box. So if you are, if you do have any questions after the fact, you can go ahead and email me at k-hunt at techsuitglobal.org. And let me just double check if there are any questions that have come in before I get wrapped up here. It does look like, I believe we have answered most of these in a general way. And so, again, thank you everybody for being here today. And again, if you do have any questions, then we will be sending that YouTube link that Briggs talked a little bit about out to the rest of the audience. And so, Briggs, if you could go ahead and email me that YouTube link after the fact, that would be great, and I can go ahead and send that on. And again, we will be emailing this recording out to everybody after the fact. And so, again, a little bit about who TechSoup is, TechSoup is a nonprofit, a lot like a lot of you who does try to provide technology and technology resources out to everybody who needs them to complete their mission. And again, I do want to thank Briggs and Michael and Becky for all helping me out with today's webinar. And, of course, I want to thank Daniela and Wings for their great efforts in allowing us to provide this webinar series. So, again, thank you everybody for expecting that recording of this webinar within a week.  So, thank you very much. If you could give two seconds of your time to fill out our survey after the fact, that would be great. So, thank you. Have a great day. And so, Lee, if you can go ahead and go to File, Exit, Leave webinar. Teresa, if you are still on, I will be sending out a link about GoToMeeting. Just so you know, for the most part, from my knowledge, GoToMeeting, the question is how many people can share GoToMeeting at the same time. If you're at GoToMeeting account, it's 15 people. If you're on a GoToWebinar account, it depends on what you signed up for, but my account has up, you can have up to 1,000 people. And there's also another tool called GoToTraining, and you can have up to 25 people on that. So, again, thank you everybody, and I will be closing out the webinar.