and welcome to Tomorrow Science Discovery 2.02. Today we're talking to Mary Michael Sharia about synthetic living materials and synthetic biology. But my name is Lisa and I've got Jared with me today. We're going to be hosting this interview and we want to get straight into it. So Mary Michael is a scientific engineering associate at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and she's working really cool stuff like synthetic biology and how we can make engineered living materials. So Mary Michael I just wanted to start off by asking you why are engineering living materials such a cool thing to work on and what are the natural materials that they're trying to replicate? Yeah so they're a really interesting thing to work on largely because we have a great ability to make hard materials and static materials but we're not very good at making things that are self-healing or self-assembling. You know everything we make like concrete and steel requires a lot of input on our half and it is what it is at the end. But living materials have the ability to grow and self-heal. They have the ability to make multiple materials within a single vat and so you can think about things like bone or nacre which is that beautiful inner iridescent layer of a mollusks shell and these things are amazing because they have the ability to be extremely strong. They have the ability to have fracture resistance so they don't you know when you crack them they slide or try to prevent the crack from propagating but at the same time they also can have some flexibility. They can have the ability to grow or heal a crack that does form and also just self-assembling. You know there's no human being going in and putting the parts in one by one they just grow on their own so we want to mimic that ability and basically where it comes from is the idea of hierarchical assembly so a mollusks shell basically has all these different levels of organizations down on the you know nanometer level. It's got these tiny little particles and biomaterial which is just kind of like sticky material and it puts those together in a way and then those that layer kind of grows into larger platelets and those platelets grow into the larger shell and so by having all of these different layers of organization it ends up having emergent properties that say the sand or the biomaterial on their own absolutely don't have. The biomaterials just squishy the sand is just particles but together they make this incredibly iridescent beautiful and strong shell and so we want to try to mimic that. So kind of like living composite materials like carbon fiber but with living cells and materials that surround them. That's cool. So what are the current state of engineered living materials that we have at the moment? Are we even close to making artificial bone or anything like that? Yeah in some ways we are it depends on kind of the different field but you know we're still in the stage where we're learning to control it and we're learning to build it on different levels so we are getting to a point where we're kind of good at the micron nanometer scale ordering and we're kind of good at the big you know millimeter centimeter ordering but getting all the different levels to come together getting them to create themselves without us having to say 3D print the different organizational levels that is still a little ways away. There's also just the aspect of you know anything that we are going to try to apply in the world is going to need a lot of verification and control and understanding before we just release it out there. You know if you're talking about something that's going to be used in civil engineering you need to know that that's not going to break down and your wall or whatever your your filtration system is going to hurt people because it wasn't tested enough. So that is one of the big things about synthetic biology that slows things down. We can make stuff in the lab but we really still have a long way to go to prove their real world application in some of these things but as far as actually building the materials you know there's a lot of work being done to use cells to mineralize things around them so there's natural systems in a lot of bacteria like cyanobacteria where really when they're just in nature they take up calcium carbonate and form little rock-like structures little crystals around themselves naturally and so there are other bacteria that can't do that and so sometimes we transfer the ability from one to the other and we also are looking at okay what other materials could we attach to the cell surface to get that kind of ordering and that's where my work starts to come in where I start to use S-layer proteins which are these really cool proteins that are on the surface of a cell and they're found on almost all bacteria and it's basically like chain mail it's this really highly ordered protein structure and there it is and and this is the one from colobacter chrysentis which is a little freshwater bug that you can find all over the place and basically this little chain mail forms on the surface of the cell for a lot of different reasons sometimes it's protection sometimes it helps it move a lot of times it's a molecular sieve so it helps you know trap or prevent things from going in or out of the cell and so it's basically just this natural protective layer but what we have discovered is that by inserting different things at various points within this layer you can then create attachment points all over the cell and so them you know by using the S-layer we have so many attachment points like thousands upon thousands and then you can start attaching different things to the surface of the cell whether it be a hard material like a nanoparticle or calcium carbonate or something that will grow a more hard stiff material or something like a biopolymer which is similar to what you know you see in a lot of shells and it's it's sticky it can form hydrogels or protective gooey layers and so you know you just pick and choose what you want to bind to the cell and then the cell just basically uptakes it out of the solution and starts growing into a larger and larger material and depending on what you're trying to achieve you would bind different materials based on where my lab is right now we are testing different materials and then using different kind of techniques like atomic force microscopy which honestly is basically taking an extremely fine stick and poking it like we have not moved beyond caveman times or we're literally just talking things with the stick but basically we build this this material of say nanoparticles and cells that grows on its own it heals itself and then we poke it with a stick and we see how strong it is how flexible it is does it just break apart when we poke it or does it hold together does it depress and then expand kind of like memory foam in your bed you know and then we start to see what kind of properties arise from different attachment points different materials different cell lines and then we start to see okay can we order it and that's where we're at right now is trying to explore what happens when we attach things to the cell so it sounds like your group has had multiple different experiments going on with this this one organism that you're using so I think the best way to kind of tackle each of these is I'd love to go into each of these individual components that you mentioned so actually modifying the SLA protein and then what you added to it so you guys talked about how you just mentioned you guys added different proteins to it and then also nano materials as well so let's talk about those two things separately but first of all can you tell us a little bit about how you actually how does one actually modify a protein that exists in in a in a bacteria like did you go in there and and shove the protein in there poke it really hard again yeah um can you tell us a little bit about that yeah so um all the work that's really done with microbial synthetic biology is starts on the dna level and so instead of you know the final point where you have a protein that is going to have a function we actually go back to the code that writes that protein similar to if you wanted to modify a program on your computer you know you can try to modify the program but really what you want to do is go back to the original source code change that and then the program becomes different over time and so what we do is we basically first identify the gene that makes the protein so in this case for colobacter it's this gene called rsaa which doesn't really stand for anything microbiologists and molecular biologists just like to make up really complex letter acronyms for things and so that gene basically in the cell will create a protein that then moves the cell surface attaches and crystallizes and makes that hexagonal picture that you saw before all over the cell surface so what we do is we go in look at that gene and see okay where could I stick things inside that gene that will still allow it to make the protein and the protein will still create the structure that it naturally creates but now with a little loop sticking out of it that has a binding event on it so in the case of this image what we were trying to do was attach a fluorescent protein so fluorescent proteins are really really great in molecular biology because they're just a tool to tell us did this work basically did this thing attach and if it did it's going to glow very simple you know very easy to tell what it is and so in this case these cells are displaying something called spy tag and the fluorescent protein has something called spy catcher on it this is basically a type of protein that when spy tag and spy catcher see each other in the solution they're going to bind together and so if spy tag actually is in rsaa on the cell surface and being displayed then the spy catcher fluorescent protein floating around is going to come in and attach to the cell surface basically telling us that yes the genetic modification that we made actually resulted in a functional protein on the cell surface so what you see here is in that top layer we just stain the cells with a dye to show that cells are there first step just so when i look at it by microscopy i know whether i'm actually just looking at cells or am i just looking at blank space and then the second layer shows did the protein bind to my modified s layer and so you see in the first three columns it's either missing spy tag or it's missing spy catcher so one half of the binding event whether it's on the cell or on the fluorescent protein is missing so therefore you don't see any fluorescence because nothing came together and then in the last you know column four row two you had both spy catcher and spy tag so the s layer has the binding peptides on the surface the fluorescent protein has the attachment protein and so they came together and you see that the purple fluorescence appeared and then the bottom row is just the merging of those two both the just dying the cells inside the cell and then the fluorescent protein attaching to the cell surface and what's cool is that you can actually tell that the dye is inside the cell and the fluorescent protein is attached to the outside of the cell because you see that the purple is kind of an outline of the cell and the blue is on the interior and we do this by basically when we look at the microscope we kind of go down and find a point where it splits the the cell in half and so you can see the inside and then the outside of the cell at the same time and this basically tells us that yes the binding event happened it did fluoresce but it's also extracellular which is really important for biomaterials sometimes when you make these proteins they get stuck inside the cell and that doesn't really help us in the case of s layers it's on the surface of the cell which allows us to you know modify and change the environment around the cell and so that was what was really important