Hi, welcome to the very first episode of the Michelle show Ed is joining me today. Hi, I'm Ed gal nice nice to see you And thank you all so very much for joining me today on this first installment of my show That's great, and we're really excited to have you here today in in studio and and basically, I wanted to just Reiterate what everyone a lot of people in the chat room already know of what this show is all about and what your plan is and That's gonna work. I The basis of my show really is to bring out into the open and open forum Conversation about topics personal topics women's topics just life topics that people don't really like to talk about so a Lot of women's taboo subjects A lot of women's taboo subjects, but as time goes on we expect for the topics to expand into anything just related to life issues right today's topic which is online dating scams is a really important topic I feel and Especially of the romance scam that has nothing to do with money because as some of you know and have seen online There have been many many instances where women and men alike will meet somebody online and Begin a romance and over time they realize that they're being scammed for money Well, this is not what today's topic is about today's topic is about What happens when you find out months down the road that the person you think you've been talking to doesn't even exist, right? well, so it's not just about financial scams, but just emotional emotional scams Yeah, I think it's a lot easier to fall prey to this kind of this kind of online dating scam because who would think that somebody's out there, you know Trying to rape somebody emotionally right and not take something of value from them Which is usually what what you expect the signs that you usually expect to see is a question of money Or when somebody asks you for something after you've started a relationship online But in this particular instance this Today's topic is what about when you meet somebody online? They send you pictures they romance you they make you fall in love with them only to find out Later that the person that you thought it was didn't even exist, right? And I think probably the The one number reason why I think that people do that is because it's so easy to hide behind a keyboard and to like Pretend like you're somebody else and even in your dreams. You might dream of being you know the person, right? Yeah, that's right, right and you have this like super ego that you want to like make a live all of a sudden in the online world Right, right, you know a lot of people are living a life that they that they probably find to be ordinary ordinary or mediocre and really You know the the online dating situation lends itself lends itself to Being able to create this fantasy character, you know whoever it is that you wish you were right so to speak So there are people that are you know stealing other people's photos Creating this you know this persona. Yeah that alter ego, right that eventually you find out doesn't exist Right, you know everybody that's watching now a lot of people that are watching now probably think that this couldn't happen to them But it happened to me So so you have firsthand experience and I can tell you that I'm the the person who is least likely You know for this to have happened to so that's that's probably what everyone that's what I think that's why they get Yes suckered into that's why they get suckered into it. So I wanted to bring this out into the open today It's not a topic that a lot of people talk about people think of online scams as you know The the money scams that that you hear coming out of Africa, right? You know all right chain letters and things like that This is a completely different topic, right and and I can tell you if I can fall prey to this anybody can fall prey to this Joining us today is Emily who is an online dating expert Emily's been dating online for a number of years has a lot to say on the topic is very knowledgeable And she's joining us on Skype by the way Hello Where were you at Emily if you can disclose where you're at yeah, I'm located in Los Angeles, California Oh great. Welcome to the show. Thanks beautiful place to live hard place to date. Oh, wow I can just imagine all the stories So what makes you? And sort of expert at this I guess is the first question You know, I've been dating for a long time and I'm in my early 30s. I've experienced I think kind of every online dating kind of Interface there is out there and I definitely think that my experiences are Similar to those of kind of every male and female in the US. I just I'm willing to talk about it So I've got a lot of tips of the trade And I've definitely kind of been there where I've been on the other end of a scam And and it sucks when people try to take advantage of you emotionally Mm-hmm, and is there like a certain criteria that these scammers are looking for or like, you know There was actually I just actually blogged about it There was a special on 2020 on online scams and of course as Michelle had mentioned there was one about You know people trying to get money and for people to send money to Ghana and kind of all of that stuff Which hopefully some of us are are keen to pick up on now these days But the other one was a woman who had met a married man on online on an online dating service and and I think that it's something that we have to consider is It's something that could happen to you in a bar. It could happen to you at a grocery store It happened to you anywhere where you can meet a married person so it just comes down to being smart and You know if somebody doesn't want to meet you immediately you got to Put put on your spideys then so wonder why Mm-hmm. Yeah, and I want to put out there right now You know that the gist of what happened to me without because I can talk about this subject for I can talk about this subject forever so I I'm only gonna give you, you know a few details So that you understand what some of the signs were in my particular case but Basically, I met somebody on Facebook and I normally don't accept friend requests from people I don't know and somebody reached out to me on Facebook and wrote me a very well articulated first message which You know, I'm very sexy It is it is very sexy and I'm a sucker for I'm a sucker for people that write well and this person articulated you know, they were very eloquent in their message and basically It was love at first sentence That makes any sense, right? He didn't even have a picture up, you know in the in the in the first In the first email that I received but basically from that moment on it became a Corresponding, you know daily multiple times a day He said he was a surgeon. So his time was very limited He couldn't be on the phone constantly. He couldn't mind you. He lived out of the state so I wasn't expecting to meet the guy in person, you know in a day or two days, it wasn't a situation where we could set up a meeting soon and He just you know, maybe I said maybe I got personal in the emails and and he fed off of that Mm-hmm. Maybe he knew what to say. Mm-hmm, but I can tell you that over the course of the many months that we were corresponding and He was very present very consistent.  So there wasn't really a reason for me to think that he was lying, right? And you know, we shared personal stories. It became an you know an intimate online dating situation and It took many many months I was probably ten months in before I found out listen to this Emily before I found out that The pictures he was using because he had volumes of pictures on his on his page It took months before a friend alerted me that she recognized the photos as being a famous movie star from Brazil I mean, can you imagine it's correct creamer? Well, listen, there are there are layers to this story, you know, the one is not only the dangers of online dating but but things to look out for in the social networks because I Love Facebook. I use it every day all the time. But this person created not only a false identity On a false Facebook account, but he also created multiple Fake identities which he had as his friends on his Facebook account So over the course of the many months that we were corresponding, he would manipulate those characters Into writing things on his wall to substantiate the lies that he told me throughout our online Relationship, I mean, that's a very That's pretty elaborate. That's a very complex, you know scenario and I Certainly didn't see this coming. You know when he said he was a doctor and his friend on his page was Posting on his wall Doctor so-and-so. What are you going to send me? You know the the information we discussed about spinal neurosurgery That substantiates that he's a doctor Yeah, at least in your mind at least in your mind, right? so we're talking about a person that You know went through the trouble of not only creating a fake identity, but multiple identities on Facebook To help substantiate his story, right? Which then leads to another you know another aspect of what we're talking about here If somebody's capable of doing that what kind of danger life threatening danger Are you putting yourself in because this guy had to be a sociopath a psychopath something?  I mean, I don't I don't know to this day If my life was put in danger because I never found out who the person was. How do you like that? Yeah, what do you think about that Emily is this does that sound familiar to you? Yeah, you know, I'm lucky enough where I haven't really had the kind of emotional scam that that's happened yet. I am a very blunt person, which is a fortunate thing and an unfortunate thing but I I Really have come to grips with the fact that whenever I am online dating. I want to meet somebody Almost immediately. I mean after two to three dates. I get two to three emails I say hey, are we gonna meet or are we not because I found a lot of the time that when I kind of Converse with somebody a ton on email I realized that maybe I just have kind of you know written chemistry with somebody and not that chemistry that you really needed person right so one of the things that I tell everybody when they're online dating is to kind of cut the crap and You know meet somebody ahead of time and always be smart about it when you meet somebody, you know Drive your own car and meet somebody the fairy for the very first time, you know in a very public space Whether it's you know a restaurant or or coffee or you know I don't think that dating online has to be as scary as it is because there are a lot of of great Outcomes that have come from it and especially with the way that our lives are so stressed out today We need kind of an outlet to meet other people that you're not gonna meet You know just during your everyday life, right? And I agree that you know the internet and corresponding on the internet Gives you a means by which to screen the candidates have an early conversation Even if it's written, you know to gauge if you have things in common. I that's one of the reasons why You know aside from because this person I didn't meet thinking I was gonna date him at some point It turned into that after we corresponded, but I have you know been on other On other websites, you know that are that catered to you know singles meeting and whatnot And I think they're great because it allows you to figure out sooner as opposed to later if you have anything in common But unfortunately, you know the whole thing lends itself to people creating fantasies, you know and somebody falling victim to You know someone who lies about their identity right well and what the scariest thing too is while we're also stressed out in our Everyday life you don't you're so protective of you know your money and your independence and Your house and kind of all of the things that are important to you for you know Money-wise, but you forget that you need to protect your emotional kind of being of you as well Yes, that's what a lot of the people can take advantage of yes Let's take a moment to thank our our sponsors. 