So I'm going to make a presentation, the statue of Erpenfusion, of this third-party community repository. I'm quite, it's quite interesting to make this presentation at this time because, for example, we have some issues with the infrastructure currently. So I'm quite pleased to make this presentation now to explain to you what we need as a project and what we expect to fix in the next months or the next federal release. So maybe I will ask some questions about who are using this third-party repository in the room. Maybe others are not using this repository and no people that are not using third-party repository in February. I think that exists also. So maybe some of you know people that don't use third-party repository. Everyone is using any third-party repository. So this is a commonly used repository, maybe, but I think there is some people that don't use this repository. The fact that we are making this presentation within the federal event is quite interesting and I'm pleased that some of you maybe have chosen this presentation because that's not a community repository that is some kind of band from Fedora. It can be discussed in the Fedora events because we often try to not say the name of which repository, which community repository can help users in the official Fedora mailing list. But we all know to explain to other people and users to install this repository as needed. Maybe it's not always needed, but when it's needed it's very useful to some users. I'm not going to enter into the details about what are the different sections in this repository. This is not a topic, but instead I'm going to describe the different point of view that might interest the user and the different states of this third-party repository from user perspective and developer perspective or contributor perspective. So this is the different topic I will try to address. I just will start with a few words about me. So I'm French, I apologize for my accent, my English is not very well, but I'm living in Paris and I've studied architecture. I'm architecture design in the school of the Beaux-Arts in Paris. So I'm not from computer studies, but I've entered in computers and free software using tools to do rendering and images. So I was interested in this area from my experience with architecture. So maybe something about this, something I studied at that time was that in architecture you have to follow some rule from carbonism and try to obey this rule to get freedom and try to get freedom from certain, some kind of rule. And it's something I try to find in my work and working with package and trying to solve issues that need to be solved within a certain kind of rule. So I'm a federal package manager since 2007 and I'm working for a Linaigoura French company which is doing only free software and open source since 2009. So I'm making a little bit of work on the Linaigoura later. Then I'm a coordinator of a third-party repository since 2011. And I'm with Incarnation, which is my wife since 2013. She's in this room. So she's supporting me and as a consequence she's supporting the project also. Just few words about what I've done in Linaigoura. I'm working in a company that is well aware of free software and open source. I've worked, for example, on the left is a project by G.C. Deco who is trying to build a dedicated OS for display image in the airport and some place. And it's a project with orange for the desktop of commercial. So from this project I've tried to play with ARM device and light desktop. So I'm quite interested in trying to work with ARM light reliance from this experience. That's why I try to push that on this third-party community repository. And this project on the left was made using Fedora. About this third-party repository I've made some stats, a little bit of stats. We'll see later. It's a project created in 2008. It was Fedora 8 also. Quite some time passed in Zemps. So it was merged from other community repository or personal repository. And it's still using Plagg. It was using Plagg at that time when Fedora was using Plagg. So Plagg is a build system. I think it's also used by Centres in Germany. They are using Koji for the external interface with Google. Building dedicated spin and they are using Plagg internally. And the idea is to follow the Fedora process and the idea whenever it's possible. We have some kind of plan guidelines that is meant to be stay as close as possible as Fedora. But we are actually a different project. Quite funny things was that appeared some time ago when some kind of special interest group made a decision. I think it was the KDU once that made a special decision that they need to install some kind of library by default in the build group. Because they want to circumvents some kind of issue. They had with G-Streamer and VLC. So it was kind of funny that they made this decision in this SIG meeting. And that decision applied to us as a project, as a supported project. That's quite funny but actually we are different projects of different way of making decision. And of course there is different people involved. So some of them are the same. Some little stats. As you can read there is a 200 source package in the free section for 18th-7th in the non-free section. We have been in the primary architecture. FEDORA ARMA is a new primary architecture starting Fedora 19 or 20 maybe. And we have made this as primary in Fedora 22. It's using the same question and stance as the other x84 build. There is around 5 GB of software for Fedora 22 release. And there is around 150 packages in the FAS project. And a little bit less in CBS. Some people using FAS for the project. There are not only packages. There are also people involved in the infrastructure and some others. As you can see this is from a daily snapshot of people from the US. It's one quarter of the circle that are coming from the US. This is statistics taken from the mirror of the list. The public mirror of the mirror. It's actually statistics from the mirror manager. The statistics shows that it's the same as Fedora as we have seen this morning. There is quite the same difference between x86 and 64 and x86. That's quite the same separation. Arm is around 1% less than 1%. This is the same. We can see with Fedora this is the raw statistics taken from the mirror manager. We probably don't see the difference. The blue area is Fedora 22 in June. There is around 5% in August. There is 15%. We show the same result as the Fedora infrastructure. This is quite a similar result. From a user perspective, I was trying to figure out what users are seeing when they use the project. Which is the process they follow to use the project to install the package and to get in relation with us. The first step when they use the project is probably to get into the wiki. What's our thing is this kind of infrastructure with the wiki. This is the front page of the project. There is quite a lot of area to improve in this area. There is some kind of documentation to improve and to get a better front page to move the Fedora support release. Maybe in the first place to get better support. The principal information for them is probably to get into the wiki and to grow the user process to install the package. They are going to install it from a common line or graphical install. From the user's perspective, the wiki is probably something that is under used. Because they probably don't find information to install their package or not each package has a wiki page. The method to install one or the other package is not addressed in this wiki. Maybe it's addressed in the upstream wiki but not the part that is dedicated to Fedora is addressed to this wiki. It's also a wiki that is free for anyone to conflate it to an open wiki. We had an issue with that some time ago because someone tried to edit the front page to show us advertising and spam. We tried to lock a certain number of page and to restrict some areas of the wiki. For example, the page that is displaying the GPG key that are certified to work with a given Fedora release for the project is locked. There is even a translation. Some pages are translated to Spanish and of course everyone is free to contribute. When the user installs the release, they try to probably install manually the release package that are trying to bring them to the project contents. They are also using a post-installation script or they are trying to use the project within the installer as they are enabling the repository in Anaconda. I don't know if it's still supported and if it was very well tested. Other methods to install the project was probably to use kickstart and to default the kickstart installation process. I don't know if it's really used but maybe it's some kind of process we can try to work further. So we can issue the full kickstart install automatically and install the RPM release package. So it's installed by default. I think it's quite interesting to address this issue because from my understanding the desktop DIM is trying to think about that kind of issue. For certain users it's not that easy to install additional packages because that doesn't come from source. That's not easy to think about to install additional packages every time we need additional packages from our community. So this is maybe a start for reflection about how this installation