I came first time in 1957 or 8, I don't remember exactly, with my father. And that time my father had inter, means darshan time because my father used to give distribution for Christmas every year. So he had an appointment with the mother and mother had to select the colours of the diaries. So I had gone with him. But my first meeting was so, so... My mother also told me about the past at that time.  You are my familiar face.  Then again she said, then third time she said this to me. And my father was overjoyed because he was happy that mother loves my child and says all these nice things. So he was very happy. But then I gathered all my courage because I was told that we should not speak when we meet mother. But she wanted me to say something, that's what I felt. So with a very simple English, I told mother, I have never come before here. This is the first time I am coming with my father. Oh, you have not come physically here but you have come here. I said, but how? For me it was something... Because I had to speak a way she was saying that means I have to speak something. Mother said, I have seen you five years before. So I said, when I was only 12 or 13 and how? I have never come. This is the first time I am coming. So I said, mother, how? She raised her hands and she said, I have seen you in my vision. So I remember my childhood experience that time because my mother was very God-loving person. So whenever somebody died in our relatives and she comes back she will say, oh, mother, where did you go? She says, oh, this is our relative uncle, auntie, whatever, gone to God. They have gone to God. So I always said, so nice, they could reach to God. So like that often two, three times this happened. So one day I thought I also want to go to God. I was lying down, how they go to God, they just take rest. So I lie down and very peacefully I was thinking as if I am now going to God. So my mama found something so strange on my face, very peaceful and nice and happy. Otherwise child generally alone becomes unhappy when papa will come, when mama will come. But I said, so what were you doing when we were not here? I said, I was playing, what you were playing, with whom you were playing, nobody. I want to go to God. So I was lying down straight as if I am no more here, I am with God.  She must understand. So my mommy got frightened.  So she took me to temple. That was a famous temple in our, nearby our house. I am Gujarati and Hindu. So we believe in Laxminara and Shiva. So she took me to Shiva's temple and she says, see my child. This is temple and here is the God. You can go, you can come to God every day here. Why she, she takes such a long time and doesn't go regularly. But okay, I loved her. So I believed her. Whatever she says is the right thing. So I, I straight away where nobody is supposed to go, only priest can go. I straight away went inside the inner chamber of that temple. And everybody started laughing because somebody will get angry. Yo, you are not supposed to go, but I found nobody was angry on me. So I went and said to Shiva temple near Lingam. My mother, mommy says you are God, so I accept you as God. But I want to see God who can take me hand to hand and I can walk with God. I can talk with God. I want to see such God. And that happened exactly after five years. So for me it was a confirmation that yes. And whenever I wanted to come, my family always sent somebody else in my ticket. That time we used to reserve ticket one month before. This is about 50s, 55, 56. So every time they will say, no, no, you are young, you know. You can go some other time in the future, but see your grandma is so old.  So I said, okay. So like that it happened many times. So ticket was reserved always for me, but I could not come. So then my father promised me this time, sure. Because that time I was studying and I brought a good result.  In between once my mommy told me, I said, when you all are coming back from Pondicherry, you are talking so much about mother, ashram. Why you people come back? So my mommy got for a shock. She became absolutely speechless. And what do you think? Mother is so busy. She has no time. So she can't talk with us. I was doing my homework and I said, if mommy, you have always time for me. If mother who has no time for me, how can she be my mother? No, no, it is not possible. So this was in between once I had a... So my mommy was very careful before sending me here.  And I had no question, no doubt, nothing. So happy as if I am flying as a free bird in the sky. So happy after seeing mother.  But after seeing her, I felt so free and so happy.  I can't do that. Because we are brought up like that, we respect. So since I had come with my father up to the last minute, we are living at night and I didn't say anything, though I wanted to stay so much. But I knew, I can't say I want to stay here. So when mother said this to me first time, anything is in your mind, please tell me, I will do for you. So I thought such a big thing, what can I ask her? I cannot ask for something small, no? So I loved my mother, my physical mother very much and she was not keeping good health. So said mother, I have written a letter, where is your letter? She asked everybody there, give me her letter, I want to read it. Anyhow, forget it, tell me what you have written in the letter. So I said for my mother's good health. So away she took the blessing packet and away she took in my hand and put so forcibly and said done. So I thought, you know, in our Gujarat side, whenever this Katha who speaks about God stories, in the end God gets pleased and comes and then says Tathastu. Tathastu means done. So I said, my God, this is something like that, you know. I'm so happy I could ask.  I said, what else? No, I'm very happy, you are the best. Then I had brought a small doll for her. I had prepared myself and put my first income into that. It was like a money-backed doll. So somehow I learned one French sentence because I wanted to speak with her in French and I didn't know French. So one Mr. Benjamin in Ashram, I used to go every day and I said this is my reason why I am coming. I want to learn one sentence from you. What is it? I said, I want, this is the first income of my life.  And I gave her that. And you won't believe how way she received it.  So my father was overwhelmed. My God, he had come for his work, for the covers of diaries for the Christmas, you know. And then he saw, everybody was happy, I was happy. Then everything over. Champak Lal Ji was watching everything. Then my father very reserved in emotions, he won't so very fast. When we came out, my father hold Champak Lal Ji's beard and I could see he is so happy. My father is so happy. So thank you very much, you know. He said mother also, thank you very much. I was thinking, still my staying was not working out, you know. Then Champak Lal Ji was little serious, you know. So thank you Champak Lal Ji, we are going, blessings we took, you know. Mother gave me, before leaving, she gave me a flower of plasticity. And to my father she gave sincerity. So we are leaving tonight, tickets are reserved, luggage is packed, you know.  Because I used to cry a lot, you know. So I will see you tomorrow, like that she had told. But my father had said thank you and took it very lightly. So very politely with respect, I told my father. Father, if I come with you now, how can I come to mother tomorrow? What? What? You mean to stay, you want to stay here? No, no, it's all right, but if I have to come tomorrow, then I must stay, you know. Then Champak Lal Ji opened his mouth, you know. Otherwise he was silently watching everything. Why? You are worried about her, so you are, no. I can't think that she has never come out from the house, she stays alone here. Because my father used to keep a permanent, only one room and everything furnished, you know. So room was always there. But how can she stay alone? Even in Bombay also, even we go for, to see movie. We go family together or friends, known friends together. But we don't go alone, no? So Champak Lal Ji says why you are worried about her, so you don't want her to stay. No, it's not that. But her mother will ask me what reply I will give. If you are worried, then don't worry. I'm sure she will be all right here. When he, he never speaks Champak Lal Ji much. But when he said to this to my father, my father had to listen to her and respect her, his words. So my father left and I stayed. This is how it started. But then after reaching home, my father had to face my mother, you know. So he says, where is Naina? My father says, listen, I will tell you everything. No, no, where is she? So my mother thought they are father and daughter playing, making me, you know. She must be hiding somewhere. 10 minutes part, 15 minutes part. Where is Naina? Where is she? Is she coming in another taxi? Then my father told, no, I don't believe. How can you do this? How can you do this, you know? Then within 15 days she came here and she says nothing doing. And I think mother felt that this will be too sudden and too much for my mother. So she told me, you will come back. It's okay if you go now, but surely you will come back. Which was, I was finding it impossible. Because I know our society, I know the family tradition. She has told me now, but for me it was like a train cannot go, cannot leave the station with me. I am going to stay here only, you know. But I said, now in between physical mother, spiritual mother. I have to respect both. I love both and I must do the right thing. So I had to leave. I left for two years, studied, finished and then came here. And in 1963, she gave me a work in Sri Aurobindo Society Guest House. I was the manager from 1963 to 88. And what happened in between, there are many things. But I will speak about Auroville. The beginning of Auroville started from there. In 1966 or 1967, one guest came from France. And I was not so comfortable with, very comfortable with our Indian guest and Indian people. I like them because I always appreciate the external perfection of the western countries and Europeans. But I was very comfortable with my own Indian people. I love India. As a child also in class, whenever the teacher, history teacher explained, I used to think, my God, you know. Our country is so great and still other people have done this with my country. So that thing was always from the childhood. But then here mother's ideal, all are equal. No caste, no creed, no nationality. And God is in everybody. That is what my mom also used to say. God is in everybody. So why this? But even then, I will talk nicely, lovingly with everybody. But I was more comfortable with my own people and not the European or other countries. So 1966, 1967, Mr. Claude Brant, his name. He came in guest house, like all other guests come. And he doesn't know English very well, very broken English. And I don't know French very well. That time I learned only one sentence.  I said, my God, he doesn't know, divine.  Because I can't live without God, without divine. Then I said, you don't know what is divine.  