about that image and I just have to say that one of my super RAs Lisa Yoon was the one who took that image she got really really good at doing confocal microscopy which both saved me a lot of time and made beautiful beautiful images like that so I have a question from our chat room from hennys vorwurp and twitch which is actually extremely similar to a question I was going to ask which is are you all are you finding this using nature structural tricks or are you just trying to mechanically create biological structures that can be used in engineering yeah so um it's actually kind of a combination of the two um what we first do is look for natural biological abilities of the cell because if the cell can do something similar to what we are aiming for it's probably going to do it better than anything I can design so why not just exploit that but then you know and that's the case of an s layer it's a highly ordered extremely stable structure on the surface of the cell that I can then use um but from there it gets more into rational engineering and so you know the idea of those two proteins that do the binding events by tag and spy catcher that actually was originally a natural protein that then somebody engineered to be able to split and come back together and then when we're talking about what we're attaching to the cell that is highly engineered as well one of the big things is nanoparticles um and those are something that are engineered in our lab they are things like cadmium sulfide um little center cores that are then wrapped in materials that help it attach and so that is a very engineered thing and then also you know right now we are still just looking at what happens when we and when we put all these parts together but eventually we would hope to have enough design rules come out of that that we could predict and plan what kind of materials trying to make you know if I attach you know this kind of nanoparticle to an S-layer that has this particular structure okay I know what kind of mechanical properties are going to arise from that material and that's still a little ways off that's what we're exploring now but that does get into the point where we'd hope to eventually be able to rationally engineer all the parts and then build a material that we understand fully I want to get back to the spy catcher and spy tag system that you mentioned I mean it's kind of seems like it's the basis of of this whole research to me it kind of feels like if I had to think of a real world analogy it's kind of like velcro like the cells are expressing the protein which is kind of like the hooks of the velcro and then the you know the materials that you want to add to the cell have like the fluffy part of the velcro and so you know they come in and they and they stick to to the surface of the bacteria um so I want to talk about what we can attach to the fluffy part of the velcro like we mentioned talking about you mentioned cadmium sulfide which I think is that a um is that a semiconductor what kind of um properties will we get out of you know attaching something like that to the cell so um the cadmium sulfide nanoparticles we we use that more just because it's a very good bright quantum dot basically it you know when we shine a certain laser light on it it's going to glow very very brightly and so it tells us that yes it's a hard material it attached it's um so it's more for diagnosis of what kind of hard materials you can make and we do different linker lengths we do different sizes of nanoparticles to see but you know as far as mechanical properties something that small um isn't going to impart too many nano um kind of nano level mechanical properties though we do see some which is interesting um and that's kind of a work that we're exploring right now but uh so the spy tags by catcher it's definitely like velcro because you have a little tiny small part and a really big protein they come together but the only difference is that it's irreversible so it forms um a bond basically that pretty much cannot be broken it takes a heck of a lot of energy to break which is really important in um engineered living materials because you know most proteins have what's called an on off rate and um so things are going to come on they're going to come off and it's you know it's unstable because of that but this is very very stable which is what you want in a material because you don't want your material changing hopefully without your control yeah totally there's a really good question um in the chat room here actually in terms of figuring out uh what we can attach to these to the spy catcher as spy tag system um honey's of all work is asking can this be done manually or can ai be utilized to help you in your work i guess in terms of finding out what might be useful to attach or um different new and emerging properties of that system yeah for sure so um i think right now we're still defining the rules and so understanding how the binding event occurs how different s layers which have different geometries affect that a binding event or different locations within the s layer different materials how they come on and off for example a protein attaches to the cell extremely fast but a biopolymer like a hydrogel like material finds um a little bit slower and so i think you know right now we're still so new that we wouldn't really know what to tell the machine learning to do and what to look for but um once we define a little bit more about the rules that apply to these engineered living materials and we have a little bit more understanding then yes it will be um very important to start using those kind of tools to expand all the options so that we don't have to manually test every single variant we can kind of look at them the scope that the machine learning or the ai tells us what could work and what doesn't and then go try to do real world applications people are doing that in synthetic biology now with some systems that are better understood but honestly the the the big sticking point that sometimes happens and this is somewhat related to the recent Nobel Prize is that a lot of times what we predict doesn't actually work in nature nature goes off and does its own thing and it does not care what you think um francis arnold recently said in a talk that she she tries not to put too much thought into these experiments occasionally because nature does not care about your algorithms nature does not care about your predictions it's going to do whatever it wants so a lot of times we do these predictive models for biology and then when we actually go in the living organism and try to apply it doesn't does its own thing which is why um technique looks like evolution where you're basically taking the cells and putting them in different conditions and forcing them to evolve and then analyzing that evolution becomes really powerful but again that's where ai can come in if you do those kind of experiments if you force changes to the genome or to the dna you get a lot of variants you get a lot of information a lot of data so then having having a human go in and analyze all those changes is very difficult so a lot of times that's where things like machine learning come in where they go in and they do an experiment throw the data into the computer and then try to see if patterns emerge that can inform us on how to do rational engineering so we've got two questions from our youtube channel that complement each other really well so i'll do i'll do one and then the second one and kind of we can hear from you on it so mike taran is outright asking what's the chance that this biomaterial mutates in a way that we can't control so kind of talking about the surprise of nature that it was throwing at you and then elan lift also in our youtube channel is asking how have rules and laws of gene modification affected your lab work and also who makes those rules and what's specifically restricted yeah so for the first one um what typically causes a cell to mutate or change is stress um so what we try to do is create materials create proteins that don't stress the cell out and so that becomes um a delicate balance of you know if you try to express your protein too much it's going to take up too much metabolic load of the cell like it'd be like if i told you to just you know grow hair all the time don't do anything else in your body just grow hair and your body is going to kind of go okay no because i need to live and so that's the point where the cell kind of starts going no i don't want to do what you want i'm going to try to change i'm going to try to mutate to prevent what you are asking me to do so in our materials we really try to limit the amount of stress involved and so that is one of the perks of using s-layer proteins because they're on the surface of the cell and because the cell already makes them in high high abundance there are tons of them on the cell um us attaching things extracellular to to that doesn't really cause that much change or stress to the cell the cell doesn't really see a notable difference and in the paper there are um experiments we did to show that the protein is still being produced the same way it was produced naturally and so that is one way to prevent mutation is to just keep the cell as chill as possible and in as natural a state as possible but that isn't always possible sometimes you are creating things that do stress the cell out or that the stress you know the cell doesn't want to do and we'll try to mutate or for some other reason causes mutation and in that case we start getting into a very big field of synthetic biology that's funded um all over the place which is basically the control of these cells in the environment um if they start to mutate if they start to get out of control how do we stop that how do we control it and it gets into a whole big field of um you know non-natural amino acids and oxytrophs and these are things where basically we make the cells dependent on us to live and so if they try to mutate and change and go out and do their own thing we just take away what they need to live and they die and so there's a lot of different um methodologies being developed to prevent mutation and to have as much control as possible because we we don't want a gray goo kind of situation yeah there's definitely there's a lot of regulations in place to to prevent um I mean the public expresses a lot of concern of this right you know we don't want to be changing things in nature and then accidentally letting them out and and destroying the world like it's there's a lot of processes you have to go to like in terms of approval of getting these kind of bio hazards in your lab you know safe to work with and safe for the environment so it's cool to know that that you guys are using those strategies but we have a fantastic question in the chat room about keeping uh the cells that you're working with alive um and uh honey's wall web on twitch actually wants to know um the composite structures that you're making um will they be alive or are you just using the cells to build the structure first with the certain traits and then the cells will die kind of as if like 3d nano printers yeah so um uh all the different labs that work on engineered living materials approach this differently there are a lot of them um especially out of mit they actually use bio printers with cells and they print down the cells and sometimes they they make what they want and then the material dies or sometimes on purpose the material is assembled by the cells and then we kill the cells because we don't want them involved anymore after they create the material but for me i'm actually working on truly living materials i want the cells to survive hopefully forever and just keep um being involved in the the building of the material because that way you know if i build say a nice flat structure and somebody comes in and punches a hole in it well in my material because the cells are living if i provide them with a little bit of food or a