process is because that was also addressed in several many lists in the project. Not always, not everyone is fine with having this community repository installed by a different federal and that's fine. We are trying to work with this simple rule that we need to deal with. So of course this provides an Ansible Playbook that can be involved in the process but that's probably someone else doing the work. Like an admin that's installing the package for their user and that's perfectly fine. Maybe we can have a different playbook that we can find several. Of course there is this question that is quite open also that we might also try to build on media to build the package by default to the installation media. But that's not something that we would like to do because it would mean doing a separate QR process. And this is not very, I'm not very fond of that because that's some kind of we're doing the federal process and it jacking the federal process of the QR. But also we can leave that for our downstream user and not speak too much about downstream users of the interface. But there are a lot of formings of federal release that probably do the job well for this kind of process. Actually if we distribute media with RP Infusion packages on it, you don't know if the repo file is okay or not. But imagine you also distribute some RP Infusion stuff on the media. You can no longer call it Fedora and you need to re-brand it. And by that you basically create the form for remix and such forms of remix already exists. For example, Korora, which I don't know if it's actually in, I met it a few years ago, but it's basically Fedora with RP Infusion and something else. So we cannot easily distribute Fedora with RP Infusion in release just like that. Yes, I think that was my point of view a few times ago. But I think the remix process, maybe I'm saying something wrong, but I think as soon as there is something like 40% or 50% of the packages that come from Fedora, additional packages that might come from Fedora in a couple of repositories or something else might be good, I don't know. But yeah, that's kind of the reason why I'm not particularly fond to work with the media process. But then let's leave this question up on how to install the release package for users. Because the next step for users to install packages is to discover which packages they really need, like installing the whole multimedia stack, the restrimer and the other multimedia application. The way we tried to address this in the previous release was using groups metadata. And this was quite surprising that it works. I think it was a huge feature at that time that when you install a group of packages, it will install additional packages as soon as the package layout moves. So if you add a package to a group in NUM, then as soon as you have installed the group, the package will be there as an update automatically. The interesting thing was that if as a request tree we are using the same groups, some additional package could be installed and we could control some kind of additional package that could be installed within Fedora installation. So it was quite an interesting feature that was introduced in Fedora 20 maybe later. But I don't know if it still works because that was also surprising to have this behavior because we tried to build the same groups names as Fedora to match the group layouts. And it's then a static package that wasn't expected for a given spin. For example, it has installed the NUM carrier where most users didn't like this package installed by default, even if it's related to the NUM desktop. So that was quite an arbitrary package so we disabled this package but then it was also probably a security issue because additional requests could then install a package that users didn't want by default. So as soon as we don't ask the provider of the package, maybe it was some kind of issue with that thing. Another way to install a package was using Fedi or other post-installation tools so it was quite an interesting idea also. But maybe that's something that would need to be underlined with package kits because that's probably what the main tools that are expected to use. So with Fedora 22, there is no support to AppStream but this is the same issue because we need to install the AppStream data to get support to package data within the project but I'm not provided with the official AppStream metadata. Can you talk about this with the AppStream developers? I tried to get this idea spread to AppStream developers but I don't know where he is. Maybe he is here, I'm not sure. No, I'm not but the following member is here. I understand you just add some metadata to the repository and if no software center or whatever it's called, you should just get it in somehow. I don't know because I don't use this. That's probably the way to fix it is not to have the AppStream metadata into a separate package but into the repository directly. So the idea was to have the AppStream application to read the repository and to read the metadata repository. And eventually we could even spread some information where to look at other repository, other sort of party repository in this AppStream metadata. Because there is some great interest in AppStream to provide package data already in a vulnerable repository like in a girl form or Skype maybe or proprietary application. And that in this case are not in a repository but can be installed with a package that can be fetched from the internet. And maybe we can have a way to install, to spread where to look at for this single package in the related section of the repository. Maybe you can say there is a package that can be installed in this location and spread the metadata as an AppStream metadata to install this package manually. Even with bootstrapping GPJ key or something. So the other area of the project that is currently missing is of course this missing support for Rewide and Bronze. So I will talk about the reason why we are behind from the infrastructure point of view and the reason why that is missing. The Cannabody package are not Rewide or further 22. And of course there is also missing features like secure boot support that is really missing. Maybe I think it is not the priority of the project. There is no data RPM support also. We can probably address this issue at a later time but that is where we are from the user perspective I think. Is that the reason why it depends on the project? Is there a reason? Is the data the reason why it depends on the project? For Federation Z2 the reason is that maybe I will talk about this later because the main idea is that we are switching to the new infrastructure and that we are in some kind of in-between state. So because of that I need to concentrate on other things to build a new infrastructure and there is also issue that need to be fixed. So that we can envision to have a script to automatically address this issue in the new infrastructure. So that is why there is an in-between state with this future. And will the new infrastructure also have a Rewide branch? It could have a Rewide branch. It could have Fedora 33 branch also. But it is just a matter of time and to concentrate because actually I finished work on Fedora 22 just few days ago or few weeks ago. Because the release request we were still moving until that time and there is still package that was failing to build for different reasons. And this take my time until we try to figure out how to do. But I think we can move to work on Fedora 23 in early September or later to do a mass review. There is no technical issue to release but as soon as we fix the new infrastructure the better we will be done. The things from how you say it seems you do this alone is the crime. Like all the rebuilding and stuff like that. That is you personally and no one else. Is there anything we can do to help? Because I think it is very much working and I could help you if you want. Maybe I can speak about this later because I am going to speak about those areas. Actually it is like when you have something that is bad to you and you are concentrating on the headache because you have this problem. My presentation is trying to try to have a step back and try to see the different features. That is why I am trying to speak about user perspective and other contributors perspective. I am trying not to focus on the main issue that is important but that is also something to consider. I would say you absolutely don't have to care about that. There is absolutely no fix in the world. If it was good they put it only the last thing to do. It is only good to have maybe but not that. The only thing for Fedora is because of merit. Fedora merit is something like one and a half terabyte for primary and another three terabytes for secondary. There are really many people who don't want to do that. Last time I checked that I think usually three and one terabytes together is something like one hundred and two terabytes. I would say two and a half terabytes together is something like one hundred and two terabytes together is something like one hundred and two terabytes. I think I completely agree with the diagram. We can say something else but I think I will go a little bit faster because there is a bug zone. It is quite an old instance. It is trying to build a better one with bugzilla 