No. I said, why, you don't go to church? No. Then I said, now how to, and this is also with a broken English and broken French. I said, this must be very miserable. I must, since he has come here unknowingly, you know, if I can do something right thing. So, I said, suppose in your life you love somebody, and that person needs the help, but you are not able to give any help. What will you do? Won't you go to church and pray? Please help this, because that is, you cannot do anything for that person. No. I do nothing. Prayer? No. I said, no. Suppose, to whom you love at present very much, okay, my mother, my physical mother. I said, very good, I understand that. She needs help, and you cannot help. Nobody in the family can help. So, what will you do? That time, if you pray, Divine Mother, or anything to whom you think as a God, you will receive the help. That is why it is Divine. Yes, my mother is suffering with cancer, and I need help for her. I said, ask her, try. Maybe. And he really loved his mother very much. I think he was not getting along with his father. He used to laugh and talk about problems very softly, nicely. He will laugh and talk about, because in our country, when problems, you know, we are little bit nervous, cry, you know. But he was laughing and talking about his family and problems. I said, my God, see, even then he laughs. So, he started believing. Can you tell me about her? I gave her the blessing packet. I said, take it with you and take for your mama.  But then he became more interested. I was tired then, you know. I said, I am managing a guest house, and I can't keep special time to talk and explain. My French was not enough, that much enough. How are you these that I can talk? So, he brought one Tamil boy from the town who was Tamil but knew French. And I knew Tamil and English, because by that time I had learned Tamil because I had to manage with ten sermons, you know. So, one day it became like a regular thing, you know. Then I was, mother, please show me the way. I don't want to involve. I can't do this. Mother, please help me. I got a lot of bulletins from the ashram. And I gave him all the bulletins, where there is a French also, English also. He started reading those bulletins. He became so interested, so interested in reading. After staying for some time in guest house, he left Pondicherry, but with good memories and good experience. And he reached to Nepal. In Nepal, he was very obvious. He had no money, much money he didn't have, because he said, my father doesn't like me because I am not according to his expectation and earning and reason. So, he was standing on the road and waiting for a lift somebody to give him. By that time, one car comes and in that, the driver was Mr. Donald Fisher, one Englishman. Afterwards, I came to know, but now the story, past story, so I know, like, but he told me that he came to, he gave him a lift and they both went up to the hotel. And this man was the son of a very rich man, Donald Fisher. His ancestors were diamond merchants in Holland. So, you can imagine, he had so much money and his father was a general in British army. So, he had lot of money. And they spoke little bit about, where are you going, what are you doing this, that... So, I came for the Nepal government to make a road here. But Nepal government is refusing me that you can't do that. Then, Claude told, in that case, you are very much required in Auroville. There very much international township is coming up and they need somebody like this. So, they both parted in few hours. So, this man separated and this Donald Fisher straight away drove his car to Pondicherry. And he had given the address of society guest house, where I was working. Mr. Donald Fisher, Claude has recommended me to the room. I was not interested. So, I was little bit curious about him. How is Claude? How is he? He's okay. He thought I will be taking more interest to his arrival. But because since he had told me he doesn't believe in divine and what is this divine mother and all this, so I was curious to know. Then he stayed. So, he says, I want to talk to you. I said, no, no, no, I don't talk. I don't like to talk. I give you room. Whatever is connected with the room, you can talk. Nothing else, I said. I have lot of things to do. I can't manage. My English is also not so good. So, he kept quiet. But he started meeting people in these environments. So, one day people... I had a beautiful drawing room in guest house. So, one day all were sitting and they were talking. And I was passing from my dining room to my room. And I overheard, he has lot of money and he wants to give all the money to church. I became like a statue there and then. I said, why? What happened? He has... That man was talking about divine mother and he heard this person must have talked and now he wants to give all the money to the church. Church is also... I believe in church. As a child I used to go in church. So, I believe in church. I believe in all the path of God. But then everybody left and he was reading the newspaper. Because for me it was very embarrassing. The person who wanted to talk with me, I always refused to talk with him. I said, now what to do? I said, I heard you have... Because if I say a lot of money, that means they will think, oh, because he has money, so I am interested to talk. I said, and you want to give that money to church? Yes, you heard right. I said, but why don't you give this money to mother? Because why should I? I said, because she knows the best use of the money. That's why you should... Why? They also will use the money for orphan, children, sick people, education. So, good, no? What you will do with money? Buy land? Make big houses? So, why? My God, I said, what to reply now I have to give, which can... Luckily 68, and this happened in 67 or 68 I think, yeah. So the chart was on my table. Society had sent me all the literature about Auroville. So it was on my drawing room table. I said, what to do now? So Auroville chart I got in my hand. And I said, you read this chart properly. You read this chart. I played mother constantly.  So then one line came that time I said, he read, you know. They are fighting with the cause of the miseries. So I read this line. I said that is okay. They are also doing good work. Here also the good work. But that is like a first aid to the humanity. And this is... Problems will be solved from the roots. And that is what their work. After that he started giving a serious thought. That was the only thing I could... 5 minutes only. Because I didn't want to involve much with strangers. Then I touched mother's picture. And I said, you will be... If you can do this noble act, you will be eternally in her consciousness. And she will be eternally with you. And I really don't know how I spoke these words. I really don't know. And I went to my room. From the next day, things started changing. And I also started giving a little more time. Because he started writing a little... That was another thing. Christmas time I think it was. No, it was February. He was Christmas time here. So correspondence started. And sometimes he will say, because you are so close to her, you speak and I write. I said no. My family is telling me, my mother or anybody, I speak and... No, with mother you have to write what you feel. I cannot. No, you have good contact with Champakalala. I said, no, nothing doing. Then I found... He used to write 5 lines and mother used to reply him in 10 lines. Like that correspondence started with mother. Then one day he says, I want to see mother. So I arranged and said, I want to give my money. I felt that, of course this is for mother and mother is only doing, I am doing nothing. Because I didn't want responsibility after that. He wrote one check. In 67, and I think that was, 1,70,000 to 80,000. At that time 1,80,000 is not a small amount. And nobody will give. And mother wanted money. But everybody had a condition with the mother. If we give money, this. If we give money, this. Mother says, I want unconditional money. Not with condition. So mother never accepted. So I arranged... Because at the same time I knew this money has to go hand to hand to mother. Nothing here, there. So I explained to Champak Lal also. And mother gave a time. It was afternoon time, 3 o'clock. Late, I don't remember now. So the check was there and mother, he put in mother's hands that check. And then it became a very big news. And then people are pouring. Then he started working to make a road. So within no time, there was no road from promise to on. Where there is a on. No road. All trees and bush and this and that. So with his own vehicle, with his own money, we made a 20 kilometer road that all can come and put the on in that soil of their country in that on. So it was so... He was very busy and he was doing his work so nicely, joyfully. But somewhere I was feeling, I hope that he is happy and he has kept something for himself. So that thing. I said, you are happy, no? You are feeling mad? Why you gave so much money at the time? You must be having family. Whatever my father gave, I don't want to live with his money. I want to live with my own money. So I said, something so perfect as a divine's work, as a spiritual work. But at the same time, I hope everything goes well because I never knew the administration, politics, everything properly. But then I had to know slowly, slowly, all. And road was ready. He trained one boy, Tamil boy, as a driver. They will pull the trees with his land rover and in between this work mother had given other people to make a road. And they again came in the picture and wrote to the mother. Mother, we will do the... Mother says, this work nobody can do except him. And mother did... Whatever I could read from his letter, double line with mother's handwriting, you will teach others what is sincerity. Like that, and he completed his work and road was made. So other people were feeling, how can one do like this? And the occasion came, 28th February 1968. That day, buses were arranged, everything was arranged, program was finalized. But that man selected to roam around with his land rover in Pondicherry. Some people could not come that time. So he told me, I was feeling so happy. Oh, see, vehicle has come, now we can go. God, thank you, you helped us so much. And that thing made me so happy to see that people who wanted to come and could not come, and so the occasion. And I felt something very nice is happening in the history of the earth. These words he himself spoke. I said, see, from the beginning and he did his best and divine's dream started. So this is my very good experience about Auroville and there are many others, because many people who are in Auroville, they have stayed first in guest house and then come here. But this is something unbelievable. Very much with golden letters, it is written in the history of Auroville, I think. So I end talking from this happy, good beginning. And good beginning is half done. So mother's work is mostly done. If people think I am doing, you are doing, they are saying, no. Her work is done. Mother told once, you people build Matru Mandir, I will build Auroville. So Matru Mandir was the main thing. And that time from guest house we used to hire bus, taxi, all my guests, we used to come for concreting of pillars from there to here. There are many other very good, I have told Sunil and Rupali, some very important thing which Aurovillian must know. And I am so happy that things are going on. At least with problems also it goes on, you know, because we are the builders of better tomorrow if we remember this, nothing else. If you want to participate, participate. Mother's work is done. It is your choice. Whether you cooperate, don't cooperate, your work is going to be done as she wanted. I have faith, because this close story also is very interesting. After that he became so dedicated, wherever he went, even for five minutes, he has done Mother's work. His wife is in Auroville at present. So she can be also a very good person to give exact information or exact what really happened. She is a wife of clothes and she is in Auroville. So we know one another since how many years, from 67 up to now. I hope I have tried my best to tell my experience. God bless you all.