little bit of the material that they attach say you know um calcium or a biopolymer which sometimes they can make on their own the cells will then grow into that hole and heal it and so that is in my mind truly engineered living materials they have to have a component of self healing self repair and i want that self repair to be as hands off as possible so in the paper we actually did an experiment where we took the cells we bound nanoparticles to them um nor they bound nanoparticles to themselves and then we left them in solution with almost uh no new food um so they ran out of food eventually and very little air and we just left them on the bench top at room temperature for two weeks actually we've done it for a month but it was published for two weeks and um and we basically saw after that time what happened were they still alive did the nanoparticles hurt them and what we found was that yes they were absolutely still alive nanoparticles were still um encrusting the surface and uh what was even cooler was if we took a little bit of those cells that had been just sitting there for two weeks and we moved them into fresh media fresh um so fresh food um fresh nanoparticles they actually then grew a new material and so we have the ability to basically seed and grow a new organism and a new material from that point on which is kind of the living point and so i kind of think of it how for years we have tried to push nature out of our buildings right we have created these sterile environments and we you know our walls our desks all of our stuff we don't want microbes we try to get rid of them and so now the industry is trying to think okay well how can we reintroduce nature back into our buildings in a helpful and healthy way and one of the ways to do that is to have microbes that are alive and can you know heal things in your environment or detoxify things in your environment how cool would it be if you know your paint had the ability to freshen your air nice um so james johnson in youtube and actually i'm going to bounce through a couple of these uh says that that sounds like it would be good for vascular needs um roger c on youtube is also sort of asking space materials like could we end up using it to build things in space um and then helio pausing is asking the big question that i definitely uh want to ask which is can you grow a burger in a petri dish um so it sounds like there's just like a huge range of applications for this to be applied to yeah for sure so my research lately has been more well i've kind of had to one has been in trying to do bioremediation so using the slayer to then take things out of wastewater that we want or that we don't want so for example you know gadolinium is very um very useful to us and it can be found in water but it's very hard to get out because it's very um rare in the water it's not very much of it so microbes are great for that um but i'm also working on structural materials so you know i want to build actual things with mechanical properties but then uh vasculature that is definitely a field of research people go into i pretty much stay away from the medical field because i don't have to deal with the fda and all of that nightmare um but there are people who are actively trying to build um vasculature and and medical devices that use live cells to either create them or help them grow and and be part of a human being um obviously that's uh that actually is a very exciting and very promising field of research but again whenever you have to do something with people it's going to be a little slow and then space research i love space research i have a little bit of a background getting to play around with um space companies and and basically synthetic biology has huge applications um for both um things like the iss and and and long-term spacecraft but also actually on other planets like mars you can talk about all sorts of applications from you know actually building materials and hopefully those materials will impart extra um abilities beyond a mechanical um man made materials so like i said you could have something that was on the iss that was part of the walls that helped keep the air clean or you could have a bacterial filtration system in the water that detoxifies everything and you know uses all of the waste to then produce something that's useful you know microbes love to grow on our waste and then if you engineer them correctly they could then go and make a pharmaceutical for you or make some other chemical that you need that would be very hard for us to take with us um as long as we can just take the cell line we can then create something from that um so it's a little easier to transport um and then there's also the idea on planetary surfaces of actually using them to to engineer the environment we're in obviously terraforming is way big we're not talking about that but in our small environment you know can they detoxify the mars soil in a way that we can then use it because there's lots of chemicals in there that we do not want to have in there or um a lot of microbes have the ability to take certain minerals out of soil that we do need it's geomicrobiology um you'd be surprised to see how much microbes actually affect and and control um the the rock the soil everything around us and so you know a lot of people can look at ancient rock structures and actually see how the microbes were affecting the um the structure that they're looking at and so how can we do that on another planet that allows us to create a small biosphere that is useful to us because really when it comes down to down to it humans can't live without bacteria we can't live without these things and these things um these little bugs are going to change depending on the environment that we're in so we need to understand and hopefully control that both for our health and also for producing things that we need yeah there there's some fantastic applications that you mentioned there and there's actually a really great question in our chat room that relates to all of that um FIT Orion on twitch wants to ask what type of environments could such a system survive in vacuum or high radiation so with the colobacteria the the species that you've been looking at could you tell us a little bit about what environment it needs right now with your research to grow and whether you think it might be able to survive these extreme or environments of radiational vacuum yeah so the great thing about microbes is that we find them everywhere all sorts of extreme environments so um being able to uh just find the microbe that can survive the environment you need currently synthetic biology focuses very much on what we call model organisms ones that we highly understand know how to engineer and are really great at doing what we want them to do such as E. coli or yeast but a lot of the field is starting to go into harnessing these other bacteria that live in these more extreme environments and can do these really extreme chemistries that we need rather than trying to put them in E. coli a friend of mine actually has a company called micro buyer that basically looks at these extreme microbes and then tries to domesticate them to take them in her lab and figure out how to modify their DNA how to grow them how to control them because that is a huge field research in itself just understanding how to deal with a new microbe as far as cyanobacteria or not cyanobacteria colibacter so they are freshwater bug they live in your ponds and streams probably in your tap water they're kind of everywhere but they like to live in semi warm to cool environments they don't need very much food and that's one of the reasons why they are so great for biomaterials we don't have to feed them very much they're very happy in just pure water in a random room temperature environment they're very friendly to human beings they are not toxic to you at all if you were to accidentally ingest some colibacter it's probably not going to hurt you at all so that's why it's really good for thinking about things like a common wastewater stream on a spacecraft is cyanobacteria colibacter would be really great in that if biomaterials because they don't need much food it's great because you don't have to constantly be replenishing their food they have the ability to just survive for a long time on minimal resources but you know if you are starting to think about more extreme environments or more specific applications then you got to go to other bacteria like I was mentioning cyanobacteria is great because it grows on sunlight so you don't have to feed it as much and it has all these cool abilities to do calcium mineralization and other detoxification things so they're actually being looked at a lot for life support systems but then there are bugs that we have found you know deep deep in the ice and can survive really really super cold environments or you look at different bugs like the all-time favorite is tardy grades you know we have exposed them to vacuum we have exposed them to high radiation and they just kind of survive they are kind of unkillable it's a little disturbing and it's because they have this whole classification state and that's the whole other field of research but the key to applying synthetic biology to extreme environments is finding the bug that already is pretty happy there you know one of the bugs I worked at geobacillus stearothermophilus is a thermophile it actually grows in really really hot temperatures and so if you have a wastewater stream or an environment that you're talking like 60 degrees celsius very very toasty happy as a clam in there in fact that's its favorite home to be in and so you would use that bacteria for that environment rather than trying to force say E. coli to survive an environment that they're not really good at as far as vacuum and space radiation go obviously we don't have access to the microbes that are in that environment but I truly believe that we will find in extreme environments life maybe it's on an asteroid maybe we discovered that on the surface of the ISS some microbes got out there and they've adapted and evolved and now they survive there and now we can use them so I do think as we explore the universe further we will find life that we can harness for our own needs and hopefully make them a part of our world in our chat room we have a question from neuroborg which I think is a very appropriate name for the conversation that we're having so far today they're asking that do you think bioprinted organs for transplant will be created in maybe the next 10 to 20 years so um like I said medical field isn't really my thing I don't know a lot about it but I have heard that they are already growing and bioprinting organs there are companies that are doing that and kind of one of the things to to know about synthetic biology is that when it moves into the company stage when it's an independent you know consumer company it's getting pretty far along in its life cycle and it the whole point is to send it out into the world and have it applied and so there are companies that are starting to do printing of organs especially organs when we're talking about things like skin and surface of vasculature but also bigger organs as far as when these actually get transplanted into humans I have no idea that is totally up to the regulatory bodies and you know all the hugely time consuming requirements that they have where you first put it in mice and then you put it in pigs and you see how long they live and the thing is that you can't just put it in them for a week and see if they survive you got to leave them in there for a while and see what happens over time because a human being is going to hopefully have this you know transplanted organ for the rest of their life what if it's great for 10 years but then in 15 years it you know goes all haywire and we need to to deal with that so I do think that actually transplanting into humans is probably a little further away but it's definitely a mature