4.4. This is 4.0. We are trying to move to another instance that is trying to address another feature. I don't know if it is similar but it is trying to use that support from the bugzilla. It is quite interesting feature to enable. That is user mailing list. I am just going to switch about abrc because I have an issue previously with vlc. vlc was complaining that the video landing was complaining that they are not receiving the backtrace from their crash. They are complaining about the message that was displaying abrc but they cannot report this message because it is not packaged from Fedora. It was trying to use Fedora package like just remote and totem and that was totally unacceptable from the video landing perspective. They are really angry about this so I try to make them speak abrc directly. Abrc was kind enough to address this issue and to reward the message that was displayed to user about the crash and the inability to report the crash. We really need to have this reporting because that is needed for open source project that is redistributed from community repository. That is another area of upstream relationship that upstream monitoring should be a feature that could be implemented. It is not the case and it is not done for a reason that should be work on. There is no mega alias to set up the abrc to report the feedback. From contributor perspective, this is package and plague interface. We are still using cbs and that is the main issue of the infrastructure and we are trying to move to Koji and this gate. Where we are from this point of view is that I am running currently the air pollution infrastructure from my own Koji instance. I am trying to address a better issue before it came out to the project. Such build tags, layouts and this is how to build separately some kind of package to make build overrides and that kind of thing. We are not trying to figure out how to fetch some external repository package like to automatically rebuild the kernel module for example from each Fedora 22. There is a need to figure out how to build a Koji layout to do this because from my example, I was not able to submit an override from a package in an external repository. If you have to deal with Koji, maybe you know the layout and the question of the layout but that is where I am about this issue. The same as the git preview, this is where I located the preview git repository and some packages are already converted to using git. The whole package from RPL Fusion are already converted to git but the git layout, this git method are not already there. That is an area to set up and we try to improve a lot in this area. What is missing from the contributor point of view is the Koji git migration and there is a need to work on the R package and Fed package like tools. This work hasn't been done. I have discovered recently that some contributors start working on the subject but it was not submitted to the mailing list and we haven't received the feedback on this work. There are still patches that are coming from contributors from different people involved in Fedora to have patch merged to the Fed package that will ease the work on this kind of tools. We need to have this Fed package tool that is funded to a R package imported to RPL Fusion. The same package DB and body was worked on by some users and unfortunately they never sent back to us their experience to set up this test tool. I'm just going to go straight to infrastructure because the infrastructure issue is that as you said we need to find out a way to delegate right. Maybe you have in mind that I'm trying to coordinate the project but actually I've only received very recently, like a week ago, I've received the route right to the supervisor of the project. So I'm not all mighty on the infrastructure project and I cannot delegate right as easily as I would like to do. When areas of improvement are about infrastructure, I've worked a little bit with this scaleway which is a spin off of online which is ESP. I'm a hosting provider in France and they are providing us this funds rate to ARM builders so the project will be able to have this builder to build a new infrastructure. Other infrastructure are headed by the primary mirror. Mirror manager instance are created by Adrian Reaver and that's quite easily self-managed. But we can also use GitHub and I've tried to set up some of the modules that have been in preview. The package that have been modified in 2020 are forwarded to this GitHub AirPen Fusion group. But unfortunately that's not forwarded to the commit mailing list so there's not public back to the data not public. We could also try to fetch accounts from cloud instance to get builder to our primary architecture and we could also try to set up in-house a builder for secondary architecture. That's something I tried to set up for ARM some time ago but now it's available online. So what we are missing from infrastructure perspective is probably we need more mirror manager instance because on each release the server are crashing and they are using a lot of resources and it's done scale well. So we need to find a way to build other mirror manager instance that can be done in cloud instance. Also a good way to delegate and to help the tool is to set up a public Git Ansible Playbook so that it can be work on the main idea of contributing to the infrastructure to submit playbook change. So the main idea is to pick the federal infrastructure Ansible Playbook and to convert them to use AirPen Fusion. Because there's a lot of, yeah, and that's what is done actually. I've done that for some role of Ansible like the Koji department and the purpose is to convert this so that it can be re-usable by other projects from Fedora to other projects. So it's not that easy. There was also an infrastructure talk a few hours ago. Yeah. Were you there for the public? No. Yeah. No, no, no. I ask if we want to use this for AirPen Fusion if we can just hit the magic button and all the playbooks will deploy and we will have Koji, Koji, epsilon and everything and it should work like that. Yeah, but that's not the case because there are a lot of things that are coded to the federal infrastructure like every host are coded in the Ansible infrastructure to our playbook. So there's need to abstract a lot from this playbook from Fedora. Okay. I have a lot of patch. I've done this conversion for Koji, but the same need to be done for Bodhi and other tools. And this Git, for example, the script that's creating the Git module for each package needs to be converted for other tools. Okay, so is there any questions left? How can we get involved? Yes, that's the last one. Yes, that's it. And I have the current state of... I need to figure out the things. So the main idea is to start working on each of the public Git Ansible playbooks and try to do the work to convert a given role to abstract the things. So the other area is to try to work for a given application and to try to get into the application, to div into the application and to try to remove everything that is outcoded to Fedora. I think there's a lot of things that... This is outcoded in other applications. That's working very well for Mirror Manager, because Adrian is actually doing this work. He's actually working with Mirror Manager, Jim, and he's making patch. He's working continuously to not to outcode things in the Fedora way. But this need to be headed to other applications also. So the problem is I cannot do this conversion for every application to collect the work and I think we get more involved in trying to set up Ansible in the infrastructure now and try to fetch to pull role as soon as they appear because now I have the ability to create instance and to create... to deploy application more easily now that I have the right to do this change. I think that's quite the way to deal with... to get involved in the process is probably to try to do it from work that can be published somewhere and that can be pulled in the dedicated instance more than trying to delegate the right because the problem with delegate several access is that those has privates several. They are not going to club the name of the one who is paying for the several but they are probably reluctant to delegate the right to people that they don't know or they don't know well enough or that don't often communicate with the project. So my idea to fix this is really to try to talk with us provider and try to get community server to receive community sponsored host. That's became a common good. That's what I'm trying to achieve to fix this issue with dedication of the right to the server because that's what is probably trying to lock the project. Yes, I think it's the contributor page for... There is an infrastructure page but I don't know if it's up to date. I think it's loosely current but there is not much time for... It's probably easier to fade from different infrastructure but I think that's not... The main area is probably to publish some kind of uncivil skeleton that someone can start working on to figure out how the server are located. But maybe it's easier to start working with federal ones, the federal infrastructure payback. Another question. I'm going to stop here. Thank you for your attention. Thank you for being here and for trying to support me during this project.