Welcome everyone to the session Achieving Aligned Autonomy in Product Development with Inceptions by Lakshmi Ramasation. We are glad she could join us today. Without further delay, over to you Lakshmi. Welcome everyone. Thank you. Thank you so much, Kunjan, for the introduction and I'm really delighted to be here. I'm Lakshmi Ramasation and I'm an Enterprise Coach at Pakiolan and I'm very passionate about the topic today. So before I get into the topic itself, I wanted to get in, talk a little bit about my living values as a coach and facilitator. These are the values that I live every day. I think about enabling inclusive collaboration, showing great care with my teams and yet challenging them for growth because that's how they get to the next level. And I have a strong sense of purpose and there's a poem that I read and learned as a child. It's a Robert Frost poem and this excerpt is from that poem. It reminds me that there's a long journey ahead and I still have so much to learn and contribute and help others with. So before we get started on the topic itself, I wanted to invite you to reflect on the last project or product kickoff that you attended. What was it like? And what was it missing? Describe your experience in one or two words and self reflect, or if you feel comfortable share that in the chat. Did you build a shared understanding when you were in the product kickoff?  Or did you struggle? And did you feel like you walked away with a different idea of the problem? You thought you understood but when you walked out you were still confused. And this is where I find most teams are when they come together in a large workshop or collaborative space. That is what an inception is all about. So an inception really is a process derived from lead inception that our organization, Paciolan uses to kick off new initiatives for teams. It's a disciplined and inclusive way so that you can help set teams up for success. And when we do this right, we really achieve an aligned autonomy. So what is aligned autonomy? It's really an outcome that a team reaches once they have a successful inception. They walk away with that excitement and freedom to be able to execute so they can creatively problem solve in order to get to those outcomes. That's a beautiful state and it's really magical when teams get there. So today's learning objectives were going to be diving into where inceptions started from where they originated, what the inception process is, and how we build fluency in inceptions. If you go back to 20 years ago when Agile came about, Agile projects emphasized the early and continuous delivery of valuable software, but that was quite an ask. The industry was quickly faced with three questions. How might we work out what should be in that minimum delightful product, MDP, and kick off work in an effective way for teams? How might we ensure the team is really creating the product with a shared understanding, the same understanding? And how might we ensure the product that we're building is incrementally being delivered and there is an effective plan to be able to get to the right outcomes? These questions were where inceptions were born. So we'll talk a little bit about the inception process and how that magic of collaboration comes together. Now, when you come into that collaborative space, you want to be intentional about creating that space where people can generate those conversations that are meaningful to them. So how do inceptions help with this? Let's take a look. The first problem that inceptions try to solve is the problem of communication. And I love this quote by George Bernard Shaw. The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place. And isn't that true? It's like the telephone game. We think that we've said something and people have understood, but sometimes we may not be conveying it in a way that another person understands. So maybe we have a story in our head that we're holding back. And this is what happens in large workshops as well. So it's really important to set the stage and make sure everybody has the same information so they can collaborate. It first starts with a good layout. So you come together in an inception and this is what we go through. This is a multi-day workshop depending on the complexity and the size of the initiative. It could be two days, it could be three days, or it could even be four days. But what you want to do is cover, start kicking off the inception with the why. The product manager and the stakeholders come together and really envision, you know, relay the product vision. And they talk about who we're building this product for, who is the persona, who are the people that are going to be using the product, what is the product, what is it not, what does it do, what doesn't it do. And the main features that we're building in this product. The team at the end of everything in the why bucket really has a strong understanding of why this problem is important to be solved for our customer. And then we start diving into those artifacts that the team is prepared. It could be technical architecture, it could be sequence diagrams, technical artifacts, US, UX artifacts, maybe some product artifacts that they have prepared so that everybody can really understand now finer details about the initiative. Customer journeys and flows can be shared. At the end of this, what really happens is the team is now able to have a good understanding of the problem, and now they can start working, breaking the work down. That's what happens in story mapping. And that's an activity we'll dive into in a little bit so you'll get a visual of what that looks like. And then finally at the end of the what we say, okay, we've created a story map, we now know what the work looks like, but how are we going to incrementally deliver, and that's what happens in slicing. Finally, at the end of the inception, you want to know what are the roles that people are going to play, what's that process where people are going to come together, and finally wrap it up and say, you know, send out a readout to everybody, walk through some of the main artifacts and make sure you leave the room with that shared understanding. This is what a good layout looks like, and helps everybody get on the same page. The second is you want to make sure the right people are in the room. This is really important. So before the inception the schedule, you want to make sure the right stakeholders, the team itself because they're going to be doing the work. There are some dependent teams that you're going to be integrating with. Maybe there's some third party partners that need to be involved. Maybe the reporting team, if there's a reporting and data analytics piece, basically everybody that cares about the success of this initiative needs to be present. The last but not least is you need to prepare well to come together in an inception to make sure it's meaningful. This is really really important, I can't stress this enough. It's important that the team is actually ready to insert. I've seen this a lot where the team is still working on finishing up the previous initiative, and we're rushing into this inception. The team doesn't even have the headspace to start preparing for this inception. So it's really important that the team is actually ready. The second is really aligning before coming into the inception. It takes time to prepare the artifacts to talk about how are we solving the problem so that you can really be in that same headspace before coming into the inception. So that's really important. And the last is we know that everybody is going to be doing the best job that they can and preparing the artifacts in the best way that they're able to. However, it's still important as a coach and facilitator to make sure that the final technical and product review has happened before coming into the inception. And remember, this is an expensive meeting. There's 20 to 25 people, maybe the core team, some stakeholders, maybe some partnering team members that are present. So it can be a large meeting and really a good investment of everybody's time. So we want to make sure that everyone's prepared and we're making good use of everyone's time. So the second problem we're trying to solve, the first problem is communication. The second problem we're trying to solve is how do we really align people to build the right product. And a lot of work happens before coming into the inception to make sure that we're building the right product. The first activity that's conducted is preparing a customer journey. A customer journey is really a tool where you get to visualize the experience of interacting with your product from the customer's point of view, but the customer's point of view. And we'll look at a sample customer journey here really quickly. I know you can't read all of the font. Don't worry about it. But the main thing you want to take away is there's three zones in a customer journey. The first is the lens. What are the goals that the person is trying to achieve? And who is this role? Who is this person? Who is this persona that is using your product? The second is the experience. How are they interacting with your product? How do they feel interacting with your product? What are their pain points and what are their moments of delight? That's all covered in the experience. And the last but not least, the most important is the insights. These are really your opportunities that you can probably use to enhance the product and build the next release of your product. So building a customer journey before coming into the inception is really critical. This is where UX designer and product manager partner and prepare this meaningful artifact. The next thing is a user flow. This could be a subset of the customer journey because a customer journey may have listed maybe 20 to 30 opportunities and you may not be addressing all of those. You may only address a subset of those. So for those opportunities, the team could prepare additional artifacts like user flows, walking through every single interaction so the team is able to understand how to work on this particular initiative. So this is really important as well and really helps provide more clarity to the team. So the first problem is communication. The second is about building the right product. The third is now that you know what you want to build, how do you incrementally deliver this along the way? So this is where Jeff Patton has a couple of activities which will really take this to the next level so that you can really figure out how do you figure out what's in that first release. Story mapping is the first activity that the team does. This is something that happens in the inception and everybody in the team needs to participate to make this meaningful. So it's a way of arranging user stories to create a more holistic view of what it is that you're delivering. So if you think about the customer journey and maybe a few of the opportunities that you've outlined that need to be addressed along with this initiative, you're now looking at that and saying, how do I create a story map of this? And we'll look at this in a second. The next activity after that is slicing. So if once you have the whole story map, you now need to figure out how do you incrementally slice this so that you can have some proof points along the way. The team can have some celebrations. Maybe they can quickly validate a problem that they've solved before they move to the next part of the initiative. This is what a slicing a story map looks like. So this is an example of a hotel management website that has some customer journey stages, some activities that the user is trying to achieve. And this is the first release of your product that has some stories that the team has mapped in the inception. Now, this is just an example of how you could slice, but the team could really come up with, you know, what is the best way to slice? Maybe the product manager will have some idea of these are the capabilities we want to provide to the customer sooner than later. Maybe the team will have some ideas of these are the technical challenges I want to solve sooner than later. So it becomes a negotiation and a communication in the inception where the team can come up with, this is the best way we're going to incrementally deliver the product. So with all of that we've talked about where inception came about why it was important to come up with something like this and the process itself, but we know that it's not important to just do the process for the sake of doing the process. The important thing is to be able to get fluent at it and for it to become muscle memory for the team. This is where building fluency comes in. Fluency is how a team develops software when it's under pressure, and we want this to become part of how they operate and collaborate. So this is where it takes discipline to be able to do this right. Before the inception, you want to align well with all of the right people, prepare the artifacts and validate the artifacts. In the inception, you want to tell the whole story. You want to be aware of those first time listeners that are hearing the story for the first time, and make sure that they're following along so that they can actually contribute and collaborate in a meaningful way. You want to have parking lot etiquette because you know when you get 25 people in a room there's going to be a lot of rabbit holes. So you want to make sure that you can really have those conversations that you want to have and save the ones that you can have later in the park to add it to the parking lot to get back to it later. And most importantly, you want to leave the room with a shared understanding. You want everyone in the room to understand the why, the what and the how so that they can really walk away with that understanding to build that initiative because that is why we're here. So ultimately achieving aligned autonomy is really simple. You take happy teams, align them to their purpose so they can come together and generate great ideas and collaborate magically. With that, if you like what we've talked about and if you think Inceptions can set your teams up for success in your organization, how can you embrace it? Who can you partner with to bring this to your organization? What support do you need to start experimenting with this process with one of your teams? And if not now, when? So with that, I'll open it up for any questions. I see one question. Okay. Is this a one time exercise by asked by Krishna Prasad? That's a great question. So it's one time for the initiative. However, depending on the complexity of the initiative, the team may decide to pivot as they start to deliver. Maybe they have to do a story mapping again if they decide that they've got to a couple of slices and now we are not able to meet the outcomes in an effective way. So that can happen. However, for most initiatives, this is a one time exercise to kick off the initiative. And then after that the team really has a starting list of stories for them to continue to iterate on. Because this is just the beginning of the journey, right? So what happens is when you come together, everybody has the shared understanding of the product that they're building, and they walk away with the starting list of stories from the inception. However, the team still needs to continue to do backlog refinement, they continue to discover, they do regular demos, they may get additional feedback from the stakeholders. So there's multiple points where they may be more work that the team needs to discover and add to their backlog. So although this is a one time activity, it's just the beginning of the journey and the team just has to continue to collaborate to make sure that they're able to get to the outcomes. Hopefully that answers your question. Great. I see one more question, and we have some time left. It's a question by Nancy, how do you get the company willing to invest the time in doing an inception? That's a great question. So there were actually, inceptions were already brought into the organization where I was in. We just kind of took it to the next level where we were able to really evangelize it, train the whole organization. When we first started in our organization, we started with one team, and we were able to really showcase that it was setting that team up for success. So it became a good success story for us to lean on, but yet there were a lot of skeptics in the room. So it wasn't easy, but after we were able to prove that it was really having a positive impact on the team, and it was really leading them to get to the right outcomes, it became easier as we started to do it with a few teams. Now in the last year, we've done 20 inceptions in 2020, I mean they were all remote, and this year all of our inceptions have been remote. So this can be done meaningfully in a remote setup as well. But you need to start and maybe have the conversation with your leadership to be able to experiment with one team so that you can showcase it. Great questions and insightful answers. Thank you, Lakshmi. Thank you so much.