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He wants to know where is a good place to meet when you're dating online? Tell us some of your better experiences. Where have they where they come out of? Yeah, some of my better experiences. I would definitely recommend To not do dinner when you're first dating somebody I've had a lot of guys tell me that You know they've invested so much money in their online dating life because They have taken all of these you know first dates to really nice dinners And then they've realized into the first drink that they don't like them, right? So, you know with all of us being in a recession right now Dating doesn't have to be expensive You know meeting at the local pub and grabbing a happy hour beer is always fun. I mean if you don't drink I think getting Starbucks Pinkberry was actually one of my very favorite first dates You learn a lot about somebody with you know what kind of frozen yogurt they get and what their toppings are There's a lot of really fun first dates that you can do that are cheap and you know You sit down for an hour 90 minutes and you really get to know if that's something you want to spend any more time with Or if you just kind of want to part ways or Introduce into one of your friends. Now.  The best assortment of candidates so to speak. I've met I mean I've met dates everywhere I've met everyone from you know somebody at the gym to somebody online to you know a pizza place to the grocery store to Okay, Cupid. I mean I literally Try to to meet anybody wherever I can the most important part about it is that When you are dating somebody and when you're ready to meet somebody online You don't have a great, you know profile of what you expect out of that person With online dating. I think you really need to think out of the box and see what else is out there That's not on your top 10 list so Not dinner is that you're saying that mainly because that's That that's what the men are saying that it's just expensive a lot about that that and it's funny because I've been invited to dinner Where I've had to pay for half the meal and that's happened Several times that guy has invited me out from an online dating relationship or from it just you know from meeting online And they have you know wanted to go Dutch at dinner, which I think is completely inappropriate You're right that is an upcoming show topic going going Dutch The men always should always be paying Well, so, you know, I think that there's I just heard from a lot of people and I think that dinner can be a really big commitment For a first date. So it's always great to To do something a little simpler. Yes, definitely. Yeah, I agree. I think that People obviously are more conscious about how what they're spending and and if I'm single and I'm dating two or three times a week I mean, we're talking about easily in New York City a hundred dollars at the very least For one date. So you're talking about hundreds of dollars to keep me on the verge of almost finding that perfect person Yeah, and I can see that the chat board is is Blowing up with questions. Yes. Yeah, they have a yeah Cassandra has a good one I think well, I can probably read it here I have a friend who has been dating a guy for almost a year, but they've never met I've tried telling her to end it, but she doesn't listen. It cost me our friendship in his previous relationship with her Friend he pretended to be someone else and dated her best friend if that doesn't show my friend What is psychopath? He is what will any advice? Yeah? I mean if you have a friend who is failing to see the signs, you know If they confide in you and they they tell you like I told see my problem was that I told a lot of Handful of my friends what I was going through I I even let them read some of the messages and most of my friends thought The guy existed just based on the correspondence Oh when you tell a friend and the friend sees that there's something suspicious I mean Emily, what do you tell that person to try to shed light? You know on on the whole thing and get them to see that something is very very wrong when they're just refusing to meet in person You know as a friend, there's only so much you can do We're all adults and you need to act like one and if for some reason your friend isn't listening to you Then I think you know it they're they've kind of got their situation in their own hands There's not much that they can do And there's not much you can do you voice your opinion and really that's kind of mean that's you did your job as a friend Right now in in the core in the the correspondence of it. I mean what are You mentioned for example you give You give the candidates that you're meeting and whatnot a three email, you know Pretty much. Yeah, pretty much. Right. There's three emails before you request to meet in person or you just you know You shut them out. Yeah, what are what are some of the signs? You think and I'll share some of mine as well But what are some of the signs? I mean when they don't want to talk to you on the phone. There's a problem That's that I mean hello That's your number right and if I talk to you on the phone And if they don't and if they don't want to you know talk live with a with a video cam obviously That's another sign Yeah, and you know I have to say those are two things that I actually prefer not to do as an online dator When I meet some when I and you know talking with somebody via email on an online dating site I don't really like to give out my phone number and I don't really you know like to talk on video chat I just give them the opportunity to meet me in person or it's kind of it's kind of it That's just my personal opinion But I think phone is a great thing that you definitely need to do The only thing with the phone and this is where it gets a little complicated Is when you are dating because people have moved around so much you can have an area code That's you know all the way across the country and they can be telling you that they're in Your city right right So there's a lot of ways to um to see the scams coming though. I think um especially Unfortunately for you it sounds like a lot of the the clear signs were hidden I mean, I think when an email is written in all caps, it's it tends to not be human Right, it's totally true right it's computer automated and they're you know, they're reaching out to you for a variety of reasons The other thing is when um, you know, the Grammar is horrible. You can normally tell that that's coming from somewhere else as well Yes, I mean listen, I don't even I don't date real life guys that have horrible grammar I don't blame you my tips for a good profile Yeah, now jennifer Online in the chat room is asking if in my particular case if the guy ever wanted to meet And and did he use excuses? Did he ever um, I said earlier that he said he was a doctor um and that he had a very busy schedule and You know at first we set a date to meet which was about five weeks in I was gonna he was supposedly from florida Um, those of you that know me know that I'm from florida, so I visit florida all the time So we scheduled a tentative date to meet five or six weeks into the relationship Um, and and I called it a relationship because it very much became that I mean it totally consumed me um, but anyways When the the five weeks were up Suddenly his father passed away and he had to leave the country Because he was originally from spain supposedly so five weeks in he had to leave the country So when it was time for me to go to florida Uh, the meeting couldn't happen and then the relationship turned into you know for a couple of weeks My trying to consult him through his father's death Right, so I wasn't trying to put pressure on him You know to when are you coming back, right? I just wanted to be a source of You know of comfort, right? So we spent another two to three months like that Oh, wow Then when it was time to meet again in florida three months later, you know, um A surgery came up that you know that where he couldn't make it and basically I held on another Seven or eight weeks or so and then that was when I found out That he wasn't the person that he said he was right, but You know, but how did you find that out? I found out I said earlier that a friend alerted me, but basically what happened was I I kept showing a friend of mine Uh pictures. Oh, you know, I showed a friend of mine pictures of the guy and she kept saying, you know He reminds me of somebody I know He reminds me of somebody I know well weeks later. She calls me up one early one morning and she said Uh in in a voicemail. She said I remember who he looks like he looks like so and so the actor from this soap opera That had aired like eight years ago. It was a brazilian soap opera dubbed in spanish And I googled it found the guy now imagine me googling the soap opera seeing Video footage of the person I've been talking to for months And then googling the real actor's name And finding virtually all the pictures that the guy had on his facebook page So you knew right then and there did you confront him michelle? I did I confronted him and then this is where it gets a little, you know, it gets sticky because I I I had to confront him right away. I couldn't I couldn't not confront him and just you know, shut him out. I was invested way too much emotionally and Um, I called him on it, you know, I emailed him right away Sent him, you know the video footage the pictures. I told him that I knew what he was doing And at that point I was still so emotionally involved emily that I was willing to still meet him because I thought that maybe He just had a complex about the way he looked physically and maybe He was The person that he said he was just didn't look the way he said he did or that he portrayed in his pictures And I didn't have a problem with that so you assume that everything else was may have been real I assume that everything except the pictures, right except the pictures So I confronted him. He gave me a story About why he didn't tell me the truth And then he promised to send me a real picture Took it took two weeks for him to do that and when he did do that I could tell right away. It was yet another hot guy from the movies So I I hung on via email for several weeks because you can imagine that You know, I really wanted to know who it was. I mean, I I don't know to this day who it is Or who it was and you know The curiosity is always going to be there. I was truly involved. You were connected 100% Yeah 100% so it took you know, I I remained Connected via email for several weeks just trying to get him to admit to me who he was I mean, I got his ip address I think I have a really good idea of where he lives and who he is But I'm not 100% sure and at this point Am I really looking to spend an enormous amount of money to have the guy tracked down Just to find out who he is to get some sort of vindication I just I don't it's it's been an energy draining project as it is I don't I don't need to take it any further But if anything can come of this really is for people to know that this can really happen to everybody and You know It's very easy To fall prey because people can spend, you know, listen, even if you have a full-time job You can nowadays you can connect on your phone You can connect on your laptop and you can feed into somebody's emotional void 20 times a day and make them feel like a million bucks and hook them that way, right? That's really, you know, what it comes down to so um I mean, what do you think Emily? Well, you know, it's funny because a lot of the people in the in the chat room have this question And I'm kind of curious too. Are you Were did you ever think maybe it was somebody that knew you? I thought that maybe it was somebody who knew who who knows me Only because I mean how did they find me? You know what? I mean how because this this was a person who sent me initially a random email So, you know, there are millions of people on facebook So the question is how did he find me? Did he just get a friend's