This is a conversation that works now. And for some of us, it's gonna work, you know, at the end of the calendar year as well. But I thought, let's not let this opportunity go by without getting Jared's opinion about this and maybe encouragement on how we can move forward at this time that can be exciting and it can be stressful. Again, if we haven't met, I'm Julia Patrick, CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy, Jared Ransom, nonprofit nerd, CEO of the Raven Group, doing double duty, because she's not only co-host, but she's actually in the hot seat today. So we're excited and welcoming of Jared. We're also incredibly and profoundly welcoming and grateful for our sponsors, Blumerang, American Nonprofit Academy, York Part-Time Controller, nonprofit thought leader, Fundraising Academy at National University, Staff and Boutique, nonprofit nerd and nonprofit tech talk. These are the folks that are with us day in and day out. We can also communicate with them and our viewers and our listeners on the cell phone. Thank you for holding it up. We have a new app, which we're really, really proud of. I wanna give a shout out to our executive producer, Kevin Pace, who with his team built this out. And it's really cool. It allows you to get a notification. It's subtle about when a new show has popped up and what it's about and it'll give you more information. So if you missed us live, you can figure out, if this is content that could help you, you can also search our content on that. And of course you can find us on podcasts and streaming broadcasts.  Which is like super kooky. I have to admit to you, Jared. I do that because I do watch the nonprofit show on the big screen so I can learn and see what we did. And that's like my secret thrill. I pop into our family room and I'm like, it's a nonprofit show. And then it comes up. It's like, yeah, it's super crazy, but a lot of fun. Okay, Jared R. Ransom, nonprofit nerd, CEO of the Raven Group. Jared, is this picture taken of you in your office? It is, yeah, my home office. That's really awesome. Can you talk to everybody about your desk? Oh, well, yeah, it's large and it gets a lot of fingerprints on it because it's glass and see-through, but it allows me to spread out. I like to spread out even though I do work on that laptop actually. But yeah, it's creative and actually what you see behind me is a lot of hats. It tells a lot of personality about who I am even at home. There's a globe back there, but an assigned that says adventure awaits, which Julia, that just is my soul, right? Like all about adventure. I love it. I think it's super cool. Well, it's always an amazing opportunity for me and for our viewers to hear what you have to say straight on. I know that you are an incredibly brilliant woman, but we don't always get to see that fully when as a co-host versus when you're the guest. And so we don't get to do this very often together, but it's really an exciting thing for me to be able to delve down into your super brain and find out what you're thinking. So the first thing, and I know this from you personally, goal assessment and planning, but how does this factor in finishing strong for the year? Yeah, thank you Julia and happy to be in the hot seat. So what I have today is really five top ways that you can finish your year strong. And so starting off with those five is this number one of the goal assessment and planning. So to really evaluate where are you now, right? Where did you start the year? Where are you now and how do you wanna finish it? Because you might need to course correct based off of what you had set your intention for the first of the year, but really looking at setting those clear expectations for the remainder of the year is important. So again, as we're recording this, it is almost June. So we're halfway through the calendar year, but at the tail end for most fiscal years that end June 30 and start July one. So you should be able to pull a lot of data already. Again, data sexy, we think so, right? We know so. We know so. So really looking at, okay, what did we set for our course this year and where are we to date, right? And you can always measure that again, fiscal year calendar, assuming they're different, they might not be for some of you and that's okay. So really just identifying where are we based off of all of the goals that we had set previously to achieve, where do we fall with those? And just getting an understanding because I think all too often, Julia, like we just keep going blindly, right? Like we just say, we just have too much to do. We have too much to do. We have too much to do and we just keep going the course, but sometimes we might have taken a wrong turn and we're going a course that we didn't intend to go at the start of the year. Right. And a course that doesn't ultimately help us achieve our mission, vision and values. And so it's one of those courageous conversations that we need to have with ourselves and our teams. And I love that you used that word course correct. It's not punitive, it's realistic. And to say, I think it's healthier to do it now than at the end of the year. And then you're like, damn, you didn't meet the goal. And then everybody's like beat down and everybody feels miserable, right? Versus saying, what can we do to pivot? So the other thing I'll say for this in particular is, if something has come onto your plate, yours as well as the agency's role, right? Go to the CEO, unless you are the CEO, go to the board chair and say, okay, what is top priority? What of these items do we want to continue? And are there any that we can set aside or push out into next year? So really looking to say, okay, what is on my plate? Because you might not have as many staff as you did when you started, or you might have more. If you're one of those fortunate organizations, you might have increased your staff. So take a look to really reset on those goal assessments and planning. Yeah, I love that. I think that's really, really smart. Talk to us about this next issue, which is such a lofty subject and it's donor engagement and stewardship. I mean, where are we with that in your mind? Julia, if I could make this like just so crystal clear and easy for organizations, I would, but I wanna tell a personal story. I was performing a development assessment for a recent client of mine. And through that process, I always liked to do a little bit of secret shopping. So I made a donation, right? And I did receive the auto responder donation. It's now been 60, 75 days. Never heard anything else from them ever as a brand new donor, right? So donor engagement and stewardship is very important. Since the time of my donation, big state giving days have taken place, right? Tax credit has taken place for tax time. Never once did I receive any communication. So that tells me there is a huge gap in their donor engagement and stewardship, which as we've learned from our partners at Bloomerang, right? If you steward and engage with a new donor right out the gate, they can likely give again quickly and give higher. So I really want you to focus on your donor engagement and stewardship for the rest of the year. Who have you not talked to? Here's something I did for another client. Also in Bloomerang, there's a report you can pull of new donors of the last 90 days. Do it, do it right now. Okay, not now, but maybe in about 20 minutes. Pull the report of new donors in the last 90 days and send them a welcome email, make a phone call, send a handwritten note, ask your board and leadership, do you know any of these individuals so that you really can engage with them because you want them to give again, if not now in the near future, right? And so customize this. I think that's really important but also utilize multiple channels, right? So again, emails, phone calls, social media, there's a lot of ways to engage with your donor audience and don't slip on that. Like that has to happen because there's so much not happening that it's really, it's not hard, it takes some time and it might take some automation but this is so important and you cannot miss it.  I mean, a birthday gift or a Christmas gift or whatever, it's such a basic thing. And I think when organizations don't do this, no matter what the reason is and because they're understaffed or whatever, it just is so hard to get beyond that with the donor. It's so hard to move past that and begin a good relationship.  