technology as far as synthetic biology goes yeah all these applications that you're kind of putting out there in terms of synthetic biology you've really sold me on how important this field is but not only how important it is like how regulated it is too so we're not just you know in the lab shooting bullets of things trying to make them work I mean sometimes we are but we're doing it in a way with this goal in mind of trying to benefit all of humanity whether that's through cleaning up the environment or making new materials that could be put into the human body um synthetic biology seems like it's it's something that we need to keep on top of and keep working more towards so um if people wanted to find out more about your research read the paper that you've been mentioning and all of your work what can they go to do that so the paper was published by a journal called ACS synthetic biology so if you just search for my name on there or engineered living materials it should pop up it was published in their January 2019 issue unfortunately this is a somewhat paywall journal so if you are interested in getting a full pdf of it and you don't have access to the journal uh one of the the things that people don't realize is that the authors of a paper are more than able and allowed to send that pdf out to anybody they want to so um if you just tweet me at at mary michael um or email me at mmsharrier at lbl.gov I am happy to send you a copy of the paper um if you want to find out more about engineered living materials in general there are a bunch of really great reviews on that journal as well as some other journals that kind of talk about all the different applications um that you can go for and one of the things you'll notice is that I find very few synthetic biologists that don't have um an environmental and um human benefit mindset you know we use synthetic biology because we think it's going to be better for the planet better for um human beings it's gonna you know replace really really toxic manufacturing such as you know a lot of the company's starting to make spider silks and leather out of mech bacteria or milk and like said burgers actually out of bacteria and these are ways to supplant um industries that are you know using cows which are not great for the environment or are using um a bunch of chemicals to create a plastic you know we're trying to supplant all that so these reviews kind of you'll see a trend in them where they're trying to supplant a negative industry with something that is more sustainable and that's what I find um kind of a core of all synthetic biologists that I meet um and then if you want to find out more about um specifically colobacter and engineered living materials you know just come talk to me um online I can give you more of a background on that um and there's a bunch of other labs that are doing things that are similar at the joshi lab uses curly fibers which are really cool little tendrils that come out of a cell and they're using that to do um similar work of attachment and growth of materials cool well um the both of us just want to thank you so much for coming on the show and and getting us excited about the cool things we can do with science to make our world better and I'm really glad that that it seems like the field and the scientists involved in synthetic biology do have that beneficial mindset of of helping the environment and helping humanity to be better through the knowledge that we gained from that so thank you so much for your time um Jared I think we better thank our patrons yeah we should thank our patrons and of course we want to thank all of you who help make this show possible we also we always start with our escape velocity citizens these folks give us ten dollars or more per episode and they get really cool stuff uh with it we also have our orbital citizens as well these folks give us five dollars or more per episode so find your name on there as best you can if you can find it and then we have our sub orbital citizens who give us two dollars and fifty cents or more per episode and you still get perks even if you're a sub orbital citizen and then even our orbit or our ground support says sorry I stepped up and then went back down our ground support citizens who give us a dollar or more per episode you folks even get some nice little things that we like to give you to say thank you we wouldn't be able to do these shows without you we wouldn't be able to have them here we wouldn't be able to bring in incredible guests to talk about their incredible work that they're doing to benefit all of us with humanity and if you would like to help make the shows of tomorrow possible you can head on over to patreon.com slash tmro so that wraps it up for this science episode and we'll see you next time


Hello, this is Sergei and this is debugging Galaxy tutorial. A last section, runtime error. So now we're going to be learning how to fix our runtime error in Galaxy. So sharing my screen and heading over to the tutorial. So the last error happens at runtime. That means that we don't have a failing test. Instead we have a bug report describing the error. Our goal is obviously to fix the error and our steps are going to be as follows. Step one, reproduce the error. Step two, locate the error in the code base. Step three, identify the problem as in what exactly is causing the error. Step four, write a test exposing the bug. The test obviously must fail. Step five, fix the error. Step six, ensure the error no longer occurs. Let's head on to the hands-on section. And part one is reproduce the error. So here is your bug report. In the user menu, clicking the data sets option causes an error message to be displayed on the page. Unquote exception in exposed API method. What do we do? We reproduce the error. So make sure you are in galaxy root, then start your galaxy.  I head into my terminal, present working directory. I am in the galaxy root, or rather in the galaxy root of the repo that I need to be running at this moment. And according to the tutorial, I need to start it with run.sh. So run.sh, oops. If you are starting galaxy for the first time, it might take quite a few minutes. If not, then you should be able to see a running galaxy in just a few seconds, waiting. And here we are, starting server, serving on HTTP <IP_ADDRESS>, port 8080. Heading back to the tutorial. So of course the process ID number will be different in your case. But now we can access galaxy. We can access it from the browser at this address. So I will just go ahead and open it in the new tab. And we have a running galaxy. Back to the tutorial to make sure we are following the steps. So to reproduce the error, we need to access the user menu. Now to access the username menu, we need to be logged into galaxy. So I'm going to, again, back to galaxy. I'm going to click the user menu. Aha, and I am logged in. So I will log out. I will pretend it's never happened. Back to galaxy, back to the user menu. The user menu does not exist. So we need to log in. If you don't have an account and most likely you do not on this version, you need to register. So I click log in or register. And at the bottom of the form I see, don't have an account, register here. So I click register here and create a galaxy account. Email address. It really doesn't matter what email address you use for this exercise, as long as it is a valid email address. So we will use, let's see, I think my email address exists in the database. So it won't let me use it. So I'll use something else, better example. Password. I believe the minimum number of characters is six, but they can be any characters. So I'll just do one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one. And create. We're in. Now, so we need to access the user menu and do something. Let's double-check. Now the user menu is available to us. Click user, then select data sets from the drop-down menu. You should be able to see the error message displayed on the page, okay? User, data sets, wonderful. We have an error message, unquote, exception in exposed API method. So this is actually very good. We were able to reproduce a bug. This means we are on the way to fix it. This means we know exactly where to start looking for it. In the wild, real world, it is not uncommon that a bug is not easily reproducible. So fixing it is not a trivial task. Heading over to part two, locate the problem. So to figure out what's happening, our best bet is to look at the galaxy log. So let's take a look at the terminal window from which we launched Galaxy. The question is can you see, can we see the error message? Terminal, let's take a look. So this is the Galaxy output log. And if you look towards the bottom of the screen, you'll see these very suspicious lines, which say file, lib slash galaxy slash web app slash and so on and so forth, line 129 in index. Raise exception, this should not happen. Exception, this should not happen. This most likely is exactly what we're looking for. Let's double check the solution in the tutorial. And indeed, you should see something like this and it gives us the summary, well, a screenshot of the lines we just looked at. So what's important is that from this error log, we can easily tell that the error happens in the datasets.py file, online 129 and the specific error message, well, it doesn't tell us much, which is often the case, but not to worry, this is a start. So let's head over to datasets.py. So back to the terminal, I believe I can get out of Galaxy. So I just clicked control C and I need the file, where is it? Here it is, file, lib galaxy web apps, Galaxy API, datasets.py. So lib galaxy web apps, Galaxy API, datasets and that will be line 129 and here it is. Great, raise exception. This should not happen. Back to the tutorial. So the good news is that the error happens inside an if else block, which narrows down our search to line 126. That line evaluates to false, causing the else close to execute. And of course the bad news is that we have no idea what exactly causes it. So once again, if we take a look at the terminal, here it is line 126, which is if stir as bull or string as bull, it takes the argument is trans.app.config.get and in parenthesis it's show datasets, comma true as a string true. If this evaluates to true, then the return value will be something else, which obviously is not happening else. So if this value is not true, as in if this value is false, then the exception this should not happen will be raised. So this is a good start. Time to head to part three, identify the problem. So we will investigate using PDB, which is our trusted Python debugger. PDB is great. It offers a wide range of functionality. It's exceptionally useful for debugging at runtime. I encourage you to read this documentation and let me click the link and show you what it's look like, what it looks like. It's not scary. And again, it's exceptionally useful. Here it is. It's on python.org. You simply head into documentation then the standard library. You simply search for PDB or debugging and you will see the link immediately. And this will take you to the documentation for the PDB module. So the documentation is not long and in fact you will need to read it once it'll take you 20 minutes. And then the debugger commands right here is all you need to navigate code bases of arbitrary complexity. So that's PDB. But let's head back to the tutorial. So the functionality offered by PDB is broad, is impressive, but we're going to use the simplest functionality it offers which is the built-in breakpoint function which simply drops you into PDB and lets you use it as an interactive Python shell. So first of all, let's add a breakpoint statement to our code right above the if else block. Back to the terminal. So here is our if else block. And again, we are in the data sets.py file. And we're going to add breakpoint right here. And again, breakpoint is a Python built-in function which will drop you into PDB as soon as the interpreter, as soon as