suggestion? And pick me at random because he liked my picture. I don't know To this day, I don't think it's somebody that I know only because All of the dialogue just so, you know, was in Spanish. None of the dialogue was in English I actually at some point want to want to publish the dialogue online Even if you know, I don't know if I'll ever translate it into English, but I do want to publish it online um So that people can read it and And see how easy it is. First of all, it's a very interesting story. The dialogue is fantastic even today when I read it It's just so juicy But you know, I want people to be able to read it and Maybe uh, they're going through the same thing and they can relate, you know What they're reading to something that's going on in going on in their life, but I mean It's just uh, it's a it's a it's a long and drawn out story It took me 10 months to figure out that this guy wasn't who he said he was And I can still to this day admit that even though, you know, he lied and he has You know psychopathic tendencies He was very present. He was very present in my life. I I shared a lot of intimate information with him He counseled me through bad moments I mean, this is a person who was very very Very smart, uh to finish answering your question. Emily, you asked if I thought it was somebody that I knew Um, since the dialogue was in Spanish and he said he was from Spain And there's you know, there are certain words and it's not Spanish Spanish from Spain is not a different dialect so to speak But every Spanish country has different vocabulary words and things that they use that makes that makes it You know that distinguishes what part of the world they're from I don't know any but I don't really have any friends that are that are From Spain, let's say, you know, except for one really good friend that I know wasn't him um And he spoke to me very consistently In this verbiage that was typical of somebody from that part of the world, right? So Maybe he's a friend of a friend that saw me on somebody's page I don't know. I mean is he still on facebook or did he just disappear? He disappeared because I I sent an email to facebook letting them know what happened to me. I think they followed up because um, actually the last time I did a search his profile was still up But I think that You know, that's only because you can never really make a profile disappear unless you you uh unactivated account So I don't know exactly If anybody else is able to like friend this guy because since I blocked him from my particular page every time I try to go into his page Even from from my ip address on my computer. I can't access it because I blocked him Okay, so and that's another thing facebook when you submit a complaint to them of this sort I mean something may have been updated since this happened to me a couple of years ago um But facebook when when you send in a complaint Basically, what they'll do is they tell you that they're going to look into it But they're not going to give you any further information So how do you know if it's ever taken care of if it's ever addressed? No, you don't it's just I mean you don't To me it's like uh, as soon as I find out someone's lying to me. It's like I just You know pretend like they've never existed I mean I I try not to do business with people that are that you find out that are liars or You know scammers or cheaters and if you see them or saying something To someone else that could be deceitful or it's a lie Then that's good enough reason for me not to deal with them because it's just why bother, you know There's just way too much and you know That they're trying to do to try and figure out right what they're up to, you know, it's like it's not worth it So, um, I wanted to to ask you emily Um, I forget who asked the question, but I copied and pasted it onto my clipboard Are there tips or red flags to look out for that should indicate? You are being scammed aside from no video camera Um, I mean, you know, there's obviously there's a few a lot of people right now are using kind of the army um You know army veterans as a scam You know saying that they are coming and going from From war and that they need money and supplies sent once they're there So that's always something to kind of be careful for um another thing is A lot of the time people will say that they're And I don't know why they always use someone foreign But a lot of the time it's somebody that's saying they're from australia or it's always an english-speaking foreign country Um, and that's when they say that they're you know going abroad for work And they would love to have you come visit, but they don't have the money to fly you there And a lot of the time you need to be careful obviously with with the money things Don't send your money anywhere spend it on yourself. Yes, that's my tip Um But the other thing you know when it comes to the emotional scamming is again You just need to be really careful about how many emails are going back and forth And just to be really weary, um That you're asking a lot of questions that you're not just the one answering them And and is there some is there certain things that you want to address right up front like Um, is there certain questions that you have that you always ask within the first few times? Yeah, you know, it's hard because I think a lot of the time you want to save You know, you're almost your interview questions like your first date questions for your first date So I always find that a lot of the time emails that I get that aren't from scammers You know that are from people that I've met with you know that I've that I've met on first dates Are really you know, what are you doing this weekend? Oh, how long have you lived in los angeles? What do you do for a living just kind of the very the very general stuff that gives you an idea of what type of person that is Um, you know, you always want to be curious as to if somebody can take you to lunch on a wednesday What kind of job do they have where they can take you to lunch on a wednesday? um Or you know, if if they're not available until 9 30 at night It was funny. I went out with somebody a couple weeks ago and the only time he could go out during the week was like after nine And I kept saying like in in la that In new york, that would be something that was totally normal, but in la you're kind of like let's do happy I mean, that's that's a school night. What are you doing?  Yes, and You really, you know, both with men and women you really need to turn on your kind of intuition and see if something feels right or wrong I can guarantee that 90 of the time if something is wrong, you're going to be able to feel it All right, I have a personal sort of a personal experience I'm not in a dating world right now or have been in a long time But I do meet people all the time online skype or whatever and uh, bruce and I actually met this Uh, it was a guy actually on skype and he was from sweden or something and we had this communication for months and there was never any kind of Thought that he was trying to get something from us. It was just mere conversation sometimes, you know Asking for advice this and that and after a few months of knowing him the natural questions that I asked was Do you are you dating someone? Are you married? What kind of women do you like? And then I'm now playing matchmaker And so this is where I went wrong was that I matched him up to one of my good friends that lives in Miami and uh To make a long story short, you know, she was very happy to have met him online And uh, and then they talked countless hours on the phone Uh, I had never actually seen him on skype because he claimed that he didn't have a video cam So we just talked on voice Excuse me, so I we assumed that he was legitimate because there was no other indication And so finally my friend talked to him for hours hours and months And they finally agreed to meet in new york city So my friend flew up to new york to meet him and guess what he never showed up never to be heard of again Ah, that's that's that's horrible. I know and I felt horrible just because I felt you were in the middle palpable, you know, you were you were in the middle I want to bring up an interesting comment that james said in the live chat James said and I'll rephrase just to not use You know verbatim What he said, but he said that rather than getting uh, let's say love in person That I allowed myself to fall into a photo drama You know online, right? Um, I certainly am Able to get love in person But this is a very I'm actually glad he brought it up because this is a very interesting point in this entire topic That a lot of times the emotional void is greater than your physical need to have sex I totally agree. Okay, because I I during the time that I was corresponding With with this guy. I actually had was kind of in a relationship with somebody else And when I and I'm even embarrassed to admit this but I broke off The relationship that I was in because I was so emotionally Invested in this new person, right? I wasn't even interested in the guy that was giving it giving it to me for real anymore So I'm glad that james brought it up because that really is an important An important part of this entire topic that that you know, the person that fulfills you emotionally that goes So much farther than just, you know, the 20 minutes of the real thing that you get somewhere else It really has nothing to do with sex. Most people that will fall prey to this are people that have an emotional void Hey, I'm not afraid to admit it. I I did at the time And you know the these people that are online doing this.  So Yeah, I I I I got myself into the whole photo online Email drama You know versus the real thing and and I got to tell you it while it lasted it was very fulfilling Now michelle, can we talk about another one of the blog or one of the kind of scams that's happening right now? Yes, regarding married men online Okay, go ahead. I I'm just curious because um, we have somebody kind of in the chat room Flan handler who who is on online dating sites and he's He's thinking about getting divorced But is dating um people out there. So he knows that he can find somebody once he does get divorced So I'm just curious what you think about that. I I'm a little I mean I think it's totally wrong for for married men to be kind of trolling the sites Listen for the emotional, you know the the women who are emotionally available and kind of looking for love I I think that anybody Who is Misrepresenting their reality In under any circumstances is just that's not the right thing to do. It's wrong And if if if you're married and you're looking Whether you're whether you think you're in a bad marriage Whatever the circumstances are if you meet somebody you need to just be upfront and tell them Not wait three dates because I know uh flan handler was asking earlier If it was okay to meet somebody since he's thinking about getting divorced But he doesn't want you know, he doesn't want to uh, he doesn't want to get divorced till he has somebody else Which is that that's a whole other issue in and of itself, but um He's asking if it's okay to let her know after the third date Listen after the first date after the second third communication after the third date if the person you're seeing Has gotten any kind of vibe or what they think is your reality And then you throw a bucket of cold water on them by telling them something different. It's just wrong So if if you're married and you're looking for love in other places What you need to do is just be honest from the beginning let the woman make the choice Listen whether we agree that it's right or wrong nine times out of ten if she really she's really digging you She's gonna go out with you anyways Right, but at least you were honest and upfront and you don't create a credibility issue later When she finds out that you lied and then that becomes the topic for the remainder of the relationship That becomes the topic of choice.  