It's such a big mistake. You know, it's funny you say that because, you know, I just went back to Georgia for my niece's high school graduation and she said, I have a lot of thank you notes to write and I was like, yes, you got it. Good job, Emily Post has taught you well. Like you need to recognize the gifts that are given to you as an organization. So definitely send, you know, some thank yous and don't rely solely on your online auto responder. Don't rely solely on that. It is a great piece, but that is not the only piece. Well, I always think of the auto responder as almost more of a receipt. Do you think that, Sharon? It's like a receipt. And it also to me communicates, yeah, it's gone through. We've received it. The email was entered correctly. Confirmation. Yeah, confirmation is a better word. Confirmation is a better word. So yeah, absolutely. Okay, well, thank you for that. Now we got to get into this next topic, which again is a huge topic which we could spend hours and hours on, but fundraising campaigns, looking at that. What does that mean to you? Yeah, so this one again kind of goes back to the first tip that I'd shared of these five, right? To really set those goals, assessment and the planning so what are your fundraising campaigns for the end of the year? I mentioned tax credit in the previous one, many organizations, right? You might receive a tax benefit, but we also know that the majority of dollars come in and Q4 calendar, Q4 for most organizations, we're talking 30% with the heaviest of that coming in in December. So I'm going to tell you to set a goal, right? Is it $150,000? Is it $50,000? Is it $5 million? Like depending on your organization, right? Set a goal. How much is it you want to raise by the end of the year? What will that support? Is it a vehicle? Is it program expansion? Is it additional? I don't know what it might be. So really set a monetary goal and that impact goal and make that very clear in your narratives and as you talk to your donors and you engage with them, share with them what you're looking to achieve by the end of the year and make it so tangible that there's no question about what you're wanting to do. Let me ask you a follow-up question to that.  We're gonna have a Valentine's Day campaign, a Mother's Day, a new building, whatever situation or do you wait until it's upon you? Yeah, so I don't do it that granular to externally share the variety of campaigns, but externally you can share. This year we have five big achievements that we want to meet that will help us to expand our programs, gain new vehicles in our fleet. Like that is something you can share externally, but internally you definitely wanna have that calendar of campaigns because there are multiple campaigns, right? Always, I think there's the annual campaign just generally speaking, but then you might have that special one could be for a program related, it could be something that is an asset, like a vehicle that I mentioned, that's a big one that I've heard lately, especially not just expanding the fleet, but repairing the fleet. Absolutely the same. The vehicles that are on the road are becoming old. And dare I say unsafe for many cases. Absolutely, I'm a big believer in if you have a physical space posting those up for the year, so that if you have a break room or you have a space where staff convenes, putting it on internal communications in the folio, I mean, this needs to be present of mind for everyone. And I just think it helps the organization move forward. So that's cool. I'm glad you talked to us about that. Now this is the next one that, and again, it's end of year, fiscal year, it's middle of calendar year, and this gets everybody a little stressed out, financial review and reporting. I think a lot of times we're afraid to ask, or we're like, oh, that's their deal. In that cubicle. Right. Well, this takes me back really to our conversation with your part-time controller, Deanna Peterson, about how we development partner with accounting and looking at that financial review and reporting. So if you've not been doing a monthly reconciliation between your donor database as well as your accounting database, you are likely reporting out to your donors, your funders, whomever, different numbers, inaccurate numbers, and that's not okay. I see it all the time, right? I see it all the time. And so really getting down to the penny, ideally. What are these financial numbers that we are reporting? Because you have to prepare for your audit, you have to prepare for your 990, 990s ask for your larger donors, that 5,000 and above. And so you really wanna make sure that you are capturing this throughout the year. I always, again, I just said it, but monthly is a great best practice and then quarterly is another one. So really just keeping your finger on the pulse throughout the year. So it's not, again, back to like, we're just going blindly and we're not gonna pay attention to any of this because it's either not fun or we don't have the time to do it. So. I think that a lot of people don't understand how to read these documents and then they're intimidated to ask or they misinterpret or they think, oh, this isn't accurate. They have like a crisis of faith within their own data and what they're getting. And so it's kind of like a triple threat. And so because of a lot of those issues, it's easier to wait till the end of the year to say, did we win or did we lose? Which is awful, awful, awful way to live. But yeah, I'm glad you brought this up because this is one of those things that is, man, if you don't know your numbers, it just seems to me like you just don't know anything. Right? Well, the other one with that, you know, is also foundations and different funders, they want you to use the money that they've given you by a certain date. And so as we look at the fiscal coming to us at that July one, a lot of dollars, monies need to be spent before the end of June. How many days is that? Like it's not that long from now. And so if you haven't spent that money, you need to spend the money because you're going to have to report on that or you might have to give it back. Yeah. Don't even think about it. That would be horrible. Take those words back. Horrible, I know.  And the trust from the foundation and the funders, the last thing you wanna do is to not remain in compliance. And so knowing your numbers and having that reporting accurate is really critical. You know, I am so intrigued by how these five different things really kind of commingle. One moves into the other and one supports one and one pushes you. And so even though they're five specific things, they're pretty woven together. And this last piece of advice that you have for us is volunteer appreciation. Talk to us a little bit about that. You know, this really goes back to similarly the donors. That engagement and stewardship is just as critical with your volunteers. So, you know, we do recognize, most of us I believe recognize volunteer appreciation week that happens throughout the year, but really having an opportunity to engage with your volunteers and to show that appreciation because there is data out there. And I don't know the numbers, but I know we've had a guest on to talk about it. How many volunteers are also financial donors, right? Of the mission, but volunteers are also some of your best advocates and ambassadors in the community. So if you are not showing appreciation to these volunteers, the chances of them coming back again and next year and maybe even galvanizing their own support of, you know, people to come with you is rather unlikely if you don't appreciate them.  It's a basic thing to thank your volunteers. You know, Jared, you and I have been talking and seeing more and more about the corporate partnerships that are coming in and corporations that are saying, we don't just have an open checkbook anymore. We query our teams and our employees to find out where they're giving, where they're volunteering. And then if we see a pattern, then we'll fund. So this is a big, big piece of the pie that I think most of us miss. Yeah. You know, one thing that I've heard from a client of mine and I had never thought of this, never heard of this and was really amazed by this practice that they've put into place is every year they send a certificate to every single volunteer of theirs, right? Tracking their hours, acknowledging their commitment, the impact that they made. And imagine if you did this for your organization, right? Many of us have an army of volunteers and without those volunteers, we wouldn't be able to fulfill our mission. Imagine if you also encouraged and invited them, the volunteers to post this on their social media, right? The amount of like just the spiderweb approach of that when it comes to awareness and recognition in packed galore. So I loved that. I served on a board where we did that and we actually had an event. And it was the humble event. It happened during volunteer appreciation week. We held it at a church and it was kind of like a barbecue theme and we had the different groups come. So if it was like XYZ Utility Company and we tracked their hours, presented them with a certificate. The group was there. They took images, posted it on their social media. We had a media wall. I mean, it got us so much attention. It frankly, kind of during a dreary time of the year where we didn't have a lot of these other things going on. And it really galvanized these teams to do matching team events, to recommit for the next year. I mean, some years these teams would bring chucks. Right. They would bring chucks to us.  And we'd be like, what? I mean, we weren't expecting this. So it, yeah, man, this is, I don't know why this falls through the cracks. It does, you know, it goes back to tracking the hours, trusting the hours that are being tracked, having the contact information for the volunteers, because these certificates that I mentioned, they're mailed to them. Now you could certainly do an electronic version of this as well, which could be, you know, maybe beneficial. And I mean, I know I've received certificates online and never mailed and I'm still able to use that, you know, to share with my community.   