the execution reaches this line. So we've added breakpoint. Let's double check the solution in the tutorial to make sure that we're doing the right thing. Solution, yes, we did the right thing. Now we need to restart Galaxy. However, here's one thing. To use PDB, we need to enable Galaxy's debug configuration option. In general, it may be a good idea to enable this in your galaxy.yaml configuration file. So what you can do is you can head over to config and there will be a galaxy.yaml.sample file. You can copy that file into galaxy.yaml and simply uncommon the option you want to set and set it accordingly. Of course, for the purposes of this exercise, it's enough to set the Galaxy config debug environment variable when running Galaxy. So what we can do is Galaxy underscore config underscore debug equals one and then run it. So Galaxy config debug equals one and run on a sage. Waiting for Galaxy to be served. And we're good, it's serving. So back to Galaxy. Here's our Galaxy. Just to make sure that it's running correctly. Yes, and we retrace our steps. So we go to user, datasets. Something different is happening. We don't see the error message, but definitely something wrong is happening. Loading datasets, the datasets have not loaded. So what we do is we head over to the terminal from which we launched Galaxy and we take a look at the log or on the terminal. And we see exactly what we were hoping to see, the PDB, the Python debugger prompt. There it is, PDB in parenthesis at the bottom of the terminal. In case the captions in the video might block this, let me just do this so you see this PDB prompt. Heading over to the tutorial to make sure we are doing exactly what the tutorial expects us to do. So at the bottom of the log, you'll see something like this. And yes, that's exactly what we're seeing. We are at the PDB prompt. From here, you can execute Python code interactively. So let's explore what's happening in the next line. Well, let's head out to the terminal. So if you look at the bottom line of the terminal, though the line right above the PDB prompt, it is the line which would have been executed if we had not added the breakpoint. So string as bull in parenthesis trans.app.config.get and arguments. So let's explore, let's see what's trans. Trans is an instance of a Galaxy web transaction. What is trans app? Trans.app is an instance of the universe application class. What is trans app config? Trans app config is an instance of a Galaxy app configuration. Finally, what is get? Well, it's a bound method. So it's a method of the Galaxy app configuration class defined in common configuration mixin. All right, back to the tutorial. So we've done some exploration. We got some context. Again, yes, we could have typed trans.app.config.get. We would have gotten the same result. But what we did, we explored a little bit. Now we know what object and what object is calling what object or we have a much better idea of the code we are going to debug. So that was useful. So let's take a look at the definition of this get method. And again, the method is defined in the common configuration mixin, which is used by galaxy.config.galaxyappconfiguration. How do we know it? Well, we got it from the definition of the, well, not the definition, but from the string representation of the get method right here. So let's head on to libgalaxyconfig init. And I don't want to exit the Python debugger. So I'm going to create a new terminal window. I'll keep it here. Go into the same directory right here. And I will take a look at that config class definition. So libgalaxyconfig init. And in the config, I'm looking for, let's see, once you find it, look for the definition of its get method. So I'm looking for the common configuration mixin. Let's find common configuration. Here is the common configuration mixin. And I need the definition of the get method and not this. Here it is, on line 480. Luckily, it's a very simple method. So it takes key and default. It has two parameters, key and default. And the only thing it does, it redirects this to self.config.dict.get a similar method. So let's see what the tutorial says about it. Once you find it, look at the definition of its get method. When you find it, look at the method signature. What is the meaning of the argument true that is passed to the method in datasets.py on line 127? So datasets.py, it's the file we were discussing when we were looking at the Python debugger. So why don't I open that datasets.py side-by-side with the config? Where does it live? Well, if you look at the PDB output, it lives in, here's the line, lib slash galaxy slash webapp slash galaxy slash API slash datasets.py line 127. That's the line we've already looked at. So let's open it side-by-side. Lib galaxy webapps, again, galaxy, API and datasets.py line 127. Here it is, string is bold. So the question in the tutorial, once again, what is the meaning of the argument true that is passed to the method in datasets.py on line 127? So trans.app.config.get, we pass show datasets as the first argument and true as the second argument. That's on the right screen of line 127. The method, this method get is defined on line 480 on the left screen. So you see the true is in fact the parameter which is called default. And this default is passed on line 482 to self.config.get as this second argument. So heading back to the tutorial, let's open the solution. And this is exactly the code we were looking at in the terminal. So the argument true corresponds to the parameter default. In the methods body, we see that the value will be passed to self.config.get. Now self.config.dict is a Python dictionary and we can discover that by looking at the code for an extra five minutes, you will find it very easily. So it's a Python dictionary and you call its get method. And we know that the get method called on a Python dictionary the second parameter will be a default value that will be returned if the key is not in the dictionary. So back to datasets.line 127. So now we know that true is the default value that will be returned if the key show datasets does not exist in the config dictionary. Take a look at this code in the terminal. So here it is, right side of the screen, line 127. If this key show datasets does not exist in the config.dict dictionary, then this code will return this string true as a default value. So this is something we have already established. Back to the tutorial. So moving on back to PDB. Let's make sure we are in the right terminal. Here is our terminal where in PDB and according to the tutorial, what we'll do is we will try to experiment a bit. Let's call trans app get config without the default argument. So show, what was it? Show datasets, I believe. I will check that it's indeed, yes, show datasets. Aha. So when we try to get the value of the key show datasets and don't submit a default, we get none. And none will be evaluated as false. Well, it means that that key does not exist. Now, what if we execute it, we pass true with a string true as the default and we get true as expected. All right, progress. So now we see that show dataset does not exist and we get the default value, which is the string true. Next step, string to bull or stir to bull. Again, back to the tutorial. And why do we care about string to bull? Because if you look at the very first line above the PDB prompt, you will see that this is the line at fault. So we were looking at the argument pass to string as bull, which is trans.ab.config and so on and so forth. Now let's take a look at how string as bull behaves as a function. So string as, first of all, is it a function? Yes, it is a function. Now, what if we pass it? Let's see what the tutorial wants us to do. The tutorial wants us to pass it the value true. Why are we passing it the value true? Because that is, we have established that the argument we are giving string as bull is trans.ab.config.get show datasets true. All this evaluates to the string true. So we're just simplifying this. So that's what happens. And we pass it and we get false. And this doesn't look right at all. So I think we found it. So exit the debugger to exit the debugger. We type Q, enter. We're back in Galaxy. Control C to exit Galaxy. Back to the tutorial. Head over to the function definition. You can tell from the import statement at the top of the file that it's in LibGalaxy until in it. Let's take a look at the import statement first. So heading to our terminal. We don't need the config anymore. So I'm closing. So now we are in, we are in datasets.by. We are interested in finding where string as bull came from. So go to the top of the file. And there it is. Line 21 from galaxy.util import string as bull. So I'm heading into galaxy.util. I'll just open it as side by side again. Galaxy util string as bull. I don't see a module. So it has to be in the module. In fact, I don't need the left side anymore. So I am in galaxy.util the init module. And I'm looking for the string as bull function definition. And here it is. Line 103 back to the terminal, back to the tutorial. And try to figure out. So head over to the function definition. We have found it. And try to figure out what, if there is an error. Well, let's take a look. So what are we looking for? We just called this function and we passed a string value true. And we got false as the return value which may absolutely no sense. So can we figure out what's going on here? Well, if the argument we passed is in this tuple and the tuple contains true, yes on one, then return true. But we got false. Why false? Can you guess what was the value we passed? Let's take a look at the tutorial. At first glance, everything seems right. It always does. And if you think of the value we're passing true, it is not in the true, yes on one tuple because true starts with an uppercase t. So apparently the developer did not account for upper versus lower case. So most importantly, do not fix this error. First, we're heading into part four. And in part four, we'll write a test exposing the bug. So this code is not covered by a test. Therefore, it is imperative that you write a test to expose this bug so that it doesn't happen again. In this case, we have a simple, completely isolated function. Again, here it is, string is a very simple function. It has zero dependencies, so it's very easy to test. A simple unit test will do. So start with a blank, let's see. Our unit test should go into test slash unit slash util slash testutils dot pi. And we need to start with a simple blank test function. Then in that test function, we will call the function on the test stringable and assert that when you pass in the value true, in an uppercase t, it returns true. Let's not think about what other cases we need to test. Let's just do this. So we are going to head, we're going to open the test util module, which is located in test slash unit slash util slash test utils. And you might recall that the first function test to control characters is from the first part of this tutorial, the test unit fixed the unit test value. So now we're going to add a new unit test. We'll call it, we're testing the stringable function. So we might as well call it test string as bold. And we need to assert that when we call it with, with the argument true, with an uppercase t, it returns true. So this should do it. Back to the tutorial.  