I mean women are you know online Doing the same thing Yes Right. I mean in that case, uh, michelle was dating someone and she was online Yes, I was I was I was thank you for putting me out there Um, thank you for throwing me under the bus But yes, I I was dating somebody I met the online guy Because I got a you know, I got a guilty conscience over it because I do feel I do feel that emotional cheating Is cheating, you know, even though I hadn't met the guy I was in a relationship. I ended A couple weeks in I ended the relationship I was in to further communicate and explore this situation with the online guy and so yes, you know, and I'm certainly guilty of You know of having been unfaithful so to speak. Yeah in in this online situation. Yeah, I can see both Sides because I mean there's always that transition period where You're not completely broken off, but you know that you're not interested But you haven't gotten to the point where okay, it's cut, you know And so in the meantime, you're over there playing the other field You might not be having sex or doing anything that could be Misconstrued as something wrong, but the fact is is that your eyes are wandering somewhere else So, right, I think that's I mean, I'm not saying it's right or wrong because everyone can make their own decisions, but Uh, I think we're human and we all have those periods of time where right where where you slip or You don't do the right thing or what you think and your partner thinks is the right thing because At the end of the day, it's all relative to you know to our own personal experiences and our own opinions But if you know that your partner would be very upset if they found out you were You know communicating via text or via email And and you had an emotional connection with somebody that's not them It's cheating if it's something that if your partner knew it would change the entire scenario, it's cheating I mean, don't you agree? Well, yeah to a certain degree, but in the same thing. I can't help but thinking You know, I recently saw the I think it was I think it might have been that movie with julia roberts that new movie I mean, I can't remember actually, but uh, it was the scenario was that the the husband was always online looking at nudie pictures Right, and I mean, I don't consider that cheating for a man. That's not really cheating. No, not if he's just looking at pictures Yeah, look, I think in general, you know when when We create in our mind a picture of who we think the people around us are Based on what they project So when time goes on and you find out Any idiosyncrasy about that person's character or personality that's not consistent with what you thought they were It's just shocking.  I'm not satisfying him Right. He's looking for another wife, etc. But the reality is is that he just men are like that, you know That's a whole other topic. I know we're gonna have to definitely uncover some of those Uncover some of those Issues issues on a later date. Let's take a minute and thank our sponsors once again Yes, thank you to us gold coins calm our trusted advisors for investments in rare gold and silver coins Andy is The owner there and he takes the mystery out of buying silver and gold by holding your hand They take a hands-on approach better to call and speak to them directly for their current inventory And the number you want to call them at is 1 800 hot coin And if for those of you that are not in the u.s. Uh, you can email them and uh, they're pretty good about responding Mezzy grill.com is our other sponsor where authentic Mediterranean food meets modern flavor And they actually are serving breakfast now. So it's not just lunch and dinner, but breakfast They're on 8th avenue at 55th street in new york city just a couple blocks from south of columbus circle And carpevm.com sees your market say it with video charlie works closely with you from beginning to end to ensure that your video makes an impact and on the web and and and they're Engaging your viewers with the video and your products that you're trying to sell and our other sponsor is mount gox.com And they are the bitcoin exchangers and for those of you that don't know what bitcoins are you can go to bitcoin me.com and we created a website to inform people about what bitcoins are and they are the newest form of currency in the online world And that's mount gox.com and you can get a three percent off now through august 9th And if you trade with them, thank you to our sponsors. We really appreciate everything that you do for us So did you uh get anything else from the chat room? Yes. Yes. I'm loving I'm loving this chat so many interesting comments and questions. Mekoto Was uh curious to find out what if you get to know somebody online and emily I want your opinion on this too What if you get to know somebody online you fall in love with you know the the person they seem to be And then you then they misrepresented themselves, you know with showing you a hot person's picture And then they turn out to be unattractive You know, um, I actually have two blogs on this called will the real slim shady still please stand up And Literally in a span of a week. I went out with three different people who didn't look anything like their profile Okay, great. So why did it go? It was a fascinating experience and this is why I really think that you need to Take the online meeting offline You need to meet somebody and you need to see if You know there for for me and I'm You can call me vane. You can call me whatever you want, but I really think that a physical connection and a You know an appearance has a lot to do with whether you're going to be Attracted to somebody in the long run Yes, I agree. Yeah, I agree. There's nothing better than live in person. I know we all believe it Um, what was that? I missed it. I said whether everybody else says that or not. I know we all believe it Yes, but don't you but let me ask you this because this is I'm I'm uh, uh, I I differ a little bit only because only because I mean I definitely agree that you have to have a physical connection, but I believe that when you fall in love with somebody online that If you meet them in person They don't necessarily have to be physically perfect or physically ideal or physically ideal what you think is ideal in every way Suddenly at least I think maybe this is true for for a lot of women because women are more emotional and less physical than men but I've met guys that are not that physically attractive, but because They're because of their intellect because of the way they speak because of the way they dress the way they carry themselves Uh, and after you've fallen in love with them online, they just become that much more attractive to you So there I don't think that That it's always there's always a disconnect when you meet them in person And they're let's say they're not as great looking as you thought they were but if they're a fantastic person I mean there's a there's an attraction in there in there at some point somewhere I mean has that ever happened to you emily? Oh, yeah, definitely. No, I 100% agree with that um But I just think that You know meeting somebody online the importance of you know getting to know who that person is When they don't have the time to sit down and actually craft and think about an email or they actually have to you know be themselves You know Immediately has a lot to do with kind of who that person is too Yeah, right because I mean in my particular case when I if I would have gotten to a point where I could have met this person Uh, and I told you earlier I was willing to meet him even in spite of the lie of the physical lie If he was in every other way the person that he said he was at I mean It look I got so emotionally involved He could have been blue coming off of the planet mars and I would have married this guy Like that's that's how fantastic. I thought he was see but I also think that I have never fallen in love with somebody just from you know talking to them online and I think that We need to you know as a generation that is really nurturing relationships from meeting online That you really need to meet somebody offline Before you really kind of take that next step. I agree and let me tell you something What you said a little while ago is going to become one of my new favorite models, you know, take the online dating offline Yeah, I think that's that's fantastic. I mean it I certainly Will never fall prey again. I hope not you know to to this sort of thing And certainly if and when I were to meet somebody online It's only going to be there's only going to be a couple of correspondences before Before we just have to meet in person. I mean, I'm just wired differently now after having gone through this experience Cassandra is is has an interesting question also What if you meet somebody online and they have Chatted with you live on camera. I mean, is it still considered a scam?  Absolutely.  Well, and again, but that's something that can happen to you if you meet somebody, you know in the protest department at a grocery store That's right. Right You know, clarify that's not something that just happens to people who online correct And that's why I said earlier that I really think Um, and that's one of the one of the most important points that I can make in in this conversation Just in life in general that there are so many people out there that are misrepresenting their reality Who they are who their family is what their name is That's wrong on every level.  So The key indicators on those websites that you go for that is like if they show you a body part, but no full So they're always asking for pictures of full body including face head the whole body Right is one of the things because as soon as you see pictures that are not that then you assume that it's not a real person And the other thing that you have to assume is that most people even if they're showing their real picture That's the best picture they've ever taken So so i'm cynical. So I always think wow, they look good, but what what do they look like in reality?  Yeah, but you don't have to see that But the reality is if they're just sending you pictures of body parts and you you know They've never sent you that sexy picture with the face. Yeah that that's also a sign that you know that that maybe Maybe it's not their thing. Yeah Well, I know from my friends.  It's definitely Like 90 percent of the time it's not The same person that's in the picture So i'm assuming it's probably the same in the in the hetero world that you know that people are just Not who they they claim to be absolutely Yeah, we have to you know be cautious and And know that when we're dialing in to these websites. So emily, what are some of the websites that you use today and uh, do they provide any kind of? Um Instructions or Criteria that they follow to eliminate this kind of thing, you know match.com recently came out with um, it was all over the news. Um They were I don't even know how matching. I guess email addresses with a Profile like a profile.   Right But that one you know that they can just create another email address and move on So, you know in all honesty, I think that there's a lot of I use personally and there's sites that I've tried everything And you know e harmony match.com plenty of fish jazzed Zeus. I mean you name it. I have loved to try it How about we is kind of fun. It's where you propose dates and and people say if they want to go on them or not But None of these sites can really protect you from online scams If you think about how many people are out there, you know online dating It's a huge huge community And I think that the most important thing is that you need to be careful of yourself and that you need to You know not be Stupid you need to really When you go on dates, you need to be safe. You need to yes Drive yourself. You need to you know, consider all don't get too drunk There's a lot of things that you know tips online that you can look up Where would be a good place to lift these things up?  I if you just google online dating tips There's some great ones. Um, there's a blogger that I love eflirt expert Um, she's fantastic and has some great tips on what to do and what not to do in dating Emily what um, you have a fantastic blog as well Tell the audience where they can find you Thanks. Yeah, you guys can find me at um, www my life on match and more Um, and there I just really blog about my dating experiences and I love to get kind of feedback of what everybody else is going through um, I'm just like you guys and My dating life it has its ups and downs as well Um, and then I also you can find me on twitter, which I actually live tweet during my dates, which everybody thinks is hilarious Oh, that's cool. Can you repeat your blog again? Yeah, my blog is www my life on match and more And my twitter handle is just my life on match And so you do like uh step by step as you're dating what's going on on your twitter Yeah, I'm like, he's in the bathroom. He does not look like Clark Kent Emily, you know, I try to be try to be sly, but sometimes it's a little harder than others Wow, that sounds very interesting. I'd like to check that out for sure. I'm curious now But I think we run out of time, right? Yes Emily, thank you so much for joining us. Um, I want you to come back I want you to come back and join us again on similar topics Uh, I'm going to be online chatting with some of the people in the in the chat room after the show Thanks so much for joining us guys. It's been a blast and the hour just flew by Yes, thanks. I'll be on the chat in the chat room for a while as well. Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you guys See you next week. Bye