They're an enormous piece. And it is something that, again, all five of your tips are good all year round, but especially as we're reaching these milestones, it's really important to step back and say, how are we achieving? How are we doing? Is it, you know, is it gonna be an upset at the end of the year? Or can it be something that we can be proud of achieving because we addressed it and to use your word, you know, we course corrected so that we could achieve these goals?   I know, we don't live that far from each other, but we have our own busy schedules. I know, it's super kooky. But Jared R. Ransom, nonprofit nerd CEO of the Raven Group, you can check her out at theravengroup.com. A lot of information on her website, a lot of free information. I mean, it can really give you some inspiration and some hope in how to conquer some of these things that, frankly, Jared, they're fear-based. You know, we get upset and we get fearful that we're not gonna do our work. I was working with somebody last night and he said, you know, at the end of the day, I just wanna do well and I do wanna do the right thing. And sometimes I don't know if I'm doing the right thing. And I thought, wow, this is like, it's so interesting because I think that's where we are in our sector. We wanna do the right thing. We want to achieve. Sometimes we just don't know how. And that's why the nonprofit nerd is one of my favorites. Well, thank you. Thanks for letting me be here. As co-host, it's always fun to have these great conversations and it's also fun to be in the hot seat and to share from my point of view a little bit more in depth. Yeah, I appreciate it. I think it's really amazing. And, you know, you and I see tremendous successes day in and day out. And it's really because of these strategies and this hard work and acknowledging where we can go. And so thank you for sharing that time with us. Hey, before we let you go, talk to us a little bit about your road trip to San Diego that's coming up. Yeah, so I will be flying to San Diego and excited for that. I will be there for the Cultivate Conference. Thank you, Fundraising Academy at National University. So June 1, I'll be broadcasting live from Cultivate and then I'll also share a webinar or workshop, rather, there at Cultivate all about tracking and measuring your fundraising success. So I'm gonna talk some cool nerdy stuff about KPIs and key performance indicators. But really excited for this. Yes, live broadcast at Cultivate June 1 in San Diego and then our ask and answer, our Friday special will also be live. So looking forward to that. Yeah, that's gonna be fun because that is going to be actually on the National University campus again and it'll give us an opportunity to drill down with some of the Fundraising Academy staff about what their experience as fundraisers has been like. And so kind of the journeys that they've taken, how they've dealt with success, failure, opportunity, loss. I mean, all of these things that we recognize but we don't always drill down into. And so I think that's gonna be really, really interesting, Jared, for you to be a part of the conversation. Yeah, we love our friends over at Fundraising Academy at National University and Cultivate is also really interesting because they have two tracks. They have one for the seasoned professional and then they have one for the person that's just going into fundraising. And so it's different, right? Different information. And I really appreciate them thinking about this. So it's gonna be a lot of fun. Hey, everybody, what's also a lot of fun is that every day we get to end our episode thanking those that support us. And they include Bloomerang, American Nonprofit Academy, Your Part-Time Controller, Nonprofit Thought Leader, Fundraising Academy at National University, Staffing Boutique, Nonprofit Nerd, and Nonprofit Tech Talk. These are the folks, like I say every day, Jared, they're in with us day in, day out. And what a privilege it is to get their support. Well, my friend, I know you have a busy day. Yeah, thank you, it's gonna be a good one. And then, yeah, I look forward to seeing these tips in action to all of our friends across the globe. Hopefully it's helpful. And I'm always here to be of service. So feel free to reach out. I love it. I so appreciate it. And I think you always make very specific action items that take a little bit of time but they're not just crazy overwhelming. That in many ways, they're just more of a mindset. Embrace and everybody be on the same page. And I think that's something we can achieve. So, hey, every episode we end with this mantra and it really means a lot. And it goes like this. Stay well, say you can do well.  Have a great day.


It's a great pleasure to be here and to be speaking to you all. It's a very interesting issue to be discussing here today. And I'm glad to share some of my experiences for the last seven years that I've been working in the coming supply chain. If we focus in the post-1990 world, the export-oriented garment industry in South Asia developed in areas with no union density. In countries like Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, the industry actually started with no unions allowed. And then, as Ponteen has worked his struggles through, governments were forced to allow unions within a restrictive legal structure that made and still makes forming unions very difficult. In the case of India, the export-oriented garment factories hired first-generation union workers with no exposure to unionism. According to some approximate estimates, less than 5% of workers out of 51 million workers are unionized in India, less than 2% out of 4 million workers in Bangladesh, and only about 0.3% in the ETZs out of 0.15 million workers in Sri Lanka. As the transnational companies began to expand their sources from the global south, activists and organizations in the global north began monitoring the shift, including raising the sweatshirt of conditions in the production countries. As time has progressed, this monitoring has evolved, become more involved in the global south, become more sophisticated and diversified along stated interests. In this presentation, I'd like to examine this involvement of various northern actors in the global south, especially their involvement with the trade unions. These northern actors involved the trade unions can be broadly divided into three categories, NGOs and their funders, including corporate funders, multi-stakeholder initiatives, and finally the global and northern unions. Even though the groups are very different, their relation with their southern partners is not very different. These northern actors, more often than not, mirror the unequal power relation that exists between their countries or countries of origin and the country they relate to in the global south. And the starkest evidence of this is the most powerful instrument that all these actors, the northern actors, used to negotiate within the supply chain. The final strategy, which is about the withdrawal of orders from the errand supplier in the global south. What this translates to in the global south is that a loss or a fear of loss is imposed on the suppliers, which they in turn pass on to the workers in multiple weeks. It may be through higher work intensity, union busting and ultimately job loss or replacement by new workers. The ultimate strategy thus is about reinforcing the relation of power between the global south and the global north over the suppliers and their transnational buyers. The northern support actors do not question the role of the transnational companies in perpetrating the violence and the violation in the supply chain. Instead they use the perpetrator, which is the northern transnational companies, to arm twist their southern suppliers. How these agencies work and why are they more acceptable than units? That the fall of Soviet Union brought in a new era and this era was about the vilification of all that was associated with the Soviet Union and that also influenced the trade unions and especially militant trade unions. And that has been the project for many since the 1990s. While employers have tried to promote team development models of work councils, grievance repressor committees, safety committees that are aimed at preventing unions from being formed on the shop road. Governments and other multilateral agencies have promoted and funded different types of NGOs. These NGOs are meant to serve multiple purposes. One, fill the vacuum created by the restructured state that has been devoted to advancing corporate interests, diffuse political anger and dole out paid what people ought to have had as right. Alter the public psyche by converting resentment into dependence and plant the edge of political resistance. The NGOs therefore form a buffer between the state and its people between empire and its subjects. They play the role of arbitrator, interpreter and facilitators. They play the role of the so-called reasonable arbitrator intermediary in an unfair, unreasonable conflict between perpetrators of violence and those affected. This is how NGOs have gained a wide social acceptability that in sharp contrast to trade unions that are seen as the last remnants of a social