I'm Kate Snodgrass. I'm Artistic Director at Boston Playwrights Theatre, the home of new plays in Boston. Yes! And these are my lovely colleagues who I will introduce. I apologize to you now. I have truncated everything. So I'm sorry for what I don't say. But I will read you a little bit about them. On my right, the other right, is Winnie Holtzman. She's an actor, producer, playwright, and librettist. She was nominated for a Tony for her book For Wicked. She's written extensively for television with my so-called Life 30-Something once again. She's also appeared as an actor in the film Jerry Maguire and in Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm. Her new play, Choice, will be produced at the Huntington Theatre in Boston. Thank God! In the fall. I'm looking forward to it. Thank you. Yes. Next is, but not least, is Kirsten Anderson Lopez. Is an Oscar and Grammy co-winner along with her husband Robert Lopez for her song Let It Go from the Disney animated film Frozen, for which she collaborated on the score. She's the author of In Transit, a musical song without accompaniment, which was nominated for a drama desk, drama league, Outer Critics Circle, and Lucille Lortel Awards. And she wrote the feature film Winnie the Pooh and finding Nemo the musical, wrote music for the feature film. Right? Yeah. As an actor, she's appeared in the original cast of You're in Town and as the voice of Kanga in Disney's Winnie the Pooh. Her musical Up Here will be featured right in this city in La Jolla Playhouse's 2015-16 season. Next, Georges Stitt is a songwriter-composer working now on Snow Child for Arena Stage and Ajax for Water Well. Her shows include The Danger Year, Big Red Sun, Samantha Spade, Ace Detective, Mosaic, and The Water. She's had three albums of her music available and her songs are featured on numerous solo albums. Her orchestral piece Waiting for Wings, co-written with her husband Jason Robert Brown, was commissioned by the Cincinnati Pops and premiered in 2013. She was last seen on television as an actor in the live performance of Sound of Music where she played a nun. Next, Lisa Crone is an award-winning playwright and performer. She just won a Tony and Obie, a Drama Critics Circle Award and an Outer Critics Circle Award for her work on the musical Fun Home, which is also a Pulitzer Prize and Kennedy Prize finalist. She's the author of In the Wake, Well, 2.5 Minute Ride, among others, and award-winning actor as well as a playwright. She's enjoyed a Guggenheim Sundance and McDowell Fellowships, and she's on the boards of the McDowell Colony, The Lily Awards, and The Dramatist Guild. And last but not least, Julia Jordan of The Count. Her plays include, among others, Boy, Titania in Color, St. Scarlett, Smoking Lesson, and her musical works include the books for Sarah, Plain and Tall, and The Mice. She wrote the book in lyrics for Murder Ballad and Bernice Bobs Her Hair. She's been recognized with a Kleban Award, Jonathan Larson Award, and a Heidemann. Produced all over the country, she's received numerous fellowships at Sundance, The O'Neill Playwright Center, among others, and she's one of the founders of The Lily Awards for Women in Theater. So you have to share the mics. You know, when I looked at the title for this, I have to say, Women Writing Women. And I said to myself, yeah. And I was kind of at a loss for what to ask you, because it all seems so obvious. So I would like to start with, you know, just a basic, very basic question of, would each one of you tell us why you started writing plays in the first place? All right, because I've been talking about it all day. I actually started back before they invented kidnapping. There used to be this thing where your parents would open the door and you'd go out the back door, and you'd see all of the other kids who also weren't signed up for summer camp. And there were like 20 of us. And I had my own little rep company back when I was like five, six, seven, like five through ten. I had a neighborhood group of kids with nothing to do, and we did plays on my back patio. And we would write them that day. We would do the costumes. I'd star in them, of course. And that's how we kept ourselves busy. And I talk about this a lot. There's this narrative, or there was in the late 70s, early 80s, where if you did stuff like that, that meant that you really were into acting. And I kind of digested that message and found myself saying, oh, I want to be an actress. I want to be an actress. And yet my whole childhood, I had really been a lyricist, writer, librettist, director, designer. But there weren't a lot of female examples of that. So my parents couldn't say like, oh, she's going to be a lyricist. And it took me a very, very long time.  And I was like, that's a thing? Like, what do I do with that? And thank God for the BMI workshop. And that really, it was something that I've done since I was a kid. And it just took me a long time to codify that it actually was a job that I could do for pay. Excellent. Anybody else? I was in acting school and I had a teacher who was very creepy. And he was always trying to get the women to take off their clothes. And I wouldn't do it. And so we had a little bit of a standoff. Howard, where were you? Where was this? This is very common. So anyway, we had a little bit of standoff. He didn't like me. I didn't like him. And then they had us write these, they called it personal monologues. So everybody was supposed to write something from their life. And it became a big confessional theater. Everybody was telling these terrible things that had happened to them. And there was a lot of emoting and everything. And I was a really bad actress. I was very shy. I had a hard time being on stage. I was not good at it at all.  So I made one up. I just completely made it up.  And I got up there and I don't know what happened to me. But I think because I wrote it and I knew exactly what it was about and exactly what line came out of what line and why, I all of a sudden became a much better actress. And I made the man cry. He was sobbing at my incredible acting, which was really, you know, actually just to pick on somebody. What was the story? And I just had him up on my hands. And I was like, wow. And then all the girls in my class, they, we were all starting to audition and they all wanted to use my monologue. But we were all going out for the same things as we didn't have agents. So it was just backstage. So they couldn't go in one after another doing the exact same monologue.  But so I started, so I wrote separate one. I wrote them each a different one. And then a friend of mine was starting a theater company in the Bronx and he asked if he could put three of them together and sort of make a night out of it. And he did. And there were like three shows running. One of the other writers who was brand new was Stephen Adley Gearkis. His first show and my first show were in the Bronx and it was weird, but it was great. And I just, I didn't even know what to think about it. But I went up there. It was on Arthur Avenue, which is a very Italian section, still very Italian. And this guy who started it, Dante Alberti, he got all of the merchants on the street to give him a little money to start this theater and it was just a room. And on each chair they put a little plaque that said like Joe's mozzarella. And then Joe was trying to find his seat. Like everybody was like looking for their particular seats. And I ended up sitting next to this little lady who was Italian and spoke almost no English. And she was watching my show and she did not know that I had written it. And she kept grabbing my hand and laughing and going, oh, and I just spent the entire time watching her. And I thought, this is great. So I just kept doing it. Great stories. I'm struck by how both of you, the similarity in your stories is I didn't know I could do this until someone told me I could, until someone asked me to do it or someone took what I was feeling and impulse for and gave me permission to do it. And that I'm not a playwright. I'm a composer and a lyricist. And I started out as a classical pianist as a kid. And I was a really good in my small town in Tennessee classical pianist. And so I went away to music camp one summer. And while I was at music camp, we had to take an elective. And one of the electives was composing. And so for the summer I took composing. And my roommate that summer played the viola. And so I thought, all right, I'll write something for my roommate and I to play. So I wrote a piece and performed it on the last day of camp. And people clapped and said I was really good. And I thought I'm getting more attention for this thing that I did than for any of the solo piano work that I've done all through high school. And I want to do more of that. More attention. Yeah, it was about the attention for sure. And about stepping out from the crowd, doing something. And specifically, I don't know that I had the voice to be a solo pianist. I don't know that my piano playing was any better than anyone else's piano playing. But my writing was distinct to me. And I felt like I had, especially writing this thing for my friend creating an opportunity for her to play and for her to do what she was good at. And I thought this is exciting to me. And so I came home and asked for composition lessons. And then ultimately, it wasn't until, I'll say college and maybe even grad school, I went through the NYU musical theater writing program, which Winnie also went through. And it wasn't until then that I realized that the poetry and things that I was writing in my journal just for me could actually be song lyrics. And it really wasn't until a teacher said, maybe you want to try writing your own lyrics. You know, instead of being frustrated that this lyricist and this lyricist and this lyricist are not giving you what you want. Maybe you ought to try. And my first thought was, well, I'm a pianist. I'm a composer. That's not what I do. And I thought, actually, I've been doing it for 15 years. I've just been doing it in my journal. So similarly, it was someone, a teacher, saying, maybe you ought to try this, that led to the lyricist part. And that's where the whole composer lyricist thing happened. Meaningful. Yeah. Lisa, Winnie? Here, it's so similar.  And I always was doing that. And when I look back, I just think it's sort of funny and charming and cute that from the time I was little, I was sort of always doing what I'm doing now. It was just kind of funny.  