Namaste, ma'am. What's your name? Neeraj. My name is Neeraj and I belong from India, Uttarakhand. And this is my first time in Rishikesh. I want to ask you a question. Why we as a human being are here on earth and what is the reason behind that? Neeraj is your name? Yes, ma'am. So, Neeraj, are you aware that you have different, let's say layers of consciousness through which you perceive this world, this existence? Say for example, you have a very material physical layer, which are the cells of your body. And those cells themselves perceive something because they feel pain, for example. So, let's assume that that is like a base layer of consciousness from which you are perceiving this environment, this world. Let's take another layer, which is the emotional, from where you experience all the various emotions that are possible to experience in this existence. There's also another layer, which could be, we could call the conceptual, from where you perceive all the concepts, ideas, thought processes, you're able to perceive all of that, like I'm speaking to you now. You're not able to perceive that I may be transmitting something materially to you, you may not be able to perceive that, but you certainly can perceive that I'm speaking a sentence and you are able to perceive the meaning of that sentence through the conceptual consciousness. There are also others. There's a creative, transformative layer of consciousness through which you actually create and perceive creation than associations. Like if you want to do a drawing, if you do it from your conceptual, it'll be one kind of drawing, but if you do it from the transformative, creative, you may actually create something which has a much deeper impact. So there are all these different ways of perceiving. Now, the question which you have, which is, what is the purpose of this life? Why are we here at all? That is a question that emerges in the conceptual. It's not the cells are not asking that question as far as we know. Do you feel that the cells of the body are asking that question not really? Is the emotional, the actual emotional being which has emotions like anger and jealousy, it's not asking what is the purpose of this existence because it's busy emoting, right? But there's one layer that asks that question. That's the conceptual. Then there's the creative, the transformative layer which is not asking that question because it's creating, it's doing, it's producing. This conceptual layer that asks this question is the base station of you as a human being. The animals have the emotional as the base station. The plants too. The minerals have the material physical as the base station. The human being has that conceptual, so that's where a lot of the activity is going on. Why am I here? Where did I come from? Where am I going? You will never, ever, ever find this answer anywhere. No one on this planet can tell you where did you come from and where are you going? They can say you were a soul, you took a body, you're going to die, your good soul is going to go on this, that, all kinds of things, but you cannot be sure of what happened before and what's going to happen. So, why am I living is a question that will never be answered. But, there's some small hope and that is that the question will fall away. It will fall away? It will disappear as a question and how does that happen? The interesting thing is that that question of who am I? Why am I here? What is this all about? Disappears when you start to move into a state of samarpan, surrender, and samarpan or surrender to what? What are you surrendering to? It is to the antaratman, to the living presence, to the cosmic soul individualized here. And you submit, you surrender, you bend down in humility to the soul, to the antaratman and its command. So, you decide, are you going with the command of the antaratman or are you going with the demand of the ego of the ahankar? That is your sadhana in every moment. And as you do this sadhana, what happens is that the consciousness itself or the ability to perceive deeper and deeper and deeper starts to expand beyond the conceptual and the emotional, which are the two main areas that you as a human being are functioning from. So, it goes up and it goes down, it starts to expand. And as it expands, the question falls away. Why? Because you start to perceive this life from very, very different vantage points. For example, you move into a unity consciousness where just looking at the other, you and the other and you and all of this is one, one, one. I am that and that is me and I am this and this is me. It's just oneness, it's all oneness. So, in that oneness, you're not bothered about how am I here, why am I here, where did I go? It's not a question anymore. It has fallen away. Or if you move to this area of the consciousness where this eye, this so-called the exactly, what that means when it opens means actually that your consciousness has expanded beyond the conceptual, beyond the transformative, even beyond the unity consciousness and has moved to the pluriform state where you're able to perceive your own divinity. You see yourself as divine, you see the other as divine and you have trikala drishti, the ability to perceive in this very moment the past, the present and the future. Just last night, one of my students had a very powerful experience of trikala drishti. When he saw in the face that was in front of him, just someone having all the various emotions that are possible in a moment, but all in one moment, from past, from future and from present, very powerful experience when the perception moves into the trikala drishti. So that's how those questions fall away. Even the question, who am I? It falls away when the consciousness expands. So you will never get an answer that satisfies you about why are you here or where did you come from or what is this life about? But you will always be able to expand the consciousness in such a way that those questions fall away. And this existence becomes one of deep surrender from moment to moment to moment to moment. Samarpan to the master within, the antar guru. So you go into that practice and then it really falls away. Not just those questions but many others. For example, the question, who created the universe? It's a question that just falls away. It puts a smile on your face because you know exactly that this question has no validity as a question even. But it's not that you're frustrated, you're just joyous because those questions are not there in your system anymore.


Hi everybody thanks for coming. It's great to be here from Australia. I'm going to be talking about failure and how we work at the DX lab. We're like an innovation lab. I'll kind of go through it in a sec. We are the State Library of New South Wales innovation and research lab started in 2014. We are Australia's first dedicated Glam lab. We were inspired by NYPL's labs and the British Library labs. Very small team. We have 2.6 people. Paula Bray who talked last year and myself, Kahutong. I'm the technical lead. Paula's kind of like the creative director, leader. I'm one of the techie guys. I've got a design background as well. Luke is here. Not .6 of him. All of him is here. He's our lab developer. He's really great with the hardware stuff. He can code as well. He has other skills too which if you talk to him you'll find out. We sit under the digital strategy and innovation branch and it's important to kind of note this. We're separated from the digital library systems and services and they're kind of the business as usual branch and we're under this kind of strategy innovation branch. I should also note that we work really closely with other teams such as the research and discovery team, the learning team, marketing, exhibitions. We run grants, very public grants where you have to apply for them and then we select the winner. It's $30,000 and these support creative and innovative uses of the library's collection data. This is a recipient which we judged about 3 months ago is Mauricio Girodo from New York. His project is what if we let the images speak? He wants to improve the discovery of our collection using machine-generated metadata. He'll be writing his own code to do object recognition, clustering, cool machine learning stuff. We also have a digital program and it's $5,000 and there are two per year and that's an invitation one. We invite creative technologists to research innovative tech and use our data. Everything's kind of revolved around our data. These are very short. They can go from a week to a month. Sometimes they do extend a little bit if the creative technologist is keen to work with us. Right now we have Scout. This is the latest one and it's a drop-in with Mina Thamaraja and she has built this chat bot. You can see it here. It's embedded in this cute little robot. The kids are just drawn to it and they answer these questions. It works out using these questions. It works out their reading level and also their interests. You can't really see it but there's this printer inside the bot and it prints out their suggestions for books. We have these values. These are on our website. Audience first, innovate, iterate, be open, constant prototyping. I'll be referring to these in our projects which I'll talk about in a sec, especially the iteration. For being open, we use open source software. We publish our things. We publish our code as well. We kind of have a bit of a mission. We showcase the collection in innovative ways. We try to engage more diverse audiences. We accelerate technological change within the organisation. This is kind of like a slightly unofficial one. We break down the library silos. We kind of fit in between the gaps in the library organisation. Try to connect teams together. We're kind of like a conduit where we try to be anyway. There are other labs out there, actually. British Library labs, of course. Library of Congress labs is massive. National Library of Netherlands has a lab. There's now a Glam Labs website you can see there. Recently, all these labs got together to write this book. I don't know if anyone's seen this book yet. Has anyone read it? Yeah, cool. Okay. That's good. Yeah. So, Mahendra Mahay organised this and he got 14 people in Doha, locked them in a room for one week, five days, and got them to write this book. I think it's like 30,000 pages. It's crazy. It was like a reality TV show for labs. And yet Paula Bray was one of the participants from our team. I'll talk about some of our experiments now, just through the lens of the theme of this topic. Experiments. So, when we refer to our projects, we try to call them experiments. It sort of takes a pressure off a bit. The framing is important. It's framing for us, but also framing for the public so that they know that this is work in progress. It's not going to be perfect. We're trying to learn something from this. The first experiment I'll talk about asks, what does the face of New South Wales look like in 2018? So, this is an exhibition we put on. It launched in October last year. And it's part of the library's new galleries projects. It's an immersive exhibition featuring thousands of portraits from the library's collection, mixed in with selfies from Instagram and also a photo booth as well. Ran for four months. I'll quickly show you how you get images onto the photo wall. So, we have these two touchscreens and the camera. And then you enter your details. Originally, we had like email and tried to capture a few other kind of details, but we're just like stuff that let's just put your name. And that's it. Let's not be creepy. Okay.  