order that challenges capitalism at its core and are thereby not reasonable. NGOs on the other hand maintain a status quo, not challenge capitalism but try and fix the glitches that marred the face of capitalism. Let's take the example of the much-talked-about instance of the Rana Plaza Accident in 2013, which resulted in the death of over 1,100 workers and over 2,000 workers were wounded. A devastated world came together and decided to change the working conditions of workers' immigration. Campaigns were launched across the global north by NGOs, global unions, demanding that the TNCs sourcing from Rana Plaza pay up for compensating the workers and their families. This culminated finally in the signing of the legally enforceable Bailadesh Accord in 2015 between global garment retailers who were sourcing from Rana Plaza and two major global unions, industrial global union and the uni-global. Under the mentorship of the ILO, the co-signatories or the support organizations that were part of this negotiation were also the clean-float campaign, the Workers' Rights Consortium, its National Labor Rights Forum and the McKillers Solidarity Network, who acted as witnesses to the sign of the accord. However, not all retailers who were sourcing from Rana Plaza signed this agreement. They formed a parallel initiative for the Alliance for Bailadesh Worker's Safety that relied on the luxury contributions by the brands, mainly the US rights. The Accord today is treated as an ideal model for a legally enforceable global framework agreement and there is a concerted effort to extend it to other countries in South Asia. But if we look critically at the agreement, we find that this too is no more than an attempt to fix a glitch that caused a glaring incident like Rana Plaza. The Accord focused narrowly on building safety and not on why five producers, hiring close to 4,000 workers, had their factories running in that one illegally constructed eight-story hazardous building in the outskirts of the city of Taqla. Over almost a decade, the Accord has enshrined a restructuring of the garment industry in Bailadesh. It has almost obliterated small suppliers such as those housed in multi-storey buildings in and around the city of Taqla and consolidated and expanded large suppliers. Suppliers have moved away from rented facilities in Taqla city to other districts by investing in infrastructure, which has led to consolidation of factories and concentration of capital. This in turn has meant the suppliers once again gained access to first-generation, non-unionized workers in these new areas. This physical shift of factories pushed unionization and collective bargaining two steps back. These new factories are larger, more modern and capable of producing more with ultimately merely means, which ultimately merely means a small adjustment in capitalist production without altering the power dynamics within the country between the suppliers and their workers and beyond between the suppliers and their transnational buyers. This restructuring also ensured higher profits from both scale and investment in new technology and machinery for both the domestic suppliers and their transnational buyers. The Accord avoided the larger question of workplace health and safety that are intrinsically linked to the profit system. Neither did the framework agreement signed by the two global unions and four international worker support organizations legally protect workers' right to free the workers' association and collective bargaining. That would have ensured a sustainable, safe environment for the workers through continuous negotiation with their employers. The Accord therefore did not disturb the status quo. It only re-adjusted it for higher profit chains and a lower wage share in the long run. And that is where the problem lies. In addition to this are the various multi-stakeholder initiatives in the government supply chain such as the Ethical Trading Initiative which is the ETI, the Fair Labor Association, Fair Trade International, Fair Fair Foundation and many more, which are primarily joint platforms of employers, employee representatives like for unions and other social organizations meant to resolve issues in the supply chain through a framework of so-called collaborative governance. These initiatives have been more critiqued than others for the intrinsic imbalance of power within these framework. The MSI structurally assumed that the equal dialogue is possible between representatives of the TNCs and those directly or indirectly representing the workers just because they are part of a certain initiative. These MSIs are initiated by the TNCs to protect their own corporate interests along with creating a smoke screen of collaborative governance. All issues that are raised within these MSIs are bound by strict norms of confidentiality. This effectively strangles affected workers and trade unions from launching public campaigns to build pressure on the TNCs thereby providing an additional edge to the TNCs involved in any particular negotiation within these MSIs. The global agenda for changes in the government supply chain is that therefore decided in the Global North, negotiated by the Global North and executed by the Global South. The actors are different for different negotiations but the balance of power between the southern unions and their northern supporters remain the same. When the NGOs are northern actors, their funders which can even be cooperates using their CSR resources decide how and where these funds will be used and thereby they set the agenda. This is very simple. When the unions are the northern actors, they set the agenda for their southern partners based on the demands of their own membership in the North and their agenda in the North. Even though many of the southern garment unions are affiliated to the industrial global union, their limited number compared to the northern membership is not able to direct the organization to a southern perspective. Thus, even within a global union that represents southern garment workers' unions, the agenda is largely normal. In all these cases, the actors in the Global North become the primary negotiators while the actors in the Global South are reduced to information providers and passive recipients of the negotiated outcome. The domain of influence of these northern actors is not restricted to instances of correction of worker rights violations in the supply chain. It extends to how partner organizations in the Global South should be structured, what their gender composition should be, what their racial composition should be, who should be their leadership and so on. On what the organizational agenda should be, so whether they should be focusing on organizing women workers, precarious workers, migrant workers, etc. Or it could be issue-based organizing such as around gender-based violence, on issues of sustainability, on health and safety, on forced labor and so on. On how organizational resources should be allocated, be it human resources or even financial resources. This is more insidious and ultimately changes the nature of these southern organizations, their composition, their leadership, their democratic structure, everything. Tribunals get transformed into deliverers of northern agenda, which may not even be the agenda of the militia. This in turn creates a widening gap between the leadership of the union who can keep pace with the global agenda, its other leaders and its militia. This also creates tribunals that do not even have critical members in the industry as membership and its strength is in material to achieving outcomes. Having said this, what is possible and how? There is no easy way forward, at least not what we can see. Organizing strong democratic units at the factory level is the first building block towards changing this power imbalance. And this I can give you an example of. 1,200 women workers were fired at an H&M supplier near Bangalore post-lockdown as H&M cancelled their order at this supplier for delay in delivery during the pandemic. This supplier had two other factories supplying to H&M, but this was the only one that was fully unionized. In the midst of the pandemic and searing summer heat, the workers continued their protest for over three months till the supplier was forced through continuous negotiation to reinstate all the workers, even after many of them had accepted financial settlement from the management under financial distress and delays. This was only possible because the union stood its ground. H&M withdrew their orders and yet the supplier reinstated the workers. What this case revealed is the need to have multiple strategies to fight together. So it protests within the national legal system, using the global framework agreements that bind TNCs to certain conditions in their own supply chain, strong linkages with unions in the global laws, which too engaged in solidarity of actions against the TNC, putting their own jobs at risk. This is a strategy that puts fear into the minds of the employers, into the minds of the labor administration and also that of the TNCs. This is a strategy that breaks the status quo. It disturbs the balance of power, even if temporarily. It is as difficult to create as it is to sustain, but it is possible. Thank you.