And I would have little scripts. It's just hilarious. And I'm sure this is true of many, many people in this room that you were playing with dolls or playing with your friends and lip-syncing to certain things and putting on shows for your parents or your neighbors. And it touches my heart, really. I mean, it's just like, it's just one continuum. It really isn't any different now. I'm just older and have worked with a lot, a lot of amazing people. So I've been influenced and nurtured. You know, I'm so lucky. But it's the same person who was that little kid. I mean, it's just incredible. I don't have anything that interesting to say about it. I, you know, I also made up shows. Porn Plays. I did a lot of really good porn plays. Gunfight at the Ok Kibbutz was one. Broadway melodies at 400 BCE was another one. And I'm telling you, they still talk about them. In Michigan. But I didn't write. I wasn't, I didn't ever picture that I would write. But at some point, I think, you know, I was sort of, I was performing and I was putting together anecdotal stories and figuring things out. But there was some point where I kept trying to, I figure out how to do one thing. And then I would realize it was something else I didn't know how to do. There was some other, there was some further iteration. And at some point, the further iterations required the kind of writing and, you know, the kind of thinking and they required writing. And so I sort of, in my haphazard way, clawed my way forward through hideous trial and error to learn something about writing. Yeah. Well, outside I was introduced to Linda Bloodworth-Thomason and I was worried about the questions I was going to ask you because I did think, oh, duh, what could I ask? And so I asked her.  Do you have any? Huh? I don't know that it's true. Well, I just think right now so many women are writing their truths. I mean, I'm really, I feel really lucky to live in America right now and have the ability to write my truth. That's how I see it.  I'm Amy Schumer. Yeah. I don't know any musicals about Kim Kardashian. I mean, I don't think, I don't think in our business that she's getting a whole lot of airtime. I mean, there are two things when I looked at the title for this that I, that sort of came to my mind. One that, you know, people have heard me say before. You know, when we talk a lot for reasons that I understand about women's voices and that we need women to tell us about women. And I, it was always sort of stuck in my head in a way and it sort of troubled way. And I realized that for me what I'm interested in is hearing women write about the world. And that there's something so reductive to me about the idea that the only thing women have to offer is to tell us about women. And that is what I'm, that's, that's what I'm interested in. That's what I'm interested in. The parody discussion in the diversity discussion is that I, you know, I don't think we need all these people who aren't coming from the standard white male perspective to tell us about themselves. We need to see what the world looks like from different perspectives. So that's one thing. And the other thing was, been thinking about this obviously a lot and it was really interesting in the last season to see the revivals of musicals by Comden and Green. And then to see the ways, I was thinking about women characters because the first, just to preface this by saying, when I looked at this title I thought, why can't we talk about men writing women? You know, I want these characters to be better. I want these characters to be better. And I feel like I see, I'm seeing male writers grappling with this and really, really, really trying to figure out how to write characters that are human and I think these are very honest efforts and I think these are real problems.   Figuring out how to give women characters volition is a struggle for people and it's so interesting to see on the 20th century and see that Comden and Green didn't have trouble with that. To see that, you know, that the romantic lead when she's singing about what she wants, you know, in the romantic story it's also what she wants in terms of her career. It's what she wants in terms of her expression as an artist and that the plot hinges on that old woman who has all the money. She's a business woman. It wasn't difficult for them to figure out how to put these female characters in the plot with lives and interests of their own and a quick thing that my partner Madeline George named which is really, really helpful for me.  People default to this because we have seen it over and over and over again. So how do we write our women, when we write our women characters maybe what we need to think of is what do they want? What do they want? And they, and sometimes I think in trying so hard we end up with these characters in which basically what women are acting is they're justifying their place in the story, you know, instead of just assuming they have a place in the story and giving them something to do. Giving them interests, careers, desires, you know, let them, yeah, let them need something on their own rather than being there to further the interests of the male protagonist. But you know, it's also, once you write them it's also about the actors who play them, right? Yes. Lisa and I have talked about this before too and I've worked a lot as a teacher both at the university level and in private practice with actors helping them as a music director, vocal coach, learn material and there have been times, especially with young women where the thing I keep saying to them over and over again is where is your power, where is your power? You're giving away your power. As a character you're giving away your power. And what happens, even though the lyrics are I'm giving away my power, I'm giving away my power. What if you say, I'm not playing that. I'm going to play something different. I'm going to play the, I don't have much power in this moment but here's the power that I have. And so when you start looking for that in the songs it challenges the actors to perform in a different way. And I've had, especially at the college level, I've had a lot of young women really, really struggle with that because they've never been asked to do it before because the songs that they're singing from the golden era of musical theater do not require them to do that. In many cases, there is, of course, exception to the rule but in many cases, and I finally had one girl who was very frustrated to say to me, I have never done a role where I wasn't wearing a bikini on stage. And I thought, that's my job. I'm going to write the roles that don't require you to wear a bikini on stage. That's why I'm here. That's why we're here. It's part of what's so exciting about Frozen.  Well, you know, it's interesting because you're talking and I'm trying to figure out, for me, process of how these stories get written can really affect change in what we're seeing in content. So, for instance, Frozen was the first time that there were two females in the core creative team. Jennifer Lee, first it was just one female. First it was just me and Bobby and a male screenwriter. And that was the time when we had a princess trying to be a perfect princess and her evil blue-haired villain sister, who was this wild child, came and kidnapped her and froze her heart. And the movie wasn't working very well. It didn't sing. And, you know, we had to kind of have a heart to heart. Like, we could tell this story and this movie could be very good. But it's not going to be a musical. Or we can all hold hands and say, let's make a musical, but we really need to look at our main characters if you're going to have two females and what will make them sing. And then we were very lucky to have Jennifer Lee come on who has a very strong female voice and is used to being in, she had just come off Wreck-It Ralph so she'd spent a lot of time with a very male room and had sort of found her power and her voice. And honestly, it created for me kind of a rule that got codified in my head of the two women in every story room rule because if one of us said, you know, every time I've ever been really upset at somebody for something like something small, it really isn't about something small. It's usually, it'll trace all the way back six years to that time that she slammed the door in my face and I felt so horrible and I never said anything. And that will play out, you know, six years later in this and that the conflict between the sisters had to go much deeper than being mad about a crown or often in the story room a group of incredibly talented male story minds would go to like, they should be fighting over the man and Jen and I often were like, no, no, we're not gonna have it be fighting about a man. That's not what gets between two sisters. It's so much deeper than that, your problem with your sister and it just helped to validate our points of view and I think we were listened to when we could kind of have each other's backs and go like, hey, hey, no, that's not how girls work. And I gotta say John Lasseter is really fantastic about listening to that too. He's learned enough to listen to the different voices in the room and know that if you're gonna make different movies, bring in those different voices. And so there's a leadership at Disney right now and at Disney Animation that really supports the different voices. Not only is it validating, it's the truth. We were definitely both of us, our sisters. I'm the older sister and Jen was a younger sister and it was so funny is that she was always like, you were my Elsa and I was like, actually I feel so much more like Anna. I am not Elsa. But I have to say I have a four year old and our kids go to school together and we know each other well. And I don't think I've ever told you this but I think it's true. Girls are obsessed with Elsa because she's unlike a ball. They like the moment in which she gets to be like, I mean it's that line. Nicole never bothered me anyway. Slam the door. I mean it's the bitchy line that they like to act out. That's what draws them to it. I have a joke for your four year old. They wanna do that because that's true. None of the other stuff is true. Oh yeah, yeah. That, that, yes. It's what my daughters do. It's a thing. And actually I will have to give my husband credit. My husband, father of two daughters, he was the one who fought for that. There was someone who wanted us to cut. Nicole never bothered me anyway. He created that line. That comes from Bobby. What's your knock, knock joke? Oh, knock, knock. Who's there? Nicole. Nicole. Nicole never bothered me anyway. Anyway, just to keep the conversation moving forward for two seconds. The other thing I think Lisa was making me think about, about why, why we make our female characters occasionally make choices that don't inherently line up with our own organic experience of the world. And I think a lot of it also has to do with feedback. As a, as a female writer, as a female writer, which is such a label that I don't know how I feel about that. But I was raised to, I was raised, Carol Gilligan talks about this to compromise to if your friend comes over and she wants to be the mommy and you want to be the mommy, you have to learn to take turns and you have to be the daughter sometimes and she can be the mommy and vice versa. And you were taught to, to make those compromises very early. It's a core component of how we are raised. And yet you grow up as a female artist and suddenly that instinct, all of those lessons don't serve you when the, we're in it right now. We're in the crucible of change it, don't change it, change it, don't change it. We're in that place of I want you to get rid of the thing you care most about in the, in the show. And are, are we being precious about it? Are we not being precious about it? How do we listen? Do we not listen?  