And you kind of jump up and down and get very excited, hopefully. Yeah, we there was some unexpected behavior, such as people taking photos of their selfie on the wall. So a bit of a weird recursive feedback loop going on there. And then they post that onto Instagram or Twitter. Here's a close up view. It was pretty complicated setup hardware set up three projectors. blending of projectors. You can talk to us later on about all that stuff. So using the photo booth as one way of getting images onto the photo wall, you could also submit selfies via Instagram. And what you would do is take a selfie on Instagram, add the hashtag new self files. And then we would have this kind of bot that would scrape this website, the the actual Instagram website, and then feed it into our system, it would run every 10 minutes, 10 minutes. Oh, quickly. Could you show the camera as well? There's the camera. Yeah. Yeah, it's a little bit cumbersome. We apparently the design was different. And when we when it came back, it was this kind of gigantic thing. Maybe some giant must have made it because it's it's pretty massive. But it worked well. Now I just want to do a bit of a quiz. Alright, because we had a few assumptions about which would be more popular the Instagram photos, because Instagram has this, you know, crazy ability to go viral, or the photo booth images. And I'm going to do some audience participation. Can can people who think that Instagram images would have been more popular? Can you put your hand up? Okay, cool. And then the other way around the photo booth images. They got a right. Okay, cool. We actually thought that Instagram images would be more popular.  So yeah, unfortunately, we didn't go as viral on Instagram as we wanted. But luckily, we still had the photo booths.  It's too much work. But luckily, we did it. So yeah, in terms of outcomes, we, the audiences loved being able to participate. We released a website as well. I'll show you a quick kind of preview in a sec. It also led to more continued research from researcher Kylie budge. And also it led to another exhibition called off the shelf. And we were able to turn this around really quickly using a lot of the same equipment, the same code, same servers. We did this in about four weeks, similar sort of concepts. But yeah, we worked directly with the state librarian. And he he kind of likes to go down into our library stacks and just kind of have a look around looking at the interesting books. And he'll take photos of them. And then yeah, it was his idea to come up with this exhibition. So yeah, part of it is actually curated by the state librarian. So new cell files launched in October last year. Orbit, this project also launched at the same time. And it's sort of this two screen experience. They're my two kids, by the way. I might switch to the website. It's no longer up. But there is we are slowly working on a web version. And I'll show you how it works. Oh, this is new cell files, by the way. Okay. So right now, all these circles, these are all the records that people are looking at on our online catalog right now in the library. And it's using Google Analytics data. Every time something pops up, that's when someone goes to that particular record. And you can get a little bit of information about it if you want. So let's go to this one. We can also do a bit of data visualization on this as well. And we can divide it by collection, published, unpublished, e-resource, format as well. Because it's from Google Analytics, we can, well, there's someone from New Zealand that's interesting. And state, and of course, city. And you can do two dimensional sort of graphs as well. I think a nice one is safe country. Okay. So someone from New Zealand is looking at audio. I'm not sure who that is. Could be someone here. Oh, yeah, cool. And yeah, this sort of updates in real time as well. This was iterated from a couple of projects. This is one of them. This is called search terms. We never finished this project. We started it. Just couldn't get it finished or find some way to present it. But we use this research to help fuel the Orbit project. It helped us understand the Google Analytics API really well. I mentioned the digital, digital drop ins before. This is one from last year called field of view. And what you're seeing now is a 3D model built in Unreal Engine using point cloud data that our kind of facilities team use for surveying for building surveying. So not for artistic purposes at all, but useful artistic purposes. And Mike Daly, he built this and it's kind of like a VR and 3D experience. There's about 9 million points in this model. So it's pretty massive. It needs a really, really powerful computer to run. You'd like to use like massive tower computer into our office and parked it there for a few months while working on this. And you can hear from the soundscape that it does change depending on where you are. This is the VR experience. So it can also be a 3D experience as well. So yeah, because it was so technically challenging and also VR is always very difficult to get onto the gallery floor. It didn't make it there. But he did build that beautiful trailer. And we know we blogged about it. We published the work. However, yesterday, we started some kind of like an extension of this project. And we're working with the learning services team to build a VR gamified experience for students.  So this is pretty exciting. So we're kind of continuing on with that project in some fashion. This is a project called the vending library. And this was launched a couple of years ago now. And it was only supposed to be around for three weeks. But it's lasted for two years. And this is a vending machine that's from the 90s. We bought it from eBay. How much was it, Luke? $260. Second hand. Yep. It still works, which is great. And what you do is you hashtag suggest, you post to Twitter, hashtag suggest and vending library. And then we have a Twitter bot that analyzes using a bit of machine learning light. You'll pass 20 tweets. And then it assigns a theme to you and then gives you a collection surprise, which is an item, a record in our collection. And it kind of looks like this. We originally tried to make this the whole thing controllable via Twitter, but it was just way too hard. We thought we'd just come up with a simpler interaction. You don't even need Twitter to use this. You can just randomly press a button and then get your collection surprise. I just quickly show you how it works. So there's your tweet, hashtag suggest, vending library. And then our bot gets back to you very quickly with a code, which is 3.4. And also you can link to the collection as well. And then hopefully you like the record that you got. So yeah, if you've got Twitter later on, please check it out. And here's some more fun interactions with the with the Twitter bots. People love it. Last year, I'm not sure if anyone saw but Paula Bray and Thomas Swing Evans came over. And they talked about 80 hertz sound lab. Was anyone around for that talk? A few people? Yeah, yeah. This was a 5.2 meter tall structure that we somehow managed to get in front of the library. And inside there's this kind of mechanism to crank handle and you can listen to audio generated from those paintings which are on this kind of roller. We, the exhibition only lasted seven weeks. So we always intended to allow people to listen to the audio. So we made a website of it. And that got launched a couple of weeks ago. I'll just give you a quick preview of it as well. I'm almost there with the projects. We've been a bit busy. This one's called Meridian. And this is my first lab project in 2017. You can see those two flat images and their images from our collection, mapped from our collection. And we mapped them around a sphere. Okay. And it's interactive so you can kind of zoom in as well. I was going to try and find New Zealand. It's sort of there. There's also another globe as well. So this was released as a website. And it works on your phone as well. It's going to be continuing as an exhibition later on next year. So that's very exciting. And this is our DXI website right after Meridian. We built a new website because we needed one. And it uses a few kind of modern website building techniques, headless architecture. So we've got separate front ends and back ends. It uses modern UI frameworks. And this is really, really good research for an upcoming digital library project as well. So keep your eyes open for that. And I think this is our last project called Dairy. And this is a tool that my friend Luke here worked on. And it's internal tool to download mass download images from our preservation system. And it's something you can't actually do. Unfortunately, the public don't have access to this, but our internal staff really need it. And when they're building publications or working on exhibitions, it's really well used and really useful. So just to kind of finish up, just wanted to talk about our impact. And we have like an external impact. We have our experiments, our publishing, our blog posts. We have our grants. We have our gallery projects, partnerships with other organizations, and also conferences that we attend. And we also have internal impact.  And that's something we don't talk about that much because it's internal. But we have internal collaborations with other teams, lots of knowledge sharing. We sort of can help consult with other teams because we have quite a diverse skill set. We build internal tools. We have a research that we do and also we contribute to the strategic plan. Obviously, there's a lot of overlap between these two things. And the way we work is we have this experiment, new experiment. Someone will come up with a batshit crazy idea and then we'll do some research. We'll design and build. And we'd like to keep the spec blurry rather than focused so that you can kind of change direction if you need to. And then this is probably the most important step. We definitely always publish and blog. And that's kind of what makes it worthwhile and a bit different. And we do this within a sandbox so that it's fast. If something goes wrong, the blast area is small, let's us become more adventurous as well. And with the publishing, we contribute back to our body of knowledge, which is our website. But then we use this when we do our next project. And then this body of knowledge grows, expanding the knowledge of the library, but also helping expand the knowledge of the whole glam sector. Thank you. So please check out the site if you have any queries. We've probably got time for one or two quick questions if anyone has any. Anyone, anyone? Very quick question. How are you funded? We're funded by the library directly. Yep. A little bit of foundation money as well. Anyone else? No? Cool. Okay. Thanks again, Kaho.