To run this test, as you remember, you need to be in Galaxy root. We are in Galaxy root. You need to have your virtual environment activated. So we will activate it now, dot space, dot then, then activate, and we have the then prefix. And now we use by test to, I suppose, execute the, run the test in the entire module. So by test, test slash unit slash utils, test utils, and it failed. Did it fail? Yes, it did. Good. Now it's time to fix the error. Why is it good? Because this is exactly what we expected from it. So part five, fix the error. Can you think of a simple way to fix the function so that the test passes? Well, let's take a look at the function. Once again, lib, Galaxy, fill in a module, string as bull, here it is. Can you think of a way to test it? Oh, to fix it. Getting back to the tutorial. One way to do it is to simply convert input value to lowercase, and that indeed will do it. So if string dot lower, so what it is going to do, it will take our string argument and it will convert it to lowercase and then test against this tuple of lowercase values. So casing of the argument is no longer relevant. This should pass. Let's double check. Let's run it. Now let's run the test. Uh-huh. And it did not pass. I don't know exactly why it didn't pass because it says that string as bull is not defined. And what we did is we assumed, oops, we should open the test. There it is. So we called it a string as bull. We assumed that it's imported. It's not imported, but the util module on line six is imported. So this should fix it. And now it should pass. Now it passes. And now since we got the wrong error, let us for just a moment unfix the error, this one. So this is what our file looked like before we so cleverly fixed it. Now let's rerun the test. The test fails, but now it fails for the correct reason. Assertion error, assert false. This is what we expected. So now we can go back into the function definition module and fix it once again. So again, we add the dot lower method, save and quit and rerun the test. Now everything passes and everything passes for the correct reason that we fixed it back to the tutorial. So one way to do is to simply convert the input value to lowercase. That's exactly what we did. In fact, that is exactly what the real function does. Check line 966, you'll see almost the exact function named string as well. So line number 966, let's take a quick look. So our function is here on line 103 and line, let's do it this way, 966. 966 and here is string as bull on the right, line 966 in the same file. So the solution is exactly the same, dot lower. This is the real function. Why we didn't alter the real function? Well, because the real function is a utility function that's used all over the galaxy called base. So essentially galaxy would have exploded in our face. It wouldn't just create this little bug, it would not run at all. So run the test, now that you've passed, we did it. Heading into part six, ensure the error no longer occurs. Now that we have the string as bull function covered by test as a bonus, we can safely do some minor effect, right? The test will prevent us from breaking things. Can you simplify the function's code? Let's take a look at the function. It's line 103, I believe, yes. So let's take a look. Again, the function is covered by a test. So now we can play with it. Now we can make it better and not fear that by making it better, we are going to introduce some other bug. Well, let's see, if something return true, else return false. So how can we make it better? Well, there are several ways, but the most obvious way, if you think back to your computer science model one days or to the first book on programming you ever read, you can just do return this. You don't need, if something is true, then return true. And if not, then return false. Just return this there. Much better, elegant, beautiful, simple, a pleasure to read. Back to the tutorial. Is that the solution? Indeed, that is the solution. But one more thing we need to do, we need to save and we need to rerun the test. And of course, something happened. What did that, what did we do? Aha, we very cleverly added a return without thinking about the end of the line. And that was a nif clause. So it ended with a colon. Left the colon and we're going to delete it. Right and quit, quit, rerun the test. Now everything is fine. So again, having a test cover function before you do anything to that function, no matter how true that is, is super useful. And I really made that error now. So back to the tutorial. Finally, head back to your local Galaxy and verify that the runtime error no longer occurs. Most importantly, remove the breakpoint statement you added to the data sets on. Getting to the terminal, the data sets where in Lib Galaxy, web apps, Galaxy, API, data sets. I don't remember where it is, but if I search for breakpoint, I'll find it. There it is. I'm removing it and I'm saving it. Start Galaxy and repeat the steps from the bug report. Well, run.sh waiting for Galaxy to be served on Fort 8080. Holding fingers crossed, almost there, not yet. And it's being served. Heading to Galaxy. Here's Galaxy, user menu, data sets, fingers crossed and it runs. Congratulations. You have fixed the runtime error. And this, by this, you have completed the last section of this tutorial and arguably the most challenging section. Congratulations and thank you for working through this. Stop share, stop recording. Thank you.


My name is Kasper Seiler and I'm a student of the DCL STEM Academy of Engineering. My middle school offered a STEM program that allowed us to gauge in different activities and build different things. I really enjoyed this and decided that I wanted to pursue engineering at the DCL STEM Academy. Beyond the knowledge that I've attained, there's a very specific skill set that I've learned. I'm able to look at problems and find abstract solutions to those problems. Being in the program has given me insight into finding unique ways to solving solutions to problems. Well, after high school I plan to pursue a Bachelor's of Engineering and a Master's of Business and then after that I'd like to go to law school. I'm part of the Leap Club. I'm part of the Patriotic Ambassadors. I'm also the ROTC program's PT commander. I'm part of varsity wrestling, varsity soccer, and I also did a JV volleyball. A fun fact about me is that I enjoy exercising and I love chopping down wood. I'd like to thank David Goggins because he's given me the discipline I need to pursue my dreams and achieve my goals.


Welcome everybody to another episode of the non-profit show. We have one of the oh geez of guests Steve and Shaddock. It's been too long.  That's okay. I forgot. It's a fabulous book It's a great lesson on how to Fundraise and what it looks like from the other side of the table and I can't recommend it enough I think it's it's really a topic. No, it's a super cool piece of work I really really love it But today we have Steven back on the nonprofit show to talk about Capital campaigns and this is going to be really an interesting conversation because he's giving us some New research that has been done. And so we're going to really delve into this to understand What what's cooking if we haven't met? I'm Julia Patrick CEO of the American nonprofit Academy Jared Ransom the nonprofit nerd and CEO of the Raven group is off today Again, we have amazing sponsors that have been with us on this journey more than 900 episodes They include Blumerang American nonprofit Academy your part-time controller nonprofit thought leader Fundraising Academy at National University staffing boutique nonprofit nerd and nonprofit tech talk We have we have so many ways you can get to us Steven and get to all of our archives and all this information You can download our super new sexy app Which I just love you can find us on podcast and of course you can watch the broadcast so My favorite thing one of my favorite things is to take if you have a smart TV Just take your remote and speak in and say the nonprofit show and as Jared likes to say We will join you on the sofa and you can watch it. It really works. I've done it. It's amazing. It's really it's kind of scary to me Yeah, I did that Anyway, hey, okay Steven Shattuck director of engagement Which is a great title for you because you my friend are very engaging So I just got to say I try. Yeah, you know you do a beautiful job capital campaign pro Talk to us about what capital campaign pro does. Yeah, we're a we're a consulting agency So we help organizations we steward them through their capital campaigns from the early planning stages of the feasibility process and then on through The solicitation in the public phase and all that good stuff. So if you're considering a capital campaign Check us out because we got a great team of coaches. We were talking about that Julia That's the really the right word for it. We help coach people through it And that's where we did this this awesome research that we're gonna talk about today too. So it's fun You are based in Indiana, which is such an interesting part of our country because it really has led Most people don't know this but Indiana has really led the nation and I would say the world With a lot of non-profit thought leadership technology Yeah, management. I mean the Eli Lilly school IU I mean say no more rings there shout out to your sponsor. Yeah, yeah Blumerangs based there. I mean Stephen Chattuck is based there But do you work with folks throughout the nation? Yeah, absolutely I think we have every state covered at least once and and some Canadian nonprofits too. We love our friends to the north. Yeah Cool. Well, let's get into this research and and have you Maybe first and foremost talk about how you started this let me let me let me back up I want to know like how you conducted the survey. Yeah, why you conducted it and kind of give us the Dynamics and then we have some very specific questions about findings. So yeah back up a little bit Well, you know me You know, I've been on the show talking about the donor retention research that we did at Blumerang And I know they've been back to talk about that, you know, and I do my my giving experiments So research is is always something I'm really interested in and and with capital campaigns. There really was none There's there's a lot of good stuff out there for other disciplines of fundraising You know, there's tons of research on online giving and donor retention like I talked about But capital campaigns, you know, there's a lot of them happening Every single day and and you know all year long and they last multiple years and big organizations are doing them And they're, you know, usually very successful But there wasn't sort of that underlying, you know, here's how most people approach them Here's what works. Here's what doesn't And you know how it is with fundraising There's all kinds of advice and stories and anecdotes and all that is good But we sort of observed that one sort of missing piece, you know, that one leg of the stool that was missing Not even a whole leg. Maybe just it was just a little wobbly like you got to put a couple playing cards under it So that's what we did with the with the research. So we went out and and surveyed As many nonprofits as we could get to respond And we had some great partners. So bloom ring was one of them. They put that word out. That was awesome Others iWave Aspen leadership group And you guys also gave us some shout outs and social media. So thank you for that And basically we asked people Are you in a capital campaign? Did you recently finish a capital campaign or are you thinking about one in the future? And if they fell into one of those three groups We had a specific survey for each of those three cohorts and we got uh to our You know Appreciation a lot of responses in each and we thought well, why don't we publish this? So we asked people Hey, what's driving your campaign? You know, what's your goal if you finished? How did it go? um lots of things with regards to You know, what were some of the benefits of doing the campaign besides just the dollars raised, you know What role did the board and your ceo and ed play? um And then the the biggest thing and we were talking about this before we hit record julia, but like You know the last three years i don't think i have to say we're pretty tough and and and way different than maybe the last 100 years right um and we wanted to know Did that change the way people Are thinking about capital campaigns? So all that is available in the in the full report Lots of really interesting things that surprised us and some that didn't but now we have Sort of that concrete Research there on those aspects. So lots of cool things. You can get it from our website. Just capital campaign dot capital campaign pro dot com slash research And uh, you can dig into them yourself Well, so let's and thank you for for kind of backing up the truck on that because it really was curious as to You know what this was looking like and I think as you know, I mean the old-fashioned garbage in garbage out Right surveys. I mean you got to figure all this stuff out and who you're who you're convening to get the This information and then how you navigate that forward. So let's start off by saying by asking you our capital campaigns even successful Given we're in this marketplace and I use the word marketplace In the sense of historical like historical marketplace.  