You know, if you've been given four notes, you have to take at least two of them to show that you can play nicely. And, and I think I, I see again, I'm, I'm lucky because I can, I'm a control group in my husband who, who doesn't have that instinct, who, who doesn't ever feel like, well, if I don't change two of them, I'll be considered a bitch. Like he never thinks that. And, and so it's good. And yet I will also say on the other side, there is a, if, if we're in balance, the yin and yang of that is that he can also be a hard headed asshole and be like, this is my vision. And sometimes you do need to listen. And, and if you're hearing it from enough people, just try it. Just try it. And sometimes you can end up finding out. So there, there is a balance. But I do think we're raised, we're raised in a way that, and that I'm fighting a lot to not just compromise for the sake of compromise, because you do need a true north. I think, you know, when I was talking to Linda and she said the thing about why can't women write the truth? I didn't take it to mean that we can't do it ourselves. I took it to mean that we are encouraged not to. And, and that that is, it's a political act for us to be writing plays, I think. For sure. But I mean, I mean, I'll just say, for me, I'm just, I'm feeling a lot of feelings right now as my, as my daughter would say. Because I have had my whole life since I was in my 20s, certain men have come into my life who've really nurtured me as an artist. And I'm not saying that I never had a woman nurture me as an artist, but I'm going to practically say that. The people that came and really brought me to that next level and opened doors for me and went like that to me and said, we believe in you. Like those guys were men. And so I just want to say that. And I think for me it's gotten to a point where it isn't about what's between your legs. It's all about what's in here.  It's because to me, the feminine values that we are so lacking in our world today, I can't necessarily go, well, women will bring those values. Well, some women might. But there's a lot of women who wouldn't. And there's a lot of men who would. So that's how I feel. How I feel better. Well, let me ask, I think I know the answer to this, but directed to the men in the audience, do you think differently when you're writing men? I actually was really stuck when I went to Juilliard. Marcia was my teacher. And for about 10 years, I couldn't get produced. And my friend, David Auburn, had just written proof and had a massive hit. And I actually was commissioned by Manhattan Theater Club. Part of my commission was to, like, intern with one of the big playwrights. So it ended up being Dave, who was really my contemporary. I mean, I actually was the person, you know, that when he was writing, I was like, what should I do? And I was like, I don't know, maybe, I mean, we were really contemporary, but we had to pretend that we were doing this. So it was weird, but it was good. And then after he had this huge year, he was like, he came over and he's, and I was crying. I was like, I don't know what to do. I'm not getting produced. I can't write. I don't know what to do. And he said, why don't you switch the gender? That's what I did. Wow. That's why I wrote this play called Boy, which actually did change everything. All of a sudden, I wrote Boy. People wanted to produce it. People started reading everything else. I had four productions in one year. But the lead character was the boy. It's me. Yeah. It really is. It really was just a gender switch. Everything that he wanted and felt was what I wanted and felt. So it really was... What's wrong with women as hero? Sorry? Women as hero.  I think at that time, things were different. I mean, at least we used to talk amongst ourselves and say, you know, if you want to have a hit show, it's got to be starring a man. It casts as many men in it. Yeah. And I think it was true. I don't think it is so true anymore. I really don't. It's less true. Yeah. I think it's less true. But I don't know if I believe it's gone away yet. Well, Casey Childs, who produced that play Boy, actually came out and said and allowed them to quote him. And the Niska study that I was talking about, he said, I passed on wit and how I learned to drive. Because I didn't think that my audience would identify with the female character going through those dark times, basically. But look how wrong he was. But he allowed her to quote him. And he said, I stand corrected. Yeah. You know, so I think it really was a thing. Yeah. But that was 20 years ago. It's a long time ago. Yeah. It's a whole other thing now. Right. I also love thinking about that proof was written for a male character. And then is that what you're saying? That he says the gender of his character? Well, he said that he was stuck. And so he wrote from a female point of view. And back, you know, I think it's just interesting. But they had conceived it differently. The subject matter of that play and why it was so, I mean, it's obviously written incredibly well. But I think it also, it just touches a nerve with the majority of the audience. Right. Yes. Yes, indeed. Well, let's open it up to questions. Yes? Yes. Yes. Why do you think that is? And how can we change it? I guess so. You can elaborate on it if you want. Patriarchal world. I mean, you noticed that.  Everything's been like that. You know, it's, we're living in a very interesting time because things are being questioned and shaken up. But, you know, we live in a world where our lives as American women are really different than most women in the world.  I mean, that's, I mean, the reason I hesitated so much is because I, I don't know, I really don't, I don't like to think, I'm not really into dwelling on that. I mean, I'm just gonna be honest. Like, I can't even explain why. I literally can hardly talk right now because it's like, I just feel like I just, I just, I'm just gonna do what I'm gonna do. It's almost like, you know, I was once with somebody, I forget who, but a fellow writer, a guy, and he was describing something and he was describing, I'm very bad at sports, but like race, race, when people race and if you go like that, you know, if you keep going like that to see what everybody else is doing, like you will, you're just gonna stumble and fall. I can't even explain it. And that's certainly not a very good metaphor compared to what you're doing. But I, I, I guess that I have a tendency not to not, and it's not that I live in, I think there are different forms of denial. I think there are positive denial. I think negative denial is like, you know, you, you pretend that the person you're living with isn't an alcoholic, say, but, but you know, there's a lot of positive denial. And I think I live in positive denial. You can't let the fact that it doesn't exist change or affect you. You have to just keep trying to push it forward. And I think we're in a really exciting time. And we're really at, we're at a tipping point. For real. Look at Fun Home. Look what it just did. I mean, and sort of following from that, I think, I think that that's totally right. I mean, I've always felt about my timing, that it has been the most perfectly lucky timing for me, because if, you know, as, as Winnie said, we're in this moment of flux and change. You know, some of the particular moment of changing the theater is happening right now because of the work that, that Julia has initiated. It's happening. And it's happening everywhere. So what that means is that for an, you know, our job as artists is to carve out new definitions and ideas of the world, new experiences of the world. The luckiest thing that can happen to an artist is not to be making, not to try to be figuring out how to make work that a million other people have in a culture that is so established. You know, to be in the moment where the door is opening up, where we can create, where, you know, now there's this, I mean, I felt if Fun Home had happened two years earlier, we would not have the reception that we had. There was this, you know, cultural framework that was, you know, had been formed by the work of, you know, decades of work by activists, by artists, certainly the gay marriage thing penetrated deep into the mainstream of America that people could meet that show in a way that I never, ever, ever. When I'm in that theater and I see the way that the audience just goes right to the show without, you know, this sort of barrier of there are those other people who I can't relate to, which I would have expected and which would have been the case before. That is the luckiest timing. So what that means is that as artists, we're so lucky. As women artists, we're so lucky that we now get to create those definitions to have, you know, I read one time about Paul Manette that he had developed all this craft, all this craft, all this craft for all these years. And when AIDS happened, which of course was the most tragic thing that could have happened in that man's life, but he had his subject. He had the thing to write about. He had the thing to pour into all that craft for an artist that is an extremely lucky thing. So for us as women writers, we are at the perfect moment. Absolutely. You know, speaking of the... Well, there's a lot of questions. Before we do the question, I just want to point us to Inside Out, the Pixar movie right now that is so much about the mind of an 11-year-old girl. And I took my two daughters to it, and they both sobbed through it, and I sobbed through it. And for different reasons, really, you know, I was sobbing to it as a parent and someone who used to be a girl, and my daughter was about, well, about losing childhood and, you know, whatever. But I read an interview where Amy Poehler, who played Joy, the main adult character, said that when the offer came to her, she expected that she was going to be the sidekick, the funny, wacky sidekick character, and they were like, will you work on this movie? Yes. And when she read the script, she thought, wait, wait, wait, wait. That's me? I get to be the main character? This is my story? That's unbelievable. And Amy Poehler is at the forefront of smart girls and, you know, all that, but even for her to say that. And then in the follow-up, I read another article that said, here's why it's so important that that movie isn't about princesses, because we're allowing our young girls to have something else to model. And I think that's because of you. I think it's because... No, I really do. I think it's because frozen, because of exactly what you were talking about, about breaking the model of the girls having to fight against each other or the princesses, that sort of thing, saying there is another way to model girls and it is successful and it will make money and pave the way for things to... for new stories to be told. Well, thank you. One last thought in all of this is that when you're dealing with a time of change, it's very easy to get very serious about things. And I think where we will find success is like Fun Home did so beautifully. So many of the panelists here, their work combines these important, big, changing ideas with entertainment. There's like a great partridge family number in Fun Home that also is providing, because it's so... If you've been sitting on an unfair powder keg for this long, it's so easy to just explode in anger and ideas. I have to say, just because we have Winnie here, when I first laid eyes on my so-called life, I hadn't ever seen anything like it before.  