The top 9 niches to sell courses. I never thought I would do it. What's it? Well, it's creating an online course.  Well, I've been selling e-commerce for a long, long time and I'm really glad I checked into it because over the years, I've sold millions of dollars online and I've got a steady income from online courses. And that's why you should start one. And in this video, I'm going to show you the top 9 niches that you can sell a course in. Hey, I'm J.R. Fisher. Welcome to my channel. If it's your first time here, welcome and do me a favor. Hit that subscribe button down there. Don't forget, turn on the bell notifications. There's a little bell next to that subscribe button. You need to click that bell and turn on all notifications. Now in this video, it's really pretty exciting because I'm going to show you how to have an income every single day, every single month from selling online courses. I'm not only going to do that, I'm going to tell you the top nine areas that you should probably create a course in. Now, in a survey conducted by bestcolleges.com, 79% of the students said that online courses were as good as if not better than actually attending a class. As of 2025, it's estimated that online courses will account for $325 billion in sales. Now that's triple what it was in 2015. Now, if you check out this chart I've got online here, you can see how people are thinking about career changes, about getting academic credentials, about lifelong learners, high school grads in a traditional academic path, high school grads. And you can see how this is growing and growing and growing. So how do you decide where you're going to put your efforts and what kind of course you're going to make? In this video, I'm going to show you the best niches that you can make your course for so you're that much more successful. Please keep in mind these are more general subjects. We can break this down more. And the more you niche it down, the better off you are. I would recommend before you pick your niche, you actually figure out who your audience is. If you can figure out who your audience is, you're going to be in leaps and bounds above everybody else. You never want to create a course for anyone and everyone because if you do that, you're going to be speaking to no one. So for example, let's say you're going to do a course on search engine marketing. You don't want to do just a course for search engine marketing. You want to niche it down more. You may want to niche it down to search engine marketing for bloggers. Now that would be a really good niche because it really speaks to those people. And when people hear something like that and they're a blogger, they're going to listen. The number one category is computers and technology. Let's face it guys. Computers and technology grow every single day. The knowledge base grows every single day. There's a huge need for courses in this area. Now we can break it down further. It can be about building websites. It can be about repairing computers and networks. It can be about machine learning or artificial intelligence. It can be operating systems. It could be cell phone repair. It could be cyber security robotics, even software programming. And the more you niche that down, the better off you are. The next thing I'll tell you, and this is my area and that's business entrepreneurship. This is a great area to do a course in. People are looking more and more on how to make money online. And a course on how to do that is extremely helpful. Some of the subjects you may want to cover are affiliate marketing or handmade products on Etsy. That's a big area now. Dropshipping, blogging, freelancing on your talent. You could do e-commerce. You could do business and entrepreneurship. You could do digital marketing. You could do branding, social media marketing, content marketing, advertising. I mean, the list goes on and on and on. And that's the area I work in. I know there's a huge demand for that. Number three is arts and crafts. A lot of people want to know how to do arts and crafts now. There's a lot of DIY channels now on YouTube that teach people how to make things, how to do things, how to repair things. That's a huge area. A lot of people want to learn how to do things and make products to sell on things like Etsy. So that would be a great area for you to do a course on. Some of the areas that you could cover would be drawing, painting, calligraphy, knitting, sewing, carpentry, digital art, photography, videography, web design, game design, fashion. I mean, the list goes on and on and on. That's another great area that you could do a course on. Number four, health. Health has always been around. It'll always be around. People are always trying to get better health. And if you're doing a course that can help people be healthier, feel healthier, have more energy, then you're going to have a huge demand for that. I think nowadays, too, people are more attuned to this. They realize that exercise and food play a huge part in their life. And if they can learn these things from you, they're going to be interesting. Some of the examples could be diet nutrition, maybe meal planning, vegan cooking, reflexology, acupuncture, massage, aromatherapy, any and all of these areas have a huge demand right now. Number five is going to be, and it always will be fitness. People are always looking to get fit. They're always looking to lose weight. They're always looking to look better and feel better. And the more we can niche this down like maybe home workouts or home workouts without any weights, pilates, maybe weight loss, weight loss for people who just had a children, weight loss for executives who don't have time to work out, swimming, running, any kind of sports, yoga, martial arts, even survival skills, all of these things fall under that fitness category that has an incredibly high demand for. Now it's kind of funny that I'll bring this one up. But number six is education, because that's what we're doing right now. But people are wanting to educate others and they don't know how to do it. So if you can educate these people on how to educate people, that has a huge demand now too. Some of the areas you may want to cover could be presentation skills. How do they present themselves in their education? Maybe they're doing videos, maybe they're doing talks, media training and how to deal with media and education, instructional design, child psychology, you know, maybe video editing. I use Camtasia. So maybe Camtasia and ScreenFlow. Maybe you can teach how to do that. Teaching English, that's a huge area right now. And teaching and starting online businesses, which is what I do. Maybe even starting coaching consultation and how somebody would do that. Number seven is writing and content creation. Okay, so we all know we need to create content, but how do we do it? If you can come up with a course that teaches people how to create this content through maybe content marketing, maybe it's making videos, maybe it's blogging, maybe it's writing copy for websites, maybe you want to teach them how to do storytelling, which is huge in content writing. YouTube video creation, I mean, that's what I'm doing right now. And people need to know how to do that too. Maybe they want to do a podcast, you can teach them how to do podcasts, or even search engine marketing once they get all this stuff together. Number eight is a big one, personal development. People are always trying to improve themselves. Personal development has become huge and courses on this are really kind of helpful and in high demand. An example would be you could do a course in time management. Everybody's trying to get more done in less time and get more accomplished. That's a great course. Of course, you want to niche it down so it could be time management for medical doctors, you know, maybe you have some experience in that area. It could be for people who have procrastination problems. So, you could say salespeople with procrastination. So, call out different areas and keep in mind if you do a course for salespeople who have procrastination problems, they'll get it. You know, they're putting off making that phone call or making that sales call, but you could also say procrastination for teachers, procrastination for carpenters, procrastination for lawn care. So, what you may want to do is do several different courses in different areas that speak to different people. You could also do ones on goal setting. That's huge. Speed reading, investing in the stock market. A lot of people don't have any clue how to do that. Maybe you have experience in that area and you could help there. And just to name a few more, we've got life purpose, we've got study skills, we've got self-esteem, we've got anxiety management, we've got emotional intelligence, conflict management, that's a huge one. Confidence, presentation skills, body language, persuasion, negotiation, networking, and of course everybody's favorite, public speaking. Now, number nine, entertainment. We all have to be entertainers now, don't we? We've got to entertain in our blogs and our videos on YouTube. We've got to entertain for our business to get customers. We all have to kind of entertain. So, if you can come up with a course that teaches people how to do those skills, it's hugely marketable right now. Now, let's break down some of those areas that you may want to do a course in because your course would not be entertainment, it would be maybe video production, video editing, filmmaking warms, cinematography, teaching things like Adobe Premiere or Camtasia, color grading your videos, iPhone photography, there's a bunch of courses on that that are hugely popular. YouTube audience growth, people would want to know how to do that. Livestreaming, video marketing, which is a huge thing a lot of businesses are doing now. Whiteboard animation, people don't know how to do that. Great idea for a course. Facebook marketing, Instagram marketing, Twitter marketing, any other social media platforms, people need to learn. And I want to throw in a bonus here because this is a big, big area and I didn't mention it but one area that's really good for courses is lifestyle training. Courses on lifestyle are very diverse. They cover the gamut from men to women, to high level lifestyle, to an average lifestyle, to living below your financial means. So there's a whole bunch of different areas within lifestyle that you can teach. Some of the other ones that I see and I see videos on this all the time is maybe travel hacking, maybe it's Airbnb hosting, maybe somebody wants to do that, journaling, becoming a digital nomad. I even know some of those people that travel around the world, cosmetics, women are into that, skincare, nail art, makeup, hairstyling, fashion, cooking and baking. That's huge on YouTube. Plenty of people doing stuff on that. Gaming, maybe you have musical skills, that's a lifestyle thing too. And let's not forget things like head care, that's a lifestyle area, gardening, decluttering. There's so many areas you can get into in lifestyle that are really, really popular and have a huge demand. All you got to do is create the content. Now I want to go through seven quick steps when you're doing this. Number one, know your passion, okay? Know what you care about, what you are interested in. If you get into an area that you have no interest in and you're trying to create courses, you're going to have a hard time. So number one, know your passion. Step two, know your strengths, okay? If you're not good in a particular area, you're not strong in a particular area, even though you may like it, if you're not good at it, you're not going to come up with a very good niche. Step three, know your risk readiness, okay? If you're not ready to do this stuff, if you don't have the time to invest it, now is not the time to do it. Wait until you do have the time to do this. Step four, and I did kind of mention it before, is know your target audience.  You've got to know them. Step five, know where you fit in, okay? I'm on e-commerce and digital courses and online sales and all. I know where my lane is, I got to stay on my lane, okay? So you have to do the same thing. Step six, choose your platform wisely.  They're like Udemy or Coursera or any of that. I like to personally host my own courses. I use Cartra. I'll put a link in the description down there. You can watch the video on Cartra. There's a plethora of other things too, not just hosting courses, but I highly recommend it. The video is free and if you want to try Cartra, you can get a trial for only one dollar. So I would definitely check that out. Number seven, learn to adapt to change, because this is going to change. Everything you do is going to change. Every software, every program, every way of marketing and you've got to stay on top of it. If you don't adapt to change, you will be left behind. So all in all, remember it's about them, not you. It's not what you want, it's what they will buy and what they want and what they demand. I really appreciate you watching this video. If you like it, give me a thumbs up. I would really appreciate it. There's a big subscribe button down there. Please hit that subscribe button next to it. There's a bell just like this. You got to ring that bell and you got to turn on all notifications. That way you become part of the Fisher Family, the VIP group that gets notified every single time I do one of these videos or even go live so we can talk. Put your comments below. Let me know what you're working on, what you've tried, what problems you're having. I want to hear from you. Put it in that comments below. Thank you so much for watching this video and I'll see you in the next one. Hey, thanks for watching my video. Don't forget to subscribe to my channel and click that little bell right here so you can be notified every time I do a new video. Also, click on one of those videos there. Keep watching on my channel.