Totally totally different. So what is right like? Well, you know, this is a big endeavor, right? So I think this is a discipline of fundraising that carries with it a very specific type of nervousness like okay This is going to be Two three years Yeah, you know 100 million dollar goal or 10 million, you know and for some organizations a million dollar goal in a capital campaign Is really big. Yeah, and and it's like well if we fail You know, will that be a huge disaster? Will that set us back? Will that be embarrassing? So the the real reason we asked this question was to We crossed our fingers that most people said yes, this would be successful So that we could sort of exert that confidence like no you can do it You know most capital campaigns if you really dedicate yourself And and follow the process, you know, whatever that process is You'll be successful and and that's what we found even in the midst of COVID and then of course this, you know, really tough economy we've been Encountering over the past year or so a vast majority of the people 94 percent who had finished a campaign Said that they considered it a success. So that was really great to see and and upon reflection I don't think I should have been so surprised because You know all other areas of giving, you know in 2020 and 2021 Even though we had a terrible pandemic and we're still in a pandemic in a lot of ways People respond and generously and it seems to be the case that capital campaigns were no exception And maybe we're even better Equipped to sort of capitalize on that that generosity because there's usually a very specific endeavor or project or building You know a very specific need that people can point to so not only were most the people that we asked successful um But the average percentage of the goal raised was way over a hundred percent. It was actually 108 was the average that people said that they had raised of their original goal. So they exceeded it um, which was great and um The real interesting about the thing about this is We we slice and dice the data by size of the organization And small shops which we defined as a million dollars or less in annual revenue And that's just kind of an arbitrary, you know mark that we found small shops are great, you know, they're still awesome They just as successful As sort of the rest of the field. So this is also an area where you know, maybe there's a feeling over too small You know, that's that's for a big university. That's for a big healthcare system Um, not the case again if you really follow through and dedicate yourself to it. There's really no reason why you can't be successful Well, you know, I I'm I'm loving this information because it gives me hope it gives me hope for the ecosystem of What's going on now? and for what Future decisions different boards and fundraising arms of organizations are going to make To go forward So let's talk about this myth and it's the capital campaign cannibalization myth because I am I'm sure you sat on boards too Yes, the the word comes up capital campaign and everybody's like, no, no, we'll lose all of our, you know our Relationships and it'll it'll take everything away You're telling us. I mean, I think you're going to say something different because we have the word myth in there What does this look like? So this is by far the the number one sort of objection you're exactly right to doing a capital campaign and You know talking to the folks at capital campaign pro that have been doing this for many many years even before the founding of the agency This is always the number one thing. Okay. We're thinking about a capital campaign But oh a board member or you know, something the development office or the ed someone Is like well, we could do that But what's the point if the annual fund just you know goes off a cliff and then you know It nets out in the end after four years So we would always tell people We haven't encountered that in our practice And I know other capital campaign consultants say the same thing So despite that there's still this sort of nervousness. So this was actually One thing we wanted to either put to rest Or say, okay, maybe this does happen, but here's what we want to do about it, right? But what we found was really interesting on this So I mentioned before that there were multiple cohorts So their first cohort was people that were just thinking about a campaign So we didn't ask them that because they weren't in a campaign obviously But then the other two people in a campaign now and then the third group people who have finished So the people that are in a campaign we asked them Okay, what has happened to your annual fund? Uh during the campaign And 79% of them said that the annual fund either increased Or stayed the same so only 21% said That it went down So that was really great to see and now there's a lot of reasons why your annual fund can suffer, right? So, you know, if you ignore it during a campaign It's probably gonna suffer, but there doesn't seem to really be any evidence that the capital campaign itself Causes that cannibalization And then for the third group people who have finished a campaign recently We asked them the same question. So during the campaign. So that was wrapped into the 79% But then we asked the people who finished, okay, what has happened in the subsequent kind of post campaign years And only 9% of those people said that the annual fund Is less than it was before they started the campaign So even in those subsequent years after the campaign There doesn't seem to be this this enormous drop off Now if you're listening to this and say well that happened to me Okay, it did happen to some people for sure But that's something you might want to work through like, okay. What was the cause of that? Was the the sort of the um the eye taken off, um, you know things in the annual fund there, but This was something we were very happy to see and and hopefully put the myth to rest That it doesn't have to be that way and in fact most people don't experience that You know, I think that's a uh for capital campaigns that I've been involved with I think that's the success That comes with having that kitchen cabinet or outside people. I don't know if that's how you all Coach or whatever, but it just seems to me that the message is being delivered differently by a bunch of community leaders Who say let's get on and push hard to the end on this one thing And then you have you know, you're your other teams going forward But if you try and take one team and move it to Is right campaign. I I think that's where we get the notion that doesn't work Yeah, absolutely. I think that's it's kind of an interesting thing Let me ask you about this Steven because this is one of those things that um I've just got to believe in my gut that this happened that people were geared up to start a capital campaign And then this pandemic came. I mean you and I over the years have talked about pandemics Unrest to social unrest economic unrest, of course, you know global at global health act, but um What happened like did people say We're going for it or did they like oh no, you know What was actually occurring? Well, I this may be surprising and hopefully won't disappoint you but By and large people didn't put their foot on the brakes for these big campaigns And that's something that you know, we saw at Blumerang in the early days of the pandemic with so many people exactly what you said like Whoa, this is not a good time to ask This may be insensitive But actually it was the opposite It was probably one of the best times in in history and I don't mean to be shrewd about that But people needed help right and if you had a clear case for support a clear need that you could articulate And doing so with a sense of urgency Those are the people who won the last three years And perhaps, you know, those people self selected into our community and then answered the survey But only 27 of people delayed a capital campaign due to covid specifically and then As we were doing the research it was really when this was starting to the the economic fears are starting to crank up So we added that and said hey, you know, is this Looming recession, I don't even know if it's going to be a recession It seems like there's it goes back and forth every day now But only 13 percent said that the economy was going to be something that that delayed the campaign Which that really made me happy because you know And I know you have too, but you know last three years we've been shouting at the rooftops like keep going you You have a case for support. You're a worthy cause Sure people are hurting, but you know, sometimes that's when they're most generous themselves So that was great to see so Yeah, it didn't seem to be a barrier to capital campaigns You know to me when I hear that it seems to me that That's like bold and visionary leadership. Yes Because people saying, you know, like they didn't have this study To refer to right at something in their heart and their soul and their intellect that said hell. No, we're going forward on this Yeah, and we're gonna be bold I think that's a really astute observation that I that hadn't occurred to me But you know that bold leadership and vision is something that is also required for a capital campaign So it you know, they're part and parcel. So it's good that those people, you know We we're gonna build this hundred million dollar center because they're we got kids in need. They're not gonna let you know The possibility of of a recession which may not even happen now stop them. So that was really good to see Yeah, yeah, you know, I think that's one of the beautiful things about the nonprofit sector is that You know, we have conviction Yes, we have conviction about things and I think in the early days of the pandemic You know, there was a clarion call to people that that were would stand up and say If you think things are tough for our our clients our communities They just got a hell of a lot tougher. Right. So so don't pump the brakes because Now we are needed more than ever. I don't care what you're doing Yeah, I mean, yeah, some things are, you know, needed more than others But yeah, we got to buckle up and and and really start looking at this and so Absolutely, you know, and it's an it's an amazing thing to Live through this but I love that you could that you all would study this Because I think you know, when you're in the middle and you're living it It's like one thing but then when you get the feedback Yeah, you start to really look at this. It's remarkable and there will be something else, you know It may be hyper localized like, you know, something happening to your city or town a natural disaster But there will always be something that you could use as an excuse to not move forward But it all boils down to don't decide for your donors They say no Fine, but at least you asked them Right. Don't yeah, I love that Stephen. I've heard you say that before In other ways and and I love that it comes up in every way. Does it it does? I mean, it's it's like one of those things. It's a truism that we need to keep repeating Hey, let's talk about feasibility studies. We don't have a lot of time left But this is one