It was like... That was the goal. It was just so unusual. I was just kind of like, what is that? And I've never forgotten that. Just that image that it was so... She was so wonky and weird. It was amazing. And the fact that it was amazing is shocking. I mean, that was what I was referring to before, is I met these two men and they said, we really believe in you and we want you to create a TV show. And we wanted to be... It was their idea that it'd be a teenage girl. At the time, my daughter was seven or six, seven, and I wasn't ever thinking about teenage girls. I was surrounded by other six or seven-year-olds. I never in my life wanted to recreate my teenage years because they were devastating. And I never would have come up with that idea. You could have locked me in a room for a million years. I wouldn't have come up with that idea. But they were like, we think that you should do that. And that's what I'm talking about, the beauty of... I don't mean to be too sentimental, but of a man who has power coming into your life and saying, I believe in you. I mean, in our generation, hopefully all of us are that, of course, to younger women, of course, because without saying, but I didn't have that from a woman. I had that from all these amazing men. Actually, I told you the story about my creepy acting teacher.  And he told me, he made me do that monologue for him, and he said, I want you to bring me five pages of writing every week and bring it up to my office. And I did, and he would take the five pages and put them in the drawer, and then he'd be like, who's sleeping with who? And I would just tell him all the dirt in the class. And then the next week, I would come in with my new five pages and he'd give me back the other one and he was like, what's going on now? He never said a word about the writing. I don't know if he ever read it. He just made me do it. That's awesome. And I did mention John Lasseter. John Lasseter is the champion of certainly for me and for Jennifer Lee. He will listen up in these big story meetings. He'll lean in and go, well, let's follow that thing Kristen said, which had never happened to me before. And he does that for Jen, and he's a real mensch. One more question. Yes. Just one? Well, I'm full of lots of feelings too. I think this panel has been really tremendous. The whole conference has been so inspiring and so empowering. What I wanted to address, and I love the work that Julia is doing, and thank you so very much, all of you, especially thank you Julia. You know, there's a deep sadness that I feel about this ongoing war between men and women. It's a sadness. And I think that perhaps what we need to do is encourage this culture to self-reflect. To self-reflect about this war, this sadness. It goes so much deeper than anger. Anger is the top layer. So we can get underneath that and see what all this fear is about. Write that play. I did. I did. And I keep writing it. I write about women in history. That's my great passion. Cool. And I keep doing that and doing that. I don't want to talk too much about my personal artistic stuff. You'll see it. But what I want to say is, when we're talking about Kim Kardashian's ass, this is a cultural mind screw. And we've got to unscrew it. And again, it's not about the anger. It's about this sadness. This sadness. We've got to get... I'm teaching a class right now. And I have one student, one female student in my composition class. I've turned it into a feminist writing course. And we're talking about the history of misogyny. And we're talking about the history of the negative aspects of the patriarchy. Not the wonderful aspects that you were talking about, Winnie. And they do exist. I've experienced great support from men too. So I just wanted to open that up. That underneath the rage is a sadness and I think a deep love that has to be realized. And maybe we can heal this. Maybe we can heal this and have all of our voices come out on stage in a really new, unique, positive way. I'm really optimistic about that. Thank you. You know, thank you. I think we're well on our way to getting out of the hospital. And what I hear saying is there's a lot of tipping points happening from childhood on and I have great expectations for all of us. Thank you, ladies. Thank you. You were wonderful.


Hello, my name is Emily. Thank you for joining me today for some yoga. Today's yoga is an anywhere yoga and it's just a short sequence to help you feel a little more grounded, a little more present and a little more aware. So let's come into a comfortable seated position either in a chair or on the ground. Now if you're in a chair just make sure that your seat is stable and that when you're seated your knees are about 90 degree angle and your feet are firmly on the ground. Let's come to a comfortable seated position, bringing the shoulders up and then around and down the spine, inhaling through the nose, bring your hands over your head, palms coming to your heart on the exhale. If it feels comfortable for you, gently close your eyes and let's take a few breaths together, inhaling through the nose and exhale through the mouth. We're count of three, gently open and dropping your hands to your side. Let's start by pushing our seat back and coming into the dasana pose. So this is the staff pose where your legs are straight. So perhaps you're holding on to your seat and your legs, your toes are touching the floor or your heels are touching the floor. So perhaps you push back into your seat, bringing your legs straight out. So if you're sitting on the ground, you'd be in this position and we'll inhale and then on the exhale we'll rotate our hips, bringing the soles of our feet together as far as what feels comfortable for you. So perhaps it's just rotating it slightly, perhaps all the way together. We'll just do what's best for your body. So inhale here, you're hopping the legs, relaxing the legs down, making sure your feet are firmly placed on the ground. Let's inhale, bringing one foot up and on the exhale, crossing over for pigeon pose. So perhaps right here looking for a stretch in the side. So one ankle crossed in front of the other or perhaps the ankle is crossed over the knee or perhaps pulling it closer to your hip, just making sure that you have room to move your ankles. But let's find some length through our spine and lean over the legs slightly, deepening the stretch if it feels good. Let's rotate our ankle. Cross it inside. If it's too much, feel free to back off. Release the leg down. Let's inhale, put the opposite side. Again, crossing at the ankle or at the knee or maybe closer to the hip, whatever's comfortable for you and your body. Let's inhale, finding length through the spine and exhaling, leaning slightly over your leg. Spine still nice and straight, so we're not slouching over it, finding more stretch to the side. And then let's focus on our breathing and our ankle. That's the direction. And exhaling, releasing the leg down. Feel free to shake your legs out from side to side. Bring our knees back to the middle, finding a nice stable position. Feet are firmly planted on the ground, helping us feel more grounded. Let's roll the hands back, lifting the arms, clenching the fists and going into our wrist circles. Direction. Drop our hands down, shake out the shoulders, shake out the wrists, rolling the shoulders up and back, palms facing forward. Feet are firmly planted in the ground. Your seat is stable, coming into the dasana or mountain pose. Let's find your right ear for a count of three, inhale through the nose and exhale through the mouth. So mountain pose, variation on the inhale. Let's bring our hands up over the head and gently dropping them down. Last variation. So with the same arm movement, we're going to also inhale, bringing our weight into our toes, lifting the heels. So on the count of three, one, two, three, inhaling up, coming up onto your toes, exhaling down. Gently just rocking back and forth, swaying your arms from side to side, back to center, rolling the shoulders up, back and down, inhaling, arms coming up, exhaling, palms come to heart. If you feel comfortable, feel free to gently close your eyes, breathing in through the nose, exhaling through the mouth for a count of three. If it feels good, gently bring your eyes open. Then you move throughout the week, feeling more present, more grounded, and more aware per muste.


Okay, so let's summarise the five priorities. Number one for me is capability. So instead of brigades or brigades can still have 120 but we will commit to a number that you and we agree to about what the operational number is and let's say it's 45 instead of 120. Still have 120 but 45 we will commit to giving turnout gear, urban and rural, pages, welfare support and training if you like. So once we've got that number when we get to the operational component we're saying that of those 45 there will be a degree of fit for duty, healthy for duty and you've seen some of that feedback through this medium as well. We believe of those operational leaders there will be some prerequisites for those officers as well within that 45 and again you can still have beyond the 45 and this is where the community safety component is which is number four comes in which is about saying there may be 20 people that are not operational that are delivering other things. It could be fuel reduction, burning, staging area management, community safety, finance and admin delivering a number of other things and finally and I think the big game changer is the annual brigade review which refreshes the section 29. This is about us understanding what your needs are, what each individual brigade's needs are and us tailoring our support to each individual need on the brigade. Not everybody, every brigade needs financial support so let's find out which ones do and make sure we're tailoring that support financially to those brigades that actually need it. Not a brush that sweeps across everybody if you like and of course there's that little bit this will flow on to driver training and other such initiatives to make sure that of the 45 and I'm just using that as an arbitrary figure that's six people we need for driver training, six people we need for or seven or eight for chainsaw etc and then we know we only have to deliver the training for those numbers and we can do the 101 gap analysis if you like. For mine the five initiatives are game changers for us as an organisation and lead us towards a more contemporary agile professional quality fire service in the future. Let's give it a go, we're piloting it across the state and we're looking to expand that now in the next 12 months so I'll keep you posted as we go along the journey and keep the feedback coming because we are listening to the feedback and we'll adjust it accordingly based on the feedback we get through this forum through our different consultative processes and so on and so forth. Five priorities that will probably grow in a number of different ways. Thank you.