Hello, my name is Salvador and I want to share my testimony how I came to Christ. I remember, you know, just the lifestyle that I was living in and I felt like I didn't have a plan and a purpose. There was no hope and there was no future for me.  I seen a lot of bad things, you know. I seen the ugliness to addiction. When the first time I smoked weed that I felt like this peace, you know, this I enjoyed the feeling because it helped me cope with whatever I was going on inside of me. My father wasn't in the picture. My mom was a single mother trying to work to provide for us and, you know, I was always looking for acceptance to my friend. I was always looking for a father or a friend or an older brother or someone to come for me. Growing up in high school, I just I didn't care about school. I would just skip school and get high. By the time I was like a sophomore in school, I was like a full-blown alcoholic.  I didn't care about anything. I didn't care about myself. I just cared about getting high and whether it was stealing from my mom to breaking into cars and just doing all these nonsense to to smoke weed, you know, to drink, to to have money because I always felt like I never had the support of anybody, my mom, my father. So, you know, as I grew older, I just started drinking more, partying more and hanging around the wrong crowd. I remember we moved to another side of town and, you know, there was gangs and there was drugs and there was a party scene and, you know, I just I felt like the people that I was around, like I can relate to all these people because all my friends, they were all fatherless. They didn't have friends. They all liked to smoke weed and party and they were just they were hurt in deep inside. So, we always had like a point of like cooperation with one another, you know, like a bond ship. When I became 18, I remember I was partying in a trailer somewhere and we destroyed the trailer and I went to jail that night.  You know, I woke up and I was wearing an orange jumpsuit and everybody was wearing blue and white and I'm like, why am I wearing orange? Why everybody's wearing blue? And I was just in confusion and chaos and somebody told me that I was looking at prison time. And people asked me, like, do you know what happened? I'm like, no, you know, and I think that's what my drinking started getting out of control. I'll constantly be blacking out and started living with people who were in gangs and were drug dealers and I just remember just liking to party and have friends and feel protected, you know, by people, you know, I feel like a sense of belonging and that led me to drugs, you know, led me to cocaine and led me to crystal meth and heroin and I started selling drugs and I just made a lot of bad mistakes. You know, being around that drug scene, I've seen so much. I just remember that I needed to get high. I didn't realize when addiction took over my life. It happened so fast that when I realized it, I couldn't stop getting high. I would constantly get sick and had to figure out a way to get high and I had to be constantly around that stuff. You know, I remember as I was living that lifestyle, I just felt like this fear, you know, of dying, this fear of not getting high. I kept living this lifestyle. I remember just feeling so alone and so empty and so fearful and I always knew that God existed and I knew that he was only one that can save me from my misery and everything that I was going through. I remember God talking to me to music, to Christian hip hop music, to radio station. I can just feel God drawing my heart and I felt just drawn to him. You know, I eventually started listening to sermons on the radio and he gave me courage to know who this God was. I was tired of living the way I was living and I knew I needed change. So I started going to church. I would go to this church and they had a parole section where I saw, you know, welcome. I felt like I belonged somewhere and I just remember that I wanted God so bad but I couldn't stop getting high. I was living a double lifestyle, mine, trying to get high and do all these bad things for how the blessings of God and it was just leading me down a path of destruction. I just remember being tormented in my mind by the enemy, by fear, by addiction, you know, just empty and feeling rejected by life. I just felt like I had nobody. I had nothing like I burned every bridge in my life. Like I done pushed everybody away with my addiction and it was tough, you know. It was very tough that my family, they didn't want to be around me. They had to push me away because, you know, they didn't know what can happen to them. I remember one Wednesday night specifically as I was getting high on the parking lot with Crystal Met that it was a Wednesday night deliverance service at this church and I would go to this church but I always wanted to get close to God but I didn't know how. I didn't really know God. I knew about God. I knew about Jesus but I never personally encountered him. I just knew that he was calling me. I remember this particular Wednesday recovery night. I went into church and I sat down in the pasture. He was giving an altar call and he was asking somebody if you want to give your life to Christ. I mean to come up to the altar and I remember that I needed God. I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. I remember I wanted to get up but I just remember feeling bound to my chair. I felt like I couldn't get up. Something was weighing me down. I just had this desperation to want to get to God but not having the strength or whatever to get up. I just remember the pasture. He just locked eyes on me. It was like a big church. There was hundreds of thousands of people there and he was just walking towards his way. I just remember seeing God on his face. Having compassion and just walking to me was like love and grace and mercy of God. I knew it was what I needed. I remember when he came up to me and he put his hand on my shoulder and I felt like chains fell off of my arms and my feet. I got up and he helped me get up and he walked me to the altar. I remember when I was in the altar that he asked me if I wanted to accept Christ into my life. I don't know what he asked me to say. I don't remember the moment but I remember the feeling. I remember the feeling of encountering God and him coming into my life. His magnificent power, this hide that I've been looking for. I remember being instantly sobered and filled with love. I remember sitting there on my knees crying. There was rivers flowing out of my face. My shirt was drenched in tears because I always start, man don't cry. You got to hide your feelings and in reality I was looking for relief. I encountered God and that night I went into a hotel, slept the night, went into rehab, not knowing what deliverance was. It was the last day I ever got high. It was the last day I ever drank alcohol. It was the last day that I ever had to live that kind of lifestyle and now I've been cleaning sober for eight years here in July. It's been the best decision in my life to follow Christ. After that I noticed that I was delivered, that I was set free, that I no longer needed to get high or drink to satisfy myself.  Since I made that move I got involved with a community. I got involved in a church. I found people that were going through the same things that I went through, you know, discipleship. People who've been through what I like, real father figures who were there to know what I went through. I just remember just the love of God. You know what I've been looking for? A community friend, people that I can relate to who've been through what I've been through. My life has completely transformed since I stopped getting high and drinking. My pastor started asking me to get involved in the youth and he asked me to be a youth leader. He asked me to be one of the ministers and he had me preaching on the pope here. I am thinking I'm no good that God could never use someone like me. Maybe you find yourself like me. Maybe you've been in and out. You find yourself lost in addiction. You find yourself in a double lifestyle mind where you're trying to live in the world and live for Christ.  There's a purpose in plan for your life. God has called you. He wants to set you free from the addiction from the hurt.  I want to encourage you to say this prayer. You know, it's not a prayer that changes you. It's a decision in your heart. Just repeat the simple words after me. Jesus Christ, I know that I am a sinner. I know that I sinned against you.  Come into my life. Feel my heart.  Set me free. Be my Lord and Savior in Jesus' name. Amen.