of those things that I've never been involved in the capital campaign Where this wasn't like a major part Yeah, the decision-making process and then ultimately forming the case for support right share with us Yeah learned it is often there, you know, there are some people who skip it and there there can be good reasons But but you know, I think after reading this research there there were so many benefits that we identified To doing the feasibility study that kind of surprised us So it actually the this finding actually didn't come from a direct question We we asked people in a campaign and and then post campaign people What were some of the other benefits? To doing the campaign besides the dollars raised and we gave people kind of a menu and they could they could select Which ones apply to them and we kind of ranked them And so things like, you know, we have stronger relationships with our donors Our internal systems were improved, you know, our team members felt like it was You know learning for them and they felt like it was kind of professional development is the term I was looking for there So we got all those answers And then I was kind of manipulating the data and I thought I wonder if people answered those those benefit questions differently depending on You know goal size did they do a feasibility study and the feasibility study differences Were really clear. So for example, this is just one example, but among people who did a feasibility study 94 of those people said that The major Ancillary benefit to the campaign was stronger major donor relationships And that makes sense because those people are a big part of the feasibility study process, right? You're probably interviewing them asking. Yeah, you're talking to them. So that's a good relationship builder Yeah, but People who didn't do a feasibility study only 66 of them said that their major donor relationships were strengthened So there's you know by about almost a third a big drop off there So that was that was pretty interesting. So That alone is probably worth the the time and effort and cost, you know, there is usually a cost involved for sure But that that can have long tail benefits For as long as that major donor is is with the organization, right? All the way through plan giving perhaps not to be too orbit about it But you know, that's good to have that relationship there and the end of the interesting thing Everybody likes to know about the dollars, but people who did a feasibility study 51 of them Increased their goal. They thought oh, actually we can raise more, right? And you know, most of them did as we said in the beginning um And that's a hair on fire moment for me. Yeah, right Oh my god That's fascinating. That's fascinating. So who doesn't want more money? So over half the goal raised and only 18% did it lower, which isn't necessarily a bad thing You know, that could just be more of a realistic realistic. Yeah. So so many good things there. Um, but you know, we're we're sort of uh We try to be impartial about it, but you know people should do feasibility studies I mean, they're they're there's so much fun stuff that comes out of them. Yeah You know, that's riveting because I think a lot of times people say Well, I mean, I've I've been in these meetings where people are like, we don't need a feasibility study We know what we need right project We know our donors and we know our community. Let's just get out there and start asking Right versus saying You know, what is the perception? How do we go about this? I mean, it's really an interesting thing because to me It we we use the word feasibility study, but it's really market research Yeah, it's i'm i'm the president of the let's rename the feasibility study like association I'm joining. Okay.  But like we don't do ourselves. It's like plan giving. It's like That's it's we should call it legacy because that's really Yeah, and there's other people talking about that and make that up. But like yeah, these terms We don't do ourselves many good favors, do we? No, I mean, it's it's so brutal and I think too Um, it it makes it more of a transactional, right? I see that thermometer, you know graphic where we fill in with the red Yeah on the billboard outside. Yeah as we go up and it's like versus being a little bit more strategic and understanding Right, you know how we can navigate this and how we can get our communities to To march along with us because these are huge huge To use your word legacy issues because capital campaigns are generally long-term strategic Um Applications to how we serve, right? So, I mean it's not just funding a big checking account Right. I think there's a part of that. I mean, especially sure we're trying to build endowments and down it Yep, because because the east and in and older parts of the midwest endowment has been part of a cultural Yes, in the west. It's not. I mean we're still building infrastructure Yeah, it changes, you know the dynamic but you know, I always always always love talking with you Um, I think you're just one of the brilliant minds and it's really been fun to You know have you here with us yet again? Um, I've got to ask are you going to be doing your giving uh, Tuesday? Well, I think that so uh, the folks at bloom ring are still doing that and they're doing really interesting kind of variations on it So if you don't follow bloom ring, you got to follow them because they're awesome And they're always putting out good stuff But I'm I'm gonna we're gonna do this capital campaign research every year And and you know me I I may come on and surprise you with something that uh, is is totally unrelated here In terms of research because I I love doing this stuff because it's so interesting to find those little nuggets But we're always good for it Well, you know, you you bring us um some new thoughts new ways to look at things. I think um, you've helped us understand that we can become Too emotional and in thinking what we believe is to be true and not really understanding how to look at things differently. So yeah Jared and I are big fans of anything that's data driven in research. So we invite you back on The show it's been far too long. I know Yeah, I'm glad we didn't get to a thousand, but you guys are gonna be there pretty quick here Well, yeah, well, yeah, it's true. It's it's marching along with without us I have to say Stephen Shaddock director of engagement for capital campaign pro check out capital campaign pro dot com A lot of great information. You can access this awesome research And really help you to you and your organization to understand if this is an investment that you want to make Um, and then from there how you're going to make that investment in terms of Time and talent and treasure. It's a it's a heavy lift But um shoot it's an exciting thing. I I've been a part of a couple and wow It's stressful, but it's so it's worth it. Yeah, it really it really is and it's some one of those things that I think Now that we are through This major disruption that we've had. Yeah across the planet in our in our own country It's the discussion is going to start to bubble up. So if you're part of a board or c-suite Leadership and a nonprofit you're going to start to hear this Discussion about capital campaigns more and more and so Yeah, look at the look to our friends at capital campaign pro to learn more about that Again, steven, you know, we talk about you a lot.  I'll keep going. I love it Thanks every day. It's amazing. I don't know how you do it every day, but I every day on linkedin It's like, oh, that's an amazing guest and I'm listening while I'm making a sandwich or something I love it. Well, thank you Thank you. It's uh, it's sometimes the labor of love, but we learn something new every day and It's genuine. We have genuine interest When you see us and how we talk, um, it's it's it's very very real and Again, thanks to our partners that that make this this possible They include blooming american nonprofit academy your part-time controller nonprofit thought leader fundraising academy at national university staffing boutique non-profit nerd and non-profit tech talk They join us day in and day out It's a small community, but it's a mighty community of thought leaders such as yourself my friend, steven shattuck I do recommend robots make bad fundraiser that book all the time because it's I think a great read and so, um Check that out. I'm sure you can still find it on amazon. Yep. It's there. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's I have bought that book for so many people Yeah, it's cool. It's really great and it's uh I think it's it's just a natural extension of who you are and how you Look at our sector and we are very fortunate to have you in our sector. So thank you steven shattuck Hey, you know every, um Every episode we still end with the sign-off and steven has heard this heard us say this before But it means something different all the time And especially this is a busy week for Thanksgiving and for a lot of family stress and travel stress So I even hear this message differently today as I speak it and it goes like this to stay well So you can do well. Happy Thanksgiving my friend and we'll see you soon. Thanks. See you guys. Bye


And hundreds of former Mohajidin and other civilians are determined to fight against the Taliban. They have reportedly gathered in the mountain areas of Gorban district and vowed to bring down the Taliban. Fighting has worsened around Afghanistan, especially in the north. That's where Taliban insurgents have conducted a wave of offensives in recent days, moving beyond their southern strongholds. Violence has escalated throughout the country since the United States announced plans to withdraw its troops without conditions by September 11.


to win on the 1st place. 100 meter hurdles. The competitors. Ready for battle. Championship record 13.1 once set in 2018 by Jamaica's crystal Morrison. There's the lineup. Davenic Dean of the Bahamas, Angel Robinson, and Malia Duncan of Jamaica, General Marie Thomas of Trinidad and Tobago, Zaza France of Curacao, Tenique Vincent of Trinidad and Zaza France of Curacao, one bronze in this event last year. The two fastest on the Jamaicans. Malia Duncan at 13.21 and Angel Robinson at 13.70. Off they go. Duncan Commonwealth for Jamaica. Robinson goes down. Tavernic Dean of the Bahamas, the 400 hurdles. Silver medalist is going brilliantly. Dean is going well. Thomas coming through for Trinidad. Malia Duncan holds on for Jamaica. 13.60 for Malia Duncan. General Marie Thomas of Trinidad and Tobago gave her all she could handle. The Bahamian Tavernic Dean was running the race of her life. She fell and Malia Duncan takes gold at 13.63. Here's the silver medalist from Trinidad and Tobago. What a fabulous performance from General Marie Thomas. 13.74 seconds for her. Quite a race. Angel Robinson the Jamaican fell early and Zaza France she's a medalist again I think bronze last year in the Bahamas and I think she snatched the bronze medal here as well. We'll get confirmation shortly the Trinidad and Tobago fans with more reason to cheer. There it is. The Jamaican goes down early Malia Duncan the second in the field steadying herself. Thomas of Trinidad and Tobago holding her all the time. Dean goes out and Zaza France of Curacao repeats as a bronze medalist after all the turmoil in this race she held steady once again and has back to back correct the bronze medals but no denying this young lady despite her own issues through the race and the opening leg for the sprint relay team for Trinidad and Tobago and now for the third year in a row it's an athlete from St. Jaeger High School in Jamaica who has the under 17 girls 100 meter hurdles title, negative 0.7 meters per second the wind speed 13.63 for Duncan 13.74 a personal best for Thomas 14.21 PB for Zaza France to take the bronze medal Darviny Dean still came through for Ford interesting 14.43 for Thomas Vincent 14.72 Caprice 14.77 and Angel Ron Vincent of Jamaica did not finish