Tower of God centers around a boy called the 25th Bum, who has spent most of his life trapped beneath a vast and mysterious tower, with only his close friend Rachel to keep him company. When Rachel enters the tower, Bum manages to open the door into it as well, and faces challenges at each floor of this tower as he tries to find his closest companion. Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of A Week in Geekdom, and we're back for another anime first impressions video. This time we're talking Tower of God. I have to be completely honest with everybody. I had no idea what the heck this show was about. I had no idea that it was a webtoon or manhwa, that it came from Korea, from South Korea. It's a webtoon written and drawn by Lee Young-hui. Also, I'm reading off the wiki page, so you'll have to excuse me there. He's also known by the pen name CU. And this thing came out in 2010, and it's been translated into multiple languages, and it has a rabid fan base. That was surprising, and I was definitely intrigued. The concept is pretty wacky. These characters are thrown into this setting where there's this huge tower, and of course it has biblical motifs and almost like mythological levels and stuff, and they get thrown into this tower, and as you climb it, and as you climb it, more power will be awarded. Yeah, it's a very interesting premise. I like the idea that you know, we're jumping into this story where the main focus is this elevated tower, and the promise of riches and powers at the top will obviously intrigue a lot of people going in, and it sort of turns into this mishmash of things that I've seen before, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. It sort of reminded me of Battle Royale and hell, even the hunter exams of Hunter Hunter. You know, it has that hype going into it where you don't know what the story's going, or the route the story's going to take, and I really appreciated that. I love when a show can surprise you from the get-go. You don't really know what you're getting yourself into, but as the pieces start aligning, you get a feel for it and you get excited, and I make the comparison of Hunter Hunter not that it's in the same tone, but just the unpredictable nature of that series and what it did for the exam trope in manga and anime. But the thing that I wanted to discuss aside from the plot is that this is one of Crunchyroll's originals series. They produce this, and the folks over at Telecom Animation Film are handling the animation, which was surprising because I thought, you know, it being a manhwa, a Korean manga, I thought it was going to be a Korean production, but no, it's a full-fledged Japanese anime based on a Korean manhwa. I'm saying it wrong, it's manhwa, or however you say it. But Telecom Animation Film, they did a good job on the series that they've done. I really enjoyed their work on Loop on the Third, for example, and the animation on Tower of God looks really interesting. At first glance, when you look at the poster, you think, huh, there's something off about that art style. It looks sketchy and somewhat incomplete, but trust me, it looks fantastic in motion. It has a certain fluidity to everything that really captivates you and wants you to keep watching, and it's fully-fledged out. I don't know, I guess it's the static image that, to me at least, I thought it's missing sort of like a shadowing or a little more darker shades or something to give it that depth that it's missing. But no, the animation is really cool, really fluid, and really fantastic to look at. The characters are pretty interesting. The character of Bam, which is another point I wanted to talk about. I find it really interesting that the main character, his name is Bam, but if you are listening to the Japanese audio, they're calling him Yoru, but you're reading it in English and they're writing Bam into subtitles. The explanation I read is that Bam means night in Korean, and Yoru means night in Japanese, so it's literally the same thing just in different languages, so that's why. But I thought that was pretty clever. That was pretty fun that you can have that interaction between language and subtitles. I was a little bit surprised that technically the only Korean thing in the anime was the opening and ending, right? The songs were pretty badass, easily on the list for a contender for best opening and ending song of 2020, I think. But yeah, the anime is pretty solid, wonderful animation, a really intriguing concept. The story basically, I summarized it at the beginning of the video. You have this character, Bam. He's going after Rachel, his friend, and she wants to climb the tower to see the fabled night sky and the stars and stuff, so she gets trapped in and he quickly follows and finds himself in the mysterious first floor where he has to pass his trial and stuff, and eventually you start to learn that this tower is actually pretty deadly, and you know, to go all the way to the top, you're gonna suffer. So yeah, it's a pretty cool concept, and I can see why a lot of people are so into the story. I was checking out earlier before recording this video the community for Tower of God, and people are so hyped about the original material and this new anime that it's infectious, and it makes you want to keep going with the story. I don't, I gotta be honest with you, I was a little bit lost with a few things, but that's sort of the point of episode one, right? To intrigue you enough to keep going and see what head-on, I think I said that right, probably not, the floor's guardian and caretaker. I want to see more of him, I want to learn about his backstory, but yeah, it turns into Battle Royale pretty quickly when you realize that, oh crap, these guys are out to kill each other. What is going to happen? You're gonna have to find out by watching Tower of God. I could do a deeper analysis, but that would kill the fun for me because I got too much stuff going on, to be honest with you guys, so I'm probably just gonna stick with the animated series and see what happens from there, but I wanted to keep reading up on the series, but I'm trying to avoid spoilers. I'm hoping that all the questions are answered, and we get explanations for all the crazy hijinks in this tower and how the structure works, and I do know that later on, as the story progresses, it does get fleshed out and explained, the concept of the tower, because from what I understood at the beginning, this mysterious structure is enclosed and each level has unique settings, like one will be like a prairie, another will be like a dungeon, stuff like that. Obviously, there are a lot of elements like the great families, which I assume they control sections of the tower, so yeah, it looks like you're gonna get some epic worldbuilding in this title with interesting animation, a really cool idea, concept, execution, I'm really excited about this. Hopefully, they start making more adaptations of Korean Manhwa, really interested in that, so I enjoyed the first episode and I'm wholeheartedly looking forward to the rest. I think it's gonna be a 13 episode first series. Will that cover everything? Probably not, but hopefully it gets renewed. We'll see. If you guys have read the original, let me know down below what you thought of the series without spoilers, please. I don't like when people spoil things in the comment section. If not, recommend me your best mishmash of violence and intriguing concepts in anime and manga. I know, that's a strange question to ask, but I'm looking forward to some answers down below. Thank you everybody for tuning into another exciting episode here at A Week in Geekdom. As always, like, comment, subscribe, hit the bell icon so you know when new videos pop up, follow me on social media, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, all that fun stuff. I've got to go. I will catch all of you on our next review.