Olen nyt nähnyt esim. faktor-analysisen, jossa olisi hyvää helpottomasti helpottomasti ymmärtävästi asiaa. Sitten faktor-analysisen on teknikin, jota aloittaa sinua löytää ympäristöryhmistä dataa. Se asuu kysymyksiä, mitä nämä varioit ovat ympäristöryhmistä, ja ne ovat yksi varioita. On eksplotero-faktor-analysisen, ja sitten on konferentero-faktor-analysisen. Eksplotero-faktor-analysisen on yksinkertaisu, ja se on jotain, jota olen yksinkertaisu, jota aloittaa ympäristöryhmistä. Konferentero-faktor-analysisen on yksinkertaisu teknikin. Tämä video on eksplotero-faktor-analysisen. Toi tehdä faktor-analysisen, jota tarvitsemme dataa, ja meidän dataa on täällä. Tämä dataa on R, ja nyt uskimme R for their analysis, ja dataa on the scores for Decathlon in the men's 1988 Olympics. So Decathlon is a sport, where you have to do 10 individual sports, so we do 100 meters run, long jump, shot put, high jump, 400 meters run, 110 meter hurdles, a discuss throw, pole wall, jowling throw, and 1500 meter run. We're gonna factor-analysis data. But before we do factor-analysis, let's take a look at what the data look like. So this is the first 15 observations. Observations are on the rows, and the variables are on the columns. To understand what these numbers mean, we need to understand the units. So we have the running sports, which are seconds. Less is better, more is lower, and therefore not as good. And then we have the throwing sports, more is better, and jumping sport, more is better. So these are meters, more meters is better, and less seconds is better. Okay, let's factor-analysis variables to see what they have in common. And we will take two factors first. So factor results and those results are here. And I have ordered the sports, according to the factor loadings. And we can see that all the running sports, particularly those that are about short distance running, less than four-and-meters, or that involve short runnings, short sprints like long jumping or pole vault, they belong to the first factor. So this first factor, we could label it as running speed, because or running, because that is what these items, that load on it are about. Then the second factor, we have a shot put, we have javeling throw, discuss throw, and pole vault that load on that. So we could say that that is upper body strength. All the throwing sports are there. So why is this pole vault in first, loading on both and running, and upper body strength? Well, if you consider what the sport is about, you first run very fast, you sprint, you gather speed, then you use the pole to put it in the hole, and then you hold it, and then you must use your upper body strength to get yourself over the bar. So it requires both running and upper body strength, and therefore it loads on both these two factors. We can extract also more factors. So if we take three factors, then we get even more dimensionality from the data. So we can see now that the running sports, there's actually running speed. So previously we had the 1,500 meter running, run, a loading on the first factor, but now it does not load on the first factor anymore. So it's only about speed now. The second factor contains the upper body strength sport still, and then the third factor contains running stamina. So you basically in the stamina for 1,500 meter run, which is the main item that loads on this and the others don't load as highly. 4,000 meters run loads to some extent because you need more stamina for that than for example the 100 meter run, which does not really load on running stamina. So when we extract more and more factors, then factor analysis quite often takes existing factors and it splits them into sub factors. Clearly if we think about these different sports, running fast and being able to maintain your speed for a longer time are two different capabilities that the person could have. So it would make sense to take three factors from this data. We can also take more factors. So if we take four factors, what is difference here is that the fourth factor here is simply contains high jump and nothing else. So high jump is quite unique sport because it's not about running speed, it's not about stamina, it's simply about how high you can jump and it's not related to upper body strength. When we start taking more and more factors from these data, eventually we will have each sport belonging to each individual factor. So if we have a 10 variable set like we have here, we can extract 10 different factors because there's always some uniqueness to each sport. But quite commonly we start by extracting two or three factors depending on our theory and then we stop when we consider that adding more factors would not add any value. So we will just start getting these individual sports and saying that all sports are different is pretty obvious. It does not answer the question of what the sports have in common. We can take a look at the correlation matrix to see what the factor analysis does. So these are the correlations between the sports and factor analysis basically finds those combinations of sports that are highly correlated with one another. So we have here the running sports, they are highly correlated and they are less correlated with other sports than they are with one another. So we could see that these all sports measure your running speed. Then we have the upper body strength factor here, all the throwing sports belong here. So they are correlated highly with one another and less with the running sport items. Then we have the running stamina factor. So we have 1,500 in the run here. We have the 400 meter run here which are correlated because they require stamina. For some reason long jump is here. Maybe the athletes that are good in long jumping are also good at these stamina sports. And we can also see that the fourth factor here, high jump, it is very unique. It's not highly correlated with any of the other sports. So that's something that depends on different sets of skills than the others. Of course, we could simply be interpreting this factor, this correlation matrix directly, but it's a lot easier to do it with a factor analysis using a computer because it simplifies it. You have less numbers to look at particularly if the number of variables grows larger than 10.


Hey guys so I have this Gammon drum set that I picked up from an Amazon inventory like restock auction. So as you already saw I went to pick it up, I got it, you put it on a cart, you walk out with it and then that's it. You can check it then and I think you're allowed to do one return if you work with this place. But yeah so I have the drums here. I've got someone coming to pick them up tomorrow. These drums sell for like 250 bucks so I'm selling this for 100. I paid $37 so obviously that's not a ton of money but you know it's more than doubling the amount of profit. So I'm gonna go ahead and start opening them up. I might fast forward some of this but I'll just go through what's in the box. I don't, this guy told me he doesn't want to put heads on it. He's going to put different heads on it so I'm more just going to show you what comes in the box when you buy a Gammon five piece drum set. So for starters I actually just opened it up. So you get a box that has all the heads in it, the Gammon logo head and then inside of that is every head for the toms and a snare. There was, I opened this up before I decided to film it. There is symbols so you have the high hats and then one kind of crash ride sort of thing. I talked about this in another video but they're not horrible. They're not good but they're not horrible. Okay so then we have a box which I'll probably open these up and make sure everything's in there but it looks like it's all here. A box with your bass drum pedal. You've got a product DVD and a little instruction thing which is good to have. It just lets, more lets me know that this is, this looks brand new. Like the one I got before which is in another video which I'll put a link to probably a couple times in this was definitely a return. Like there was duct tape on it so it was kind of like a deal where like someone returned it and duct taped it and they just said screw it and then sold it on this auction site. But so first box this has a bass drum pedal and then we have a snare stand in the bag which I'll leave in the bag for now. Again I'm just showing you what's in this stuff. Then I've got a ton of lugs and tension rods and claws which it's kind of scary because there's a hole in the box and you know you want obviously every single tension rod to be there so you don't have one missing and not have the right lengths like bass drum tension rods. So I might put these on just to make sure this guy gets what he's looking for. So I'll put this back in the box. Okay so that's snare stand and bass drum pedal. We've got this longer stand which is probably a cymbal stand or two. Oops okay so this is a cymbal stand which I think it comes with one. This is a pair of sticks probably like five A's or five B's or something obviously no brand or anything. Then we've got our excuse me our floor tom legs and that's it for this box. So this is the what comes in the second little box on top there. Put this down. Okay now we've got another box that's probably the hi-hat stand. Let's see what we've got in here.  All right so yes this is the hi-hat stand bass part of it and then there is the upper part of the clutch and the actual the rod in there so I'm gonna try and probably not be able to get this back in here but yeah okay so that's the second box has hi-hat and um yeah just the hi-hat. So that's the second box labeled H on there. I don't know if that helps anyone. Now we've got this box that has the snare drum that is new and it has snares and the heads on it so I'm gonna leave that in here yeah so I'm just checking what all is here now there's another little box labeled S and this is probably okay so this is uh bass drum feet come separate the spurs I guess you would say and then this is the tom mounts. So the tom mounts should be in this box labeled S so I will most likely set these up might be a separate video but you'll find out in this video okay so then in the box which I think you can see we have all right now at this point I want to make sure there's no um huge issues I got one on set a premier orange sparkle one um that had a massive not a massive it was actually not even that visible like a but a spider web crack in the floor tom so that's why it was at this auction um tom one in good shape two rims up top so you would take this bottom one and put it on there with the tension rods that are in the separate box so one tom stuff under that is the other tom but so here is the floor tom which again because it has this like the two rims up top it's making me think that this was just a brand new drum set because no one would take the time to put that back on like that so I guess this is factory you know it's the old and brand new so floor tom is good so inside of the the box it's kind of hard to show you but it goes bass drum floor tom two toms stacked on top of each other and then the bottom of the throne is right over there so again looking at this it's good a little dusty but it's perfect and again two two rims there are thrown which when people buy these drum sets like buy buy some drum shells it doesn't have a throne and that's always like kind of a pain in the butt but um so we got thrown here is the bass drum with let's see got both hoops on it oh man okay so here is oh my god okay so here's the problem as I'm finding this out for the first time uh this has the bass drum has a gouge in it um let's see if I can show you that so it's kind of hard to see but let's see if I can see the focus going there so yeah you can see there that that is a gouge in the drum where then on top of it it has get the focus going there come on autofocus it has punctured through and popped up that so um uh so that well let me zoom you back out here so that sucks um that is the problem so that's why these drums were 37 dollars um honestly for a hundred dollars only three hundred bucks that's probably not going to be a deal breaker um this guy tomorrow was giving me a hundred dollars plus three mij he said 30s or 40s shells which I don't know if they were making Japanese drums in the 30s or 40s but that is not good there's always something there's literally always something wrong it's definitely a gamble to buy these drums but I might even hit that with some glue and just try and get the um that's a and here's the the last thing in the box is the um stand for the throne which we have the bass of over here so um yeah so that's everything that comes in the box when you buy the gaming drum set you get a uh broken bass drum um no I'm kidding you get a bass drum two toms a floor tom a snare pedals all your accessories a throne um and uh all that stuff so yeah I guess I'm gonna probably get them set up here in a second but um yeah so thanks for checking out this video of unboxing and seeing what's inside of a gammon five piece drum set I definitely recommend the drums be careful if you buy them from some sort of auction site where it's like a restock or overstock thing because that's the problem there is always an issue like that so um yeah I'm gonna figure this out here in a second I'll catch up with you guys later